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

Still nothing.

I pulled the truck’s gear selector down.

“Wait.”

The voice had come from the back, and I turned and looked at one of the boys, the driver and Eddy’s half-brother, Edgar. I held the photo out for him to see. “You know her?”

He glanced at the others, and Eddy was quick to speak. “Shut up.”

I started turning the wheel to pull us back onto the road.

“Not Tisdale.”

I stopped and turned to Edgar, after giving Eddy a strong look. “She may have another name?”

“Lynear.”

I rested my face in a hand; of course, it had to be. I waited a moment and then opened the door and climbed out. “Edgar, why don’t you and I take a walk?”

Walking around the back of the Bullet, I waved at the girl at the table, who looked to be may be ten. Henry and Vic had allowed Edgar to get out of the truck and now corralled the rest of the boys by the grille guard.

Steering the skinny youth to the side of the road a little away from both the Bullet and the girl, we pulled up at the floral cross, victims of our upbringings and unwilling to walk on the symbolic grave.

“Do you know where she is?”

“No, sir.” He paused and looked over at the others. “She was cast out.”

“From the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God?”

“Yes, sir.”

I brought my face up from the marker and turned to look at him. I still couldn’t see any family resemblance between him and his half-brother. “When?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “About a month ago.”

That would’ve coincided with her appearance at the Butte County Sheriff’s Department when she’d been looking for her runaway child. “Why did she get kicked out?”

“Because of her son.”

“Cord?”

“Yes, sir.”

I studied the floral cross adorned with blue plastic lilies and chrysanthemums. “Was he kicked out, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“He was found wanting.”

I was getting tired of the coded churchspeak. “What does that mean?”

“He wasn’t selected as one of the three sons of the One, Mighty and Strong.”

I sighed. “And who is that?”

“Roy Lynear.”

I massaged the bridge of my nose, attempting to rid myself of the headache that was trying to grow roots there, and thought about the domineering and obese man I’d met the other night in the back of the fancy pickup. “So, Sarah Tisdale was married to Roy Lynear?”

“Yes, sir.” He paused for a moment and then lowered his voice. “Cord is in line for the inheritance of the mantle of celestial supremacy in the Lord’s true church but committed apostasy and turned away.”

I knew there was a reason I liked the kid. Here he was attempting to get out of this loony bin, and his mother was excommunicated for looking for him.

What a world.

I studied the teen in front of me and thought about all the good that religion could do and all the bad. “Do you mind if I ask you another question?”

“Nope.”

“If all of you are related, then why do none of you look alike?”

He glanced around, embarrassed. “We are lost boys—were kicked out of the communities in Hildale, Utah; Colorado City, Arizona; and Eldorado, Texas. Mr. Lynear adopted us and gave us a place to be.”

Somehow that was a notch in Roy Lynear’s favor, but I still wasn’t convinced. My reveries were suspended as he looked down the road at a spiraling dust cloud that approached from the straight-as-an-arrow distance to the horizon.

“Oh, no.”

I followed his gaze. “Somebody you know?” I walked the boy back to the truck and joined the small group at the grille guard.

Henry, never one to miss anything from near or far, was looking down the road and called out to me. “We have company.”

“Hmmm.” I thought I’d left the others as I walked across the dirt road to where the young woman sat in the chair by the card table, but when I got there, I noticed that Edgar had followed me. I studied the array, which was indeed full of plastic bags of cookies, cakes, and an amazing assortment of pies.

The girl looked up at me from under the shade of the bonnet, where I could see her Mongoloid features. Her face looked like a full moon in a night sky; when she noticed the young man standing beside me, her voice was an excited croak: “Hello, Edgar!”

“Hi, sis.”

She was already up and around the table when he closed his arms around her and ushered her back to her chair. “Have you been out here all day?”

She clutched his hand and answered, her voice breaking, “All . . . All day!”

When she turned to me, I could see that her lips were chapped, and when I glanced around I couldn’t see a blanket, a cooler, a bottle of water, or anything with which the child might’ve been supplied.

“Would you like to buy some cookies?”

A tide of emotions attempted to draw me under as I was reminded of Melissa Little Bird, a young woman I knew, a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome and the daughter of Lonnie Little Bird, the chief of the Northern Cheyenne. “Yes, um . . . Yes, I would.”

She recited the prices of the individual items in a long list and then smiled up at me, her rounded cheeks almost completely hiding her eyes.

I dug my wallet from my back pocket. “Are you thirsty?”

She thought about it and then looked at Edgar for approval.

The young man smiled and nodded. “You can answer for yourself.”

She looked back at me. “Yes?”

I motioned to the Bear, who was still standing in the center of the road. “Hey, Henry? Could you grab me one of those pops from the little cooler under the backseat?”

He did as I asked, still keeping an eye on the approaching vehicle, and then tossed the Coke across the road to me. I stuffed my wallet under my arm and caught the can, tapped the top in order to disseminate the carbonation, and then gently pulled the tab and handed it to her.

She looked at the pop and then to Edgar.

The young man glanced away and then up to me. “We’re not supposed to have soft drinks.”

I motioned toward the can in the girl’s hands, now noticing that she had no fingernails.

“I think in this case that you shouldn’t worry about it.”

He smiled and gestured for her to drink, which she did.

I have relished numerous beverages in my life, from the Rainier beer I discovered in my teens and still drank, the Tiger beer I slugged to support my sweat habit in Vietnam, to the Pappy Van Winkle’s twenty-three-year-old Family Reserve I drank from the bottle hidden in the corner cabinet of my old boss, Lucian Connally, but I’m sure that I’ve never enjoyed a sip of anything as much as that girl enjoyed her first taste of Coca-Cola.

“It makes my nose tickle!”

Her brother and I smiled at her, but the young man’s face sobered at the arrival of a late-model maroon Suburban with tinted windows. We both watched as the dust from the vehicle blew past us and down the road like an ill omen.

I watched as four men got out of the SUV and stood by the doors, their attention divided between Henry, who was still standing in the middle of the road in front of them, Vic, with the other boys at the side of my truck, and the three of us at the bake sale table.

The man who got out of the passenger side was tall, with a dark suit and with hair in a reddish pompadour that swept up the sides of his head and around his enormous ears. The driver was darker, bigger, older, bearded, and heavyset, in a dress shirt with a straw cowboy hat that looked like white plastic. Out of season.

I stood there with my wallet in my hands and waited.

One of the other men was middle-aged, in a black polo shirt—he had exited from the driver’s-side backseat and was careful to keep an eye on the Absaroka County undersheriff and Henry Standing Bear of the Bear Society, Dog Soldier Clan, still standing in the middle of the road.