“Yep.” We sat there looking at each other.
“Did you tell him you’d do it?”
I had been hoping that the conversation wasn’t going to go in this direction; the last thing I needed was Ruby’s help in backing myself into an ethically nonneutral corner. “Maybe.”
“Are you absolutely sure there is no reason for an autopsy?”
I groaned and leaned back against the wall with a thump, a few dribbles of coffee sloshing up and running down the side of my mug. I wiped the bottom on my pants. “Of course not, but I am also not absolutely sure that there is a reason for one.”
She took my coffee cup and started out of the cell. “Then you’ll know after you have one.”
“Is it still snowing?”
She looked down the hallway to the windows out front. “Yes.”
“Then the whole thing is academic, because no one from DCI is going to make it up here in this snowstorm.”
She wasn’t looking at me, and she wasn’t going to. It was one of her techniques for getting me to do what she considered to be the right thing. “You can get a medical examiner from Billings.” She disappeared around the corner, and the dog followed her.
I thought about the old sheriff. I thought about how Ruby had just lied about Mari Baroja. I thought about what I didn’t know, about how I knew the anecdotes but, perhaps, not the story.
When I got to my office, my steaming cup was full and resting at the center of my blotter, and the red light on line one was blinking from Cheyenne. I picked up the receiver and punched the angry little button. There was the commensurate pause after I explained the situation. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Things must be really slow up there in the hinterlands.”
I leaned back in my chair and tossed my hat onto my desk. It landed beside the mug. “I guess I’m going to need a general autopsy.”
“Do you want us to call Billings?”
I noticed Ruby standing in the doorway. “Well, it’s a blizzard, and we’re kind of short on personnel.” I nodded, and she brought the note over.
“I’ll see what I can do, but I bet they’re going to want you to transport.” I hung up. The note said we had an accident near the highway at the access road. It was a bad spot where the curve of the road and a stand of cottonwoods concealed the approach from the I-25 off-ramp. “I’m going to go out there and cut that stand of trees down myself.”
I reached out, picked up my hat, and twisted it down on my head. I looked up at the old Seth Thomas clock that had served the last four sheriffs of Absaroka County, a sum of almost a hundred years. It was just mornings like this that it felt like all hundred were mine. It was 7:47 A.M., and I guessed the citizenry wasn’t staying home after all.
Ruby was on the phone but cupped her hand over the receiver and looked up. “Another one at Fetterman and 16; I’ll call Vic and tell her to go directly out there.”
“Does it sound serious?”
“Fender bender.” The phone rang again, and she frowned at it.
“Call the Ferg and tell him he’s full time until further notice.”
It was like walking into a snow globe and, since I had parked the truck, it had gained another inch. Dawn was lingering, but there was a faint blush back toward the hills and, with the glow of the streetlights, the whole place was starting to look like Bedford Falls.
It didn’t take long to get to county road 196, and it didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. The best news was that all the participants in the vehicular altercation were alive, well, and arguing on the side of the road. I flipped on the light bar and pulled the Bullet over to the opposite side so that it would be visible from both directions. There was an older Chevy Blazer that I knew belonged to Ray Thompson, and a newer little Japanese SUV that had number 6 plates, Carbon County. There was one of those new-fangled racks on the top of the Nissan, and it had a bumper sticker that read, IF YOU DIE, WE SPLIT YOUR GEAR. Hello Santiago Saizarbitoria. He looked just like his photograph, only now he looked irritated. “Hey, Ray. This guy run into you?”
“Yer damn right.”
Ray’s wife was next, and I figured they must have been on the way to dropping her off at the school cafeteria where she worked. “Came out of nowhere, flew around that corner and ran right into us.”
Saizarbitoria was about to explode when I put a gloved hand up to his face. “Just a minute.” I took Ray by the shoulder and steered him away from the vehicles and over to my side of the road. I checked in both directions, but there hadn’t been any traffic since the wreck. “Ray, I wanna show you something.” I walked him behind my truck and over to the stop sign where the two roads converged. “Ray, these are your tracks, the ones that slide all the way through the intersection.”
“That’s not…”
“You can see from the tire marks that your vehicle didn’t stop at the sign, and you can also see from the point of impact on both vehicles that you went through just as he passed. Maybe in all the excitement you just didn’t notice.” He didn’t say anything else, just looked at the tracks and fumed. I waited for a while myself, as the blue and red light flickered over the smooth surface of the snow. “In a situation like this, it’s going to come down to who has his vehicle under control, and you didn’t. Now, I’m going to get my camera and take a few shots of these tracks so that if there are any questions later on, we’ve got answers. But my advice to you is to go over there, apologize to that young man, and get out your insurance card.”
By the time I’d taken the pictures, they were all grouped around the hood of the Blazer. I copied down information from both drivers, only partially listening as Saizarbitoria told the older couple that he was here for a job interview, and they wished him well.
The Blazer would continue to the school even though I doubted that there would be any, but the little silver SUV wasn’t going anywhere. Ray had hit right at the wheel well, and the left front was pretty much pushed into the engine compartment. I radioed in to Ruby after we got in the Bullet and arranged for his vehicle to be brought over to Sheridan where it could be repaired.
I also asked about Vic.
Static. “She’s at Fetterman, and the Ferg’s out on Western where one of the snowplows took out a mailbox and got stuck turning around. By the way, you got your coroner from Billings.”
“King Cole is driving down here in a snowstorm?”
Static. “You’ve got to keep up with Yellowstone County politics; Fast Eddie was replaced last November. The new kid’s name is Bill McDermott, and he’s very earnest, so be nice to him.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I turned to the sad young man beside me, pulled off a glove with my teeth, and extended a paw. “Walt Longmire, welcome to Donner Pass. You got anything in that car you’re going to need?”
“Everything.”
I watched as he climbed out and crossed, looking both ways. Fool me once… He gave the impression of being a lot bigger than he was. As I watched him dig a satchel bag, a Meeteetse Cowboy Bar ball cap, and a cell phone out of the car and walk back over, I would have sworn he was six feet.
I continued filling out the accident report. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Excuse me?”
“You and your wife. I’m assuming you have a plan for this interview?” I broke the scenario down. “If this goes well, what happens next?”
“Oh.” He nodded and quickly jumped in. “If things look good, we were planning on coming back over the weekend and taking a look at houses.” He looked past me at the crumpled metal of the Nissan.
“So you’re in for the long haul?”
“Sir?”
“Looking for a house? A place to raise kids?”
“Yes, sir.” He waited a respectful moment before asking. “You married, sir?”