Was anybody in there? Ever since the mountain, I was careful to look for them out of the corners of my eyes. It seemed as though, if I stood there long enough, they would begin to appear, sitting easily on the leather seats and looking back at me with their hair-bone chokers, their trade cloth tied in their hair, and their closed-mouth smiles. They held the rifle in their laps, waiting for me to get in so they could hand it to me. I leaned against the door and closed my eyes; the glass was cold, but I could think again. I opened my eyes, and they were gone. I stood there for another moment, and I’m not sure if I was making sure they were gone or hoping they would reappear. I turned the key, opened the door, and slid in next to the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead. My hand shook a little as I slid the rifle over and placed the box of ammunition on the seat next to me. The box looked old, as if the edges had been roughed off and the printing had been done by an antiquainted press. The date on the box even read 1876. It felt heavy, and I thought about pumpkins.
By the time I got over to my desk, the Espers were waiting on line two. I had told Ruby I would get it in my office and passed by Vic’s open door. She was on the phone, and it looked like she was enjoying her call far more than I would mine. It was probably her friends at the Department of Justice, and I had a brief twinge of panicked jealousy. If Vic weren’t married to Wyoming anymore, she’d be a fool not to go back east and get a job with a large, urban department or with the Feds. As I sat there in my office, my plans for the first female Wyoming sheriff evaporated into thin, high plains air.
I picked up the receiver and punched line two. “Longmire.” I sounded busy and possibly a little angry.
“Sheriff?”
It was Reggie Esper. “Yep, Reggie. Are you still in Deadwood?”
There was a pause. “We are. I told the mine I’d be back yesterday, but we had a lucky streak and decided to stay on ’til Monday. Then this South Dakota Highway Patrolman came to the casino and got us.” Another pause. “Walt, if this is about that damned Pritchard kid, I haven’t let the boys have anything to do with him…”
“It’s not about Cody Pritchard.”
Yet another pause. “Well, is it important? I mean I don’t want to cut a weekend short if I…”
“It’s important.” I stared at the blotter on my desk and picked up a pen. I looked up at the old Seth Thomas clock on my wall, a plugged-in leftover from Lucian and Red Angus before him. I adjusted it twice a year, and it never lost or gained a second. “It’s a little after eleven, and you could be here by three or so?”
There was a discussion going on in the background. “We’ll leave right after lunch.”
He started to hang up. “Reggie? Make sure you come straight to the sheriff’s office.” He said he would.
I put the phone back, leaned an elbow on my desk, and accidentally hit my ear. I swore and readjusted my hand to my cheek. It hurt to hold the pen, and I clutched my tender fingers in a half claw. I put the Espers down for four o’clock and wrote a note to ask Vic about ballistics. I had to talk to the Curator of Firearms at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, talk to Jim Keller, and call Dave at the Sportshop about Vasques, size nines. I was also beginning to wonder about Lucian and Turk. I started to punch the intercom on my phone, but all the lines were busy. Probably Vic, faxing her resume. I got up and walked out to Ruby’s desk.
She was on the phone too, but she hung up. “Lonnie Little Bird was here looking for you.” She laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. “He’s sweet.”
“Yes, he is.” I paused for a second. “I’ve got the Espers coming in this afternoon. If they’re running late, can you stick around?”
“Yes.”
“Anything on Jim Keller?”
“Not back from Nebraska yet. But Mrs. Keller has been here twice already today.”
“How’s the kid doing?”
“He’s in the back, asleep. I gave him the old sheriff report books to look at, which would put anybody to sleep. By the way, you have the worst penmanship of any sheriff we’ve ever had since 1881. I thought you’d be glad to know.”
“Who was before 1881?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Nobody; that’s when we first became a county in the territory, about nine years before we became a state. You did hear about that?”
I scratched at my ear and immediately regretted it. “Yep, I remember reading about it in the papers.”
“Stop picking at your ear.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I slouched a little bit. “Do you know what’s happened to Lucian and Turk?”
“They are having lunch down the hill at the Busy Bee. Lucian mentioned something about having a Come-to-Jesus meeting with his nephew.”
“Oh, boy. Anything from Vic on the ballistics at DCI?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“She’s on the phone.” I looked down at all the blinking lights on Ruby’s console. “She’s on all of them.”
“Then she hasn’t, or she is now.” She stayed looking at me.
“We’re not going to be able to keep her, are we?” It was out before I knew I had said it and, when I looked up, Ruby’s electric blues steadfastly joined with mine.
“Why don’t you go have lunch; she’ll be off the phones by the time you get back. Besides, you could use a little religion.”
In its usual perverse manner, the sun had decided to come out and cast a glare without providing any heat. It might get warmer by the end of the afternoon but, for now, it was just plain cold. As I navigated the courthouse steps, I looked up at Vern’s window. He was probably up there still waiting for our lunch, but I could bet that he wouldn’t want anything to do with Lucian’s type of revival meeting, even though I was sure it would carry its own unique version of fire and brimstone.
Cody and Jacob, convicted of two counts of first degree sexual assault, could have been sentenced to as much as forty years. The sentencing date hung over all of us for two solid weeks, but over nobody as much as Vern Selby. The jury had lived with deciding, and now they had passed it on to Vern like some communicable disease, and the fever of justice ate away at him.
He had taken it upon himself to merge the two counts into one, which was his judicial latitude, and sentenced Cody and Jacob to a maximum of fifteen years in prison, far to the low side of the five- to fifty-year sentencing guideline. George had gotten the minimum of ten, but it all became academic when the judge had pronounced that the offenders would be incarcerated in a young adult institution in Casper and would therefore receive indeterminate terms. I guess Vern had decided that since they were all first offenders, the rape shouldn’t cost them the rest of their lives; never mind what it had cost Melissa.
Cody Pritchard had turned to his friends in the back of the courtroom and playfully tossed his hat in the air and smiled. With time off for good behavior, Cody, Jacob, and George could see less than two years of soft prison time. Bryan Keller would receive two years of probation and one hundred hours of community service. The young men were once again released without bail, and Vern had nodded quietly in his chambers when I personally volunteered to drive the three of them down to Casper.
When I got to the Busy Bee, I glanced through the window. Turk was slouched on his stool and was against the wall about as far as he could be. Lucian, with his lips barely moving, was leaning in and glared at the side of Turk’s face. Any thoughts of hunger passed, and I continued along the sidewalk to the Sportshop. When I went in, David was punching something into his computer behind the counter, and his wife, Sue, was waiting on an overweight middle-aged woman in the shoe department. I strolled up to the counter and leaned a hip against it.