Messenger: A Walt Longmire Story Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Messenger

  First Chapter of A Serpent’s Tooth (Book 9 in the Walt Longmire Mystery Series)

  Craig Johnson is the author of eight novels in the Walt Longmire mystery series, which has garnered popular and critical acclaim. The Cold Dish was a Dilys Award finalist and the French edition won Le Prix du Polar Nouvel Observateur/BibliObs. Death Without Company, the Wyoming Historical Association’s Book of the Year, won France’s Le Prix 813, and Kindness Goes Unpunished, the third in the series, has also been published in France. Another Man’s Moccasins was the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award winner and the Mountains and Plains Book of the Year, and The Dark Horse, the fifth in the series, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. Junkyard Dogs won the Watson Award for a mystery novel with the best sidekick and Hell Is Empty was a New York Times bestseller. The eighth novel in the series, As the Crow Flies, was a New York Times bestseller and an Indie Next Pick. All are available from Penguin. Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire novels have now been adapted for television in the hit series Longmire on A&E. His next novel, A Serpent’s Tooth, will be available from Viking in June 2013. Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.

  Praise for Craig Johnson and the Walt Longmire Mystery Series

  “Like the greatest crime novelists, Johnson is a student of human nature. Walt Longmire is strong but fallible, a man whose devil-may-care stoicism masks a heightened sensitivity to the horrors he’s witnessed. Unlike traditional genre novelists who obsess mainly over every hairpin plot turn, Johnson’s books are also preoccupied with the mystery of his characters’ psyches.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Johnson knows the territory, both fictive and geographical, and tells us about it in prose that crackles.”

  —Robert B. Parker

  “The characters talk straight from the hip and the Wyoming landscape is its own kind of eloquence.”

  —The New York Times

  “[Walt Longmire] is an easy man to like. . . . Johnson evokes the rugged landscape with reverential prose, lending a heady atmosphere to his story.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Stepping into Walt’s world is like slipping on a favorite pair of slippers, and it’s where those slippers lead that provides a thrill. Johnson pens a series that should become a ‘must’ read, so curl up, get comfortable, and enjoy the ride.”

  —The Denver Post

  “A winning piece of work . . . There’s a convincing feel to the whole package: a sense that you’re viewing this territory through the eyes of someone who knows it as adoring lover and skeptical onlooker at the same time.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Johnson’s pacing is tight and his dialogue snaps.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Truly great. Reading Craig Johnson is a treat. . . . [He] tells great stories, casts wonderful characters and writes in a style that compels the reader forward.”

  —Wyoming Tribune Eagle

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN 978-1-101-63654-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Lola, our Shoshone Rose

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Messenger is another one of those stories that I like to refer to as a connecting tissue between my Walt Longmire novels—little stories that aren’t so much of a mystery but are more revealing of character. There are things I count on in the books and in the stories, characters that I depend on to bring a certain energy to the scenes and two of the big ones are Henry and Vic; I always know that when they join Walt, things seem to happen—sometimes crazy things.

  A portion of the proceeds of this story goes to the Teton Raptor Center in Jackson, Wyoming, in hopes that they will extend their efforts in saving owls in the Bighorn Mountains. If you’d like to make a further donation, they can be reached below.

  Teton Raptor Center

  P.O. Box 1805

  Wilson, Wyoming 83014

  Phone: 307.203.2551

  E-mail: [email protected]

  I’d like to thank the Teton Raptor Center for the information I gleaned from them along with Marcus Red Thunder for the Cheyenne owl lore. And where would I be on the hanging road if not for Gail “Goshawk” Hochman, Marianne “Merlin” Merola, Kathryn “Great Horned Owl” Court, Tara “Snowy Owl” Singh, Barbara “Gyr Falcon” Campo, Scott “European Eagle Owl” Cohen, Carolyn “Crested Owl” Coleburn, Maureen “Crowned Eagle” Donnelly, Ben “Bald Eagle” Petrone, and Angie “Screech Owl” Messina—and as always, my little Burrowing Owl, Judy.

  The crow wished everything was black, the owl, that everything was white.

  —William Blake

  Messenger

  It was one of those late summer days that sometimes showed up in early October after a killing frost—warm, dry, and hazy; Indian summer. The term is over two hundred years old and was first coined by the French American writer John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur in 1778, describing the warm calm before the winter storm.

  Boy howdy.

  If one of these miraculous days happened to appear on an autumn Saturday in north central Wyoming, Henry Standing Bear and I would head up into the Bighorn Mountains, a sister range to the Rockies, conveniently located between the Black Hills of South Dakota and Yellowstone National Park. No place in the area offers a more diverse landscape, from lush grasslands to alpine meadows, from crystal-clear lakes to rushing streams, and from rolling hills to sheer mountain walls—or so read the national forest travel brochure and map I had unfolded in my lap.

  The Bear had been my best friend since grade school, and we always headed for those crystal-clear lakes or rushing streams in pursuit of rainbow, brown, brook, and cutthroat trout. We were returning from one of those trips on a late afternoon with a cooler of fish, the aspens having turned a shimmering gold, which provided a counterpoint to the dense verdant green of the conifers. The made-for-my-life VistaVision effect was ruined by only one thing; due to the road conditions leading in and out from one of our favorite spots along Baby Wagon Creek, relatively unknown to the greater fishing population, I was forced to accompany Henry in his truck, Rezdawg, a vehicle I hated beyond all others.

  Making the environs more decorative, however, was Victoria Moretti, my undersheriff, who had decided to join us. We’d just rounded a corner when Rezdawg’s wrinkled right fender collided with one of th
e aspens, which scraped along the door and knocked into my elbow. It might’ve collided with the passenger-side mirror if there had been one, but we’d knocked that off a mile back.

  The trunk was a little bit bigger in circumference than a Major League Baseball bat. “Ouch.”

  Vic was seated between us, and I glanced at her; dressed in provocative jeans, hiking boots, and a hooded Philadelphia Flyers sweatshirt, the buds of her iPod were in her ears, her eyes were closed, and she was ignoring everything, including me.

  Diving between two more trees before heaving the vintage 4x4 over a rock outcropping on top of a small ridge and sliding down the other side, the Bear sawed at the wheel and looked at me, rubbing my elbow. “Are you okay?”

  I folded the boredom-fighting map and stuffed it into the glove compartment with a box of fuses, an old radiator cap, a seventeen-year-old vehicle registration, and a large mouse nest. “Scarred for life.” I glanced back at him, unsure of what to make of the attention and instead focused on Vic’s head, bobbing along with the music playing so loudly we could hear it by just sitting next to her. “I don’t think she’s concerned for my welfare.”

  “Do you think she is upset about not catching any fish?”

  “If she was, she should’ve tied a fly on the end of her line and put it in the water; that’s where I usually catch fish.” I reset the handheld radio that kept trying to ride up under my rump and placed it back between Vic and me. “Are you sure this is the way we came in?”

  He gestured toward the surrounding forest. “The trees are bigger than last year.”

  I braced a hand against the dash. “Uh-huh.”

  He shot a response at my disbelief, the corners of his mouth pulled down like guidelines on an outfitter’s wall tent. “Shortcut.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The handheld radio chattered briefly, but it had been doing that all day; set on scan, it was picking up the signals from the sheriff’s department, the highway patrol, the forest service, and the wardens from game and fish. I picked the thing up and toyed with the squelch in an attempt to get better reception, but it didn’t seem to do any good. “Wardens must be busy . . .”

  The Cheyenne Nation nodded and looked at me again. “Hunting season and the last of the tourists.”

  I pointed toward the road, or the lack thereof. “If you’d pay more attention to where we’re going, you might save some of these trees.” He ignored me, and I continued to fiddle with the knobs on the police radio, the only concession I made to my full-time job when fishing—in my line of work it’s sometimes important for people to get in touch with me; not too often, but sometimes.

  I could feel his eyes on me as he looked past Vic, grooving in her own world. “What?”

  He did his best to sound innocent, something at which he wasn’t particularly good. “What?”

  “Why are you behaving strangely?”

  He turned back to the road. “Define strangely.”

  “You keep watching me and asking me if I’m all right.”

  He didn’t turn to look at me this time. “Are you?”

  “Yep.” I sighed. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “As a good friend . . ” He sounded annoyed now. “Can I not simply be interested in your general well-being?”

  “No, not really.” I picked up and played with the radio again and thought about what this kind of inordinate attention usually meant. “Have you been talking to Cady?” My daughter, The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time, was a lawyer in Philadelphia. Newly married to Michael, my undersheriff Vic’s brother, she was pregnant with her first child but sometimes treated me as if I were one. “What’ve the two of you been cahooting about now?”

  He shook his head. “I know you are in the suspicion business, but your paranoia may be getting the best of you.”

  “Are you saying you haven’t been talking with her?”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  He shook his head solemnly. “No, I did not say that.”

  “No, you haven’t been talking to Cady or no you didn’t say that?”

  “Exactly.”

  I shook my head and watched the passing scenery as we bumped along.

  After a few moments, he spoke again, just as I knew he would. “I am supposed to broach a subject with you.”

  “Ahh . . .” This is the way it usually worked; Cady, unwilling to ask me questions on more sensitive issues, would sometimes ask the Bear to intercede and bring the subject up, floating a topic for response before the real familial debate began. “What’s this about?”

  “Your granddaughter.”

  I took a breath, realizing the subject matter was of true import. “Okay.”

  “She is going to need a name.”

  I nodded. “Tell my daughter I agree, the child should have a name.”

  He quickly added, ignoring the humor. “It is a question of what name.”

  I smiled; Henry had been friends with both my deceased wife and me long before we’d gotten married. “We discussed that when she was here for rodeo—she’s going to name her Martha.”

  There was a long pause as the Cheyenne Nation fought the wheel, the road, and possibly me.

  I turned and looked at him. “She’s not going to name her daughter after her mother?” He shrugged. “We talked about this; we sat there in the bleachers at rodeo and she brought up her mother’s name and I seconded it.”

  “She says you are the one who brought up Martha’s name.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “She said she mentioned something about the baby’s name and that you brought up Martha.”

  “I just brought her mother’s name up casually in conversation, and then she said she was going to name the baby after her.”

  He shook his head some more. “When you bring Martha’s name up in conversation, it is never casual.”

  We drove in silence, hearing only the music in Vic’s ears.

  “I might’ve brought it up uncasually.” He continued to say nothing, which spoke volumes. “So, she doesn’t want to name the baby after her mother?”

  “She is not sure.”

  “Fine.”

  “Obviously, it is not.”

  “I just . . .” My voice sounded a little confrontational even to me, so I changed my tone. “It’s just that I’d gotten used to the idea.”

  “Your idea.”

  “Evidently.” We glanced off another tree, but they were fewer and farther between. “What does she want to name the baby?”

  “Lola.”

  We drove along in silence as I contemplated the thought that my daughter was considering naming my granddaughter after a 1959 Baltic Blue Thunderbird convertible. “She wants to name my granddaughter after your car?”

  He gestured toward the vehicle in which we rode. “At least she is not going to name her Rezdawg.”

  “Lola, really?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about it. “Where did the name of your car come from?”

  “There was a lovely young woman from South Dakota . . .”

  “The stripper?”

  He smiled a knowing smile. “She was a dancer, yes.”

  “A stripper; she was a stripper from over in Sturgis you dated in the seventies.”

  “She was a very talented performer.”

  “And you named the car after her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not having my granddaughter named after a car named after a stripper.” I shook my head. “Lola Moretti. Lola Moretti?”

  Vic chimed in for the first time, and I noticed she’d taken the buds from her ears and was cupping them in her hand. “Sounds like a pole dancer to me.”

  Static. “. . . A couple of lives endangered, and if we don’t get any help here pretty soon I’m going
to have to do something drastic.”

  Henry, Vic, and I looked at the handheld radio in my grip as if the device itself might have blurted out the words and interrupted our conversation.

  I punched the button on the mic and responded. “This is Walt Longmire, sheriff of Absaroka County. Copy?”

  Static. “. . . Crazy Woman Canyon, and the situation is pretty serious. We can’t get to our vehicles and . . .” The sound drifted off, and I glanced at Henry. “. . . Without backup I’m going to have to use my gun.”

  I keyed the mic again; it sounded like Chuck Coon, one of the forest service rangers. “Chuck, this is Walt Longmire. Over?”

  The Bear mumbled under his breath. “Did you say Chuck Coon?”

  I nodded and smiled. Coon was actually a very nice guy—the kind of ranger who wouldn’t cite you if your campfire was an inch too close to the trail or your horse was picketed a little too near a water source. Henry, however, had had a few visits with him about the difference between brook trout and brown trout and the number of each species allowed a day, but ever since I had dissuaded a group of motorcyclists traveling from Sturgis from beating Coon to death at West Tensleep Campground, the ranger had pretty much decided we were best friends. “Sounds like he’s in trouble.”

  Henry shrugged. “We could go help whoever is trying to kill him.”

  I thought about the distance between where we were now and where the ranger was. “How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”

  The Cheyenne Nation thought about it. “Not too long.”

  Looking out the window to avoid Henry’s intermittent gaze as we glanced off another tree, I folded my arms on my chest. “Lola.”

  Henry remained resolute. “It is a lovely name.”

  Vic shrugged. “She’s my niece, and I vote for Lola. We just better start stocking up on body glitter.”

  • • •

  Passing Muddy Creek forest station, Henry accelerated into the turn and slowed at the dirt road marked Crazy Woman Canyon, a spot in the Bighorn Mountains where a settler family had been decimated, leaving only the mother who had, reasonably, lost her mind; the incident made famous in the Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson. “Did Coon say Crazy Woman Canyon or the campground at Crazy Woman Creek?”