With a leather helmet, I figured. “Is that right, sir?”
“Halfback.”
“Yes, sir.” Backup, no doubt.
He studied my papers some more. “I didn’t play much.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stood there with my mouth shut, another method I’d learned in dealing with military hierarchy. “Look, somebody owes somebody a favor and that’s why you’re here.” He leaned back in his green metallic chair, which almost matched the chromate walls, and finally remembered that I was still at attention. “At ease.” He dropped my papers and concentrated on me as I took a quarter step to the side and placed my hands behind my back. I was still holding my hat. “We’ve got a little drug smuggling problem on the base, but nothing big. We’ve already got some very good men working on the situation. I’m only guessing, but I’d say the provost marshal wants one of his brand-new MOS 0111s to get his feet wet.”
He continued to consider me, and I guessed that he wanted a response. “Yes, sir.”
“Why mother-green-and-her-mean-machine can’t police her own messes, of which there are plenty, is a mystery to me, but you’re here and we’ll just have to make the best of things.” He glanced back at the papers on his desk. “You are new, and it won’t take long for everyone to figure out why you’re here. So the best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told. You got me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All of the work you’ve done in the past has been under the direct supervision of navy investigators; now, however, you will be working with air force security personnel and central intelligence detachment, who, I am sure, you will find infinitely more capable than the swabos.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m putting you with Mendoza, who is our own 377th, and Baranski of central intelligence division. They’ve been working the case for about five weeks, and you will provide the muscle.”
“Yes, sir.” If he belched, I was going to yes-sir it.
“They’re first louies, and you will follow every order they give you. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re class of ’66.” He slipped my papers back in the folder and handed them to me. “That means there’s one of you butter bars left; gives great hope to the war effort.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
When I got to the outer office and handed my folder to the airman, there were two first lieutenants leaning against the doorway. One was short and dark; the other was a tall bon vivant with an Errol Flynn mustache. The tall one had blond hair, air-force-blue eyes, and army fatigues. He stuck his hand out and I shook it, taking in the casual, self-assured swagger of a man very content with himself. “You our new pet Marine?”
“Yep.”
He lit a Camel cigarette and swiveled his head to look at his partner, who now extended his hand. I shook his as well. He spoke with a strong Texas accent. “Mendoza. This here is Baranski.”
I had already read their names just above their right pockets, just as I was sure they’d already read mine, but it was now a different protocol. I slipped my hat back on. “Longmire.”
"Sheriff Longmire?”
I turned and looked up at Rosey Wayman, one of the few females in the Wyoming Highway Patrol. She’d been transferred up from the Elk Mountain detachment about six months ago and had been causing quite a stir here in the Bighorns. “Well, if it isn’t the sweetheart of I-two-five.” I watched as the trademark grin showed bright white teeth, and her blue eyes sparked.
Maybe my evening was looking up. I wondered when Vic would be back.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Walt, but we got a call in, and Ruby said this would be where you were.”
"What’ve we got?”
“Some ranchers found a body down on Lone Bear Road near Route 249.”
Maybe my evening wasn’t looking up.
That was near Powder Junction. It was July, and it didn’t take much deduction to figure out why the locals were out on that desolate part of the county road system. “Swathers or balers?”
“Balers. They supposedly swathed last week.”
No square hectare of grass went unshorn in a Wyoming summer. The Department of Transportation usually subcontracted the cutting of grass along its motorways to the lowest-bidding local ranchers, which allowed the state grass to become a private commodity commonly known as beer-can hay.
I poked a thumb toward the blond patrolperson as Dorothy returned with the dish full of chicken and lemongrass. “Can I get that to go?”
No matter what aspect of law enforcement with which you might be involved, there’s always one job you dread. I’m sure at the more complicated venues it’s the terrorists, it’s serial killers, or it’s gang-related, but for the western sheriff it’s always been the body dump. To the north, Sheridan County has two unsolved, and Natrona County to the south has five; up until twenty-eight minutes ago, we’d had none. There you stand by some numbered roadway with a victim, no ID, no crime scene, no suspects, nothing.
I got out of Rosey’s cruiser and nodded to Chuck Frymyer and Double Tough, my two deputies from the southern part of the county. “Walt. She’s down over the hill.”
We headed toward the giant balers at the edge of a large culvert. Lieutenant Cox, the highway patrol division commander, was standing halfway down the hill toward the barrow ditch with two more of his men, still writing in their duty books. It was near their highway, but it was my county. “Hey, Karl.”
“Walt.” He nodded at one of the pieces of equipment where two elderly cowboys sat, one in a beaten straw hat and the other wearing a Rocking D Ranch ball cap. “You know these gentlemen?”
“Yep.” The two got up when they noticed me. Den and James Dunnigan were a couple of hardscrabble ranchers from out near Bailey. James was a little wifty, and Den was just plain mean. "How you doin’, James?”
Den squinted and started in. “We swathed two days ago, and she wasn’t here....”
James cut him off. “Hey, Walt.”
"What’a we got?” I figured the HPs had already gotten a statement from them, but I thought I’d give the brothers another shot at the story before we went any further.
"Already told ’em.” Den gestured toward the HPs. It had probably been a long day, it was late on a Saturday afternoon, and he evidently felt they had been detained long enough.
“Tell me.” I remained conversational but made sure it wasn’t a question. Frymyer had his notebook out and was scribbling.
James continued in a soft voice and did his best to focus on the conversation at hand. “We was balin’ and come up onto her.”
“What’d you do?”
He shrugged. “Shut ’er down and called 911.”
"Go near the body?”
“Nope, I didn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.”
I glanced at Den, who was blinking too much. "Den?”
He shrugged. “I went over to the edge of the culvert and yelled at her.” He blinked again. “I thought she might be asleep. Then I saw she wasn’t breathin’.”
I had Den show me the exact route that he had taken, and then I retreated to the top of the culvert with my two deputies, where it was unlikely anybody had been. I squatted down in a hunter’s crouch and listened as Cox dismissed the Dunnigan brothers.
I turned to Chuck. “You know how to open a baler?”
The sandy Vandyke smiled back. “Born to it.”
“Go crack that one open and check the contents and then split the last two bales northbound. If she was walking or running from somebody, then she might’ve dropped her purse or something along the way.” Frymyer paused for a moment, and I looked at him. “You need help?”
He glanced back at the one-ton bales. “Yes.”
I looked at Double Tough, and he started off with Chuck.
There was still a lot of light—it was like that in the summer this far north—and you could plainly see where the young woman had played out the last moments of her life. She was provocatively dressed, inappropriate for the surroundings. She had on a short skirt, a pink halter top, and no shoes. Her long, dark hair was tangled with the grasses; it had been blown by the ever prevalent Wyoming wind, and you could see her delicate bone structure. The eyes were closed, and you might’ve thought she was asleep but for the blue coloring in her face and a swollen eye, and the fact that, from the angle, it was apparent that her neck had been broken.