Title: NOT EXACTLY BFF's
Author: Ramos
Rating: PG-13 for language (c'mon, it's Vic!)
Disclaimer: Don't own Walt Longmire. Takes place after 'Harvest' but veers off from canon before 'Counting Coup.'
~Chapter 8~
Driving at less than the break-neck pace her father had employed, Cady arrived back in Durant just after two in the morning. The five hour drive had seemed even longer; she and Vic had ridden up front, talking occasionally but ignoring Branch and his attitude in the back. She hadn't argued when Vic directed her to drop Branch off first; if she'd been honest with herself, she would have admitted she didn't really want to spend any time alone with the man who'd once shared her bed.
By seven, Vic was awake again and stumbling towards the shower. It gave her the energy and focus needed to dress and get into work, where she figured that half a night's sleep was better than nothing, and the deficit could be made up with caffeine.
"I guess you're here today," Ruby surmised as Vic headed straight for the coffee pot. Vic gave her a thumb's up without removing the mug of black gold from her mouth.
Ferg was equally surprised to see her, but greeted her with a neutral good morning.
"Thought you were taking some time off?" Vic commented when she'd gotten through the first half of her cup. "Four day weekend?"
"Starting tomorrow," Ferg replied. "I'm going fishing, and you all can figure it out."
"Figure what out?" Branch asked as he slouched in through the door, looking unkempt and haggard despite obviously having showered recently.
"Whatever it is you all are doing," Ferg said sullenly before walking off towards the bathroom.
"What's his problem?" Branch asked, staring after the stout deputy.
"I wouldn't worry about Ferg if I were you," Vic warned him, not bothering to remove her own surly edge from her voice. "Right now you're the one on the shit list."
She took another sip of coffee, then muttered, more to the coffee than her fellow deputy, "Hell, at my old job you'd be up for a psych eval."
"I'm not crazy!" Branch insisted yet again, his blue eyes glaring.
"Maybe not. But you sure as hell have some PTSD issues."
His response was short and succinct. "Bullshit."
"You attacked Cady at the hospital. You kidnapped a man and poured peyote tea down his throat. You broke into my house and went through my computer… does any of that sound like something you'd normally do? Tell me you're sleeping at night, not having nightmares. You can't, can you?"
Unable to answer, Branch looked away.
"You got shot, Branch. You haven't taken the time to heal up, physically or mentally. You're obsessing over this David Ridges…"
"While you and Walt and Cady waste time on this Miller Beck cold case!" Branch exploded. "Henry killed the guy who killed Walt's wife, and none of you want to admit it!"
"I don't know who killed Beck, but if Ridges is involved in this, then you running around focused on just him is not helping! So get your head out of your ass and stop going off like a kid throwing a temper tantrum!"
"You're one to talk about temper," Branch shot back. "How'd you ever manage to keep a job in Philly?"
Vic's expression turned hard and cold. "I am one to talk, Branch. I've been shot, on the job. If I hadn't been wearing a vest, I'd be dead. And they never even pressed charges on the little shit because they already had him on a murder rap.
"I had mandatory counseling, and I had to pass a psych test before they let me back on the street, and I'm telling you, Branch – you cannot cowboy through this. You will end up dead, or hurting someone else. Probably someone who doesn't deserve it. Like Cady."
Incensed beyond reason, Branch stood fast enough to send his chair rocketing back into the wall. Without another word he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Ferg stood in the open space by the jail cells, having just caught the last bit.
"Branch hurt Cady?"
"No, she's fine," Vic bit out. "Did you get anything more on that Burns guy?"
"Yeah," he answered after a long moment. "Here."
He slapped a file folder on her desk and went back to his own.
Vic stared at him, genuinely surprised. Ferg was typically cheerful and easy-going, which made his current hostile attitude all the more surprising. "Seriously, who peed in your Cheerios this morning?"
"You wouldn't understand," Ferg muttered.
"Fine. You know what? Branch is pissed at me. You might as well be pissed off, too."
Slamming his desk drawer, Ferg turned to face her. "I'm not the office gopher, okay?"
"What?"
"Ferg, get this. Ferg, do that. Ferg, fetch this. I'm not a dog – I'm not the office errand boy!
"You and Branch, and Walt, too, you all treat me like some kid. You're the super cop, and Branch is a stuck up S.O.B., pardon my French. And Walt's so busy chasing his tail lately, he's barely here."
Open-mouthed, Vic frowned at the chubby deputy. She swallowed her first sharp retort, and reconsidered her words.
"You're right. Okay? You're not the errand boy. I've been doing it too." Rubbing at her forehead, she closed her eyes briefly. "I'm sorry. I just – things have been really shitty lately, and I'm not handling it well."
"All what things?" Ferg asked grudgingly.
Glancing in the direction of Walt's office, Vic lowered her voice. "Well, for starters, Sean left me. I found the divorce papers in the kitchen under the coffee pot the other morning."
"Seriously?" Ferg asked, then swallowed. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she told him wearily. "So - I'm sorry if I've been a bitch lately. You didn't deserve it."
"Okay," he said reluctantly, but refused to budge from his previous determination. "So are you gonna tell me what else is going on? Who's this Burns guy?"
Huffing a quick, resigned sigh, Vic dug the rounded heels of her hiking boots into the old wooden floorboards and dragged herself, chair and all, over towards Ferg's desk with short, choppy steps.
"Okay. You know Henry is being charged with the murder of that tweaker down in Denver, right?"
"Beck, right? The guy that killed Mrs. Longmire?"
"Right. So, it's possible that this Burns guy was the one who sent Beck after her. On Malachi Strand's orders."
"Whoa – really? Because Walt arrested Malachi?"
Vic gave Ferg an approving nod, pleased that he'd deduced the suspect's motivations so quickly.
"The thing is, some of the other pieces don't really fit. Like the way Strand and his pal Burns are both working for Jacob Nighthorse now. And why was Hector White Buffalo murdered? Then you throw Ridges and him faking his death in there, and it's a mess and a half."
"Didn't that Ridges guy used to work for Nighthorse?" Ferg asked.
"Yeah. And so did Hector, or at least he knew him. It's a lot of coincidences, and all we get are more questions and nothing's adding up."
"Like what?"
"Well…" Vic began. "For starters, why did Hector break out of the Cumberland County jail? Walt put him there to keep him off Detective Fales' radar. Why'd he suddenly decide to go apeshit and escape the other night?"
"Did you ask 'em?"
"No – I didn't stick around. I probably should have, but they had a couple of injured cops and I didn't want to remind them it was our prisoner who did it."
Ferg frowned thoughtfully. "So…maybe we should give them a call and ask them what happened?"
"We could," Vic agreed, less than enthusiastic. "But I'd feel better if we did it in person. You know – go in and schmooze them a bit, ask if everything's okay, if there's anything we can do to help them out...
"And then just casually ask what set him off, right?" Ferg added, a sly grin dawning on his face. "Maybe check their visitor's log, or see if he got a phone call or something."
"Exactly," Vic told him with a matching smile.
"I could totally do that," Ferg volunteered. "I mean, I know those guys, and all."
"You think you could handle it?"
"Definitely," Ferg replied, his chin firm with resolve. "I'll be back in a couple hours."
Shooting him a grin, Vic rolled herself back over to her own desk. It wasn't until she'd grabbed the edges to pull herself back into place that she spotted the tall shadow lurking inside the doorway between the main office and the Reading Room's antechamber.
Walt leaned one arm against the door frame and waited as Ferg bid Ruby a goodbye and headed out the door, all the while giving Vic a considering look.
"Keep this up and you'll get my job."
"Don't even joke about that," she growled back. "How long were you standing there?"
"Little bit. Heard Branch stomp out. Then I heard Ferg yelling. I didn't get concerned until it got quiet out here."
"So you heard what I told Ferg?"
"About Darius Burns? Yeah. Why, did I miss something?"
"No, nothing else," Vic told him, carefully nonchalant. "Just that we get more questions every time we find an answer."
Nodding, Walt walked forward and tapped a worn set of folded papers on her desk. "That's about the way it's been going. I've spent most of the morning calling everyone on this Casi-No phone list Cady gave me. Left a bunch of messages, but a most of them said they just gave up after the injunction was overturned."
Vic tilted her head. "What injunction?"
Hitching one hip up on Vic's desk, Walt laid the pages down. His handwriting, formed when kids were still taught penmanship at school, was neat and legible. "My wife did some volunteer work after her cancer went into remission. She started with a literacy campaign, then she got roped into the group opposing the casino getting built. They eventually got an injunction from a federal judge against the corporation doing the building."
"Okay," Vic nodded, following him so far. "So when was the injunction overturned?"
"Around January, just after her cancer came back," Walt said quietly. "She tried to get things started up again, but most of the others had dropped out by then. Malachi Strand saw to that."
Vic shot him a quizzical look, and he pursed his mouth in distaste. "Strand was in the pocket of the original developer, Will Dobson. He came in here a few years back, got the whole thing rolling. Gave the Tribal Council and the elders a song and dance about how much money a casino out here would bring in. The tribe ended up putting in several million dollars of investment.
"When some members of the tribe started to object to the casino plan and wanting more input into the whole thing, Strand started leaning on them to keep quiet. It got really bad after the injunction came down. That's actually when the B.I.A. started paying attention to the extortion complaints folks had been making for years."
"Did Strand ever try leaning on your wife?"
"I doubt it," Walt answered seriously, then let out a tiny exhale, not quite a chuckle. "Martha didn't take crap from anyone, not even me. Sweet as honey when she wanted to be, but tough as nails underneath.
"So, anyway, the injunction got overturned, and most people expected the project to start up again. The only problem was, Dobson had decided to hedge his bets and embezzled nearly a million dollars out of the project. He skipped town."
"So then Strand is suddenly on his own…" Vic guessed.
"Exactly," Walt confirmed. "The B.I.A. leveled the extortion charges against him, not that they ever got off their asses to actually go and arrest him."
"So where did Nighthorse come from?"
"Oh, he showed up here a couple of months before you did," Walt told her, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Brought a new casino plan, and his own financing. According to Jacob, he's the man with all the answers."
Leaning back in her chair, Vic frowned. "But he didn't come to Absaroka until after your wife died, did he?"
"No," Walt answered shortly.
"So he never even met her," she continued, reluctant to point it out. "Why do you hate him so much?"
"Because he's a smug son of a bitch who wraps himself up in the whole Cheyenne doctrine and uses it to justify everything he does."
"He's not pure Cheyenne, though. Doesn't he come up short on that blood quantity thing?"
"Blood quantum," Walt corrected. "And no, he doesn't qualify, according to that test. That's what's so irritating. There are folks who've lived here in Absaroka or on the Rez their whole lives, who are a hell of a lot more Cheyenne than he is, but he treats them all like dirt."
"Like Henry?" Vic guessed shrewdly.
"Like Henry," he agreed. "And like Laura Howlingcrane and Rueben Lamebull. They're Cheyenne, even if their pedigree doesn't show it. I'd bet my badge he was behind the idea of the blood quantum in the first place. Once that casino starts operating, it's gonna bring in a ton of money. I haven't seen the contract but I hear he's guaranteed about half the profits."
"That's a lot of cash."
"You betcha. The next thing you know, there's gonna be a Nighthorse Library on the Rez, or a ballpark, or some other damned thing, all bought with his money and wearing his name. He'll be waving that cash around like it can buy him anything he wants."
"Will it buy him into the tribe? That's what he wants, isn't it?"
"Maybe," Walt said. "He's already a provisional member of the tribal council. Who knows where he'll end up in five years."
"Is there any way we can check his financials?"
"Nope. Jacob Nighthorse has filed an official complaint against this department. Unless we show significant reason for suspicion, we won't get a warrant for it."
