A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (13 page)

Ruby joined Sancho in the doorway as Vic sat in my guest chair and placed her boots on the corner of my desk as always. “So we’re putting Orrin the Mormon on the Evanston Express?”

I thought about the state psychiatric hospital in the southwestern part of Wyoming. “I hate it because he seems like a nice old guy.”

Vic’s voice was muffled as she spoke behind the fist at her mouth in an attempt to not burst out laughing. “He’s a nice armed-to-the-teeth old guy.”

Ruby volunteered, “And he’s very helpful.” We all turned to look at her, and she felt compelled to elaborate. “He takes out the trash, washes out the coffee mugs; he even raked the leaves on the lawn out beside the courthouse this morning.”

Santiago folded his arms on his chest. “Not to change the subject, Walt, but was there any mention of who it was that sent him?”

“No, I thought the first order of the day was to disarm him.”

The Basquo’s attitude was conciliatory. “How did he respond to having his weapons taken away?”

“Disappointed.” I looked at all of them and then down at the cache on my desk. “Not that his weapons were gone, but more that he was disappointed that we would think of taking them. He told me about being a federal marshal back in the day and that he’d be happy to help us in our investigation.”

Ruby took a step closer but shuddered as if the weapons might leap to action on their own. “Did you ask him about the Tisdale girl?”

“I did, and he wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

“How did he take to getting arrested?”

It was quiet in the room.

Vic looked up. “Tell me you arrested him.”

It was quieter in the room.

“Oh, Walt.” She got up and started through the doorway as Ruby and Sancho made way for her.

“Where are you going?”

Her voice carried from the hallway: “To arrest the son of a bitch.”

I looked up at my remaining staff. “I just couldn’t do it; he’s two hundred years old and he looked so depressed.”

Santiago nodded and walked over to my desk. “They’re loaded?”

“Yep.”

He picked up the shortened Army Colt and carefully examined it. “Looks like the real deal to me.”

“I think it is, too. We can check the thing for model numbers and manufacturer’s impressions; I’m no expert, but I’d swear it’s the genuine article.”

He fingered the edge on the Bowie knife. “Forged steel with a Damascus finish—looks like it was honed from a barrel stave.”

I nodded. “Common practice in the 1800s.”

Vic returned to the doorway, a little flushed from the run. “So, nobody’s going to be surprised that he’s gone, right?”

“You wouldn’t think that a manhunt for a gimpy two-hundred-year-old would be this difficult.” We stood there on the street behind the sheriff’s office and looked past Meadowlark Elementary toward the trees along Clear Creek that came from the Bighorn Mountains. Vic followed my gaze. “Maybe he’ll meet up with Virgil White Buffalo and solve both of our problems.”

“At least he’s unarmed.”

She snorted. “As far as we know.”

It was the middle of the day, and it was unlikely that Rockwell, or whoever he was, had gotten far. “Any ideas?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I spend my days trying not to think like a nut job.”

“Where is our Indian tracker when we need him?”

“I’m betting The Red Pony and then home.” She paused. “Drats, huh?”

I thought about the situation and what the old man’s intentions and motivations might be. “Where is Cord?”

“I assume still gainfully employed at the Busy Bee.” She turned and looked at me. “Surely you don’t think . . .”

I started across the courthouse parking lot toward the stairs leading down to Main Street. “It’s why he’s here.”

She followed, quick-walking alongside me in an attempt to make up for her shorter stride. “So, we know why he’s here?”

Staying to one side, I navigated the stairs. “Cord says he’s his bodyguard. I just wish I knew who sent him.”

My undersheriff jumped a few steps to confront me. “But this Rockwell character tried to kidnap him.”

I barely stopped before bowling the two of us down the stairs. “True.”

“And he was headed south, which kind of indicates Orson Welles in the three-quarter-ton.”

“Roy Lynear, the father.”

“Looking out for the son while we search for the Holy Ghost.”

“I suppose, but his father is the one who kicked him out.”

“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want somebody to keep an eye on him.”

“Well, Rockwell hasn’t shown any interest in kidnapping Cord since being in contact with us. I guess he figures Cord is about as safe as he can be without being locked up.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Then why are we sprinting to the Busy Bee?”

“Because you never can tell.” I moved past. “Let’s get off these stairs; I’m having way too many serious conversations here.”

When we got to the sidewalk, Saizarbitoria pulled up in his unit and reached across the bench seat to manually roll down the passenger-side window. “I want a new car.”

Vic laughed. “Get in line.”

“I’m not joking; there’s a guy over in Story that’s got a four-wheel-drive with cruise control and electric windows—I’ll pay half.” He lowered his head so that he could look up at me. “It’s even white. Please?”

“Put in a requisition, and I’ll see what I can do.” I rested my forearms on the sill of his door. “Anything on the fugitive?”

“I put an APB out on him and figured I’d make the loop down by the church just in case he decided to go there.”

“Good thinking.”

“Ruby called the Ferg in, and he’s on Route 16, started for the mountains to make sure he didn’t head up that way.” He threw a wrist over the steering wheel and glanced down through the heart of town. “He’s ancient. Where the hell could he have gone off to?” He pulled the car from the curb, flipped on the lights and siren, and the few cars in the main drag cleared to allow him to pass.

“Way to sneak up on ’em, Sancho.” She turned to look at me, the tarnished gold pupils dialed up to high, and planted a Browning tactical boot forward in a provocative manner. “Hey, Walt?”

“No, you can’t have a new vehicle.”

She started to punch my chest with the index finger that sometimes felt like a truncheon but then slowed the velocity until I could barely feel the tip of her finger as it rested there. “You know she’s dead, right?”

I stared at her.

“The mother, Sarah Tisdale, the one you’re hanging this whole investigation on. You know she’s dead.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Missing persons after the first twenty-four—you know the percentages.” She squared off in front of me, folded her arms, and looked at the sidewalk, which gave me a little relief from the metallurgy. “Three weeks and nobody’s heard from her? I don’t know who killed her, Walt, but she’s dead as Kelsey’s nuts.”

“She could . . .”

“No, she couldn’t.” She stepped in close and looked up at me. “Stop it.” She ran her fingers along the edges of my jacket lapels. “I know how you are and don’t think I don’t appreciate it.” Her hand rested over my heart. “I sometimes think that’s where your true strength lies, in that bullshit hope of yours, but I’ve also seen the aftermath when it doesn’t work out and we all get to watch you crawl from the wreckage.” She patted my heart and let her hand drop. “I’m just warning you that this is going to be one of those times.”

I nodded and raised my head to find the boy standing on the sidewalk only about ten feet away. “Hi, Cord.”

Vic turned and looked at him. “Jesus.”

He dropped his head, and we watched as a brief exhale wracked his narrow chest. None of us moved, and then his face rose and he smiled the crooked smile. “Hi.”

Vic traded the hand from me to him and held it there between them. “Kid, I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “It’s okay.”

The skinny youth started to walk past us toward the steps as Vic glanced up at me in appeal. I cleared my throat and called out to him. “Hey, Cord, how would you like to go meet your grandmother?”

He stopped and glanced back with a confused look on his face. “Huh?”

“Your father is Roy Lynear, and your mother is Sarah Tisdale?” He looked at me blankly. “That’s your mother’s maiden name, the name she had before she married your father—Tisdale. Did she ever mention any relatives you might’ve had here in Absaroka County?”

His head dropped, and he nodded. “Yeah, but she never told me any names.”

“But that’s why you really came here, to look for them, right?” He stared at me for a moment and then nodded again. “Would you like to meet your grandmother?”

His eyes escaped for an instant but then came back to mine, and the color there was like fear. “Would she like to meet me?”

•   •   •

We weren’t having much luck in locating Rockwell, so I took the opportunity of a trip south in hope of possibly finding him on the roadside as we had before. Figuring the kid could probably use some company in the backseat, I stole Dog back from Ruby; the only thing I was worried about now was that he was going to wear the brute’s hair off petting him.

“So, do you have any idea where Mr. Rockwell might’ve gone?”

He shook his head at me in the rearview mirror.

“We don’t want to hurt him; we may not even arrest him, but it would probably be a good idea if we knew where he was.”

He looked at Dog, who looked back at him.

Vic, still evidently feeling a little embarrassed at having Cord overhear our conversation, was now half-turned in the seat in order to attempt to engage the youth in conversation. “So, what are you doing with all the money you’re making washing dishes, Cord?”

I glanced at him in the rearview as he continued to pet Dog.

“Saving it.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know.”

My undersheriff pulled a leg up and tucked it under her. “A car?”

“I don’t drive.”

“How are you ever going to get a girl if you don’t have a car?”

He shrugged. “You have to have a car to have a girl?”

She smiled, exposing the lengthy canine tooth. “Doesn’t hurt.”

I interjected, “Especially if you’ve got a mustache and your name is Rudy.”

She reached over and slapped my shoulder without looking. “You ever had a girlfriend?”

“One time, kinda.”

“What’s kinda mean?”

He looked embarrassed. “I made a necklace for this girl I knew, but she’d been promised to her uncle, who was one of the elders.” He plucked a tuft of dog hair from the seat and let it float. “He was an old guy.”

Vic glanced at me and then back to Cord. “That’s fucked up, just so you know.”

I thought the kid’s head was going to explode. “You know you’re going to hell, right? I mean it’s okay—I’m going to hell, too.”

Vic’s voice took on a different tone as she continued to study him. “What makes you say that?”

“All my family is on the inside and they’re going to heaven, so where does that leave me?”

“What if they’re wrong?”

“I don’t think that they can be wrong.”

“Kid.” She gestured between the two of us. “Our very livelihood depends on everybody being wrong sometimes, trust me.” She leveled the eyes on him again. “So, what are you saving up for?”

He squirmed a little, obviously taken aback by Vic’s unadulterated attention—I knew how he felt.

“I don’t know; maybe a gun.”

I thought about the magazine the kid had buried in the pump house and unconsciously let off the accelerator. I put my foot down again when Vic glanced at me. There was an uncomfortable silence as I drove south on the two-lane blacktop. “What do you need with a gun—you’ve got us.”

He stopped petting Dog and glanced at me. “I won’t always have you, so I’ll need a gun.”

My undersheriff readjusted herself, the irony of her squeaking gunbelt underlying her next statement. “Who you wanna shoot?”

He sat there under her interrogation. “Nobody in particular; I just want to be left alone.”

“I get like that sometimes.”

I laughed.

She ignored me. “Cord, there are people out there who are good at believing things and following orders, and then there’s the rest of us, the ones who have urges and get mad about shit; the ones who ask questions. I’m one of those people, and I think I turned out all right.” She pointed a loaded finger at me. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“. . . Anyway.” Her eyes softened as she studied him. “Just so you know; there’s room for all of us.”

I wanted to kiss her but just kept driving as the afternoon sun cast rays across the rolling hills in that horizontal light like clean windows.

•   •   •

Cord was leaning forward when we got to Short Drop, his eyes staying on the cottonwood from which the noose twisted in the breeze. “Did they hang somebody here?”

“A long time ago, or at least they think they did.”

“They’re not sure?”

I pulled the truck down the embankment and into the town proper. “Back in the day, saying you’d hung somebody was almost as good a reputation as actually having done it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This is cow country, and back in the late nineteenth century there was a lot of rustling, so if a town had a reputation of being hard on criminal activity, fewer operators were likely to go freelance and rustle cattle.”

His eyes were still on the noose as we drove by. “So they didn’t really hang anybody.”

I parked the truck in front of the Short Drop Mercantile. “I didn’t say that.”

Eleanor was standing on the boardwalk as we climbed out of my truck, and as tough as she was, I saw her sway just a tiny bit and then rest a hand on one of the support beams of the porch when she saw the boy.

I let Dog out, and he baptized a tumbleweed that had lodged itself against the steps. “Hey.”

Vic brought Cord around the side of the truck with a hand on the young man’s shoulder, and I watched as the breath caught in Eleanor Tisdale’s throat. “Um . . . Howdy.”

Cord glanced at me and then returned his eyes to her for only a second before dropping them to the gravel at his feet. “Hello, ma’am.”

Gathering herself, she pushed off the post and stepped toward the edge of the porch. “How would you folks like to come up and have a soda to wash the dust out of your mouths?” She started in but then added, “You can bring that grizzly bear, if you want.”

The beast and I followed Vic and Cord as they mounted the steps, and we followed the little troupe into the Merc, where, strangely enough, stacks of books stood all over the wide-planked oak floor in piles about three feet high. Eleanor tracked her way through the maze and stood amid the piles like some acolyte of literature. “I have a problem.”

I nodded as I reached down and plucked a particularly vintage tome from the nearest stack. “I know—it’s hard to borrow shelves.”

“I go to these auctions and estate sales and the one thing I cannot resist is the books, so I’m thinning the herd and taking the excess over to the library.”

I opened the volume to the title page and read: “
The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume XXV, History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming 1890.
” I gently closed the heavy, leather-bound hardback and rested it against my chest. “Is this book for sale?”

She smiled at me with all the warmth of a Moroccan rug salesman. “Do you know what it’s worth?”

“I do.”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

I studied the marbled edges of the pages. “That’s not what it’s worth.”

“I wasn’t negotiating a price; I was simply trying to see if you knew the value.” She sighed deeply and picked up another from one of the towers near her. “I’m past the point of caring what things cost; I just want to know that beautiful and important objects are in the hands of people who will appreciate them.” She thumbed open the book in her hands. “
Tensleep and No Rest
, Jack R. Gage, first printing and it’s signed; do you know he was the governor of Wyoming for two years?”

“I do.”

She thumbed the binding. “I guess he wasn’t much of a governor, but he was a hell of a writer.” She tossed the book to me, and I caught it. “Twelve dollars.”

I stood there holding the two books and looking at the piles around us—they were like literary land mines just waiting to explode minds. “Um, is there any way I could get you to lock the front door and not sell any more books until I’ve had a chance to go through all of them?”

“I’m going to have the books out of here by Sunday afternoon. I’m closing the place and selling the merchandise—other than what goes to the library, of course.” She glanced at Cord, who stood holding his own selection. “Did you find something of interest there, young man?”

His eyes came up slowly from the open pages. “There’s a book?”

The proprietor’s eyes shone. “Well, I’m not sure which book it is you’re talking about.”