Sherriff Walt Longmire is back in another action-packed mystery following the events of <Return to Sender<.

Autorentext

Craig Johnson

Klappentext

**A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A masterful new novel in the beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series**

When Pepper McKay, one of the most hated men in Absaroka County, is found murdered on his ranch in Crazy Woman Canyon, suspects aren’t in short supply. But Sheriff Walt Longmire’s attention is on those who had gathered for a family meeting that evening before his body is discovered, McKay’s very different sons: a smooth-talking charmer, a cosmopolitan journalist, a reclusive monk, and a half-Native ranch hand who keeps things running at their family's lodge. Each had a motive. Each claims he’s innocent.

As Walt investigates what happened on the ranch, he’s pulled into a tangle of old grudges and long-buried secrets. Then the case takes a sharp turn: a second body surfaces, and a wildfire tears through the canyon, trapping Walt and forcing him into a fight for his life as both the killer and the elements close in.

The twenty-second novel in the Longmire series, The Brothers McKay is a murder mystery and a survival thriller that tests the sheriff’s hard-won sense of justice—all while paying sly homage to Dostoevsky’s classic.

Leseprobe
1

It wasn't so much of a surprise that Pepper McKay was dead as much as it was an amazement to everyone in the county that it had taken so long for him to die, or for somebody to kill him.

My undersheriff, Victoria Moretti, held one of the new two-way radios she'd ordered for the department in an attempt to sell me on the things. "Eight hundred megahertz, which is what the highway patrol, fire departments, and rescue squads are using. It's got the extended battery system so it'll last longer than those pieces of single-band crap we've been using from back when Marconi patched 'em together."

The patriarch of the extended McKay family was not a complicated man but had led a somewhat complex life with business interests that spanned the globe, including but not restricted to the O-Kay Ranch at the mouth of Crazy Woman Canyon in Absaroka County, Wyoming. The original name of the ranch had been the O-Slash-Y outfit and had belonged to the Harris family, who were the first non-Natives born in the county when the territory had become a state.

"It's got an extended tac button, dual speakers, and can have an RSM, not that you'll ever be wearing a microphone on your lapel, you dinosaur."

The O-Slash-Y had been a working cattle ranch during my youth, but as times had changed in the sixties, it had transmogrified into a guest, or dude, ranch where well-heeled left and right coasters had flocked to experience the authentic ranch lifestyle. That was how Pepper McKay had been introduced to the O-Slash-Y, or more important, to the heir of its family fortune, Miss BeeBee Harris. Pepper had been married twice before, once annulled and once divorced with a child, whereas BeeBee, to say the most, had not.

"It's got Bluetooth and GPS."

I looked at her. "Did you just say that newfangled radio has blue teeth?"

She stared at me as we sat there in the long line of vehicles, waiting for the WYDOT crew and construction workers to give us our turn at heading south on the Old Highway 87 that ran alongside the interstate, partially closed because of a grass fire. "Something like that." She fiddled with the device some more. "See these two knobs here on top?"

"Yep."

"You twist the one on the right to turn it on."

"That's all I need to know?"

"We're going to start slow on your training." She slumped back in her seat, staring at the long line of cars ahead of us. "So, this Pepper McKay basically screwed BeeBee to get the ranch?"

"Well, I don't think that was the official policy . . ."

"So, he's not from here?"

"No."

"Children?"

"Three sons, and maybe a half."

"A half?"

"I'll get to that." I inched my truck forward. "The eldest is David at about forty. He's probably the most like the old man and is from the previous wife. Both Pepper and David are or were given to carousing, gambling, and drinking as a career. David did a stint in the army and even got corralled by the CIA from what I'm to understand, but got the boot when his indiscretions caught up with him. I think he was working as a security consultant down in Texas, but I'm not sure."

Victoria Moretti placed the new radio on the seat between us, rolled the window down, and leaned her head out to check on our progress. "You can smell the smoke." Pulling her head back in, she added, "And the other two?"

"BeeBee's two sons, Ian in his late thirties and Alan in his early thirties. Ian's an interesting young man, a journalist who works for the High Plains Bulletin."

"The newspaper blog thing?"

"I guess. Ruby prints out articles she thinks might interest me, and Cady quotes from it sometimes."

"And Alan?"

"He's a monk."

"Excuse me." She stared at me with her tarnished gold eyes. "Did you just say a monk?"

"I did, the Saint Benedict's Monastery here in Wyoming."

"Get out of here."

I smiled. "Over near Meeteetse; it's a beautiful place and they're building a Gothic cathedral."

"In Meeteetse, Wyoming?"

The cars in the opposite lane passed, and as the pilot car circled around in front of us, we started moving forward and I joined the pack. "You might want to close that window unless you want the smell of burned grass and sagebrush filling up the truck."

"It would be better than the smell of Dog." She did as I said, leaning back and scratching the beast's head just to make sure he understood there were no odiferous bad feelings. "A monastery, honestly?"

"Started at the turn of the century, the most recent one, through the Cheyenne diocese. They grow and grind their own coffee and even have a cattle herd."

"That's weird."

I shrugged. "Why? It's an atmosphere of natural solitude, a wild and remote environment of geological enclosure that's separated from the world, providing a secluded life of contemplation and prayer."

"Is that from the brochure?" She laughed. "You sound like a convert."

"I thought about it."

She looked at me. "The hell you say?"

"Yep, after Martha died, I went over and met with the Elder bishop, Elder Zebrowski, and we discussed it."

We watched out the window as the big bulldozers and graders pushed some of the still smoldering brush into a pile. "But speaking as a lapsed Catholic, you're not."

"Not what?"

"Catholic."

"Yep, that came up. That, and the fact that the bishop thought that I might've seen and done a little too much to be satisfied by a simple life of contemplative prayer."

"I have a hard time seeing you as a monk with the whole hermit, poverty, and chastity thing . . . Especially the chastity part."

"Thanks."

"So what is Alan doing out here in the real world?"

"The same elder within the monastery, Father Zebrowski, decided he needed a little sabbatical seasoning in the world and couldn't think of a more seasoned group than Alan's own family."

Driving around the waiting vehicles, I drew alongside, recognizing the commander of the National Interagency Fire Center. "Wow, this must be one heck of a grass fire for them to send down the head muckety-muck."

The blond-haired man with a beard and green hard hat covered in stickers ambled over and leaned his elbows on the door of my truck. "Just waiting to get through, the same as you."

I gestured toward Vic. "J. R. Rose, meet my second-in-command, Victoria Moretti."

Rose reached across me and shook hands with my undersheriff before glancing down between us. "Is that one of those new APXs?"

I interrupted. "Where are yo…