Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty Read Online Free PDF

got to the corner, the prisoner spoke. “Here.”
    The Basquo slowed and even went so far as to put on his turn signal for the Suburban that followed us; the other federal vehicles and the Ameri-Trans transport with Otero and Popp had gone ahead to Meadowlark Lodge.
    Pfaff was talking to Raynaud Shade with the familiarity that a doctor had with a patient. “You’re sure? It was a while ago.”
    I could see the reflection of his one eye getting the lay of the land. “I’m sure.”
    The road got bumpier as we left the loop and headed north toward Baby Wagon Creek. We got to a turn where I’d remembered a Basque sheep wagon being parked during a fly-fishing trip with Henry and the Ferg. It was going to get a lot rougher from here on in, and I was relieved when Shade spoke again.
    “Here.”
    Saizarbitoria eased the van to a stop, and it shifted a little down the incline toward the creek.
    I turned in my seat. Agent Pfaff stared at the side of the prisoner’s face, and McGroder, holding a plastic-sealed quad sheet for comparison, read the LED display on a handheld global tracking device. “It’s within a hundred yards of where he said.”
    Shade looked past me through the windshield. “We can walk from here.”
    I turned to look up the creek bed and could see a number of rock outcroppings sticking up through the snow before the dark shadows of the fir trees blocked everything out. It was getting late, and up this high the shadows were long.
    We unlocked Shade from the floor, threw a blanket over him, and he walked with one of the Feds on either side. Pfaff followed, and McGroder, Saizarbitoria, Sheriff Wayman, Marshal Benton, and another of the field agents pulled up the drags.
    McGroder continued to read the GPS with the assistance of the map but surprised me by speaking as we trudged through the snow. “So, did he say anything while he was in your custody, Sheriff?”
    I thought about the things Shade had uttered over the last day, most of it indiscernible. “He said that two men had sent him a bone in the mail—about wanting the money.”
    The agent’s eyes slipped up to mine. “Is that all he said?”
    I thought about it some more. “He also said something about voices and testing me, but I think that was mostly guff.”
    McGroder nodded.
    Up ahead, Shade turned, the heavy wool blanket forming a makeshift hood that shadowed his dark face and, like a malevolent monk, he looked directly at me. “Here.”
    The group assembled around a slab of moss rock about the size of a door. “I buried him here.”
    McGroder checked the GPS one last time and looked at his map before turning to look at Tommy. “Thank you for your help, Sheriff Wayman. I’ll have one of my men drive you back down to your vehicle.”
    He turned to me.
    “Not your lucky day, Longmire.”

3
    The temperature had shifted to slightly above forty degrees, and the booming in the distant, dark clouds promised a freezing rain if we weren’t lucky. We continued to watch as the younger agents and Saizarbitoria, under the attentive eye of Special Agent Pfaff, excavated the snow from around the boulder.
    McGroder and I were too old for that kind of foolishness and were sharing a thermos of really good coffee in the cab of one of the Suburbans. “And those’re the two other convicts who were in the Ameri-Trans van?”
    “Yes.” He blew into his stainless travel mug—even it was black. “I’m sorry about all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we’re on a need-to-know basis and, until I could verify which county we were dealing with, I had to keep my cards close to the vest.”
    I nodded.
    He drank from his mug. “I was just as happy to not have it be Sheriff Iron Cloud’s jurisdiction.”
    “Because?”
    “The victim is Native American.” I looked at him as he continued to sip his coffee. “Crow, to be exact; taken from a vehicle parked at a bar/bait shop near Hardin, Montana. Shade ID’d the victim, even though the child was never reported