Survival

The Day After Laundry Day

Chapter 13

(End of chapter)

The crime mentioned in the chapter is based upon an actual crime committed in Montana February? 2015…reported in a Sheridan, WY paper. Another one of the bazillion unusual stories out of the High Plains states.

Timeline-wise, I'm pretty close to catching up to Chapter 1, which means, the subsequent chapters will be about moving into the future, augmenting their personal and professional relationships with other forms of survival.

Would love more reviews over the course of the arc. If you have read other of my pieces, you may have noticed that I'm better at writing relationships than mystery/action/violence segments, which are often challenges for me.

Meanwhile, there were just a few dirty items left after Laundry Day…

The sense of glorious indulgence was the first thing she felt as she struggled awake. Her body felt slightly sensitized, but she couldn't remember when she had felt so satisfied. Where he'd been still convulsively echoed now and then, sticky but slick, her body acutely sensitive to where his stubble had grazed. Her ribs were still a little sore from her encounter two days earlier with Florian and the unaccustomed activity of the last twelve hours, but she felt so…alive.

She heard a slight noise, cracked an eye open. Pale pre-dawn light filtered through window not her own, past the nailed-up curtain, to…a long, familiar, hairy arm draped around her. The morning was cool, the fireplace in the main room had died down, and it was chilly in the bedroom, but under the covers and with a long furnace called Walt at her back, she was cozy-comfortable.

The noise was him stirring, like a sleeping sigh. She couldn't resist studying his large, capable hand sprinkled with dark hairs, relaxed and lying open across her stomach. Indulging herself, she took the unresisting hand and brought it to her lips.

She quietly rolled to her back, watching him sleeping. He had a broad smile on his face, but one she'd rarely seen before, and that only fleeting.

A sudden movement, and his arm gathered her into him. Sneaky! She found her shoulder nestled under his armpit, her breath against his chest hair. She could smell him—a little sweat, sage, maybe some leather, her, the result of their exertions the night before. She hoped she carried the same aroma of him about her, and wished she could bottle it. It was undeniably erotic.

He rumbled under her ear, "Wondered when you'd wake up. "Horse has been awake and demanding breakfast for a couple of hours, now. I called in and left a message for Ruby that we might not be in until early afternoon, but I'm on call if anything happens sooner. You can sleep in as late as you want. You've had a couple of long days."

Yeah, she thought long. Attending a wedding, rescuing a hog, shopping for major appliances, doing laundry, and…a mini-honeymoon of sorts…Okay, she'd accept the word long.

She could faintly hear a whinny in the distance. Then his words penetrated the lingering fog of sleep.

"Horse does sound pissed. Wait—You told Ruby both of us? Uh-oh."

"Truth. We don't have to hide from Ruby. There's also a case we need to look into later, faxed over from Montana. A dozen horses, pet horses, decapitated. A Pretty on Top is mayor up there, and thinks they've identified the perpetrator as a white guy who's supposed to have a girlfriend on the Rez. They think he may be retreating this way to hide out."

She thought about it and cringed a little. "That sounds more like a Philly Mafia thing, horse heads and all that, but okay. Where do we start?"

"Having Mathias contact the girlfriend and see if he's been around. We may want to go out and talk to her as well."

Another whinny, louder and more insistent, sounded.

"Hmmm…you think Horse is jealous that you ride me, too?" He only paused a second, but responded by tickling her tummy half-heartedly. When she glanced up, his eyes had opened as though enjoying her, but that self-satisfied smile was still there.

"That is one shit-eating grin, Walter Longmire. I am going to call that the shit-eating, cat got the canary and THEN the cream, grin."

"That's quite the title."

"Matches quite the night."

She wondered if his suddenly ruddy complexion was from blushing. She wriggled, he released her and she rolled over to warm her back again. It had already gotten cold when turned away from the Longmire Furnace.

"Vic, you remember that friend of yours, Claudia, who visited you from Philly last summer?"

So where was this line of questioning going? She decided to find out.

"Yeah, I remember. She and I went to high school together and visited here last month. She's a ditz."

"A ditz?"

Walt, it's, well, I don't take her seriously. Really, she works as a fashion consultant. It's like a dilettante job. She's always been more worried about appearances than substance. I mean, that's in contrast to this job, which may not pay a lot, but there's a lot of diligent police work and a sense of fulfillment after we get bad guys off the street."

He digested that for a moment. Then, "I had to use the men's room at the Pony, and when I came out, she was pontificating. I stayed at the back wall all the way to the bar just so I could be enlightened."

"Uh-oh. Pontificating?"

He tilted his head a little. "Educating you on the foibles of older men."

Now she hesitated. He couldn't have possibly heard that, could he?

"Walt, just spit it out. What did you hear?"

"She was warning you against older men, that the rumors are true, they can't get it up, keep it up, or do it again. She called it The Old Guy Trilogy. She sounded like she had it all figured out. Her message was worse than the commercials with the bathtubs or little blue pills."

"And…you took her seriously? The Oracle from Philadelphia?" His words penetrated. "Wait, how do you know about those commercials…?"

"I took it seriously that you might have believed her. And, football, of course. The commercials are a direct frontal assault on older men."

She sighed, but hesitated before rolling back and burrowing into his side again. "Well, it's obvious bunk. You disproved that three times over in the last twelve hours—"

"Four."

She paused again, feeling her forehead crinkle. "Four?"

He took her hand and ticked off a finger for each point. "Shower, me on top, you on top, me behind..."

"Ohhh" Her eyes narrowed, tallying them. "But—we haven't done it with you behind…"

She remembered suddenly how smug he sounded, and the grin. Detective Moretti swiftly pieced it together.

"You dog!"

His eyes closed, grin back in place, rolled her to her side facing away from him, and brought the covers up over them again.

"I concur with your conclusion, Deputy. Let me warm you up."

XXX

Waking again at what seemed like much later, she laid a tentative hand on his chest. She had been vaguely aware he had gotten up at some point, probably to relieve himself and placate Horse, but he seemed to have rejoined her. She wasn't sure if he were sleeping again, or not.

Sunshine flooded in the windows, but in her mind, it was time. She moved closer, laid her head on his chest where her hand had been. His arm instantly came around her and held her close. So, not so asleep as she might have thought.

"Tell me about Martha." She let it float for a minute.

He seemed to be weighing her words. The pause was more than mere hesitation. "What do you want to know?"

"As much as you're willing to share. I feel like she is still part of you, and I want to know everything about you. Sometimes," she paused, "I don't think I can measure up, because so many people in Durant loved her." She bit her lip.

"Why do you think that?" His voice sounded almost sharp in the pale morning light, and she suddenly thought she might be very sorry indeed she had brought up the topic if he retreated back into his head again.

"What?" she asked, startled.

"That you feel you can't measure up. That people here loved her. Cady and I loved her, she loved the Methodist Church, she loved controlling committees and groups, and she may have been respected, but I'm not sure people here loved her."

"They all speak well of her. She is thought of as a good woman. In my head I sometimes think of her as…" she wondered if he would explode or retreat from her with the words, but whispered them, "The Paragon of Durant. At least it seems like she was someone I'm not. You know, me, poor impulse control, language, authority issues, temper…"

He was very quiet for a minute.

"She was very religious, some might say devout. She also had secrets which I have yet to figure out, although it feels like I've spent the better part of a lifetime trying."

"Secrets?" she asked, startled. That was a word she had never heard applied to Martha.

"Remember the visit to the psychic? That was not her first, although there was no physical evidence from earlier visits. It was only the latest in a long list of things I wondered about for years."

"That…I didn't know that," she whispered.

"No. If she was sharing secrets with Cassandra, and it seemed like Cassandra had enough secrets that it was initially unclear what got her killed, I have no idea what was going on between Martha and Cassandra, and there were numerous other…questions…all along our marriage."

Vic didn't say anything for a minute. "Could she have been protecting you and Cady because you are a public figure?" she asked, "because I could understand that. It's why I didn't say any more about Gorski when he checked himself out of the hospital. I was afraid you'd destroy your career for me, and I don't think I could have lived with that. You almost did that before Hector visited him. It's why I did what I did."

He huffed under her hand. "You've always tried to protect me, swinging on Mathias, for example."

She shrugged. "I told you once you can't protect everybody…"

"And neither can you, but I love that you try. And regarding Martha, that doesn't mean she wasn't a good woman…" he said softly. "And just because you were a bad girl, doesn't make you a bad woman, either."

She laid her head against his shoulder. "I don't want to have secrets from you."

She could feel him shrug under her cheek. "Everybody has secrets. They might be tiny or huge. They are only destructive when your secrets can hurt other people, or you have ones that can eat you alive…"

"Like the ones you carried inside about Martha's death."

"Yep."

"I may have more questions along the way. I don't know very much about her, or how you two got along…"

"You can ask. I hope I have the answers. It wasn't all clear-cut. There are times marriage is compromise from both sides. I just know I'm willing to figure it out with you for the rest of our lives. That's pretty much all anyone can ask for, a future together figuring things out."

She nodded against him, but he was suddenly moving away, off the bed, in his boxers, and scooping her toward him. He lifted her easily in his arms.

"Let me show you," he said softly. She tilted her head in question, as he carried her to his front room.

"Grab that blanket for me, will you?" She snatched the blanket draped over the chair near the fire, and he sat with her at his piano, adjusting her a little on his lap. He wrapped the blanket around them both. She clutched the edges together as his long arms reached from beneath and began to play. She laid her head against his shoulder.

She had never heard him play his own piano, before. At the wedding, there had been a number of comments about 'Walt finally playing again.' But this was different…this was for her alone. She thought it was Gershwin, but it was with feeling, seductive, warm, maybe with more than a little of himself imbued into the notes. He played on, a variety of pieces, for a long while. When the last notes died away, he nuzzled her.

"The music speaks for you?" she asked with a secret smile.

"Yep. Did you understand it?"

"I think so, and if so, then, Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes, to your question in the shower. Yes, eventually, when we agree when and how we want to make it happen."

He didn't say anything for a minute. He seemed to relax against her, and sighed as though completely content.

"Well, okay then." But he kissed her to seal the deal, and if they were really, really late getting into work, and it turned into five times, who was really counting?

XXX

That deal-sealing kiss had indeed led to other things she felt powerless to stop, or more accurately, she felt motivated to see through, and so they got in very late to work. Walt took the usual post-its and dealt with them from the privacy of his office. Ferg seemed surprised to see her.

"I thought you were taking the day off," said Ferg.

"Misunderstanding," she said, knowing that he had covered almost all weekend for both Walt and herself, and that it wouldn't be fair to Ferg to not show up. Lucian had covered dispatch for Ferg and Ruby during the wedding, but the junior deputy had been practically living at the station all weekend. He was becoming both competent and capable, but that was no excuse not to pull their own, and even more so now, collective weights.

"Ruby said that…you were with Walt?"

She raised an eyebrow, and he changed the subject.

Ruby knew, it was only fair Ferg should, too, but only after discussing it with Walt and presenting a united front. No blindsiding. After a respectable amount of time, she walked back to Walt's office. She closed the door, but stood in front of it.

"Are you comfortable sharing with Ruby and Ferg that we're seeing each other?"

He sat back in his chair. "Not that we're engaged?" he asked, surprising her.

"I thought maybe we should just give them a little time to absorb the seeing part, fuck, to absorb the us part in any form?"

"Okay," he said, "but I'm willing to share, or celebrate more any time you want."

"I think we should tell them both now that we're seeing each other. We can figure out the rest later?"

He shrugged as though either was fine with him.

They came back up front together.

Ruby was typing and Ferg appeared to be absorbed with the Arbogast report from Montana. Walt looked over to her, tilted his head. Her brows rose and she jerked her head to the two absorbed people.

Walt cleared his throat, then took her hand in his. "Um, Vic and I thought you should know, we've started seeing one another. It's not a secret, especially here in the office, but we're not really broadcasting it yet, either. Ferg, I know you protected Vic for me after Branch's attack on her, but…if you think, or Ruby, if you notice anything, if either of us are out of line or unprofessional, come see me and we'll work through it. It's new territory for all of us."

To her surprise, neither of them seemed surprised at all, but Ferg said quietly to her after Walt had eventually retreated to his office, "I'm glad for you both. He's needed someone." She idly wondered if maybe Ferg was not only talking about Walt, but about himself. She wrinkled her brows, she couldn't think of too many girls he might be interested in around Durant.

After that, it seemed like a long Monday afternoon-into-evening trying to develop leads on the whereabouts of a person of interest in the Rez-related case, researching one George Arbogast, whose pickup had been identified leaving the area near the crime, which was a long, remote gully just off the Montana side of the Rez.

It was equally challenging to set up effective professional walls at work to contain their new-found intimacy. She found herself with a rather startling clear daydream at four in the afternoon, and firmly tamped it down and filed it away. Another time, as Walt merely walked past, she wanted to riffle her hands through his hair, and willed her hands into stillness around her pen and hockey puck.

The daydream was not a bad notion, though, and she thought, Maybe we could try that later…becauseit now looked like there would be a lot of laters.

She forced herself back to the case. The bottom line to the case was that Mathias had jurisdiction, but didn't want to pursue the suspect because Arbogast was white, and technically in Walt's county. Arbogast did have a residence down near Powder River, but had been reported in the Durant area over the last few months. Word had it George had recently moved back to the Rez because his long-time, long-suffering girlfriend who had reported him for abuse twice over a period of years, had borne him a second child less than a year ago, and it was more or less a safe place for him.

"I don't know," said Vic in disgust at one point, "I try to give our persons of interest the benefit of the doubt, but this guy has scumbag written all over him from the get-go. I don't know how Mathias can live with letting this fucker openly abuse her without arresting him."

"I get it for the abuse stuff here, but how is he connected to the horse mutilations?" asked Ferg.

She shrugged. No doubt a pattern would emerge, but for now, it all revolved around collecting data and trying to create a paper trail for Arbogast over the last several months. "It might not even be him, it might be someone driving his pickup, but there are certainly enough questions to warrant an investigation."

"Into the horses or the abuse?"

"Into why the horses, and anything connected with that, including other crimes." It was pretty much all Walt and she had discussed on the way into work that morning. They had retrieved her truck from the back porch and she had followed him in, although he'd made a stop for ruggela and coffee at the little Basque bakery shop in the center of town.

"Okay," said Ferg.

"Say, Ferg. You remember when Walt was on Cloud Peak, and I told you that you had to leave?"

"Uh—yeah."

"Yeah, well…that was because I didn't want you to see me cry. I was really afraid he might not…make it."

"Really? You cry?"

"Yeah," she said, now trying to joke it off. "Go figure, but I was worried. Those FBI ass-hats would have let him die, and we had no idea Henry and Branch were on their way up. Omar saved him with his cold weather gear, but we didn't know that, either."

"Yeah, it was messed up."

"Totally fucked. Did Walt tell you that FBI guy tried to offer me a job not long ago?"

"No! When was that?"

She jerked her head. "Couple of months ago. Another FBI guy who Walt knew from that so-called undercover thing he did in Powder River a couple of years ago, was with Towson. They liked the Murder Board. Walt put in a good word for you, if ever you want to pursue that path."

"FBI?" he almost whispered. "Hell, no!"

She laughed in delight. "That is pretty fucking much what I said before they offered me the job! Anyway, thought you might want to know."

"Yeah! Well, you know, if it doesn't work out here, for some reason…" he kind of trailed off.

"Like what, Ferg?"

"Well…my dad isn't as crazy about me working here anymore, after Branch…"

She bit her lip. She hadn't thought of that aspect of police work, especially how Ferg's dad might feel, now. Surely being shot twice in one year, once by a family member, didn't both qualify as in 'the line of duty,' even if that line of investigation had implicated said family member?

"You can't think about that stuff too much or it'll make you crazy. You just do your job."

"Yeah, and I have come to really like it."

"That's great, Ferg. You've come a long way, here." But she was sorry she couldn't offer more comfort, especially to his dad.

She wondered if Walt still thought about Chance and Ridges, or if it still affected him in ways. She still thought punching Jacob had been part of the fight-or-flight left from the ambush earlier that morning. If you added Henry and Branch, they all had experienced the year from hell.

Huh.

Meanwhile, the image of her 4 pm daydream intruded once more.

Double huh.