A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (12 page)

“No, of course not, but if the man’s dementia has caused him to research the real Orrin Porter Rockwell to the point where he may be one of the world’s foremost experts, then he needs desperately to write a biography of the man.” He smiled. “If not an autobiography.”

“Maybe you should write it.”

“I might.” He thought about it. “Any idea how long he’s going to be around?”

I shrugged. “Oh, seventy-eight to ninety-seven months if the government has anything to say about it.” The bishop looked confused. “Kidnapping of any sort is a column-one federal offense.”

“Are you going to turn him in?”

“Not if he behaves himself; I mean he’s obviously as nutty as a pecan log, but he seems to dote on Cord and the kid calls him his bodyguard, so I don’t think he’s any real danger.”

Henry raised a hand to get Dorothy’s attention and a possible refill. “What did you find out from the IAFIS?”

I glanced at the puzzled look on Goodman’s face. “The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.”

“Ah.”

I looked back to the Bear and shrugged. “Nothing.”

He looked surprised. “Really.”

“I don’t know why you’re so amazed; it happens on the Rez all the time.”

“Yes, but this is a white guy.” He turned to Goodman. “No offense.”

The bishop nodded, still preoccupied with the thought of cowriting a historical religious epic. “None taken.”

•   •   •

We walked along the two blocks that were downtown Durant before the Cheyenne Nation broke the silence. “Is that the old jacket your parents bought you?”

I’d made a nod to the fact that the weather was cooling off and deigned to wear the thing. “Yep.”

We walked on. “I was trying to remember if I ever saw your father in a church.”

“You didn’t.”

“Ever?”

I shook my head. “Ever.”

“Why?”

“He just didn’t believe in organized religion.” I thought about it. “I don’t think he believed in much of organized anything.”

“Your mother did.”

“Yep.”

He studied me. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“This case appears to be concerning you, perhaps more than others, and I was just wondering if it has something to do with the religious aspect?”

“I don’t know.” I breathed a sigh. “I haven’t been in a church since Martha died, you know that. I’ve been in more sweat lodges than churches in the last five years.” He nodded but said nothing. “Like anything else, I think organized religion, like most human endeavors, is good when it’s doing good and I think it’s bad when it’s doing bad.”

“And you think these people are bad?”

“I think the people in charge are, yes.” The wind blew up Main, and I watched as the leaves trembled. “I’ve always been taught that religion is supposed to be a comfort to people, not a threat. I think these people have perverted something that’s supposed to be holy and turned it into a weapon.” I pulled in a lungful of the crisp air. “I think there’s a hierarchy at work here and quite a bit of megalomaniacal madness. I mean, the patriarch is climbing on his roof naked and building spaceships in his backyard.”

He smiled. “And you do not want them here?”

I stopped and looked at the cracks in the sidewalk and in my own logic. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because I do not approve of their methods.”

“Their methods or their beliefs?”

I stopped and turned to face him. “Well, one’s kind of responsible for the other, now, isn’t it?” He continued smiling, and I continued walking. “And stop grinning at me.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Well, nobody’s threatening Cord. . . .”

“Mostly because you haven’t formally told his father, who is lodged in the southern part of your county, that you have him.”

“That’s the next step.”

“So you are still concentrating on the missing woman?”

“Yep.”

We walked along. “Speaking of missing women, have you heard from your daughter lately?”

“No.” I stopped on the sidewalk and looked at him again. “Have you?”

“No.”

We continued walking. “I think she’s glad she bought that old tannery building; it’s got plenty of room, and since there are going to be three of them . . .”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets as we started up the steps leading to the courthouse. “The baby is due in January, yes?”

“Yep.”

“Lola.”

“Lola.” I paused for a moment. “I mean I don’t know if she’s told Michael. I think she wants it to be a surprise.”

A funny look played across his face.

I broke eye contact with him and looked back down the main drag at the banner proclaiming the impending homecoming festivities. “I told you, it’s something that Virgil said on the mountain.”

“Live Virgil or dead Virgil?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “I haven’t decided yet.” I glanced up at the Bighorns, at the new snow there. “He made some predictions about my life; about it not all being good.”

“Whose is?”

“This sounded a little more dire.” I watched the breeze pull at his hair—a wind that seemed to urge us southeast away from the mountains. “I guess I’m getting scary in my old age.”

He climbed a few stairs and turned to look at me. “You are truly concerned?”

“I suppose.”

“What would you like to do?”

I thought about it and shook my head. “Nothing. I mean there’s nothing I can do besides call Cady and tell her I’ve got a bad feeling and she should stay at home and hide in the closet.”

“I do not think she will do that.”

“Me either.”

“You put a great deal of stock in Indian prophecies?”

I grunted. “More and more these days.”

He stepped back down and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Then I will make one—she will be fine.”

I stared at him, wanting to believe. “You promise?”

“Yes; there are two things I know beyond any shadow of a doubt.”

“And they are?”

He started back up the steps. “That the future is uncertain, and that it can change.”

I followed after him. “And the other?”

“The most important thing about a rain dance.”

“Which is?”

He called over his shoulder. “Timing.”

•   •   •

“They have not delivered my fucking corsage yet.”

The Bear looked at me as we stood in the doorway of her office. “She wants to go to the homecoming ceremony Friday night, and she wants a corsage.”

“Black-and-orange, same as the Doggies.”

“Dogies.”

“Whatever.”

“Rockwell?”

She logged off her computer and tipped her chair back. “Cousin Itt is back in the holding cell communing with a higher power between viewings of
My Friend Flicka
.”

I pushed off. “I’m going to have a conversation with him and then make a run down to Short Drop and have a chat with Roy Lynear about his son and the possible whereabouts of Sarah.”

Her interest was immediately piqued. “Can I go?”

“If you promise not to shoot anybody.”

She smiled the wicked little smile she reserved for the more energetic aspects of our occupation. “Cross my hairs and hope to lie.”

I was not in the least comforted and, leaving them to discuss the finer points of shooting people, started off for the holding area.

Rockwell was reading from the old Book of Mormon and was seated on the bunk with the cell door open, his graying hair hanging down to the edge of the mattress pad and cascading over it. He didn’t move when I came in but continued to harken to the word.

“I see you got your book back.”

Pulling off a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses, he noted the page number and gently closed it. “It brings me comfort.”

“It’s probably worth a fortune with that inscription from Sara Rockwell.”

He folded the glasses and placed them in his vest pocket. “My mother.”

“Um.” I paused. “Yep.” I pulled up a chair. “That’s actually something I’d like to talk to you about.”

He set the book on the bunk beside him. “This is not the only time I have spent in a jailhouse, Sheriff Longmire.”

“I know Orrin Porter Rockwell spent eight months in the Independence, Missouri, jail.”

He nodded his head enthusiastically. “A horrid place with food unfit for dogs.”

His performance was spot-on, and I started wondering if maybe we could get the old guy a job in some outdoor drama in Utah. “Rockwell was there because he attempted to murder Lilburn Boggs, the governor of Missouri.”

He shook his head, and the pearly hair swayed back and forth. “Another act in which I had no part; the proof of said statement resides in the fact that the man survived. If it had been I, such would not have been the case.” He leaned forward. “I will tell you my theories on who was party to the attempted assassination; it was none other than the storekeeper, Uhlinger, who accused me of stealing the pepperbox pistol that was found that night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I would never have overcharged the weapon, which led to its being dropped upon firing. Another point being that with so many weapons at my disposal, why would I steal one from a local merchant who at first claimed that it had been stolen by Negro slaves and then by me?” He laughed. “Oh no, if you can find a suitable villain in the public’s eye, which we Mormons were at that period in time, and I think Philip Uhlinger did, then you are free as a proverbial bird.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Have I told you about fishing from the second-story window of the Centennial jail with corn dodgers? I never caught a Missourian, but I had numerous vigorous nibbles!”

“Mr. Rockwell . . .” I sighed, long and loud so that he would be aware of my mood. “You’ll excuse me for saying so, but I find it very hard to believe that you are approaching two hundred years old.”

He smiled, and there was a twinkle in his opalescent eyes. “I don’t look a day over a hundred and fifty, do I?” He sat forward. “My name is Orrin Porter Rockwell, and I was born June 28, 1813, in Belchertown, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, and was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on January 5, 1846.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose with thumb and forefinger. “So, that’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”

“It is a strange one, yes?”

I looked up at him. “Yep, it sure is.”

“I will attempt to explain, Sheriff.” He edged forward on the bunk and rested his elbows on his knees. “I was the subject of a direct prophecy by the prophet Joseph Smith.”

“Which was?”

His face brightened. “As you mentioned, I had just spent eight months in a pestilential hellhole jail in Missouri. Filthy and starved beyond recognition, I made my way back to Nauvoo and arrived unannounced at a Christmas party at the great prophet’s home.” He stood, overcome with enthusiasm for his story. “I remember the soft and golden glow of the parlor oil lights as I stumbled into the room and the beaming face of the prophet. There were other men there, bodyguards to Joseph, who grabbed hold of me for fear that I might mean the great man harm.” He laughed. “Perfectly reasonable when you consider my appearance, but Joseph stepped forward and placed his hands upon my head, telling me that as long as I kept the faith and never cut my hair, no bullet or blade would ever harm me.”

“Like Samson.”

“Exactly, but something must have happened in that moment when the prophet laid hands upon me in that my rate of aging crept to a standstill; as near as I can tell, within the span of the last two hundred years I have aged only forty!” I stared at him. “Eighty-five years old and as strong as the day is long—is that not miraculous?”

“That’s one word for it.”

His eyes sharpened under the bushy brows. “You do not believe me.”

I spread my hands. “Well, you’ve got to admit that it’s a pretty fantastic story.”

“It is!”

“So, how do you explain the recorded death of one Orrin Porter Rockwell in 1878 due to natural causes, who was subsequently buried in a Salt Lake City cemetery?”

“It is a fundamental belief in our faith that no true believer shall be interred in the earth without a proper physical monument to indicate the site, but it is not I, sir—and it is the true Orrin Porter Rockwell who stands before you.” He limped out the open door and half-crouched beside me. “The burial of the nameless man was a clever ruse by the church in an attempt to keep the populace from pestering the prophet into another use of his miraculous powers as he had with me.”

I stared at him. “I see.”

“You still do not believe?”

“No.”

“What is it I can do to convince you?”

I sighed the way I always did when I’d reached the limits of my energies when dealing with crazy people. “To be honest, not a lot.”

He casually reached under his herringbone-patterned vest into his inside coat pocket, past the vintage eyewear, and pulled out a Colt 1860 Army model with a shortened barrel, deftly turning it in his hand in a flash and holding it out to me, butt first. “Here, shoot me with this, if you like.”

I sat there, looking at the black-powder pistol, more than a little concerned with the dexterity the old man had just displayed.

He thumped his chest with a broad hand, indicating a target for me. “I will not be harmed, I can assure you.”

I took the big pistol and examined the beautiful gleaming finish of the museum piece. “Have you had this the entire time you’ve been here?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes. I never take the air unarmed.” I thumbed open the cylinder, taking in the rounds. “Honestly, you may fire upon me at will.”

I rested the weapon in my lap and placed my face in my open hands. “Mr. Rockwell, do you have any other weapons on your person?”

•   •   •

I carefully placed the hog leg pistol along with a Navy-model .44, a Derringer, a wicked pair of brass knuckles, two knives of moderate length, and a frighteningly sharp Bowie knife with the initials OPR burnt into the hickory handle onto my desk.

Vic raised her head to look at me. “You didn’t search him?”

“We never formally arrested him.” I shook my head at myself. “It’s my fault more than anybody’s.” I slumped into my chair and looked at both Saizarbitoria and her. “He still claims to be
the
Orrin Porter Rockwell of frontier repute.” I gestured toward the assortment of weapons. “But faced with his personal armament here, I’m afraid it puts a new complexion on things.”