Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Read Online Free PDF

floor behind the counter. The old sheriff holstered the Smith & Wesson, hooked the handle of his mug with a forefinger like a talon, leaned forward, and held the cup under the stream to fill it.
    The young waitress appeared at the door with both hands at her mouth. Lucian turned his head, grinned, and threw her a quick wave before she backed through the door and ran away.
    After filling his mug, he took mine and held it just away from the gusher. “Cup of coffee?”
    —
    The sheriff’s office in Gillette was a big one by Wyoming standards, and to me it looked like a fort set down in hostile territory. I didn’t know anybody in the outer sanctum—Sandy Sandburg must have been in his office—but they all knew Lucian.
    “There was this one time where we had this crazy guy from over our way that was after his wife and her boyfriend and drove over here. Killed both of ’em and was on his way out the door with a pump shotgun.” I watched as the old man’s eyes glinted in the storytelling. “There was a whole mess of us, but you know how those things can go when you’re dealin’ with the deranged—somebody’s gonna get shot.” He shook his head. “The crazy son of a bitch was on the porch wavin’ around that twenty-gauge and screaming and yelling about how he was going to kill everybody, and we’re takin’ cover behind the vehicles when I reached in the trunk of my Nash Rambler for my own scattergun and noticed the vacuum cleaner I had in there.”
    I studied the plaques on the entryway wall and noted that Sandy was a member of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the Masonic Lodge, the Powder River Shrine, Kalif Horse Patrol, Elks Lodge, and the Wyoming Sheriffs’ and the National Sheriffs’ Associations.
    “So I fetched the thing out and started walking toward this loony like I was there to sell the crazy bastard a vacuum cleaner.” He turned and swept his eyes over the half-dozen deputies who listened in nostalgic rapture. “I had the thing in there to drop it off to get worked on, but I just walked up to that man and started telling him all about the benefits of having this vacuum cleaner.”
    I wasn’t sure if it was the retelling of Lucian’s story or thethought of all those associational responsibilities that was wearing me out, but I wasn’t aware that Sandy was standing beside my chair until I heard him laughing at the old sheriff’s story.
    “Well, crazy as a waltzin’ pissant, this guy starts screaming that he’s gonna kill me, but I just kept tellin’ him about the vacuum cleaner and how he was gonna need it to clean up the mess in there . . . Well, sure enough, he starts listening and after forty minutes I traded the crazy son of a bitch the broken vacuum for the shotgun.”
    Sandburg tapped on my shoulder and nodded toward the sanctuary of the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office. Unnoticed by the assembly, I stood and followed him down the short hallway; he partially closed the door behind us so that we could still hear Lucian’s voice. “He’ll be tellin’ that story for the next hour, and I’m betting you’ve heard it before.”
    “You’d be right.”
    He crossed around his large, wooden desk and sat in an oversized, oxblood leather chair. “So I hear you had a lively breakfast at the Aces and Eights this morning.”
    “Lucian has a somewhat unique perspective on self-service; I was just along for the ride.”
    He glanced at what I assumed was an incident report that had been taken by the nice young patrolman we’d met this morning and straightened the stack of papers on his leather-trimmed blotter. “Mr. Patel of the Wrangler Motel Corporation has agreed to not press charges if you replace the mortally wounded coffee urn today.”
    I glanced up at the mounted elk above his head. “Okay.”
    “They’ve got nice ones at the Kmart on South Douglas Highway; I had to buy a new one for the bullpen a month ago.”
    “Somebody shoot it?”
    “Nope, natural causes.” He