Title: Somebody's Got To Be The Sheriff
Author: Ramos
Rating: PG-13 for language (Vic is in this one, so rating is automatic.)
Disclaimer: Don't own Walt Longmire.
~Longmire One Shot~
The determined rapping on his front door started up again, and Walt Longmire scratched one eyebrow before resigning himself to the inevitable. A quick glance through the window showed auburn hair, but it was curly and shorter than he was expecting, and although he never would say it out loud, he suspected it came out of a box at the drug store once Mother Nature had begun falling down on the job.
Ruby hefted the box the box in her hands impatiently when he opened the door, thrusting it into his chest. "Here," she told him. "All the things from your desk."
"Uh, thanks," he managed, stepping out of her way as she forged past him. She was in a mood, no mistake, and he Walt braced himself mentally.
"Where have you been?" she asked, looking him over with the same critical eye she gave his dusty, unkempt cabin. "Cady said you left her a message, but she never talked to you."
"Went fishing," he answered shortly, putting the box on the cluttered coffee table. "Henry knows this little lake, up in the Bighorns."
When he'd first suggested to his best friend that they go fishing together to celebrate his recently restored freedom, Henry had been more than willing. The town had been reeling with the news Martha Longmire's murder had been orchestrated by one of the county's most prominent citizens, and Barlow Connelly's attempt to murder his own son to conceal that crime had made it that much worse. Walt could hardly walk down the street without people stopping him to express their horror and outrage and rampant, morbid curiosity. The idea of skipping town and taking that fishing trip they'd been putting off for years had appealed to both of them. They'd hauled Walt's horse and a couple of borrowed pack horses up to the trail head and disappeared into the mountains.
"Henry got back two weeks ago," Ruby told him tartly. "You know, Walter, we all understood you wanting to take some time off after everything, but you did not handle that well at all."
"So I've been told," he muttered. "Henry mentioned that once or twice."
Actually, his brother in all but blood had literally put him on the ground and sat on him while lecturing him about his ill-considered actions. It was nearly a week into their trip, and deep into a bottle of whiskey one night, before Walt had mentioned the fact that he was currently unemployed, having left a letter of resignation and his badge on the County Commissioner's desk. Henry had been less than sanguine about Walt throwing away his career, and had lectured him until Walt lost his temper and called him an old nag. Henry had called him a few things in return, and for a while it looked as though they might end up re-enacting the battle of the drinking fountain from their school days. Instead, Henry had taken a deep breath, told Walt to come back down when he had pulled his head out of his ass, and then left him behind with just his horse, all the food, and none of the booze.
"Henry expected you to be back in town days ago. You told him you'd only be a few days behind him, so he and Cady organized a memorial service for Martha. It was last week."
"I, um.. I should have been there," he admitted. "I just couldn't."
"Your daughter is fit to be tied, and I don't blame her."
"Yeah. I'll call her tonight," he promised. Of course, he'd been making himself that promise for the last three days, but still hadn't quite managed it.
Ruby continued to give him a long look, her disapproval evident.
"Want some coffee?" he finally asked in desperation.
"Sure," she replied. "Then I can catch you up on what all you missed."
"Can't wait," he breathed out, but Ruby still heard him and gave him a narrow-eyed look as she followed him into the kitchen.
The old aluminum percolator sat on the back burner of his stove, still smutched with ashes from the campfire. Having filled it this morning, he'd never quite gotten around to turning on the flame to start heating it up. He did so now and turned to find Ruby giving him another appraisal.
"What?" he asked, defensive.
"I know you've always been about two days past needing a shave and two weeks past needing a haircut, but the Jeremiah Johnson look really doesn't work for you."
Rubbing at the inch or more of scruff on his chin, Walt couldn't argue. "I suppose I ought to take care of it."
"Right," she drawled, obviously not believing him. She sat at the kitchen table, shoving aside some of the camping debris he'd hauled back down from the mountains. After a several more moments of silent regard, Ruby addressed him plainly. "Walter, have you lost your mind?"
"Not sure," he said finally, leaning his hands against the back of the chair opposite his former dispatcher. "I just, uh… needed some time off."
"Well, you could have asked for it," she told him. "Instead, you made a mess of things and I don't think Vic will ever speak to you again."
That actually brought an expression to his face. "Somehow I doubt that."
"You have no idea," Ruby warned. "When Jim Buckner came over the day after you left, Vic talked him into putting you on a leave of absence instead of accepting your resignation."
"Oh?" That was news to him – he hadn't checked his mail yet, which had been threatening to burst the limits of his mailbox when he'd returned. It still sat in a haphazard pile on the table by the front door.
"Jim and the rest of the County Commission seemed to think that if they put you on extended leave, they wouldn't have to hire a replacement. So they decided to borrow one of the more experienced deputies from over in Weston County to fill in for a while."
Nearly a month of deliberately not thinking about anything but fishing, eating, and sleeping had created a welcome numbness in Walt's mind, a barrier between his professional and personal lives. Now, Ruby's matter-of-fact words were thinning that barrier. Rubbing his tongue against the molars on one side of his mouth, he considered the possibilities.
"Don't tell me it was Dennis Frankover."
Her expression told him the truth, and he winced. Dennis had already gotten on Vic's bad side the day they met. Of course he'd been on Walt's bad side since shortly after the two men had met as well, and hadn't budged to any other side in the twelve years since.
"That lasted a little while," Ruby told him. "And then he took to calling Vic 'Darlin.'"
Walt glanced up at the ceiling, then towards the coffee pot, hoping one of them held a reprieve. Neither did.
"Vic put up with it for a whole day. The next morning she informed him he was being unprofessional and she preferred the less sexist designation of Deputy Moretti."
"Did he stop?"
"No," she scoffed. "So then Vic decided she was deaf every time he said it. And then Dennis called her into his office so that he could discuss her attitude."
Bracing himself, Walt asked the question. "What happened?"
"She broke his nose."
"She could lose her job for that," he said seriously, though the crease at the corner of his mouth deepened. "Did he press charges?"
"He threatened to charge her with assault," Ruby replied. "Until Vic played the recording she'd made on her phone of his little 'interview' in his office. I didn't hear more than the first minute or so, but I'd have broken his nose, too, then sued him for sexual misconduct.
"So, he high-tailed it outta there, and the Commissioner had to call another special session. Ford Drummond, the associate Commissioner, said he'd take over as sheriff, until Vic asked him what his experience in law enforcement was. Turns out he has a college degree – in accounting – from 1972.
"Then Ford made the mistake of asking Vic about her qualifications. Did you know Vic has three letters of commendation from the Philadelphia Police Department?"
"Yep," Walt said, the other side of his lip twitching as well in what could almost be called a smile, although it was lost in the forest of scruff. "She's got an inside straight on that score. Ballistics training, criminal justice degree, and a hell of a lot more experience than anyone out here. She's got better qualifications than I do."
So, then Ford tried to suggest they get Branch to take the job."
"He's still suspended, isn't he?"
"He is, and hasn't made any effort to get reinstated. Vic told them all that, but when they wanted to know the details, she said it was a confidential internal matter and none of their business. But then Branch stood up in the back of the room and said he was seeking treatment for PTSD issues from his shooting. And with his father's recent arrest and having to oversee the family business, he had too many conflicts. He said he'd be willing to help out on an auxiliary basis, but not full time, and certainly not as sheriff."
The coffee pot began to snort and shake on the burner at that moment, prompting Walt to reach over and turn the flame down to a simmer. Rapidly browning water began bubbling into the clear knob on the top.
"So, then Ford tried to say Vic wasn't a resident of the county…"
"She's been living and working here for nearly three years," Walt interjected.
"I know that – she's a registered voter, she's got a Wyoming driver's license and pays property tax on that house. Heck, she was enough of a resident to get her divorce here, so eventually Jim and Ford and the whole stiff-necked bunch had to follow the proposition you'd left in your letter and appoint her the new Sheriff."
"Good for her," Walt said with a definitive nod. He'd been hoping that they'd take his suggestion, but he'd had no power to enforce it and very little hope that they'd be that sensible.
"Right. And before they had all finished congratulating themselves, Vic stood up and said not so fast. It seems she had some concerns with the way things have been run for the past few years."
"Oh?" Walt said mildly, though his blue eyes held more heat and life than they had ten minutes before.
"Don't get your back up, Walt. She started off by saying you'd done a fine job with the resources you had. And then she started quoting statistics and budget numbers and ADA rules… like the fact our station and half the official buildings in the county aren't handicapped accessible because they don't have an elevator or ramp access. The computer system Branch was always complaining about isn't compliant with the state-mandated offender databases or their case-filing system. And that per capita, our county spends less money on law enforcement and gets more convictions than just about any other county in Wyoming.
"Well, you know how tight-fisted Jim Buckner can be. He started protesting and back-pedaling and coming up with all sorts of excuses. And then he noticed Randy Cahill was sitting right over there in the corner, taking notes."
"Randy Cahill. From the Durant Courrant." A heartfelt grin snuck across Walt's features. "Vic called him in, didn't she?"
Ruby smiled as well, her satisfaction evident. "Walt, you should have seen it - that entire county commission looked like they were sucking lemons before she was through. She had a whole list of improvements she was recommending, including hiring FOUR deputies, getting our computer system upgraded, and a satellite office down in Powder Junction."
"I've been asking for that for five years," Walt said, outrage tinging his voice.
"Well, we may just get one now. And she got approval to hire at least three new full-time deputies, with the fourth pending some budget negotiations."
"Well – good for her," Walt repeated. "Sounds like she's got it all under control."
"Don't be stupid, Walter," Ruby retorted sternly. "She's got Ferg and herself running this whole county right now, with one position filled and the others nothing more than a stack of applications. The rookie sounds good, he's a corrections officer from over at the Federal facility in Utah, but he's got to finish up there and then move himself and his family over here. He won't even start for nearly three weeks. And you don't want to hear about the other applicants she's got – she even said she'd take Frankover back if he could just learn to keep his mouth shut."
"Why are you telling me all this?" he asked, scratching through his ratty beard once again. "There's nothing I can do about it."
"Well, actually there is," she countered, her voice as sweet as it was stern a moment ago. "I just happen to know someone perfectly qualified for the position, and he seems to be currently unemployed."
"Oh, no. No, no, no," he argued, raising his hand and backing away. "I just quit – I'm not going back." He turned to the coffee pot, snagging a mug and pouring a cup full of black, fragrant coffee.
"You've been 'quit' for a month now, Walter. Has it helped any?" Ruby asked as she accepted the cup he handed her. "You don't look any better. If anything, you look worse."
"Some," he admitted. "I didn't think much about anything while I was up there, but now I can't seem to stop thinking about things."
"You've had a hard row to hoe," Ruby allowed. "And you've done some things that you probably shouldn't have. But you were a good deputy for ten years, and then a better sheriff for nearly fifteen years. You had another fifteen left in you, I thought, and I know Martha wouldn't have liked seeing you end your career like this."
"Then she shouldn't have died," Walt bit out, his voice more bitter than he intended.
"She had no choice over that, any more than you did," she replied, not taking offense at his tone. "The only choice you have now is what you do with the rest of your life, and so far, I'm not impressed." She looked around the kitchen, the sink piled with dishes and the floor gritty from dirt.
"Cady thinks you ought to go talk to someone," she continued. "We all know you won't do that, but she says it's helping Branch and it probably wouldn't kill you."
"She's seeing Branch?"
"She's talking to Branch," Ruby corrected. "Though she did tell me to tell you that she'll start dating him again if you don't call her soon."
"Okay, I'll call her," he vowed. "Promise."
"You'd better," she warned, then sipped her coffee in silence.
"You know," she began after a little while, "my husband and I sat down and talked after our parents had all died. We promised each other that no matter who died first, the other person would do their best to go on living."
Walt gave her a warning glance, but she was undeterred. "I can't see that Martha would have felt any different."
"It was different," he insisted. "She didn't die of old age, or of cancer. She was taken from me."
"And what would you have wanted, if things had been the other way around? In your line of work, that was always a possibility."
Walt studied the table, reminded of having just such a conversation after a particularly close call at work. Martha had been upset, and angry, and he'd made her promise that should he ever not make it home some night, she'd not mourn him for too long; that she would try to go on with her life and be happy without him. Looked at that way, it made him something of a hypocrite.
Ruby let him sit in silence, digesting her words, but smiled into her coffee cup while Walt wasn't looking. She and Martha had been friends and co-conspirators in the care and feeding of Walter Longmire from the beginning, and she knew exactly what Martha would have thought of his recent actions.
When she thought he's stewed enough, she said gently, "I think you have a decision to make, Walt. Either you curl up and die, or you get up and start living again. You have friends who love you, and a daughter who needs you. Vic probably wouldn't turn down an offer to help out, either."
"You said she's still getting divorced?"
As much as he tried to keep the question casual, Ruby wasn't fooled. "Not getting – already done. That husband of hers headed out of here around the same time you did, and nobody's seen him since, not even Vic. She stopped wearing her wedding ring the day the judge banged the gavel."
She finished her coffee and stood. "Now, some of us have to get back to work. I'd wash out my cup, but I'm afraid I'd have to bulldoze my way to the sink."
Walt glanced at the sink in question. It wasn't that bad. The pile of dishes hadn't quite gotten even with the rim yet.
After walking Ruby to the door, he poured himself another cup of coffee and settled back at the table. His eyes wandered over the modest kitchen Martha had designed, in the cabin where they'd planned to grow old together. The cabinet doors were finally on their hinges, but the wooden plank flooring needed to be stained and given a coat of polyurethane. A good sweeping and mopping would probably help, too. The ceiling still needed the drywall joints sanded and some sort of paint or spackle treatment to finish it off. The pantry was unorganized, and he was pretty sure there was a nest of mice living somewhere in the unused pots and pans. Long after his cup was cold and empty, he sat and thought about things that had never been finished and promises he hadn't been able to keep.
As much as scattering his wife's ashes had been an attempt to release Martha, all he'd done was plunge himself back in the pain and the rage her death had caused, and torn open all the wounds he'd thought were closed. He'd left that idyllic meadow with murder in his heart, and no thought towards anything but his single-minded pursuit of vengeance. That headlong charge towards Jacob Nighthorse had been thoroughly derailed by the sound of a shotgun ringing through the still air, and Vic's subsequent call for backup.
The resulting fallout had proven to him once again that giving in to his temper and lust for revenge was a bad idea. Only providence had kept him from killing a (technically) innocent man, and left Walt paralyzed with shame and mortified at his own stupidity. The depression and anger that had ridden him so hard and so long had returned, steeped with the humiliation of having once again put aside his life's work for his own personal, selfish desires. Added to that, the revelation of Barlow Connelly's sins had shocked him to the core. The man had killed Martha, not for his own gain or for any imagined slight that Walt had given him, but because of his ambitions for his son to carry the badge Walt had worn for so long. Compared to his wife's life, the brass star had seemed to be worthless in comparison and he'd left it behind with less thought than he'd taken to kick mud off his boots.
A month in the mountains had given Walt some distance from the situation, but being back home had proven that it was only a physical distance, after all. Now, without the distraction and insulation his job had given him, he was left with nothing but the bitterness of his own failures. Branch deserved all the credit for solving Martha's murder, which was only right. But Walt had to face the galling realization that his persecution of Jacob Nighthorse had not been fully justified. Yes, the man had been an accessory, and was guilty of a number of crimes, but he hadn't planned or condoned Martha's death.
Even worse, however, was the betrayal of his own personal creed. Walt had spent most of his life fulfilling three titles – Husband, Father, and Sheriff. In setting out to extract his vengeance, he'd thrown all three away and in doing so had not only failed to live up to his own moral standards, but most certainly failed to live up to what Martha would have expected from him.
Eventually the kitchen chair became too hard, or maybe it was the silence that was too profound. He stood and looked in the fridge, finding only a couple cans of beer and some unidentified leftovers that probably should not be examined too closely. Torn between the idea of another beer or heading out for some sort of supplies, Walt took one more look around the kitchen and forced himself to look at the dishes in the sink. Martha had detested a dirty sink.
Almost of their own volition, his hands reached for the stopper and the hot water spigot. With a little help from some dish soap, he found the bottom of the sink, and the mindless act of washing dishes soothed some of the restless, desolate despair. Eventually, he had a strainer full of clean dishes, and his nails were clean for the first time in several weeks. Drying his hands on a stiff, stale-smelling kitchen towel, the pile of camping gear on the table drew his eye next. He sorted through it mechanically, putting things away where they belonged.
The dust on the shelves that served as his pantry began to irritate him next, especially the not quite clear rectangle where a wooden tea box used to reside. Though he hated dusting, he used the damp, smelly towel and made a thorough job of it.
Momentum alone carried him into the living room, but it didn't take long to go through with a trash bag and pick up the empty beer cans and sort through the papers that had accumulated. With the trash bag at his feet, he sorted through a month's worth of mail. The few important pieces – like the overdue electric bill – were placed prominently on the mantle waiting to be matched up with a checkbook.
"Fake it 'til you make it, right sweetheart?" he told the picture on his dresser in the bedroom, which showed a faded color picture of their wedding day.
The work was cathartic, and while it didn't feel good, it felt less bad than just leaving the mess. By dark, he was ready to call it good enough. The cabin wouldn't have passed Martha's standards of cleanliness, but she would have approved him making any effort to get off his ass and do something. When thinking about how Cady would react – assuming she didn't faint first – a slight smile crossed his face.
All the effort had made him work up a sweat, which only added to his already ripe condition. He found a clean towel and spent some time on his personal welfare, and a while later he slid in between freshly washed sheets, his newly-shaven chin not even rasping on the pillowcase. He waited for the crushing, overwhelming grief to hit him, but the fatigue of the work and the peace that he'd found fishing at an un-named and probably unmapped lake came to him instead, and he fell asleep still waiting.
He did call Cady the next morning, and when he asked about lunch she said she'd already had plans and tentatively offered to meet him for dinner at the Red Pony. He told her that would be fine. It gave him the time he needed to run into town to buy some badly needed supplies.
In the afternoon he saddled his horse and rode out to the meadow where his life with Martha had both begun and ended. As before, he talked to her, haltingly, as though she were still there listening, and in his heart he believed she was. The overwhelming urge for violence, for revenge, had lessened, and continued to fade as he told her about Barlow, and Branch. He found himself talking about Cady, and his trip with Henry, and Ruby's visit the day before to knock some sense into him.
Then he found himself talking about Vic.
"You'd like her," he told the wind and the nodding grass heads, pulling absently at one long strand. "She's got a mouth on her, but she's tough as a two-dollar steak. She sorta reminds me of Lucian.
"Wasn't really fair of me to sneak off and leave her with that mess," he continued. "To be honest, it's getting pretty boring around the cabin. You know me - I can only clean for just so long."
He listened to the rustling of the grasses and distant wind, and after a while he went back to his horse and rode home. One important stop before heading to the Red Pony was accomplished in less than an hour, but it was worth it to see Cady's reaction.
"Wish I had a camera," he told her, giving her a kiss on one cheek.
"If you carried a cell phone, you'd have a camera," she shot back. "Dad – holy crap. Henry said you'd gone all hermit-man on him. What happened?" Her hand stroked his smooth cheek in wonder, then his exposed ear, still dusted with tiny clippings of hair.
"Had a little heart-to-heart with Ruby," he told her. "Then one with your mother."
"So I guess I'm next?" she said with a wan smile. "Dad, I understand, really. That week after the D.A. dropped the charges against Henry, and then Branch nearly killed his dad – I thought I was going crazy for a while. But then you disappeared with Henry, and didn't come back… I started to think maybe you'd gone off and done something…
I would never," he vowed, his hands taking hers in a tight, urgent grasp. "I will never leave you, Cady. I want to see you living your life – maybe even walk you down the aisle someday."
"Just not with Branch," he added as an afterthought.
I want that, too," she confessed. "I want to see you living your life. Mom would have wanted you to be happy, Dad. She would never forgive you if you weren't there at my wedding day." Her faint smile turned mischievous. "But if you don't want it to be Branch, I guess you'll have to stick around to be sure, huh?"
"You betcha," he said, and led her to the table.
The staircase up to the sheriff's office was as daunting now as it had been the first time he'd come to apply for a job here, and his heart hammered a bit harder than it should have as he climbed the old wooden treads. The apprehension vanished when Ruby greeted him. She gave his sports coat an approving nod, and he repeated the same words he'd said twenty-five years ago.
"I understand you have an opening for a deputy position? I'd like to apply, please."
Ruby gave him the application and waved him towards his old office. The door was open, revealing the furniture arranged in a different configuration. The stack of books that had occupied the corner behind the desk had been set in a newer bookcase along the wall, and in its place was the glass case that held the department's complement of long arms. The desk itself had been moved to one side, no longer facing towards the doorway but angled slightly, making the two chairs in front of it the center of the room. It felt more inviting and less institutional.
Vic was leaning on the front of the desk, one hip hiked up on the wooden surface and her profile to him as she read through some paperwork. Her blonde hair was pinned into a ruthless bun at the nape of her neck. Instead of the jeans he'd seen her in every day since she started working for him, she wore a pair of chocolate brown uniform slacks. Her shirt was no longer a short-sleeve leftover from another deputy, but a cream long-sleeve tailored to fit a woman, complete with crisp creases and embroidered shield patches on the shoulders. The star pinned to her shirt pocket was brilliantly polished, and she fingered one point absently as if not yet used to the weight.
"Where's your hat?" she asked the paper in her hand, proving that he hadn't caught her as unaware as he thought he might have.
"Left it in the truck," he replied. "Hat in hand is a bit of a cliché, don't you think?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You got a reason to be hat in hand?" He was gratified when she blinked at his appearance. "Holy shit."
"Sorta what Cady said. And Ruby."
"Ruby wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful of it," she shot back. "Wow."
"So, uh, Sheriff – Sheriff Moretti. I understand you need another deputy," he began. "I may know someone who could fit the bill."
"Oh, yeah?" she challenged, as if she didn't quite believe him. "Is this someone a person who's gonna take off like a dumb-ass when the going gets rough?"
"No, I'm pretty sure the dumb-ass quotient has been filled for the decade."
"Okay," Vic returned, still giving him an assessing look. "Would this person have any issues taking orders from a woman?"
He grinned. "No, ma'am. I might be pretty bad at it, but I wouldn't have a problem with it."
"As long as you listen once in a while, and don't call me darlin', I think you'll work out fine," she told him. "When do you want to start?"
~fin~
Author's note: I know, I'm way, way late on finishing 'Not Exactly BFF's' but it's been a weird month. I was laid off in October and facing life without the framework of a job I'd held for sixteen years was a little weird. As you can tell from this story, I've been doing a lot of thinking about life, and jobs, and other things that make you wonder if you're taking yourself too seriously, or if you've just been thinking too much. And it makes your head hurt. After a while, you just have to quit wallowing and do SOMETHING.