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

Vic joined me at the door as Double Tough spoke on the phone. “Why would they have something like this, and why would it be hidden the way it was?”

“I don’t know.”

She paused to pick up the box that the bit had been in, partially crushed and filled with Mexican newspapers. The side read MISSION TORTILLA ROUNDS, RESTAURANT STYLE, IRVING, TEXAS. “Do you think they had it and forgot about it?”

Tapping the lid of the box with a forefinger, I laughed. “If you had a one-hundred-seventy-thousand-dollar piece of equipment” . . .

She finished the statement for me as she looked at the vehicle belonging to the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God. “. . . in the spare-tire well of that piece-of-shit Brady Bunch station wagon, no, I wouldn’t forget about it. I’m betting that’s why they are more interested in the car than in Big Wanda.” She pulled one of the wadded newspapers from the box and stretched it flat. “Ciudad Juárez, they’ve got a sale on tire-tread sandals.” She glanced around and when it became apparent that I wasn’t paying any attention to her, she nudged me with an elbow. “Hey.”

“Yep?”

“Thanks for not sending me down here—I think I might’ve slit my wrists.”

I looked through the dirt on the window and realized the majority was on the inside. “I liked it when Lucian sent me down here, but you’re welcome.”

“What’re you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering how the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God is all of a sudden paying off hundreds of thousands of back taxes up and down the Great Plains.” I let out a long, slow exhale. “Something is going on with these people.”

“Ya think?”

I did think and turned and looked at Double Tough as he hung up the phone.

“They’re going to call me back, and I have to admit that it was fun telling them this had to do with a criminal investigation and they better do it pronto.”

I nodded. “They say they’re drilling a new water well over at East Spring Ranch—is there any reason why they would use a bit like this for that kind of application?”

He considered. “Well, it’s a rock bit; I guess if you were bound and determined to drill a water well in one spot you might use it if you ran into a lot of rock.”

“Like down here in the southern part of the county?”

“I guess.”

I studied him. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not; why not just move the well? Anyway . . .” He gestured toward the Diamond Jim Brady of bits. “It’d be overkill to use a piece of equipment like this.”

“So what would you use it for?”

“I told you: oil, gas, something worth big money.”

I thought back to the detailed description I’d given him at the beginning of the conversation. “Could you drill oil or gas with the kind of rig I described seeing down at East Spring, the one on the back of the Peterbilt?”

“Not here, no way.” He shook his head, and I watched as his mind sank into the ground, plummeting through the strata he knew so well. “It’s all tapped out, at least the stuff that’s easy to get to. You’d have to drill almost twelve thousand feet before you got to the Niobrara shale, Shannon and Sussex formation above that; you’re talking about a ten-thousand-foot vertical well with possibly a five-thousand-foot lateral section, and setting up the equipment to sell the oil, you’re looking at a good ten million dollars just to get started.” He sat on the corner of the desk and placed a hand lovingly on the bit. “Do your friends over in East Spring Ranch have that kind of money?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anyway, they’d have to permit that kind of activity through the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, especially if they were God-fearing and law-abiding.”

“Well, the jury is still out on at least one of those.”

Vic joined us in staring at the bit. “What would you do with the oil?”

Double Tough laughed. “Tanker trucks or, better yet, a pipeline.”

“Have you seen any activity like that down here?”

“No, but I haven’t been looking.”

“But you say there isn’t enough oil to bother with?”

He shook his head. “Not on an industrial scale.”

I glanced back out the window—a familiar pickup filled to the gills with men had pulled in behind the station wagon. “Right now I have to go return some rightful belongings.”

I started toward the door but watched as he rolled the bit over on the table with a loud thunk . “That include this?”

“Not unless they ask for it.”

The phone rang, and he reached for the receiver. “What’re you gonna do?”

Vic tossed the box to the floor and followed as I turned the knob and pushed open the door. “Go fishing.”

• • •

Roy Lynear was seated on his throne atop the Super Duty and was holding a somber sort of court. “Hello, Sheriff.”

“Mr. Lynear.”

He leaned forward, and I watched as Lockhart, the guy with the crew cut, got out of the driver’s side and stood by the door. Another man stood at the front corner of the bed and looked at Vic and me; it was only after a moment that I noticed the swollen eye and recognized him as the guy I’d punched in South Dakota. “My driver is Mr. Tom Lockhart, and I believe you’re acquainted with Mr. Earl Gloss?”

I studied him for a moment and then looked back at the driver, the grip of a semiautomatic just visible under a navy Windbreaker. I returned my eyes to Lynear. “I was hoping to see Mr. Bidarte; I was hoping he was doing better.”

The big man glanced back at Gloss, who immediately started for the station wagon. “I think he’s thrown himself into his work at the ranch; some men respond that way.” He tried to keep my attention, but I watched as the man with the swollen face walked to the back of the car and tried the rear door, which was locked.

I thought about tossing the keys to Vic, but she’d stepped to my left to keep an eye on Lockhart. I started toward the station wagon and watched as Gloss’s eyes widened and he glanced at his boss, then to me again, before reaching toward the small of his back. “Just so you know; I won’t have hands laid on me again.”

I paid no attention and kept coming, watching out of the corner of my eye as Vic countered to face the other man. “Really.”

I was putting my hand in my jacket pocket when Gloss slipped a late-model, expensive-looking .45 from his waistband and pointed it toward me. “Don’t come any closer.”

I wasn’t too concerned, seeing as how I could tell it wasn’t cocked. Granted, any capable marksman could pull the hammer back if there was a round in the chamber, but I got the feeling from Gloss that he was not a member of that group, at least not with a uniformed, armed officer bearing down on him.

He raised the pistol a little higher, directing it toward my face. “I’m not telling you again.”

Sometimes, you can slap a sidearm out of a shooter’s hand; it’s a roll of the dice because sometimes you can’t and then they shoot you. But I was feeling full of piss and vinegar and took the chance. Gloss’s pistol flew through the air and into the soft dirt on the far bank of the barrow ditch between the road and the school parking lot.

Standing close to him, I dangled the keys between us and then bent over to unlock the tailgate of the old station wagon.

Gloss glanced at his gun, a good twenty feet away. “You had no right to do that.”

I turned the key, the rear window whirring down with a herniated whine, and then lowered the door. “Just for the record, I had every right. Just because you can carry a sidearm, doesn’t mean you can brandish and threaten a sworn officer.” I tossed him the keys and then stepped back.