A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (14 page)

He tipped the cover up so that we could see the familiar green hills, a boy, and a horse.

“Oh,
My Friend Flicka
. Is that a book you’d be interested in?”

He looked embarrassed. “I, um . . . I don’t read that well.”

Vic took the book from him and flipped a few pages back. “First edition, first printing, signed and dated.”

The owner/operator turned back to look at me. “My mother was a friend of Mrs. O’Hara down in Laramie.”

I looked around the stacks on the floor, estimating that there must’ve been close to two thousand volumes. “I repeat my request.”

She spread her hands. “All gone come this weekend.” She turned and walked toward the heavy door leading to the bar. “C’mon, the refreshments are this way.”

We followed her into The Noose, and Eleanor scooped a few pops from the cooler at the bar-back and placed them on the counter.

“Mrs. Tisdale, we were thinking of making the run out toward the East Spring Ranch and taking a look around, and I was wondering if it would be possible for us to leave Cord and Dog here with you?”

She studied the young man now seated on the end barstool, his nose buried in the book, his finger tracing the lines as he read very slowly with his lips moving. “Hey, youngster.”

His head swiveled, and he looked at her, smiling.

“You think you can tote books?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, ma’am.”

I gestured to Vic, and we started toward the front door of the bar, but only after I paused at Eleanor Tisdale’s side. “You do know what that book is worth, right?”

She smiled as she watched her grandson, his lips moving in time to the words. “I know what it’s worth to him.”

•   •   •

“You told her about
My Friend Flicka
?”

I drove south and east of the little hamlet, the road undulating with the rolling breaks of the Powder River country. “It might’ve come up.”

She studied the stack that reposed on the seat between us, then picked up the heavier of the books and began studying the Bancroft. “It’s like a history of the state?”

“
The
history of the state.”

She leafed through the pages, marveling at the imprinted words on them, her fingers touching them like braille. “‘Even the serpent, emblem at once of eternal life and voluntary evil, was not absent, taking up his residence in the underground inhabitation of the prairie dog, to escape the blistering heat of the sands, where he sometimes met that strange inmate, the owl, also hiding from the intense sunshine of the plains. So did this region abound with life in ages when the white man, to the knowledge of the red man, was not.’”

“Pretty good for a historian, huh?”

She silently watched the scenery, or, in her opinion, the lack thereof, pass by. “Why do you suppose she didn’t mention closing the Merc when we were here before?”

“Seems sudden, doesn’t it?” I admired the profile of her features at once refined and dangerously focused. “Maybe something to do with news of the daughter and the grandson.”

“In what way?”

“Sometimes we spend our lives thinking we’re doing something, when in reality all we’re doing is waiting; maybe what Eleanor’s been waiting for has arrived.”

“Yeah, well . . . I wouldn’t know anything about that mother/daughter relationship thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

She closed the book in her hands carefully and looked at the Roman numerals on the binding. “Twenty-five of them?”

“Yep.”

“Think the ol’ broad’s got all of them?”

“Looks like.”

“So, what are they worth?”

“Thousands.”

“Let’s go back and rob the place.”

I smiled. “That would be against the law.”

She settled in the seat and propped her boots onto the dash. “We’ve done enough for the law—look where that’s got us.”

“Where’s that?”

She opened her arms and gestured to the landscape with dramatic flair. “Nowhere.”

•   •   •

We’d taken a left just after another of the roadside fatality markers onto a gravel road with a ranch gate hewn from strapped-together logs with an archway that read
EAST SPRING RANCH
. It wasn’t exactly the end of the earth, but you could send it a telegram from here, not that you’d get an answer.

I ignored the signs warning us that the land was posted and didn’t welcome trespassers and continued down the road toward what looked like one of the towers we’d seen in South Dakota. Once we got to the structure, I could see that the distance in both directions was strung with a ten-foot chain-link fence with three strands of diagonal barbed wire on top.

We stepped out of the Bullet and, looking at the desolate landscape, I got the odd sensation that I was back in the military. A breeze was coming off the mountains, cool and putting a rub in the air that I could feel between my teeth. I sighed the way I always did when I got that feeling, walked over to the large gate seated on a pair of rolling casters, and noticed a small intercom with a plastic shield to protect it from the weather.

On closer inspection of the greenish wooden tower, I could make out a small security camera under the eaves. “We may or may not be on
Candid Camera
.”

Vic walked to the fence and then across the dirt road. “Not motion activated, and it may not even be hooked up.”

“How can you tell?”

“The unconnected wires hanging off the back.” She returned to the gate and the intercom, flipping up the plastic cover and pushing one of the buttons. “Hello, have you found Jesus Christ as your personal savior? We’re on a mission, and we hear you fuckers are up to some really heinous shit in His name.” After a moment she turned to look at me with an eyebrow raised like a question mark. “I don’t think it’s working.”

“Are there wires hanging out of the back of it, too?”

“No, but it doesn’t make any noise, static, nothing—smart-ass.”

I came over and looked at the intercom and then the three massive padlocks on the gate. “I guess they’re serious about not wanting visitors.”

“You bring your bolt cutters?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

She looked past my shoulder toward the road, where a two-tone brown ’71 Plymouth Satellite station wagon with its leaf springs resting on its axles slowed at the turnoff. “Company.” The car stopped as the dust behind overtook it and blew our way, partially concealing us. “Is that color scours?”

“No, more of an Autumn Bronze Poly, as I recall.”

She glanced at me.

“I had one.”

She continued to stare at me and then muttered to herself, “Family man.”

The driver, an aged, extremely heavyset, Hispanic-looking woman in a powder blue prairie dress got out of the station wagon, went over to the roadside grave marker, and straightened the plastic, floral wreath attached to a makeshift wooden cross. Her hands were clasped at her waist and her head lowered.

Her ministrations continued for quite some time, and Vic finally spoke. “She praying her way to heaven or what?”

I stepped past her toward the newcomer on the dirt road. “Some people need it more than others.”

Probably hearing our voices, the woman’s head rose, and she looked at us through the thin veil of dust. Maybe it was the dress, maybe it was the surroundings, but I had the feeling that it was an old stare—one from a different era, a different time.

I waited as she slowly made her way back to the vehicle and climbed in, shifting the still-running car into gear and turning where we were parked, effectively blocking the road. I raised a hand and motioned for her to move. She paused, even going so far as to look back up the road for traffic, which was absurd considering our environs, but then turned, looked at me, and finally drove forward.

I walked over to her and strung a hand on the fender as I stooped to look inside, Vic walking past me, taking a textbook stance behind the woman’s left shoulder.

Her bloated face was surrounded by straggles of dark hair, gray at the roots, that had escaped from the bun high at the back of her head, and I could barely see her dark eyes. Her voice was surprisingly high and decidedly Spanish. “
Sí?
”

I looked into the station wagon, the backseat covered with an abundance of bulk-food containers, drinks, and home supplies in franchise plastic bags, and finally allowed my eyes to rest on what looked to be two dozen bricks of 12-gauge, .30-06, .357 Mag, and .50 BMG ammunition on the seat beside her. “I didn’t know Sam’s Club in Casper sold ammo, especially .50.”

Her hand dropped down and pulled the plastic back over the ammunition as if that might make it disappear. “
No hablo Inglés.
”

The blue-black smoke of the aged engine bellied out from under the rocker panels, and I just hoped we could get a few answers before dying of asphyxiation. “Well, señora, that’s going to make it hard for you to have a legal driver’s license.”

“Oh, I has license, Officer.”

My undersheriff chimed in. “And evidently more English than at first supposed.”

I smiled. “I’m a sheriff.”

She repeated, “Sheriff.”

I extended my hand, and she shook it with one that was swollen and moist. “I’m Walt Longmire.” I gestured toward my partner in noncrime. “This is my undersheriff, Victoria Moretti. And you are?”

“Big Wanda.”

“Wanda, do you mind if I have a look at that driver’s license?”

She hesitated for a second, then reached down again, dragging a sizable purse onto the transmission hump, and snuck a hand in to pull out a turquoise wallet stuffed with bills. She thumbed through a number of cards, then pulled out a Texas license and handed it to me.

I studied it and then handed it back to her. “Ms. Bidarte.” I thought about the tall, lean man I’d met at the bar and continued to smile, just so she’d know I wasn’t rousting her. “Are you by any chance related to the poet Tomás Bidarte?”

She nodded with enthusiasm. “
Sí
, he my son.”

“Well, you must be proud.” I also remembered Sheriff Berg’s remarks about the two women who had been married to the space jockey, Vann Ross—one of them having been named Big Wanda. “Well, I’m looking for Roy Lynear, and I understand he lives at this address?”

Her eyes, or what I could make of them, stayed steady. “He be my husband, but he not here.”

That’s one way of keeping it in the family. “Roy Lynear is your husband?”

“
Sí
.”

“I gather you were married before, then.”

“
Sí.
”

I nodded as I thought about what Tim had said concerning how the women in polygamy cults would file for abandonment to receive social services funding. “This license is almost four years old, ma’am. If you are residing in Wyoming, you’ll have to get a new one.”

She said nothing but tucked the license back into the billfold and rested it in her lap.

“Your husband—he’s not at the ranch?”

“No.”

I glanced around as if I might spot the man. “Then where is he?”

“
Sur
Dakota.”

I nodded. “Visiting family?”

“
Sí
. His father not good.” She shifted her bulk and glanced at the clock in the dash of the old car for a long moment, and I would’ve bet that it wasn’t working. “I got food in the car and need to go.”

“Would you mind if we followed you in?”

She stared at the dash, and I could see the agitation in her growing. “You cannot. No.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few more questions here, will you?” Her eyes roamed the interior of the car but could find no easy avenue of escape. “Do you mind turning your motor off?”

She shook her head with a quick motion, still trying to avoid my eyes. “If I kill motor, it no start again.”

I glanced up at Vic, who had taken a step back to avoid the fumes. “Well, I’ll try and be brief. Wanda, we’re looking for a woman by the name of Sarah Tisdale. Do you know her?”

Her eyes shifted toward Vic and then refocused on the dash. “No.”

“No, you don’t know her or no, you’d rather not say?”

Her breath picked up. “No heard of her.”

“How about Sarah Lynear?”

She paused for a second and then glanced back at Vic again, and I was beginning to wonder what the attraction was. “No.”

“Well, that’s odd, seeing as how she was also married to your husband.” I kneeled down and rested my arm on the sill, pulled the photograph from my shirt pocket, and held it out to her. “You’re both married to the same man and you’ve never heard of her?”

Wanda glanced at the photo for only an instant and then patted the steering wheel as if urging it to go. “She no married to my husband.”

I continued to hold the photograph of the blonde woman out to her. “Maybe you should take a closer look.”

Instead, she moved to tuck the wallet back into her purse, accidentally opening it more than she’d wanted, exposing the Pachmayr grip of an S&W revolver where her hand lingered.

Still holding the photo in front of her, I gently slipped my hand down on the elk grips of my Colt, unsnapping the safety strap, a motion that did not go unseen by Vic. As I spoke, my undersheriff slipped the Glock from her holster but let it hang at her side, unnoticeable to the woman unless she looked specifically backward. “Mrs. Lynear, I need you to remove your hand from your purse very slowly and place both of them on the steering wheel.”

She didn’t move.

“Mrs. Lynear, I need you to do that right now.”

The beauty and the horror of a life in law enforcement is that you will, in your time, be stupefied at what people will do. I watched in that adrenaline rush of slow motion as Wanda withdrew her hand from the purse and reached up like a foregone conclusion. She threw the Satellite wagon into reverse and floored it.

I stumbled backward and Vic scrambled to the side, raising her 9mm and leveling it at the Plymouth as it tore backward down the dirt road toward the intersection. “Wait!”

She held the Glock steady but turned her head slightly to bark at me. “I’m shooting the radiator and/or the wheezing motor.”

I stood and joined her, watching the retreating car. “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.” We watched as the majestic beast, still hanging low on its springs, rocketed backward across the macadam and slid off the other side with its prow in the air like an Autumn Bronze whale. “Thar-she-blows.”