Kindness Goes Unpunished Read online

  Praise for Kindness Goes Unpunished

  “Johnson deftly integrates country and city sensibilities; makes Walt’s love and fear for Cady palpable; and casts a droll eye on Walt and romance…. A must-read for both the tough and the tenderhearted.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

  “Johnson crafts great, imaginative mysteries with lots of twists, turns and misdirections. Even in this big-city setting, a sense of the West and its values overlays the action…(and) the author skillfully seasons his books with humor too often missing in his genre.”

  —The Billings Gazette

  “The quick pace and tangled web of interconnected crimes will keep readers turning pages.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Johnson’s love for his main characters—including Longmire’s fiercely devoted partner (and Philly native) Victoria Moretti and his friend Henry—also extends to the many side characters and villains that populate the novel’s urban wastelands. There’s genuine emotion and care in these pages, with humor and humanity to balance its undertone of imminent violence.”

  —Mystery Scene Magazine

  “Craig Johnson’s third installment in his Sheriff Walt Longmire series, Kindness Goes Unpunished, solidifies this author’s stature as a mystery storyteller at the level of Michael Connelly, Tony Hillerman and James Sallis. Craig Johnson’s eye for drawing upon his deeply developed characters’ personalities and their realistic emotional and physical reactions to tragic events is what makes this author stand out with these icons of the mystery genre.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  Praise for Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire Mysteries

  “The Cold Dish is my top pick for the first novel Edgar Award. It’s that good!”

  —Tony Hillerman

  “Johnson delivers a story you can wrap your arms around…. We in the West have a major new talent on our hands.”

  —The Denver Post

  “A winning piece of work, and a convincing feel to the whole package.”

  —The Washington Post

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

  —The New York Times

  “Johnson delivers great storytelling in an intelligent mystery packed with terrific characters and an engulfing sense of place…capturing life in a breathtaking, unyielding landscape.”

  —The Oregonian

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

  —Robert B. Parker

  “Death Without Company moves swiftly and the dialogue shines, but it’s the Western mood and sensibility that set Johnson apart.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Pile on thermal underwear, fire up the four-wheel drive and head for Durant. Walt and his idiosyncratic crew are terrific company—droll, sassy, and surprisingly tenderhearted.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

  “Death Without Company is a vivid ride through the modern American West. Great characters and storytelling make this well worth your time.”

  —Christopher Moore, author of Lamb and A Dirty Job

  “Death Without Company exudes Johnson’s bone-deep knowledge of the harsh, sometimes desperate side of the American West…. No pretty ponies or slick cowboys here—this is the real thing.”

  —Neil McMahon, author of Revolution No. 9 and To the Bone

  A PENGUIN MYSTERY

  KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED

  Craig Johnson is the author of the Book Sense and Killer Picks Death Without Company and The Cold Dish. The Cold Dish was also chosen as a Dilys finalist, and Death Without Company received the Wyoming Historical Society’s Award for Fiction. Johnson is also the author of the next book in the Walt Longmire mystery series, Another Man’s Moccasins. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.

  CRAIG JOHNSON

  KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007

  Published in Penguin Books 2008

  Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2007

  All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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

  ISBN: 9781101371954

  CIP data available

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For the Donut, who started it all…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A writer, like a sheriff, is the embodiment of a group of people and, without their support, both are in a tight spot. I have been blessed with a close order of family, friends, and associates who have made this book possible.

  I have the usual posse to thank, and a few new deputies that came along for the ride. Thanks to Gail Hochman for pulling out the jail bars. Kathryn Court, Ali Bothwell Mancini, Clare Ferraro, and Sonya Cheuse at Viking/Penguin for having the horses saddled, Susan Fain, Joel Katz, and Richard Rhoades for the cover fire, and to all the Troiano’s for the spaghetti westerns.

  Thanks to Mandy Smoker Broaddus for use of her poetry from her book Another Attempt at Rescue (Hanging Loose Press), and to Marcus Red Thunder and Henry Standing Bear for cutting the telegraph lines. Eric Boss for selling the snake-oil, Neil McMahon, Bill Fitzhugh, and Christopher Moore for baking the cake with the file, Margaret Coel for the Derringer in her garter belt, and to Tony Hillerman for the pardon from the governor.

  Thanks to Jim Pauley and the City of Philadelphia Police Department Public Affairs Office, the Trauma Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, OperaDelaware and the Grand Opera House of Wilmington, Delaware. Thanks to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and to Judy, my favorite masterpiece.

  Philadelphia, where no good deed goes unpunished…

  —STEVE LOPEZ

  The Philadelphia Inquirer

  January 15, 1995

>   KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EPILOGUE

  1

  I didn’t wear my gun. They had said that it was going to be easy and, like the fool I am, I believed them. They said that if things got rough to make sure I showed the pictures, of which there were only twenty-three; I had already shown all of them twice. “‘Long, long ago, there lived a king and queen…’”

  I looked around the room for a little backup, but there wasn’t anyone there. They had said that I didn’t have to worry, that they wouldn’t leave me alone, but they had. “‘…who didn’t have any children. One day, the queen was visited by a wise fairy, who told her, “You will have a lovely baby girl.” The king was so overjoyed when he heard the news that he immediately made plans for a great feast. He invited not only his relatives, but also the twelve fairies who lived in the kingdom.’”

  “Where’s your gun?”

  My thought exactly. “I didn’t think I was going to need it.” They all nodded, but I wasn’t particularly sure they agreed.

  “How long have you been a sheriff?”

  “Twenty-three years.” It just seemed like a million.

  “Do you know Buffalo Bill?”

  Maybe it was a million. “No, he was a little before my time.”

  “My daddy says you’re a butt hole.”

  I looked down at the battered book in my hands. “Okay, maybe we should concentrate on today’s story…”

  “He says you used to drive around drunk all the time…”

  The instigator in the front row looked like a little angel but had a mouth like a stevedore. He was getting ready to say something else, so I cut him off by holding up Grimm’s Fairy Tales open to the page where the young princess had been enchanted and put to sleep for a hundred years. “Why do you think the fairy visited the queen?” A dark-haired girl with enormous eyes who sat in the third row slowly raised her hand. “You?”

  She cocked her head in disgust. “I told you, my name is Anne.”

  I nodded mine in contrition. “Right. Anne, why do you think the fairy visited the queen?”

  “Because their daughter is going to fall asleep.” She said it slowly, with the hearty contempt even young people have for civil servants who can’t get it right.

  “Well, yep, but that happens later on because one of the fairies gets angry, right?” Anne raised her hand again, but I ignored her for a slight redheaded boy in the back. His name was Rusty, and I quietly thanked the powers that be for word association. “Rusty?”

  “My dad says that my Uncle Paul is a fairy.”

  I’m not sure when it was that my storytelling abilities began to atrophy, but it must have been somewhere between Sesame Street and The Electric Company. I think I used to be pretty good at it, but that was a long time ago. I was going to have to ask my daughter if that really was the case; she was now “The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time” and a Philadelphia lawyer. When I had spoken to Cady last night, she had still been at the office library in the basement. I felt sorry for her till she told me the basement was on the twenty-eighth floor. My friend Henry Standing Bear said that the law library was where all the lawyers went to sleep at about $250 an hour.

  “You are the worstest storyteller we ever had.”

  I looked down at another would-be literary critic who had been silent up till now and wondered if maybe I had made a mistake with “Brier Rose.” Cady had loved the story dearly at an earlier age, but the current enrollment appeared to be a little sophisticated for the material.

  “My daddy hides his medicine whenever anybody knocks on our door.”

  I tried not to concentrate on this child’s name. I propped the book back up on my knee and looked at all of them, the future of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

  “He says he doesn’t have a prescription.”

  I was supposed to make the drive to Philadelphia tomorrow with Henry. He had received an invitation to lecture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with his Mennonite photograph collection in tow. I thought it would be an opportunity to visit my daughter and meet the lawyer who was the latest of her conquests. The relationship had lasted about four months, a personal record for her, so I decided that it was time I met the prospective son-in-law.

  “His medicine makes him fall down.”

  Henry was planning on driving Lola. I had tried to talk him into flying, but it had been a while since he had driven across the country and he said he wanted to check things out. The real reason was he wanted to make an entrance with the powder blue 1959 Thunderbird convertible; the Bear was big on entrances.

  “He smokes his medicine.”

  We were going for only a week, but Cady was very excited about introducing us to Devon Conliffe, who sounded like a character from The Philadelphia Story. I had warned her that lawyers shouldn’t marry other lawyers, that it only led to imbecile paralegals.

  “My mommy says the only thing his medicine does is keep him from getting a job.”

  Patti with an “i,” my daughter’s secretary, agreed with me about lawyer interbreeding. We had talked about the relationship, and I could just make out a little reservation in Patti’s voice when she mentioned him.

  “He’s my third daddy.”

  We were supposed to have dinner with the elder Conliffes at their palatial home in Bryn Mawr, an event I was looking forward to like a subcutaneous wound.

  “I liked my second daddy best.”

  It would be interesting to see their response to the Indian and his faithful sidekick, the sheriff of Absaroka County. They probably wouldn’t open the gate.

  “I don’t remember my first daddy.”

  I looked up at the kid and reopened the book. “‘Long, long ago, there lived a king and queen who didn’t have any children…’”

  Dorothy Caldwell turned toward the patties on the griddle behind her, lifted the press, and turned them. “What’d you read?”

  I pulled Cady’s personal copy from the stool beside me and sat it on the counter. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “Brier Rose”—“Sleeping Beauty” before Hollywood got hold of it.

  She gave me a sideways look and then leaned over to glance at the love-worn cover. “Kindergarten?” She shrugged a shoulder as she placed the meat press aside. “Kids have gotten a little jaded since Cady’s generation, Walter.”

  I set my glass down. “Well, I don’t have to do it again until after the election.” She slipped the hamburger, lettuce, tomato, and bacon onto a toasted bun and slid the plate toward me. “The usual?”

  She nodded at the old joke, sipped at her own tea, and peeked at me over the rim. “I hear Kyle Straub is going to run.”

  I nodded and put mayonnaise on my burger, a practice she hated. “Yep, I’ve seen the signs.” The prosecuting attorney had jumped the gun this morning and placed his red-white-and-blue signs in all the strategic spots around town before finding out for sure if I was really going to run again. So far, it had been the strongest motivation that I had had to continue my tenure.

  “Prosecuting attorney/sheriff.” She paused for effect. “Kind of gives you an indication as to what his administration would be like.”

  I thought about my original plan, to run for sheriff, put in half a term, and then hand the reins over to Vic, allowing her to prove herself for two years before having to face a general election. I chewed a chunk of burger. “You think Vic would make a good sheriff?”

  Dorothy slipped a wayward lock behind her ear and looked past me. Her hair was getting longer, and I wondered if she was growing
it out. The answer to my question about Vic, like everything else about Dorothy, was definitive. “Why don’t we ask her?”

  I fought the urge to turn and look out onto Main Street, where I’m sure a handsome, dark-haired woman was parking a ten-year-old unit in front of the Busy Bee Cafe. Wyoming had never elected a female sheriff and the chances of their electing an Italian from Philadelphia with a mouth like a saltwater crocodile were relatively slim.

  “She’s got the Basquo with her.” There was a pause as I continued eating my lunch. “Those two are quite the pair.”

  Santiago Saizarbitoria had joined our little contingency three months ago and, with the exception of trying to put out a chimney fire single-handedly on an ice-slicked roof, had proven himself indispensable. I listened as the door opened and closed, the laden April air drifting through the brief opening. They sat on the stools beside me and threw their elbows onto the counter. In identical uniforms and service jackets, they could have been twins, except that the Basquo was bigger, with wrists like bundled cables, and had a goatee, and he didn’t have the tarnished gold eyes that Vic had.

  I kept eating as Dorothy pulled two mugs from under the counter, poured them full, and pushed the cream dispenser and the sugar toward the old world pair. They both drank coffee all day. Vic slipped her finger through the handle of her cup. “How was this afternoon’s premiere at Durant Elementary?”

  I took another sip of my iced tea. “I don’t think we’ll make the long run.”

  She tore open five sugars and dumped them in her mug. “I been here two years. How come they never fucking asked me?”

  I set my glass back down. “It’s hard to read nursery rhymes with a tape delay.”