Craig Johnson - A Serpent's Tooth - A Walt Longmire Mystery

It was true that my deputy’s house was in Powder Junction, a forty-five-minute drive south. “Don’t you think he’d like to go home?”

“Not particularly, considering that Frymire’s girlfriend is visiting.”

I thought about it as I took a right onto Desmet. “Yeah, I guess they share a house.”

She nodded. “A run-down, two-bedroom rental by the creek, from what I hear. What, you think we can all afford houses on what the county pays us?” We drove along in one of those silences only women can produce, a ponderous, heavy quiet. “For your information, I’m aware that you arranged the financing for my house behind my back.”

I pulled up in front of the little gray craftsman with the red door. “I have no idea what it is you are talking about.”

“I saw the papers.”

I sat there for a moment and then tried a reverse in the backfield. “I may have signed something that said you were an employee in good standing with the sheriff’s department—in short, I lied.”

She didn’t laugh but sat there studying her hands. After a moment she unsnapped her safety belt, nudged her knees up onto the seat, and, slapping my hat into the back, she slid herself across my lap. She grabbed the back of my hair and yanked it, locking her mouth over mine, and I could feel the waves of heat from her body pounding me like surf on a coastal rock.

• • •

I snuck in the front door of the sheriff’s office like a teenager getting in after curfew and could hear Double Tough snoring on the bench in the reception area. I gave a salute to the painting of Andrew Carnegie, a relic from when our building had been the town library, and quietly climbed the stairs past the 8×10s of all the sheriffs in our county’s history, sure their eyes were watching me as I passed.

My deputy had dragged out a few pillows and a blanket from the supplies. The noise that he made was horrific, and I figured it was probably for the best that he wasn’t sleeping in the holding cells with Cord—the poor kid would be deaf by morning.

I also reminded myself that tomorrow was Tuesday and that I would need to call my old boss, Lucian Connally, at the Durant Home for Assisted Living and cancel chess night if I was going to the southern part of the county to loiter with intent.

All of these things were roiling in my mind as I kicked an empty Mountain Dew can that Double Tough had left on the floor.

I stood there quietly as his snoring stopped, and he spoke. “You’re grounded.”

I turned and looked at him, or rather at the lump of gray wool blanket that passed for him. “How’s our charge?”

“Asleep.” He shucked the blanket and blinked at me. “Chief, you’re not going to believe what we did tonight.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“You know the old TV and VCR down in the jail?”

“Yep.”

He smiled. “I was walking by and saw a box of tapes in that stuff that Ruby’s sending off to the church. I was feeling bad because the kid is just sitting in the cell reading his Bible like he’s in solitary confinement, so I thought, What the heck, I’ll make popcorn in the microwave and we’ll watch a movie.”

“What did you watch?”

“Well, it’s not like we had a lot to choose from; I mean it was church lady movies. . . .”

I leaned against the dispatcher’s counter. “Maybe that was for the best.”

“ My Friend Flicka , the one from a million years ago.”

“Set in Wyoming—Mary O’Hara wrote the book.”

“Yeah, well they filmed it in Utah. . . . But that’s not the point.” He swung his legs down and gathered the covers over his shoulders like a serape. “Chief, I don’t think that kid has ever watched TV or a movie before, I mean ever.” He stood and leaned an elbow on the counter with me. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I about fell asleep every ten minutes, but that kid was glued to the screen; he laughed and cried like the stuff was happening to him right there in the chair.”

“I guess it’s possible that . . .”

“He watched it three times.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay; after the first time I just started watching him.” He leaned down and picked up the can I’d kicked, crushing it effortlessly in his hand and tossing it into Ruby’s wire trash can. “I hope Ruby don’t mind, but I gave the kid the tape. I tried to explain that they had these new things, DVDs, but he didn’t care. . . . You’da thought I gave him the friggin’ horse.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back in holding.”

I yawned. “I’ll check on him, and then I’m going to hit the hay in the other holding cell.” I pushed off. “Seeing as there’s no room at the inn.”

I checked my office on the pass by but didn’t see Dog and assumed that he must’ve been in the back keeping an eye on the young man. I tried to remember what the first movie was that I might’ve seen but could come up with nothing. I’d grown up on a northern Wyoming ranch about as far from everything as was possible in what seemed like a different century, but I watched TV and couldn’t imagine the kind of lifestyle where young Cord had never seen one.

I turned the corner in the dark room, quietly slipped along the wall to where I could see into the holding cell, and was immediately greeted with a rumbling half bark.

“Shhh . . .” I moved over to the bars and noticed that Double Tough must’ve changed his mind and decided to close the door. I pulled on it gently but discovered that it was locked. I glanced around and then reached over and flipped on the light; the only occupant in the cell was Dog.

4

“How long do you think?”

Double Tough was as flapped as I’d ever seen his unflappable self. “An hour at the most.”

I thought about it. “He’s on foot. Couldn’t have gotten very far; the question is—did he go south or east?”

“You go one way and I’ll go the other, but the highway or surface roads? The little idiot’s so uninformed that he could be walking along the center stripe of I-25.” We were moving toward the doors now, passing the reception area where I’d found Double Tough asleep only minutes ago. “Do you want to call in more staff?”

“No, we’ll . . .”

The phone on Ruby’s desk rang, and the two of us looked at each other, my deputy the first to vote. “We could ignore it.”

I sighed. “That’s not the sheriffing thing to do.” I strode back to the desk and snatched it up. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

The line buzzed and then became clear. “Walt?”

“Yep?”

More buzzing, and then the voice again. “This is Wally Johnson down here on the Lazy D-W.”

I recognized his voice—I had heard Wally many times at the National Cattlemen’s Association, where he served as counsel. “How can I help you, Wally?”

Buzzing. “I’m sorry, I’m on this damn cordless down at the barn. You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve got a couple horse thieves down here.”

I waited a few seconds and then attempted to establish some priorities. “Wally, is this something we could discuss tomorrow?”

His turn to pause. “You mean you want me to let them go?”

I thought about the location of Wally and Donna’s ranch, just a little south of town on the secondary road. “You mean you’ve got them got them?”

“Yes.”

I glanced over at Double Tough and marveled at our good fortune; five more seconds and we would’ve been out the door. “Is one of them a skinny kid, blond with blue eyes?”

“Yeah, says his name is Cord.”

“Who is the other one?”

There was a brief scrambling and some conversation in the background, and then the rancher came back on the line. “Old fella, says his name is Orrin Porter Rockwell, though I kinda find that hard to believe.”