Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

I reached for my wallet. “What the governor doesn’t know won’t hurt him?” She didn’t say anything and ignored the older man completely as I handed her two twenties. “I might need the room for more than one night.”

“Even better. I’ll keep your change as a deposit.”

I took the key and turned toward the door. “Thanks… I think.”

“You want a drink?”

The older man hadn’t moved; he still stood in the same place and was watching me. I turned and looked at her. “Thought the bar was closed.”

She smiled a stunner of a smile with perfectly shaped lips. “Just opened.”

October 17: ten days earlier, evening.

They’d brought her in on a Friday night. The jail had been empty. It usually was.

One of the ways we supplemented our budget allotment was to import prisoners from the overcrowded jails in other counties. They did a brisk business, especially in Gillette, which was in Campbell County, and I provided high-security, low-amenity lodging for a portion of their tax base.

Dog and I had slept the previous three nights at the jail. Sleeping in a holding cell was a pattern I had developed when I was feeling discontented, and I had been feeling this way since Labor Day, when my daughter, Cady, had left for Philadelphia.

I leaned against the wall and could feel my shoulders slope from their own weight as I watched Victoria Moretti. My deputy was easy on the eyes, and I liked watching her. The trick was not getting caught.

Vic filled out the transport of prisoner forms, dotted a vicious “i,” and snapped the pen back onto the clipboard. She handed it back to the two deputies. “For them to send two of you, this Mary Barsad must be pretty dangerous.”

The young man with the ubiquitous cop mustache ripped off the receipts and gave them to Vic. “Dangerous enough to fire six shots from a. 22 hunting rifle into the right side of his head while he lay there asleep. Then, for good measure, she set the house on fire.”

The other deputy interrupted. “Allegedly.”

The first deputy repeated. “Allegedly.”

Vic glanced at the papers and back at them. “That’d do it.”

Wyoming law states that incarcerated females must be supervised at all times by a female docent or a matron, neither of which aptly described Vic, but she had the third watch and would until Mary Barsad was transferred back to Campbell County for trial in three weeks. It was an understatement to say that she wasn’t thrilled.

She bid the two deputies an extraditionary farewell, and I waited with Dog at the door of her office, which was across the hall from mine. She handed me the paperwork, which was stuffed in a manila folder, crossed her arms, and leaned on the other side of the doorway. She stared at me. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

“It’s not my fault. If you want to yell at somebody, call up Sandy Sandberg and give him an earful.” I reached down to pet Dog so that the beast wouldn’t take the argument seriously; she reached down and pulled one of his ears so that he would. “He didn’t tell me the detainee was a she.”

“That douche-rocket is doing this because I outshot him at certification in Douglas two months ago.”

I figured I’d divert her before she got really mad. “You want something to eat?”

She looked up. “Is this a date or just dinner?”

“Just dinner. I figured if you were going to be stuck here alone all night, I’d go get you something.”

“What the fuck do you mean just me all night? Where are you going?”

I took a breath. “Well, I thought I’d go home.”

She looked at the wall. “Great. You sleep in the jail all the time, but as soon as I’m here, you decide to go home?”

“You want me to stay?”

She looked back at me, the tarnished gold eyes shimmering. “Yes.”

I didn’t move. “You want me to go get you something to eat?”

“Yes.” She thought for a moment. “What are you getting?”

I sighed. “I never know until I get there.”

“I’ll take the usual.”

I slipped the folder under my arm and headed back to take a look at the prisoner on my way to the cafй. Dog trotted after me.

Vic called out as I retreated down the hallway. “And be quick about it. There’s a classic example back there of what happens when we women get frustrated.”

Mary Barsad didn’t look like one of my usual lodgers. She was tall with blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, with a face that had more character than pretty would allow. She looked good, which was a real trick in the orange Campbell County Department of Corrections jumpsuit she was wearing. She had narrow, long-fingered, capable hands and had used them to cover her face.

“Would you like something to eat, Mary?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Dog and I are starved.”

Her face came up just a little, and I looked into the azure eyes as they settled on Dog. She was terribly thin, and a trace of blue at her temples throbbed with the pulse of her thoughts.

“No, thank you.” She had a nice voice, kind, very unlike the one with which I’d just been dealing.

“It’s chicken potpies till Monday-sure you won’t change your mind?”

Her eyes disappeared behind the hands, and I was sorry to see them go. I hung an arm on the bars. “My name is Walt Longmire, and I’ll only be gone for about twenty minutes, but if you need anything I’ve got a deputy right down the hall; her name is Victoria Moretti, but she goes by Vic. She might seem a little scary at first…” I trailed my words off when it became apparent that she wasn’t listening.

I watched her for a moment more and then slipped out the back door and down the steps behind the courthouse to the Busy Bee Cafй. Dog followed. We walked past one of the bright, red-and-white signs that read KYLE STRAUB FOR SHERIFF, A MAN TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I thought about the newest political slogan to sweep the county-a man to make a difference; what did that make me, a man against making a difference? Whenever I saw the slogan, I felt as though somebody was walking on my grave without me fully being in it.

Kyle Straub was the sitting prosecuting attorney and had been running a vigorous campaign with signs, bumper stickers, and pins; I had seen all of them with an unsettling frequency. When it had come time to choose a homily for my own campaign, I’d proposed a slogan from Cato the Elder, CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED, but that platitude had been quickly shot down by the local council.

I had supporters. Lucian Connally, the previous sheriff of Absaroka County, had put in an appearance at the local VFW and had loudly announced to any and all, “If you stupid sons-a-bitches don’t know what you’ve got, then you don’t deserve a sheriff like Walt Longmire anyway.” Ernie Brown, “Man about Town,” was the editor in chief of the Durant Courant and had caught our dispatcher Ruby in an honest moment where she’d stated flatly that she wouldn’t elect the attorney as dogcatcher. It seemed as though everyone was doing all they could to make sure I would be elected in November-that is, everybody but me.

The first and only scheduled debate at Rotary had been something of a disaster despite my friend Henry Standing Bear’s support. Kyle Straub had made a point of lobbying for a new jail as the centerpiece of his future administration, and the fact that we didn’t have enough lodgers to support the facility the county had now had done little to dampen the enthusiasm for a new building out along the bypass. I had failed to take into consideration how many contractors filled the rolls of Rotary.

It was the middle of October, and there was a star-filled twilight, with an evening that was cooling off nicely in promise of the cold to come. Autumn was my favorite season, but Cady had left and I was still unsettled by her departure-and now by the woman in my jail. I took a quick look at my pocket watch to see if I was going to make it before the cafй closed, and the brass fob with the Indian chief centered between opposed horse heads flapped against the pocket of my jeans. There were more than just a few leaves dropping from the cottonwood trees that surrounded the courthouse, and I crunched through a few piles on my way to the Bee.