Also by Craig Johnson
The Cold Dish
Death Without Company
Kindness Goes Unpunished
Another Man’s Moccasins
The Dark Horse
Junkyard Dogs
Hell Is Empty
As the Crow Flies
A Serpent’s Tooth
Spirit of Steamboat
Any Other Name
Wait for Signs
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2015 by Craig Johnson
The series Longmire™ is copyrighted by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. which also has a trademark in the series title.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Johnson, Craig, 1961–
Dry bones : a Walt Longmire mystery / Craig Johnson.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-698-15751-4
1. Longmire, Walt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Sheriffs—Fiction. 3. Wyoming—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.O325D79 2015
813’.6—dc23 2015001102
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
CONTENTS
Also by Craig Johnson
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
EPILOGUE
For Joe Tuck,
because Heaven needs drivers,
and the Lord likes to keep his blacksmiths close . . .
Them bones, them bones gonna walk around
Them bones, them bones gonna walk around
Them bones, them bones gonna walk around
Now hear the word of the Lord
Disconnect them bones, them dry bones
Disconnect them bones, them dry bones
Disconnect them bones, them dry bones
Now hear the word of the Lord
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I was wandering through the Natural History Museum in London with my granddaughter when we stumbled onto a T. rex—from all places, Wyoming. I asked my friend paleontologist Bill Matteson and he informed me that the majority of Tyrannosauri populating the museums of the world were from around our area, here in the Northern Rockies.
I vaguely remembered a situation in the ’80s that had escalated among the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, an Indian rancher, his tribe, and the FBI over the largest, most intact T. rex fossil that had ever been found—all of which seemed rife for a Walt Longmire mystery.
Attacking the subject with half-remembered scenarios and forty-year-old public school science would’ve been a mistake, so I jumped into the dig with both feet, reading as much as I could about the creature itself, the history of the dinosaur wars here in Wyoming, and finally the titanic cluster that took place right across the border in South Dakota. Many books, including Peter Larson and Kristin Donnan’s Rex Appeal and Steve Fiffer’s Tyrannosaurus SUE were essential to understanding what had happened in the tiny town of Hill City, South Dakota, along with the marvelous documentary, Dinosaur 13. Two more fabulous sources, which convinced me how little I knew about dinosaurs, were Robert T. Bakker’s The Dinosaur Heresies and Peter Larson and Kenneth Carpenter’s Tyrannosaurus rex: The Tyrant King.
To dig up a good story you need a team and mine starts with Gail “Hylaeosaurus” Hochman, and Marianne “Mosasaur” Merola at the office in Times Square, one of the most unpredictable hunting grounds in the world. Down island in the West Village epoch reside the fiercely loyal Kathryn “Carnotaurus” Court and her hunting partner Lindsey “Stegosaurus” Schwoeri. Barbara “Compsognathus” Campo reads the fossil imprints and Victoria “Spinosaurus” Savanh handles the details, both large and small. Carolyn “Conchoraptor” Coleburn keeps an eye to the horizon while Ben “Parasaurolophus” Petrone and Angie “Megalodon” Messina keep the herd moving in the right direction and away from extinction.
There’s always a big thanks to Marcus “Rhabdodon” Red Thunder.
Then there’s Judy “Tyrannosaurus rex” Johnson, who makes my cold blood run warm.
1
She was close to thirty years old when she was killed.
A big girl, she liked to carouse with the boys at the local watering holes, which of course led to a lot of illegitimate children, but by all accounts, she was a pretty good single parent and could take care of herself and her brood. One night, though, a gang must have jumped her; they were all younger than she was, they had numbers, they might’ve even been family, and after they broke her leg and she was on the ground, it was pretty much over.
There was no funeral. They killed her and left what remained there by the water, where the sediment from the forgotten creek built up around her, layer after layer, compressing and compacting her to the point where the bones leeched away and were replaced by minerals.