Also by Craig Johnson
The Cold Dish
Death Without Company
Kindness Goes Unpunished
Another Man’s Moccasins
The Dark Horse
Junkyard Dogs
Hell Is Empty
As the Crow Flies
A Serpent’s Tooth
Spirit of Steamboat
VIKING
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First published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Craig Johnson
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Johnson, Craig, 1961- author.
Any other name : a Longmire mystery / Craig Johnson.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-698-16353-9
1. Longmire, Walt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Sheriffs—Wyoming—Fiction. 3. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.O325A74 2014
813'.6—dc23 2013047845
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
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, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Lola, Act I
CONTENTS
Also by Craig Johnson
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
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
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those that would harm us.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First off I owe an apology to Campbell County, Wyoming, for getting all noir whenever Walt heads over there; it seems as though it’s always the dead of winter when I cross the Powder River country, but I promise that someday I’ll do a bright and cheery book that takes place in the spring or summer. Honest. Speaking of summer, thanks to the fine folks at the State Game Lodge in Custer National Park for the ghostly tour.
Finally, this novel sprang up with the fertile assistance of Dr. David “Nasturtium” Nickerson as well as the numerous train experts who helped me in spreading the fertilizer and Auda “Snap Dragon” DeLeon and Marlen “Larkspur” Larson for the Spanish language lessons.
Not much grows in the high plains winter, but I had more than a few hothouse beauties helping me up on this one like Gail “Hydrangea” Hochman and Marianne “Magnolia” Merola. The pruning and cutting was ably handled by Kathryn “Columbine” Court, Lindsay “Star of Bethlehem” Schwoeri, copyeditor Barbara “Chrysanthemum” Campo, and Scott “Cactus” Cohen. The bouquet that makes the road smell sweet is Carolyn “Calendula” Coleburn, Ben “Plumeria” Petrone, Maureen “Dahlia” Donnelly, and Angie “Indian Paintbrush” Messina.
And, most of all, my rose by any name, Judy “Sweet-Pea” Johnson.
1
Joseph Conrad said that if you wanted to know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a storm; if you want to know the age of the Powder River country, just be on the wrong side of a coal train. A guy who worked for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe once told me that the trains in northern Wyoming are about a hundred and forty cars and a mile and a half long, but it sure seems longer than that when you’re waiting on one.
Lucian Connally, my old boss and the retired sheriff of Absaroka County, reached into his pocket and pulled out his beaded tobacco pouch the Cheyenne elders had given him along with the name Nedon Nes Stigo—He Who Sheds His Leg. “Damn, this is a long one.” He also pulled his briarwood pipe from the inside pocket of his light jacket, much too light for the weather, and fingered a small packet of wooden matches along with it. “We used to get calls from the railroad detectives, what a useless bunch, wanting us to come down and identify the hobos that climbed in the hoppers back in Chicago and Milwaukee, and with the slick sides on the railcar walls, they couldn’t get out . . .” He stuffed a small amount of the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “They’d pull those cars into the mines and dump tons of coal onto ’em—imagine their surprise.”
“Homeless.”
He turned to look at me. “What?”
“Homeless; they don’t call them hobos anymore.”
He nodded his head and looked back at the train. “Flat as a damn pancake is what I called ’em.”
I watched the cars roll and felt the ground shake. The single most plentiful source of coal in the United States, the Powder River Basin contains one of the largest deposits in the world and has made Wyoming the top coal-producing state since the late eighties.
He pulled a match from the pack and made ready to strike. “Pulverized pepper steak; wasn’t a lot to identify, I can tell ya that much.”
The major cities of the Wyoming portion of the basin are Gillette and Sheridan; in Montana, Miles City. The rest of the twenty-four thousand square miles is what they call sparsely populated and I call Durant and home.
It was a Saturday.
“Flat as a flitter.”
I was tired.
“Identify my ass.”
And I was about to lose my patience.
“Looked like hamburger.”
I scrubbed a hand across my face. “Old man, you’re not going to light that pipe in my truck.”
He looked over at me for a moment, the silence between us carrying the electric charge of decades, grunted, and then pulled the door handle and climbed out of the Bullet. The clanging of the warning bells amplified through the open door before he slammed it behind him and hobbled on his one real and one fake leg to the corner of my grille guard, at which point he recommenced lighting his pipe with a great deal of dramatic flourish.
It was December on the high plains, but you’d never know it to look at him, cupping his knotted hands together without a shiver or gloves for that matter and ducking his Stetson Open Road model hat down against the wind. Amplified by the flashing red lights of the railroad-crossing barrier, the brief flicker of orange glowed, reinforcing the impression that he was the devil and that the deal I had struck with him was venal and binding.
He raised his head, the consistent wind that battled the onward rushing of the train pulling at the brim of his hat like a miniature tornado, his eyes almost squeezed shut with nothing showing but the stained, walnut-colored irises glinting black in the half-light.