Longmire 04 - Another Man's Moccasins by Johnson Craig

Author:Johnson, Craig [Johnson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143115526
Google: ysteow83wgYC
Amazon: 1567503101
Goodreads: 2812358
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I took that extra second that usually keeps me from strangling my constituency, always important in an election year.

“Have you seen him today?”

“No.”

I glanced back at Henry. “Well, his motorcycle isn’t here.”

“He keeps it in the barn.”

I turned and looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“That fancy new one that he doesn’t want to get rained on.” She glanced past me and at the cloudless sky, the smol-dering cigarette still frighteningly close to the oxygen nozzle under her nose. “Not that it’s ever going to do that again.”

She watched us as we turned the corner and walked past a A N OT H ER

M A N ’ S

M O CC A S I N S

217

corral toward the Dietz barn with a Dutch-style hip roof. “She thinks you’re going to steal her chickens.”

“There are no chickens.”

“See?”

It was a standard structure, with the roof supported by a number of big, rough-cut eight-by-eights, which had been sided with raw lumber that had long faded to gray. There was a metal handle with a wooden latch on the door, which I pulled, and we stepped back as the big door swung toward us. Up in the loft there was a flutter of barn swallows, sounding like angel’s wings might. The Harley sat parked on its side stand, swathed with the same cover that I had seen at the bar. Henry lifted the vinyl shroud and whistled. “What?”

“FLHRS Road King, custom job.”

I vaguely remembered Henry having a bike, but he had rarely ridden it. “What’s that mean?”

“Expensive. Close to twenty thousand.”

I thought about the chicken shed. “Well, he hasn’t been spending his money on lodging.” I reached down and felt the chrome-bedecked engine, only vaguely warm. “And he hasn’t ridden it lately.”

I took a step into the barn proper, and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. There was a smell, one that I knew.

I unsnapped the safety strap on my .45, pulled the Colt from my holster, and glanced back over my shoulder at Henry.

The main breezeway of the barn was empty except for the motorcycle, but there were two other passageways through the stock stalls. I motioned for the Bear to head right, and I would take the left.

The stalls hadn’t been used for their initial purpose for quite some time but had instead been filled with used lumber, 218 CR A I G J O H N S O N

broken equipment, and aged firewood. I worked my way through the four of them and met Henry at the far end of the center breezeway.

“Well, he’s not hiding in the corn crib.”

There was more fluttering, and I noticed the scar tissue under Henry’s chin as he studied the rafters. “No, not in the corn crib.” He turned in a circle until he was facing back toward the opening where we’d come in. “But it appears he has received a suspended sentence.”

I turned and followed his eyes up to the rafters where, from a stout length of hemp rope, hung the dangling body of Phillip Maynard.

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