A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (24 page)

“You don’t say?”

I brought my face around to his. “I do.” Leaving him, I stepped over the fallen man and gave Lockhart the once-over. “You see, the sheriff’s substation . . .” I glanced back at Lynear and then settled my eyes on Lockhart again. “The county property in question was burned with a chemical accelerant, probably kerosene.” I bent down to the glass-jawed guy, slid a Wilson Combat/Tactical .40 from his inside-the-pants holster, and propelled it across the gray hardwood floor where it lodged under Henry’s uplifted boot with a solid thunk
.

Nobody moved.

I sniffed the younger man’s head and then lifted an arm, attaching one end of my handcuffs to his wrist. “Guilt is a lot like kerosene; the scent stays longer than you might suspect.” I dragged the cuffed individual along by the arm like an afterthought, turned toward Gloss and Bidarte, and took a few steps into the center of the room.

Gloss put the butt of his pool cue on the floor, his hand tightening around the shaft of it, and glanced at Henry and then at me. “You stay the hell away.”

The Bear and I looked at each other, and he was the first to speak. “That sounded remarkably like an admission of guilt.”

“Yep, it did.” I cocked my head. “You wouldn’t be armed again, would you, Mr. Gloss?” I gestured with the unconscious man’s arm. “I mean, not like your friend here, who I’m betting is going to be spending a few weeks in my jail in violation of the carry laws of the state of Wyoming.” I stepped to one side of the table, and they countered by moving to the other. “Do you have another weapon on you, by any chance? I took the last one you had, which means if you didn’t acquire a different one, you would have to find some other way of doing your dirty work, something like an accelerant—say, kerosene?”

He glanced at Henry and then at me and the holstered .45 on my hip.

His eyes came back up to mine, and I could see the panic-driven thought that was there. I reached down and drew back my jacket and unsnapped the safety strap from my Colt. “It doesn’t take much to carry one of these things—forty ounces of milled steel and eight rounds.” I pointed toward his shirttail, hanging past his waist. “Whatever you’ve maybe got there probably carries more, but caliber, rate of fire, that doesn’t really matter—doesn’t mean anything really. All that matters is being willing—willing to pull it, willing to fire it, willing to kill.” I took another step, still dragging the now half-conscious man along with me. “It’s one thing to set a place on fire with a man sleeping inside, but it’s another when a man is standing right in front of you, ready and willing.”

Bidarte sidestepped slightly to the left but carefully raised his hands, keeping them where Henry and I could see them. “I don’t know what this is all about, Sheriff, but we’ve been here, playing pool all night.” He gestured toward Eleanor and kept moving sideways. “The lady, she can tell you. . . .”

“That’s far enough; I’m not that bad a shot.”

He smiled but stopped.

I glanced at the proprietor, and she shrugged with a sad humping of her shoulders. “They came in here around six, all of them.” She looked away. “I wish I could tell you something different, but I can’t.”

I looked over to Henry and remembered what he said before we’d entered—it does not make sense, remember that. When I turned back, I could see Gloss had dropped his hand and was starting to raise it toward the underside of his shirttail. There were about six feet between me and him, which was the range in which most sidearm fatalities took place. “You shouldn’t miss from that distance, but then again, neither should I.”

Gloss started to shift his weight. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. . . .” He glanced to my right, where Lockhart was watching him.

I heard a noise behind me—the Cheyenne Nation must’ve stooped to pick up the pistol—but I was pretty sure it was the shotgun that he was aiming in Gloss’s direction.

I cleared my throat. “Now, in these types of situations, if you’re properly trained, the next step would be to distract the assailant just long enough for the primary target to pull his weapon, but I’ve nullified that possibility by having backup, right Henry?”

“You bet your lily-white ass.”

I gestured toward Gloss’s waist. “I’ll tell you what, if you want to get it out of your pants and ready to go, that’s fine by me.”

His lips moved, but it took a few seconds for him to come up with something to add. “Look, um, is this some kind of joke?”

My turn not to say anything.

He shook his head, stared at the long green of the felt, and looked at the ceiling. “I want a lawyer.”

“Place your weapon on the table—thumb and forefinger only.”

He made a show of doing exactly that and carefully placed another high-priced, carbon-steel .45 with some kind of fancy finish on the flat surface.

I reached across and picked it up.

“You want to smell me now?”

It was the wrong thing to say at the exact wrong time, and I made that clear by bringing the butt of the semiautomatic up and popping it into his nose. Blood blew from his nostrils, and his hands went up to his face. Bidarte actually laughed until I looked at him; then he gently placed his hands on the pool table in a position that didn’t look unfamiliar to him.

I glanced at the others. “Anybody else want to join the conversation?”

There were no takers, so I unhandcuffed myself, walked around the table, and yanked Gloss’s hand away from his face so that I could handcuff him to the other probable felon.

Bleeding profusely, he attempted to staunch the flow with his other hand, but the blood was spouting onto the front of his shirt and his voice was muffled and nasal. “We haven’t done anything.”

I gestured with the confiscated pistol. “Oh, you’ve done all kinds of stuff—it’s just a question of whether you’ve done this
one
thing, and if you have, are you going to be sorry.”

•   •   •

Vic, never one to miss a party, arrived a few minutes later, and we loaded Gloss and his pal into the back of her unit. My undersheriff glanced in the cage with a smile, noticing the man’s nose, still bleeding through the bar towel that Eleanor had provided. “Jesus, what’d you hit him with, a two-by-four?”

I handed her Gloss’s other gun. “Here, for the collection.”

She studied the weapon. “Another Wilson; you sure this guy’s name is Gloss?”

“No, I’m not, but I figure you’ll be able to tell me by morning.”

She whistled as she studied the sidearm. “A .38 Super, Combat Carry Competition—three grand, at least.”

“Yep, the boys seem to have money.”

“Must be the bake sales.”

“Uh-huh.”

She glanced at them again. “Can we keep their guns?”

“Sure, we’ll have a sale of our own.”

She nodded. “So what’s Double Tough’s condition?”

I stared at her.

She stared back at me.

Of course, Henry hadn’t told her over the phone. I took a breath, just to clear the pipes before trusting the words. “He’s gone.”

Her mouth dropped open just a little bit and hung there. We didn’t get many fatalities in the department; as a matter of fact, this would be the only one—and on my watch.

She sat there with all that training and experience she’d culled from the Philadelphia Police Department stamping down on her emotions, but I’d had a lot of experience with unquenchable fire lately. The tarnished gold eyes sharpened like a straight razor as she turned to regard them. “Oh, you fuckers.”

“Book ’em, run ’em—I want to know everything.”

After a moment, she turned and nodded at the dash. She took a deep breath, reached down, and started the engine. “You will.”

I looked at the group. “Call the Ferg in to help.”

Her beautiful jaw stiffened. “There’s a problem with help.”

“What’s that?”

“Witnesses.”

I stepped back as she laid her own strip up Main, fishtailing sideways as she sped through the intersection at 192 and shot up onto the highway about as fast as her old unit could travel.

I turned and started to walk up the steps almost into the owner/operator of The Noose. “They were here all night, Walt.”

I stood there three steps down and looked her in the eye. “When did they get here?”

“Early—six, maybe six-thirty.”

I sighed.

“Not what you wanted to hear.”

“No.” I stared past her at the lights illuminating the Merc proper. “Looks like you’ve gotten rid of the majority of your books.”

She adjusted her glasses and smiled. “Most of them went to the library, but I’ve got a stack for you in the back.”

I didn’t move. “I find it strange how suddenly you’ve decided to give up the ghost and close your business.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, but I could see the incredulity growing in her eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

I scrubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I don’t know who to believe.” Forcing her to move back, I started up the remainder of the steps. She moved, but just enough to force me to brush by her, her voice sharp with righteous indignity. “So we’re no longer friends.”

I stopped and stood there. “It’s dangerous being my friend; you might not want the job.”

•   •   •

Henry was behind the bar with the shotgun lying on the surface; he was drinking what looked to be orange juice.

“Like a day without sunshine?”

He slipped a look at Ronald Lynear and Tom Lockhart at the other side of the bar. “Fights germs.”

Lynear was the first to speak. “We’re going to get them out as soon as you set bail.”

I nodded. “That should be in a few weeks.”

“Then I’m filing a wrongful arrest and harassment charge against your department.”

Lockhart placed a hand on his arm and then slid a piece of paper toward me. “Take a look at this.” It was an ATM slip from the small branch bank across the street, dated yesterday, with a withdrawal of two hundred dollars—the time, six thirty-two. “What’s that look like to you?”

“It’s an ATM slip for what looks like two hundred dollars, but since I have a career in law enforcement, I’m not sure how to count the number of zeros.”

He attempted to control himself. “You see the time?”

“Yep, they teach us how to do that at the academy over in Douglas; they say it’s important.”

“We grabbed some cash when we got to town and came straight over and started drinking and playing pool.” He gestured behind me where Eleanor stood by the door. “You’ve got a reliable witness who tells you the same thing.” He shook his head at me as if I were some child in need of reprimand. “You haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

Shooting a glance at Ronald, I reached over and stole the Bear’s juice. “I’m curious, Reverend, what it is you’re doing in a den of iniquity like this?”

He smiled. “I’m not drinking, but I thought I’d join in the celebration.”

“And what is it you’re celebrating?”

He made a face, as if it were obvious. “Our new water well.”

I turned and looked at them. “And how were you able to drill that well without the benefit of your Hughes polycrystalline three-cone bit?”

He looked at me with an expression as blank as the biblical nonshifting desert sands. “Our what?”

“The industrial one-hundred-seventy-thousand-dollar bit we found in the back of Big Wanda’s Plymouth that she ran off the road to try to keep us from finding.”

The sands remained still. “We used the one that was attached to the Peterbilt that you saw the other night. Tomás fixed it. I’m sure I don’t know what other drill it is you’re talking about.”

“Maybe you don’t.” I set the glass down and squared off with Lockhart. “But I bet he does.”

A long moment passed, and Lockhart placed a hand on Lynear’s shoulder and spoke to the confused man. “Ronald, why don’t you head back to the ranch; I’m sure your father is wondering what’s happened.” He slapped him gently. “Go on, we’ll be along in no time.”

The man of religion glanced at all of us and then quietly departed, excusing himself as he passed Eleanor, still standing at the entrance.

Lockhart stood there for a moment more and then started toward the door. “Could I get you to step outside with me for a moment, Sheriff?”

I stared at him, at Eleanor, and then back to Henry. I pushed off the bar and followed him out the door.

It was cool, but the rays of the sun were just starting to rise over the plains with a diffused, yellowish-gray glow. I turned to Lockhart, leaning against one of the support poles.

Lynear was just backing out in an older Buick with a crumpled fender that had been touched over with gray primer on the passenger side. We both watched as he pulled out and drove away.

“I’m a professional; I want you to know that.”

I turned and looked at him, folding my arms over my chest. “I do. It’s a professional
what
that I’m trying to figure out.”

“Sheriff, how much money do you make a year—forty, fifty thousand?”

“I don’t know; like I said, they stopped teaching us remedial math at the academy.”

He nodded. “But you can tell me what time it is, right?” He turned and looked at the rising sun, and I watched him shiver. “Well, how about I tell you what time it really is?” His face returned to mine. “Time to look the other way.”

I said nothing.

“How old are you, Sheriff? Closing in on retirement with a half-finished house would be my guess, with children, a daughter, maybe? Newly married and expecting your first grandchild? A professional herself, possibly a lawyer in a large eastern city, an associate with hopes of making partner. . . .”

I cut him off. “I get it, you know all about me—I sure hope there’s more to this conversation than that.”

“I hope so, too, Sheriff, I hope so, too.” He shivered a little more, and I had to admit that I was enjoying his discomfort. “What if I told you that I’d like to make a donation to the Walt Longmire reelection campaign?”

“I’ve already been reelected.”

“Oh, this money would be disassociated from any political responsibilities; you could use it for whatever you wanted, finishing your house, a gift for your daughter, college for the grandchild. Anything you’d like, it doesn’t matter. A lot of money, Sheriff. Like Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen used to say: a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking serious money.”