A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (31 page)

As if reading my mind, he spoke. “Why take the chance, Sheriff?”

I stiffened my muscles, ignoring the body-numbing cold of the water but allowing the coolness to come into my face and the steadiness into my hands, thinking about a young man lying in the backyard of a rented house in Powder Junction. “Frymire.”

He nodded, and his black hat reflected in the water with the movement. “That was his name?”

“It was.”

“Unfortunate.” He remained maddeningly calm. “I didn’t really want to kill him, but Señor Lockhart said it would slow you down.”

“It did.”

“But not enough.”

“No.”

“A shame. I appreciate the care you took of my mother; I will always be indebted to you for that. I have already retrieved her from your town and made arrangements for her transportation and comfort.” He shook his head, the hat again dancing on the water. “This will all disappear, we will all disappear—you will disappear.”

“I don’t suppose, in the spirit of fair play, you’d let me stand, disassemble, blow the water out of my gun, and let me reassemble and reload it?”

“No.”

I took a deep breath, just like I always did before exhaling into the steadiness of a shot. “I didn’t think so.”

I moved forward and aimed the Colt and about ten gallons of water to boot. I watched his arm extend toward me, anticipating the bite of the stiletto somewhere in the explosion of water, but the effort drove me to the side as I fired, the shot detonating out of the sidearm in my hand, my adrenaline so pumped that I couldn’t even feel the thing firing.

At least in that split second, that’s what I thought was happening.

The blast of the extended fire was faster than my .45 could cycle, and as I stumbled against the rocks I heard the knife go by me like a deadly hummingbird. I fell forward as Bidarte was lifted up and backward, the numerous rounds entering his body, jerking his arms and legs like some frightening, akimbo tango dancer.

I watched as he splashed into the pool like a depth charge and then floated there in the silence.

I stared at the slide mechanism of the Colt, lodged back and jammed, just as I’d thought it would be as I pushed off the rocks. I started to turn to see who was behind me when another round shattered the silence of the canyon by bouncing off the rock walls and striking the surface of the water with a vicious
spak.

I ducked as another round followed that one, shooting by and skipping across the water, and then another.

She was standing in the creek in a two-handed shooting stance, the barrel of her Glock still extended toward Bidarte’s floating body. Her voice was labored and rough. “Die, fucker.” I watched as she lowered the semiautomatic, her arm bumping into something as she stopped and looked down to where the six-inch handle of the knife stuck out from her abdomen, slightly below the ribcage on her left side. “Oh, shit. . . .”

I got to her before she fell, took the Glock, and stuffed it in my jacket pocket. I leaned her back, careful to avoid the gleaming black handle protruding from her body, and supported her head with my shoulder.

Her eyes wobbled a little but found mine. “Is he dead?”

I didn’t even bother to glance back. “Seven times over as near as I can count, and maybe three more for good measure.”

“The fucker is Dracula; he’s lucky I didn’t run a stake through his heart.”

I studied the knife in her and winced as the blood began spreading onto her uniform shirt. “Speaking of, how do you feel?”

“That is the Academy Award of stupid questions; I feel like I’ve been stabbed, you dumb ass. . . .” Her head rolled up on my shoulder, and she looked at the handle, rising and falling with her breath. “Is that close to the same spot where I got shot back in Philly?”

“A little to the center.”

Her head relaxed against my chest. “Fuck me; he couldn’t have stuck me in the boob or something?”

“I don’t know how he missed.”

She snickered and then let out a slow, liquid exhale. “At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I’m cold.”

I could feel the surge of concern blooming into full-blown panic as I looked at the switchblade sticking from her like a pump handle. “I don’t think I better take it out; I’m not sure what organs he got, and I’m afraid you’ll bleed more.”

Her eyes widened just a little. “Don’t touch it.”

Henry appeared from the shadows of the canyon, the sudden silence of the area disturbed by his movements. “Okay, but we need to get you out of here.”

The Bear leaned forward, placing two fingers under her jaw. “Shock?”

“I think.”

Her eyes flashed between the two of us, but her words were slow. “She’s fine and stop talking about me like I’m already dead.”

Henry left his fingers at her throat and then raised his eyes to look at mine.

I started lifting her.

Her head moved. “Wait.”

“We’ve got to get moving.”

The Bear watched silently as the panic I was feeling progressed geometrically as Vic swallowed with difficulty and then had a little trouble catching her breath. “Just a second.” Her hand came up and grazed the knife handle as she reached for my face. She grimaced and then smiled with half her mouth—that little upturn of the corner that drove me crazy. “I want to look at you.”

“You can look at me as we’re getting you to the hospital.” Her hand stayed on my face and her fingers were cold, and all I could hope was that it was the water causing the coolness in her extremities, the water, just the water.

“You think about my offer?”

I focused my eyes on hers, willing her to be there with me now, disregarding every other thing in the world from my mind and hers in an attempt to hold on. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about, and it almost got me killed.”

She continued to grin the half smile, but it was fading. “I’m the one who saved you.”

“Yes, you did.”

The tarnished gold with the harlequin flecks seemed to dance in her sockets. “I’m quite a catch, huh?”

I shook my head and began lifting like a deep-sea salvage operation before the tears in my eyes robbed me of the strength. “Boy howdy.”

I hate funerals, and it seemed like today I had a passel to go to; the only good thing was that I had company inside the perimeter of the
POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS
tape that surrounded us.

Henry studied me as I drove Vic’s beat-up unit, a large manila envelope and a small white box lying on the center console between us. “Any word from South Dakota?”

I nodded. “Tim Berg says they raided the compound in Butte County and took the few women and children left there into protective custody. They confiscated the equipment and foreclosed on the property after the payments on the back taxes fell through.”

“Same story in Nebraska and Kansas?”

I parked, and Henry and I got out of the vehicle. Pushing off the speed limit sign, I walked toward the two-lane blacktop and the roadside marker. “All the assets have been frozen, and without money the whole thing is shutting down.”

“What about the Lynear family?”

I studied the tiny cross with the plastic white and maroon chrysanthemums, daisies, and blue lilies. The ever prevalent Wyoming wind kicked at the horizontal piece of wood of the makeshift cross, causing it to gesture with a will that almost seemed its own. “There are enough charges to put the whole bunch away, but chances are they’ll all end up back in Texas where they started; without the money from the oil scams, I’m betting that that won’t last long either.”

“But that is Sheriff Crutchley’s problem.”

I chewed on the inside of my lip and watched as the wind caught one of the plastic flowers and sent it tumbling toward us. “I’m afraid so.”

“And the adopted boys?”

I stooped and caught the blue plastic lily between my fingers. “Will be farmed out to foster homes.”

He moved up beside me and stood there, his rough-out boots near my knee. “Kind of a mess, hmm?”

Henry Standing Bear and I watched as the Division of Criminal Investigation techs carefully removed the body of Sarah Tisdale from under the roadside marker at the entrance of East Spring Ranch where her remains had been reburied. Edgar Lynear had tried to convey that to me the best he could in our conversation in Butte County, and Wanda Bidarte Lynear’s performance on the side of the road had raised my suspicions, but it had been Dale Tisdale’s remark about never laying a body to rest in the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God that had sealed the deal.

It had taken me an awfully long time to find that ungrateful child, but I finally had.

My voice sounded a little sharp as I spoke. “Most certainly a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

He said nothing for a while but then spoke gently. “There are no other bodies?”

I studied the plastic flower in my hands and twirled it by the stem. “No, thank goodness.”

The Cheyenne Nation stood there beside me, his hair loose with the breeze, and we listened to the sound of the shovels. “I think goodness had very little to do with it.”

I carried the flower toward the crowd at the edge of the police tape, looking through the half-dozen people that were curious about DCI’s undertakings, finally spotting the older woman with her arm over the young man, both of them seated on the tailgate of an International pickup.

Saizarbitoria caught the tape and lifted it, allowing us escape from the sad scene. “Ruby called and wanted to know if it would be okay to release Frymire’s personal effects to his family.”

I nodded my head. “Sure.”

“They’re planning on having the services next Thursday.”

“All right.” We both stood there having so much to say with the limited resource of language to say it. I finally came up with something we could address. “Any word on Double Tough?”

“He lost the eye.”

I nodded some more and stuffed the blue flower in my coat pocket.

“Supposedly they want to ship him back to Durant Memorial on Monday.”

“Do you mind going and getting him?”

He made a face and then smiled. “Don’t you think they’re going to want to send an ambulance?”

“I do. I also know Double Tough well enough to know that he’d rather ride with one of us.”

I moved on to Eleanor and Cord, still seated on the tailgate a little away from the tiny crowd. When I got there, they were talking between themselves in low voices, and I waited a few steps away until the owner/operator of the Short Drop Mercantile looked up.

“Sheriff.”

“Hey.” I waited, and the boy finally lifted his face to look at me, his eyes red-rimmed. “How are you doing, young man?”

He didn’t say anything, letting his gaze drop back to my legs.

Eleanor pulled him in closer. “I was telling him how you said his grandfather was very brave in confronting those men.”

“I couldn’t have done it without him.” I adjusted my hat so it blocked the sun from my eyes. “Still closing the Mercantile?”

She watched the boy closely and then turned her face to look at me. “Now that I’ve got help, I thought I’d try and keep it open.”

I smiled. “Can I talk to you privately for a moment, Mrs. Tisdale?”

She glanced at her grandson and watched as Henry sidled onto the tailgate on the other side of the youth. “Hey, Cord, did I ever tell you about the time I punched the sheriff here in grade school and loosened one of his teeth?”

He glanced at the Bear as I led Eleanor a few steps away, downwind, where the breeze would carry our words to Nebraska where no one would care what we said. She pulled up and stopped, gathering the cloth jacket she wore a little tighter around her shoulders, the pearl strand that held her glasses bumping against her exposed neck.

I took a deep breath, aware that now might not be the best time to bring up the subject but also aware that there might not be another chance. I gently placed a hand on her arm and led her even further away, finally stopping where the entrance road to the ranch tapered off into a culvert. “You sent him.”

She turned and looked at me. “What?”

“Dale Tisdale . . . Orrin Porter Rockwell, your husband—you’re the one who sent him looking for her, and that’s how he accidentally discovered your grandson.”

Her lips tensed, and we stood there looking at the DCI technicians as they brought evidence bags to the site. She took another step forward but then turned slightly to the side, and I could see her face again. “We didn’t even know he existed, but after Dale sold East Spring to that bunch I figured the least he could do was find his daughter.”

“He did more than that.”

“Yes, he did.” She gathered her fingers together and clutched them to her mouth, speaking through a fist. “I didn’t know who else to call. I knew that Dale had connections to those people, and I thought he was the only one that could find out what had happened to Sarah.” She turned the rest of the way and spoke to me, face to face. “Do you know what it’s like to have someone like that in your family?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s a living, breathing hell. You never know if they’re alive or dead, if what they’re telling you is the truth. Finally, I just gave up and decided to live my life the way I saw fit.” She stepped backward, and her eyes were fierce. “Who are you to judge me?”

“I’m not—I’m just trying to find out what happened and why.”

The fire in her eyes smoldered and then dampened as she glanced back toward the truck, where the Cheyenne Nation continued his animated storytelling by smacking a fist into his open palm.

“I killed him.”

I stepped around her and down the slope a bit to face her at eye level, as it seemed we were always finding ourselves. “He made choices; sometimes they were good ones and sometimes they were bad, but he made them himself. He was possibly the most abstract individual I’ve ever met, but he was committed.”

Rubbing a hand over my face, I could feel the resistance of a couple of days of beard growth. “I sometimes think that it’s not our enemies that we resent in life, but rather friends we have who stood quietly by and did nothing. You couldn’t say that about Dale—he threw himself into the fray over and over again.” Her head dropped, and I brought up a hand to raise her chin. “I think it was the last great adventure of his life; an opportunity for redemption. . . .” I glanced past her shoulder toward the truck, then returned my eyes to hers. “And then he got to meet his grandson.”

I looked out toward the open country beyond the collapsed chain-link fence. “A friend of mine called those made-up people that Dale became Legends. . . . I think he got caught up in that so much that he wasn’t enough for himself, but in the end I think that he rose to the occasion and became bigger than all those imaginary selves, bigger than Orrin Porter Rockwell. Dale Tisdale finally became legendary—big enough so that he could die as himself.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then studied me. “It’s a good thing you hold political office.”

I smiled back at her. “It wasn’t meant to be a speech.”

“I’m glad of that.” She stuck her hand out to me. “Friends again?”

I took her hand and put the blue plastic lily in it. “I’m not giving back the twenty-fifth volume of
Bancroft’s Works
, but I thought maybe I should remind you that Bishop Goodman has the Rockwell Book of Mormon.”

“I’ll get it back.”

I turned her around and placed my arm over her shoulder, tacking her through the wind and back toward Cord. “I bet you will.”

•   •   •

Henry studied me as I drove Vic’s unit, glancing periodically at the large manila envelope lying on the center console between us, and the small white box. “What about Lockhart, Gloss, and that bunch?”

I set the cruise control as I took the on-ramp to I-25, discovered it didn’t work, and kept my foot on the accelerator. “It’s an interstate jurisdiction, so the FBI field office in Casper is in charge.”

He continued to study me. “The Department of Justice.”

“Yep.”

“The Department of Justice, clients of the Boggs Institute that employed Mr. Lockhart?”

“The same.” I glanced around at the clutter that accompanied Vic’s vehicle and thought about how the thing appeared to be more of a rolling nest than a police unit.

“Kind of a mess, hmm?”

My voice sounded a little sharp as I spoke. “Most certainly a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about that either.”

He didn’t say anything more to me as we drove the forty miles back to Durant, but he looked at me questioningly as I took the early exit and jumped on old Highway 87 and turned south. After a few miles, I pulled over to the side of the road under the Lazy D-W ranch gate.

I slid the heavy envelope from the loose piles of refuse on the console and handed it to him, motioning for him to place it in the large rural-delivery mailbox.

He stared at the name on the envelope and then his eyes came back to mine. “What is this?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I simply do not wish to be party to mail fraud.”

I looked down the road. “Oh, it’s not fraudulent.”

He felt the heft of the thing. “This is the file on both Lockhart and Gloss?”

“Maybe.”

He smiled the close-lipped smile that was his trademark, the one with no warmth in it. “You are sacrificing them to Donna Johnson?”

I shrugged. “You live by the trench coat, you die by the trench coat.” I sighed, adjusted my hat, and lodged my chin in the web of my hand. “Donna Johnson can make their lives miserable.” I turned my head to look back at him. “I think they deserve that.”

He reached out, opened the mailbox door, and deposited the envelope inside. He closed it, even going so far as to raise the flag.

•   •   •

I dropped Henry off at the office where he could grab his ’59 Thunderbird for the last ride of the season. He said he wanted to accompany me over to Durant Memorial, but that he had a full Indian uprising out at The Red Pony and that if he didn’t get out there and relieve the bartender who was covering, he would likely find the place burned to the ground.

“Please don’t mention buildings burning to the ground.”

He leaned on the door of the Baltic Blue convertible he called Lola, the gloom of evening reflecting the available light off the T-bird’s glossy flanks. “Sorry.” His face hardened a little with the next statement. “Does it bother you that Big Wanda is gone?”

I thought about it. “Not so much; Tomás told me that he had had her taken away.”

“And the body of Tomás?”

I stared through the windshield and looked south, over the rolling foothills of the Bighorn Mountains to the plains of the Powder River country, my perspective down low among the sagebrush and the buffalo grass, racing across the ground until in my mind’s eye I could see the tall man, his blood pouring into Sulphur Creek like an offering.

“You mean the lack thereof?”

“Yes.”

The Division of Criminal Investigation had combed the area, but they didn’t know it as well as I did—and they didn’t have an Indian scout. “I was thinking about taking a drive down to Sulphur Creek in the morning and looking for a sign.”

“What time?”

“Early.” I leaned slightly out the window of the SUV and turned my head, listening to the distant roar of the high school football game at the southern end of town. When I glanced back at Henry, I noticed his face had been drawn in that direction, too.

“Worland . . .” He thought for a moment. “Warriors?”

I nodded. “Go, Dogs.”

He murmured back. “Go, Dogs.”

“They’re retiring our numbers at halftime.”

A puzzled look spread across the Cheyenne Nation’s face. “I hardly remember my number.”

“Then you won’t miss it.”

“No, I would imagine not.”

“Thirty-two.”

He nodded his head and smiled. “Ahh . . . Yes.”

We listened as the band played the Durant Dogies’ fight song, and there was more cheering. “Do you think things were simpler back then?”

The Bear stared at the macadam surface of the parking lot. “No.”

“No?”

“No.” He fished the keys from the pocket of his jeans and drew open the door of the concours vintage automobile. He settled himself in and hit the starter on the motor of the big square Bird.

He said something more, and the rest of his answer hung there in the slight breeze. I watched in the side-view mirror as both the stately beasts made the right on Fort and the left on Main and headed out toward the Rez. Listening to the sounds drifting up from Hepp Field, I was drawn back to those days when the only thing I had to concern myself with was making sure that our star quarterback, Jerry Pilch, didn’t get flattened.