In the boy’s room, I attended to business, washed my hands, hit the button on the hand dryer, and wiped my hands off on my pants to the quiet hum of modern technology. It was then that I realized I was wearing my weapon. I don’t wear my gun to community functions, and I don’t wear it on weekends. I was actually famous for taking it off and leaving it places. Periodically, Vic would bring it back to me from the bathroom in the office or out of the seat of the Bullet. She liked to make fun of my antique armament by calling it the blunderbuss. Heavy, hard to aim, slow rate of fire, it was the weapon I had used in Vietnam for four years, and I’d gotten used to it.
The Colt 1911A1 had a grisly but effective past. During the Philip-pine campaigns, the islanders took to getting doped up and wrapping themselves in sugarcane. United States servicemen had the glorious experience of shooting these natives numerous times with no result before being hacked to death by their machetes. Obviously, something with a little more hitting power than the standard issue. 38 was needed. John Browning’s auto-loading, single-action child graduated to. 45 caliber, and the Filipinos began flying back out of the trenches they had hurled themselves into. Unaccurized, the weapon was about as precise as a regulation basketball but, if you hit something with it, chances were good the fight was over.
I thumbed the standard duty holster open and took the weapon out to check it; an old habit. The matte finish was rubbed off at the sights and the ridges along the barrel’s slide action. Fully loaded, which it was, it regularly weighed 38.6 ounces, but today it seemed to weigh about three tons. What the hell was it doing on? Was I responding to some unconscious threat? Did I know more than I thought I knew? It was about this time that I became aware of the bathroom door being opened, and a fully dressed fireman looked at me and my gun.
“I didn’t think the pancakes were that bad.”
“Hello, Ray.” He was the young one I had seen talking to Vonnie at the kitchen window. “You need in here?” It took him a moment to respond.
“Ms. Hayes sent me over, you got a phone call in the kitchen.”
It was probably the first time he had ever used the title Ms. in his life. He still didn’t move. “Anything else?”
He smiled, embarrassed. “You gonna shoot somebody?”
I thought for a moment and sighed. “Anybody need shooting?”
“Not that I know of.” He looked away for a second. “Sounds like the only one that needed it got it last night.” He was roughly Cody Pritchard’s age, and they probably had gone to school together. I nodded and started to squeeze by him. “What’s the um… story on Cody?”
I stopped, and we were lodged in the doorway. I looked down at him. “Well”-I paused for effect-“he’s dead.” I watched him to see if there was anything else. There wasn’t, so I smiled. “You better get some pancakes over to the mayor at the Business Associates Committee table before you guys are putting out fires with a bucket brigade.”
“You bet.” Always good to know on which side your pancake is buttered.
As I made my way toward the kitchen, I mused on the thought of being caught in the bathroom playing with my gun. Great, as if everybody in the county didn’t already think I was loony as a waltzing pissant. When I got to the kitchen door, Vonnie already had it open.
“No rest for the wicked?”
“I wish.” God, she looked good with that little bit of sweat in the hollow at the base of her throat.
“The phone’s over by the sink, back hallway.”
I breezed by, trying to exude competent professionalism as I picked up the receiver from the drain board. “Longmire.”
“Jesus, are you eating again?” The long distance whine from Cheyenne was no surprise; in my experience most things from Cheyenne whined.
“I am motivating the constituency and have yet to eat any pancakes. What are you still doing awake?”
“The state medical examiner just finished his preliminary.”
“Let me guess. Lead poisoning?”
“Yeah, the rig/liv says it was about six-thirty when he got it. Gives some credibility to the hunting accident scenario, changing light and all, but…”
This must be good. “But?”
“Massive cavitations with a lot of radiopague snowstorm.”
My mind immediately summoned up a visual X-ray with the usual fragments of civilian hunting ammunition. Obviously, this was not the case. “Nonmilitary?”
“Maybe semijacketed, maybe not. It’s a really strange caliber, and it’s big.”
“What?”
“We don’t know yet.”
This was something. With Vic’s specialty in ballistics back in Philadelphia, I had assumed her initial assessment that it was a. 30–06 was gospel. “What do you think?” There was silence for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s a deer gun.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“I know what a fucking high-powered slug looks like, all right?” I let it set for a moment, and so did she.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” It was fun saying it to someone else. Silence.
“He had a cheeseburger with jalapeno peppers.”
“I’ll go by the Busy Bee and talk to Dorothy. Anything else?” Silence.
“Go talk to Omar. He’s a crazy motherfucker, but he knows his shit.” Silence. “So, do you miss me?”
I laughed. When I hung up the phone, Vonnie was holding a plate where a steaming stack of pancakes lay waiting. “I figured this was the only way you were going to get to eat.” She relaxed and leaned her back against the wall. With the apron on and her hair up she looked like an Amish centerfold. “You have a lot of women in your life.”
“You think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?” I said between bites.
She peered over her coffee cup. Her eyes were enormous. “Depends on the women.” I nodded and chewed. “It’s just got to be difficult. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Well, it’s not my usual routine, running ten miles at dawn, three hundred sit-ups…” She let go with this snorty laugh and apologized, holding her hand to her face.
“How are your pancakes?”
I took a breath. “They’re great, thank you.”
“I heard you used to make animal shapes with pancakes.” She smiled mischievously.
“You’ve been talking to one of the women in my life.”
“I have, it’s true. I learned all kinds of little secrets about you when she was working for me.”
I nodded, thought about little secrets, and took my last bite. “The deal was this, if she went to church on Sunday mornings with her mother, she didn’t have to eat her heathen father’s breakfast. It’s a wonder she didn’t turn into a devout Methodist.”
“That’s not what she told me. She said she liked having you all to herself.”
“And now she does.” It was out before I knew I had said it. I had gotten so used to joking about Martha’s death, but here it just seemed wrong. “Sorry.”
“Do you ever get lonely, Walter?”
“Oh, sure.” I tried to think of something else to say, but nothing seemed honest enough. All I could think of was how soft and inviting she looked. I had this unfocused image of her, my bed back at the ranch, and all my worldly needs being gratified at once. This didn’t seem appropriate either.
“Maybe we should get together sometime.”
Maybe it was appropriate. “Why, Ms. Hayes, are you making a pass at me?” I emphasized the Ms.
Her eyes sparked. “Maybe, Mr. Longmire, though I must admit your indifference and the gauntlet of women I may have to face seem daunting.”