A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (27 page)

I backtracked into the entry and followed the Bear as he stood looking up the steps to what I assumed were the bedrooms. I kept my voice low. “Anything?”

He shook his head as Vic, also speaking quietly, joined me. “If, and I repeat if, there is no one here, why was Double Tough sleeping at the substation?”

“Maybe Frymire went to Sheridan and didn’t tell him. I don’t know.”

Sancho had taken the basement, and Henry nodded toward the stairs and started up with us following. There was a landing at the top with one of those pull-down attic accesses, doors on either side, both of which were closed, and a window that overlooked the backyard. We split the duty as we got to the top, the Bear taking one door and Vic and I taking the other. The door was stuck to the old paint on the molding, but I bumped it open and found a mattress and box springs on the floor, the sheets and pillows looking like they got a regular workout. In an attempt at interior décor, there were a few Wyoming Game & Fish posters on the wall, and a large Turkish rug on the floor that looked out of place. The closet door hung open and clothes and an assortment of hiking and hunting boots were spilling out onto the floor.

As a token to amour, a small lamp with a pair of red panties hung over the shade was sitting on a cardboard set of drawers; it was still on and cast a pinkish glow on the cracked wall. Vic walked into the room and paused to read the label on the lingerie. “Victoria’s Secret. Of course.”

I turned to look at the Bear, whose girth blocked most of the other doorway, his face turned toward the ceiling. Vic joined me in returning to the landing behind him, and I moved to his side as he took a step into the room. He slowly raised his hand and finally an index finger, touching one of the stained cracks in the ceiling. He picked at the crack until a chip fell away and something seeped from the plaster.

He withdrew his hand and rubbed the thick substance between his thumb and forefinger and his dark hair pivoted to reveal the powerful face as he held his fingers out for me to smell.

No mistake about it.

I watched as a drop fell onto the narrow-pinewood floor, the drip sounding like the beginning of a soft rain.

This room was also empty, with the exception of two folding chairs, a sleeping bag, and what appeared to be a broken transistor radio.

Stepping around Vic and back onto the landing, I reached up and pulled the short cord, lowering the folding stairs, and flipped the bottom section down, placing the spring-loaded rails on the scuffed, worn floor. I put a foot on one of the treads to test if it would hold my weight and then gripped the rails and started up.

It was dark in the attic, but there was a string hanging within arm’s reach, so I pulled it, immediately illuminating the rafters with no insulation.

I backed down the steps and looked at the two of them. “Dead raccoon.”

Vic smiled. “Natural causes?”

I glanced at Henry, but he was no longer paying attention.

“I’d wash my hands if I were you.”

Vic started down the steps, and I spoke in a low voice. “I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.”

She stopped and turned as Henry continued downward. “Look, it was a perfectly reasonable line of inquiry, all right?”

“I was just joking.”

She turned and started off again. “Wasn’t funny.”

There was a scream from downstairs, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the Cheyenne Nation. Vic leapt down the steps Glock-first, and I even found my hand on my sidearm as I half-leapt, half-tumbled down the steps after her. There was a young woman standing in the entryway with a pizza box on the floor at her feet and the Bear with a hand out in an attempt to quiet her. She screamed again when she saw us but then placed a hand on her chest and leaned against the wall in an attempt to catch her breath.

Vic holstered her weapon and looked back at me. “The fiancée.”

Figuring it was my party by default and that I should welcome her to it, I stepped past Vic and Henry, and stuck out a hand of my own. “I’m really sorry about this; I’m Walt Longmire, Chuck’s boss.”

Her hand stayed on her chest, and she breathed deeply, finally pulling some of the blondish-brown hair away from her face. “Grace Salinas.”

I smiled. “Hi, Grace.” I looked down at the box leaking pepperoni and melted cheese. “Sorry about the pizza.”

“Oh, it was some promotion they were supposed to be having over at the Sinclair station. They called and said we’d won a free pizza and that we could come over and pick it up, but when I got there, I had to pay for it. Not much of a promotion.” She smiled back but then looked concerned. “You’re here about the shooting?”

Vic and the Bear glanced at me, and I continued to look at her. “Shooting . . .”

“This morning—the raccoon?”

“The dead one in the attic?”

“I told him not to shoot it, but it was keeping us up at night. He killed it this morning—I figured you were here because of that.”

“Not precisely, but is Chuck around?”

She glanced in the living room as if he should have been there. “He’s here somewhere; I just ran out to get the pizza.” She stooped and began scooping the pie back in the box. “If he went back to bed . . .”

“I don’t think so; we were just up there.”

She stooped for the box and started past us toward the kitchen. “Well, he’s got to be around here somewhere.”

Saizarbitoria was standing in front of the closed back door next to a table and chair; he leaned on the facing and smiled a stiff smile. The young woman considered him and then turned back to me. “Boy, the gang’s all here. Really, is there something wrong?”

Sancho widened his eyes in the brief instant we had before she turned back and looked at him. I, in turn, made strong eye contact with Vic.

“Excuse me, Grace?”

Her eyes returned to me. “Yes?”

“How about you accompany my undersheriff back out front for a moment—I’ve got some things I need to discuss with Sancho.”

“Sure.” She studied me for a while and then started off as Vic followed her out. “I just can’t figure where he got to.”

The Basquo waited until he was sure she was gone and then stepped back, opening the door behind him enough so that I could see Frymire, in a pair of boots and a bathrobe, lying in the backyard with a shovel still in his hands.

Saizarbitoria, the low man on the totem pole, drew the duty, and I sent him to wait with Grace in her car until the Ferg and the Powder River EMTs arrived. Ferg would drive the distraught young woman home to Sheridan, and Sancho would stay with Frymire.

The rest of us were kneeling beside my deputy’s body and trying to piece together what had happened. “He shot the raccoon, went down to dig a hole in the backyard, and somebody caught him out there?”

The Cheyenne Nation carefully lifted the flannel bathrobe, saturated with blood. “With a knife, a very large one, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.” He released the robe, and we watched as it settled back against the dead man’s body. “Between the second and third ribs, up and to the side—professional.”

I thought about the conversation I had had with Lockhart on the boardwalk in front of The Noose, and about professionalism, but mostly I thought about Bidarte and the knife that he’d stuck in the pole between Henry and me.

The Bear looked toward the stream, where the assailant would’ve most likely set up observation. “He waited, watched the house, called, and when she went out for the pizza, he went in.”

Vic continued for him. “And when he wasn’t in the house, caught him digging a hole in the backyard. But why was the door of his truck left open, the front door, the back door . . . and why take the chance and leave her alive?”

I nodded toward the house. “She was supposed to find him.”

Henry sighed. “And call you.”

I watched as Vic’s jaw set, the way it always did before the storm. “This was a delaying tactic?”

I stood. “They’re counting on this slowing us down enough so that they can clean up and get out of here or at the least get the lawyers between them and us.”

“They didn’t have a reason to kill Double Tough, but they had one to kill Frymire?” She stood. “What makes you think they’re not already done and gone?”

I pointed at Frymire’s body. “This.”

“So, now what?”

The Cheyenne Nation also stood. “We go after them.”

The elongated canine tooth trapped part of her lower lip as she smiled at both of us. “Now we’re talking.”

We piled in my truck, and Vic flipped up the center console in order to sit in the middle to allow the Bear to have her coveted shotgun seat. She stared at the dash as Henry slammed the door behind him, lodging the butt of the shotgun between his feet.

“Something?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’re not suspecting one of us now, are you?”

She stared at the dash, still distracted. I waited for a moment and then started the truck, spinning around on the other side of the bridge and flipping on my lights and siren as her hand came up. “Why try and kill Double Tough?”

I rocketed down Powder Junction’s main street, a smattering of traffic darting for the curbs so that I could pass. “We’re not on that again, are we?”

She made a sound and threatened me with the hand as I waited, glancing at Henry, the two of us at a loss.

“Something he said.”

“Who?”

“Double Tough. What’d he say about last night?”

I made the turn onto 192 and headed southeast. “Nothing important—he said he didn’t see or hear anything.”

“Before that, he said something about a traffic stop.” We were just passing the burnt wreckage when she slapped me in the chest. “Stop!”

I hit the brakes. “What?”

She gestured toward the ex-station. “Pull in here—pull in!”

I did as she said and watched as she crawled over Henry, yanked the door open, and ran toward what was left of the structure.

The Bear turned to look at me. “What is this all about?”

We watched as she passed the building and continued on toward the Suburban, still parked where we’d left it early this morning. Henry clutched the open door as I spun the wheel and pulled across the parking lot to follow her. When we got to the SUV, she had the passenger-side door open and had dived onto the front seat, her legs sticking straight out of the open door.

The Cheyenne Nation glanced at me as we got out. “It must be something important.”

We stood there as she extricated herself from the Suburban with Double Tough’s duty clipboard in her hands, pulling the forms free of the clip and throwing them into the open cab.

“Vic?”

She ignored me and opened the inside of the clip where the white copies were usually deposited to be filed. She stood there looking at the top one, finally turning it around and handing it to me.

The form was a standard ticket written out as a warning to one of the kids Double Tough had mentioned stopping yesterday evening—he was driving an early-seventies C-10 pickup with South Dakota plates, and his name was Edmond Lynear.

I raised my eyes to hers. “Eddy Lynear, late of Butte County, South Dakota?” I thought about it. “The kids.” I studied the form. “What the hell were they doing over here last night?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, but they were here in that diarrhea-colored truck and somebody got in there and took that bit. Either you were wrong about Lockhart being unconcerned about the damn thing or someone else was interested.

•   •   •

When we reached the entrance to East Spring Ranch, the scours-colored truck was sitting on the other side of the gate with a gaggle of heavily rearmed teenagers in the bed, on the hood, and in the cab.

I pulled my truck to the side of the road, still a little ways away from the gate, and left the engine running. I shut off the sirens but allowed the blue lights to continue racing across the blockade like an accusation.

Eddy Lynear was, of course, the first one to speak. “That’s as far as you go.”

Stepping from my truck, I watched as Henry, having left the shotgun behind, slid out the other side. Vic, who evidently had decided to hold back until this particular group of the youth of America made their move, remained in the Bullet and watched.

Henry joined me, and we walked toward the fence as I pulled the paper from my pocket and held it up for them all to see. “This is a warrant for admission to this property, and I will now ask you to move this vehicle and unlock this gate to grant us entry.”

Eddy, who was holding some sort of tactical shotgun with a folding stock and built-in light, called down from the top of the cab, “We were told to kill you if you try and enter.”

I looked up at the kid. “Hey, Eddy, why don’t you climb down here and talk to us?”

The other four were now making menacing noises with their weapons like they were starring in an episode of
Steadfast Resolution
, beside the fact that these modern automatic armaments haven’t had to be cocked since well before they were all born.

I rolled up the warrant, for all the good it was doing me, and put it away. The light from the shotgun was bright, and I raised my hand to block the beam. “Before you do something stupid, how about we talk?” My only concern at this point was that they might accidently discharge one of their exotic toys, and I knew from experience that accidentally dead was still dead. “I bet I can guess who it is that gave you these weapons.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m betting it was that character Tom Lockhart, wasn’t it?”

He still didn’t say anything.

“I bet he also filled your head up with a bunch of hooey about him being some kind of big wheel with the CIA, didn’t he?”

You could see the doubt beginning to chip away at the others, but Eddy was still standing tall before the man and wasn’t giving ground. “He says you’re dirty.”

“What?”

“He says you’re planning on getting rid of us, that this is Armageddon.” He motioned with the barrel. “I’m not kidding, Sheriff. If you try to get past us, I’ll kill you.”

I shook my head. “All right. First off, I’m here to tell you that Tom Lockhart is not CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, FEMA, NASA, the Absaroka County Dog Catcher, or any of the other things he’s been telling you. He’s just a loudmouth with a checkered past—pretty much a never-was. Now I don’t know if he got you guys to go after my deputy Double Tough and get the drill bit out of the Suburban. I don’t know if you guys are the ones who set fire to the sheriff’s substation as a diversion or what, but the important thing for you to know is that my deputy is still alive. I’d like to think that you didn’t mean to hurt him or that you didn’t even know that he was asleep in the back room.”

The kid poked the shotgun at us with a little more enthusiasm. “Shut up.”

“The point being that you haven’t done anything that you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life in an eight-by-eight cell paying for—unlike your buddy Tom Lockhart and his friends in there.”

Eddy’s face was red as he screamed down at me. “Shut up!”

“He gave you the guns and told you that was just the beginning, didn’t he? Said he’d cut you guys in on the deal? Well, I’ve got news for you—he’s just a money-grubbing lowlife who’s tricking all of you into doing his fighting for him.”

Eddy jacked the breech of the tactical shotgun.

Both Henry and I watched the spent unfired shell bounce off the sheet metal of the cab and land at our feet. The Bear looked at me, neither of us all that concerned with Eddy Lynear.

At that point I heard a roar from behind us and figured Vic must’ve accidentally stepped on the accelerator in trying to get out of the truck, but I should’ve known better. The engine racing had been a warning, kind of like when a bull snorts, paws the ground, and bellows. When Henry and I turned to look at her, she had already reached up and pulled the selector in my truck down into gear.

More readily able to tell the difference between a potential and absolute threat than I ever could, the Cheyenne Nation pushed me to the side with all his considerable strength and then leapt backward as the three-quarter-ton charged forward into the giant gate. The Bullet slapped the gate backward and in turn broadsided the truck on the other side.

The young men, not unaccustomed to vehicular assault, leapt from their vehicle, leaving Eddy as the only occupant. Vic pushed the aged Chevrolet down the road sideways, Eddy dropped the shotgun in an attempt to stay on the top the truck, and Henry and I stood at the center of the road as Vic continued to push the entire mess like an icebreaker.

“When do you think she will stop?”

“When she finds a cliff to push him off of.” I stooped and picked up the shotgun, noticing that it, too, was a Wilson. “Fancy. They must have a dealership.”

Vic finally took her foot off the accelerator as she deposited the Chevy into the roadside ditch like some botched Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float.

One of the kids loped next to me, the others fell in, and pretty soon we looked like some lost platoon in search of transport. I reached down and took an elongated weapon from him. “You mind if I take a look at that, Edgar?”

He smiled. “Nope. I don’t even know where the safety is, and it weighs a ton.”

“It doesn’t have a safety.”

“Oh.” He cantered along. “It was the last one, and nobody wanted it—I mean, it’s a bolt action.”

“Uh-huh.” I held the exotic weapon up and looked at the barrel as we neared the two-truck pileup. “Fifty-cal BMG.”

He looked puzzled as we arrived at the Bullet, where the window was still rolled down. “What’s a BMG?”

Vic threw open the door, climbed out of my damaged vehicle, glanced at us momentarily as she slammed the door with more than a note of finality, and straightened her ball cap. “Big Motherfucking Gun.”

I clarified for the kid. “Browning Machine Gun.”

Lynear looked at the weapon with renewed respect. “It’s a machine gun?”

I studied the body of the thing, dark and dangerous. “It’s an antimaterial sniper rifle.”

“Sniper, huh?”

“Yep.”

“What’s antimaterial mean?”

The Cheyenne Nation offered as he came around the other side of the Chevy, “It shoots through walls.”

“Wow.”

Eddy Lynear was trying to climb out of the bed of the C-10 where he’d been deposited when the vehicle ditched, and Henry lowered the tailgate to make it easier on him as I surveyed the damage to the Bullet, now steaming and draining vehicular fluids onto the roadway.

Eddy was holding his head, where a substantial cut was bleeding through his fingers. “You wrecked my truck again.”

I surveyed the damage to the trucks and to Lynear. “Doesn’t look like it did mine any good either.” I patted the tailgate and had him sit, laying the shotgun and the big .50 in the bed to keep company with the cases and extra ammunition that Lockhart must’ve left.

Vic was in the process of taking the weapons away from the rest of them as Henry appeared at my side with a confiscated ArmaLite and the first-aid kit from the Bullet.

I attempted to peel Eddy’s hand away as the other teenagers gathered round, incapable of ignoring gore. “Let me see.”

Vic was depositing the rest of the automatic weapons in the bed of the Bullet and Eddy, being a male, was drawn to her. His next statement probably had to do more with the braggadocio of having his posse nearby than good sense. “I’d rather she did it.”

“Oh, you don’t want that.” I sopped up some of the blood and laid the skin flap back over his forehead. “She’s more likely to use it as an excuse to put you out of your misery.”

“Or ours.” My undersheriff studied my handiwork as I patched the young man up. “You’re going to have a great scar.”

I sealed the wound with some gauze and tape. “So, you guys were the ones that set fire to the substation?”

He said nothing until Vic reached up and slapped him in the back of the head. “Hey, that hurts.”

“Talk, you little shit.”

He sighed. “We overheard them and thought if we got the bit back that Lockhart would let us in on the deal. We didn’t know anyone was in there. Honest.”

“What deal?”

He shrugged, and the sullen look returned to his face as he glanced around at his friends. “We don’t know.”

“Eddy, playtime is over.” I leaned on the side of the Chevy next to the Cheyenne Nation. “And I need some information.”

He glanced at his buddies again. “We’re not telling you anything.”

“Well, then I’m going to arrest you.”