Holiday from her Holiday

Chapter 3

A/N: This is has been percolating and stuck in a file for a few weeks, now. I'm letting it out, so Merry Christmas!

XXX

The mid-January plane ride into Billings was choppy. She had heard it was, of course, going to snow that night, in the endless rounds of blizzarding that defined winter in Wyoming. She wondered if she should consider this a post-holiday holiday away from her holiday, which could be summarized as Too Much Philly punctuated by a guy who wouldn't hear the word "no" and now wore sore testicles. In her mind, it was an old refrain to a tired song.

Ferg pulled up to the sliding doors in her former Absaroka County truck.

"Wow, nice ride!" She smiled at him and meant it. The familiar face, the familiar truck, gave her a pang.

He grinned ear-to-ear. "The new perk, Eamonn is senior in experience and may get it eventually, but if you agree to come back, I'll surrender it in a minute."

"Awwww…" She hugged him briefly. A few weeks of deflecting guys who knew she was recently divorced, presumably horny and on the market again, had grown tiresome. Being without work had left her…restless. As Ferg put the big pickup into gear, she asked, "So, spill, what's the real deal that you felt panicked enough to text: HELP?"

"Walt's on personal sabbatical, Eamonn's in charge. I like him fine, and Zach's doing well with him, too, but we could use Walt's guidance on a big case, and we're both concerned about his whereabouts. None of us has seen him in the last week, and Ruby says that he wasn't there when she went out to the cabin to check on him yesterday. You know if Ruby's worried that it's unusual for him. Henry says he's been camping a lot—"

"In fucking January?"

"—and having beer delivered by the pallet, not the case."

"Shit. He'll pass out in a snowdrift or fall off his horse and freeze to death, destroy his liver first, or something. So here's the thing, Ferg. You think he's just pulling these stunts so I'll come back and rescue him, or at least talk to him, or has he just gone off the deep end like we expected him to after Barlow and the Donna dump?"

"Nobody knows. He won't talk to any of us, even Henry seems concerned. He said the only time he's heard from Walt since you left was to ask him to watch after Horse."

"Hmmmph. It sounds like he's reverted to some kind of shrinky-dink lingo passive-aggressive rebellion thing?"

"I don't know. We're deep into high-stakes corruption —in the middle of a casino money-laundering investigation – remember that guy Oscar Ernesto a few years back?"

"Yeah, um, his alias was Ray, borrowed a corpse to fake his death and burned up his own horses, I remember that.Burned horse shit-storm."

"Well, before he was killed, he said someone called Landetta had been trying to cut a deal with the casino even way back then…"

"Yeah, I vaguely remember that."

"…Well, Landetta was sighted here a few weeks back, squiring around one of the bosses, Tony Patriarca."

"Shit! Even I've heard of that name—Boston, right?"

"Right."

"That is big stuff if the Patriarcas are visiting Durant—Walt needs to be in on that."

"I know!"

"Malachi has to be involved in something that big, if not Jacob!"

"I know!"

"Oh." She stopped. "So, that's why I'm out here? To convince Walt to come back and personally supervise re-catching Malachi in the act and hopefully eradicate The Mob from Absaroka County?"

"I don't know. When you got off the plane, I wanted to say, You're our only hope, Obi-Wan, but it sounded way too corny."

"I figured you were desperate when the county offered to pay my plane fare. Was that courtesy of Eamonn?"

"Yep. He wants to see you, too. He said you two have unfinished business. And of course the county would spring for the plane fare, to get Walt back. We're kind of lacking seniority around there since you've been gone."

She shrugged. She and Eamonn might have unfinished business, but she was pretty sure it was not offering a renewal of affection. She'd learned from that. The heart wants what the heart wants. Her own happened to be in cryo, awaiting resuscitation.

"So you want me to locate Walt and convince him to come back?"

"Um, well…"

"Shit, Ferg. He probably won't even see me, just shoot first. He's probably even angrier with me than before, if possible."

"I don't know about that. He wouldn't discuss it, though."

"That's what I mean. He hasn't said anything to me. I'm persona non gratis with him." She felt slightly guilty saying that, yes, there had been a number of calls, but from the ASD number, and she hadn't listened or kept the messages. He could have called. More, he could have come after her, if he really cared, and make the larger statement than things hadn't changed.

"I don't think so, Vic, I think he misses you."

She swallowed and her head went down. "Then, double-shit." She couldn't keep a tremor out of her voice.

"Maybe. Where do you want to go first?"

She exhaled. "The station, of course, so you guys can fill me in, before the cabin."

"Gotcha."

They sped through the flurries, which had already started. At any other time, she'd think it was a winter wonderland since she wouldn't have to stand out in it for hours looking for an escaped trailer of stinking sheep…but the thought of Walt out in it alone made her paralyzed with worry, and she chided herself for that. She could tell herself a million times that it was no longer her problem, and his words pumped through her in remote litany. The exact nature of my relationship is none of your business, but the truth of that, her truth—stripped bare—said that it was.

XXX

Ruby hugged her, Eammon shook her hand heartily, escorted her to what she thought of as Walt's office, but was now his own. Ferg and Zach followed. Over the next couple of hours, as a blizzard moved toward Durant, they proceeded to fill her in on the last month.

Ruby brought her coffee the way she liked it and squeezed her shoulder. Ferg looked at her gratefully more than once. When the meeting broke up, Eamonn asked her to stay back a minute.

"I've hoped you've forgiven me," he began.

"Forgive you? There's nothing to forgive you for, you told me nothing but the fucking truth. I appreciated that in a season of lies, Eamonn, you don't know how much."

He grinned, a little sheepishly. "D'you know, I've been seeing my former groupie Maddie, lately? She's really a nice person."

Something inside her thawed, that things were going well for somebody's relationship. "That's really sweet, Eamonn, hope you're very happy."

"Well, we'll see, it's early days, yet, but after a few dates with her, I suddenly knew…I see the same thing, whenever I see you with Walt. I have to believe this whole shift for him happened because you left. I'm thinking you leaving may have undermined his whole existence. He depended on you, your presence to keep him righted. Ferg and Ruby have said that Martha did that for him when she was alive, why he's struggled so much since then. And I saw it, that after you left, he just sort of crumpled into himself."

She thought most recently of the Santa suit, but of all the times since the Grant Parkford shooting when they'd been together and actually becoming friends between solving cases. She pressed her lips together and looked with concern out the window as the storm intensified, remembering him alone above Tensleep chasing escaped cons, and how her heart had contracted over his well-being enough to punch an FBI agent, that same heart which was currently MIA.

"I hope I don't have that effect, if just leaving sent him into Russian roulette with blizzards."

"Thanks for coming back when we needed you, Vic."

She threw him a sharp look. "I'm not working here again, y'know. I'm just here to talk to him."

He laughed gently. "Okay, I can live with that. Just see what you can do, convince him ASD still needs him. I think he feels unwanted and unneeded."

Welcome to the club.

XXX

The cabin was dark and cold, and she wondered if Horse were okay. She remembered how Walt had shown her how to make a fire in the big fireplace during the evening before Lizzie'd appeared, and where everything was. Back then she'd felt the attraction, but there had also been the equally understood convictions of fidelity, and an innocence of sorts between them.

Her arms were full of sacks of groceries, adequate supplies to combat the pallets of beer, if those were to be believed.

Ferg went in before her. "I'll take lead on this." She liked this developing deputy Assertive Ferg side of him, although she thought maybe he was casing the joint hoping against hope to find Walt just lying dead drunk inside, or much worse, Walt actually dead inside, so she wouldn't be the one to find him. It was a twisty, slightly macabre, but affectionate thing for him to do. She blinked back tears.

No one lived or died inside. Instead, it was almost tidy except for a huge trash can full of beer cans out back. A couple of cases of beer-at-the-ready sat inside near the back door.

She stood in the kichen, bundled up in her parka and Sorels, and her mouth twisted. Everything looked all right, but something was wrong. For one thing, Walt wasn't there wintering.

"What do you think, Ferg? I think something's fucked."

"Yeah. All the years I've known him living here, he's never spent much time away from the cabin in the winter. Of course, for a while, he stayed really close because of Martha, and then, afterward, mourning Martha, but this…this looks almost abandoned."

"Yeah, I get the same vibe. Can you check on Horse while I put the groceries away and start the fire?"

"On it," Ferg said and trudged off in the snow to the shed which passed for a barn.

She quickly unpacked the bags, got a blazing fire going and checked the fuel status. The back porch was full of firewood. Stocked then, but…for what? The bed was made, as though freshly so, the sheets smelled of detergent and clean, not used. As though he planned for someone to use them—or for his return. If he were on sabbatical, he wasn't sleeping at the station most nights like after he returned from Barlow, so where had he been going, or had he been spending his nights on the couch?

The groceries were a good guess, he typically kept very little there to go bad—but there were a few left in the fridge, with expirations good for a while. Not put in there long ago, then. Still, good to stock him up, assuming he was coming back.

She made cocoa, simple and fast, and had it ready before anyone returned. Optimistically, she put three mugs out. Who knew, maybe he had just been out camping with Horse?

Her heart raced as the front door creaked open, but it was only the Ferg, who looked a little sheepish. "Horse looks fine, a truck's been down there, but not the Bronco. Oh!" He must have seen her stricken face. "Guess I should have announced myself, huh."

"No…but it's weird here, Ferg. Like he went out for a walk, not for a week."

'Yeah."

"Let's have some cocoa in front of the fire and figure out the next step."

"Okay, it's awful out there, anyway. With the wind increasing and temps dropping, we'll probably be snowed in by tomorrow if we stay here."

"Right. Let me think. Where would he go?"

"Well…he likes to fish."

"In this weather? Maybe ice-fishing?"

Ferg shook his head. "Nope, that would be Lake DeSmet, but I don't think so. I've never heard of him ice-fishing."

The fire crackled and it was very companionable with the cocoa, but she knew with every fiber inside her that she sat there in that cabin with the wrong man.

"Are there any cabins he could shelter in if he were camping?"

"Not…cabins per se, but there are a couple of sheepherder huts…"

"You mean like the little places that family had while they were pasturing near there?"

"Yeah, yeah…but those are kinda far out."

She made a decision. "The rest of my winter gear is in the back of the truck. Let's get packs together and go find him."

Ferg looked startled. "Where?"

"Well, the Bronco's not here, so let's assume he must have taken it to a trail head. We find the Bronco, we find him."

"Okay," said Ferg with more enthusiasm than she'd heard since she'd left Durant weeks ago.

"But we go armed," she said. "Walt would have come back here if he wasn't hurt…or kept back…by someone. Also, his Winchester and Colt are both gone."

"Okay," said Ferg again, with the program. She used the bathroom while he brought her duffle in and she layered up in thermal layers and heated socks for the conditions in Walt's room while Ferg sat by the fire on his phone.

"You think he's hurt?" Ferg asked as she put basic first aid supplies into her pack. Ferg's carried freeze-dried food and space blankets. They both carried matches and bottles of water.

She shook her head. "I have no idea. I just want to be prepared. You know this area a lot better than I do, so I'll follow you."

"There are a lot of trailheads on 16, but that's on up the mountain, and going will be treacherous in this storm."

"He had the Bronco up there during the Wayne Durell thing, at least we're better prepared than he was then."

"Horses or ATVs would be better…"

She might agree if they knew where the needle in the haystack was hiding in all of Wyoming. Instead she said, "Let's see if we can locate the Bronco and go from there."

"Okay."

"I'll have Ruby put an APB out for it, just in case somebody saw him coming or going."

"Good idea."

She banked the fire and shut the door securely behind her. For the first time in her life, she hoped that would not be the last time she ever visited his place.