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

“Walter.”

I stared at the truck and thought about what a dinosaur it was, and how it was a lot like him—unsophisticated, honest, and durable.

“There is nothing more you could have done.”

I stood, dumping the rest of the coffee from the cup and tossing the container into a bucket that served as a trash receptacle, and, pulling the blanket up higher, squished my way toward the large SUV with the Cheyenne Nation in tow.

“I heard you yelling, punched through the wall, grabbed you by your shoulders, and pulled you out. He probably did not know what happened, Walt.”

The sun would be up in a few hours—the dawn of a new day. From the flats of the Powder River country, a gaseous ball of hydrogen billions of degrees in heat would brighten the mountains behind me. I would meet that day with a serious degree of heat myself, a smoldering little ember that would become the size of a man, I’d say—most certainly more than one—which I would tinder until I could find just the right fuel.

“Walter?”

I fumed like the fuse on a bundle of dynamite and looked at my best friend in the world, the man who had just saved my life again.

The Bear stared into my face and didn’t like what he found there, but knowing me as he did, he didn’t say anything, just kept pace.

I took the last few steps and stopped at the corner of the official vehicle of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department, my department, and stared through the back window of the Suburban. Double Tough’s clothes were piled in the back, and it looked as if nothing had been disturbed.

I hitched the old army blanket higher to cover my neck, turned, the tail end of the thing flaring with my effort, and walked toward the crumpled husk of the substation with the Bear trailing after me. He moved a little to the right in an attempt to see the side of my face with those dark eyes of his, seemingly darker than before, his eyes always growing deeper and more liquid as these crucial, emotional moments became a part of his soul.

At what used to be the front door, I looked straight at him to assure him that I wasn’t just wandering, sidestepped in, and went over to the scorched empty key rack. I stepped on something and stooped to pick up a set of keys that were under a couple of inches of dirty water. They were on a funny ring I’d never noticed before from some second- or maybe third-tier amusement park with an image of a giant character who looked a little like Bozo, leaning on a structure that read CAMDEN PARK—AT THE SIGN OF THE HAPPY CLOWN.

There was something else, too, that I noticed as I bent over—the vague scent of kerosene.

I turned around and started back toward the Suburban. I flipped to the second key and attempted to get it somewhere in the vicinity of the keyhole that unlocked the tailgate. My hands continued to shake, and the damn thing fell. I started to lean down, but the Cheyenne Nation was quicker, as usual, even catching them before they struck the pavement.

He stood and slipped in front of me, and I listened to the unctuous whir of the window descending. He reached inside, pulled the latch, flipping down the tailgate, and glanced back at me, standing there quaking. “You need to get out of those clothes.”

I pointed a quivering hand at the dirty laundry and willed my finger to stop shaking—if it didn’t, I silently swore, I was going to bite it off. It must’ve heard me and grew steady.

Henry sighed and pushed the clothing that smelled like my deputy aside till there was nothing but the ribbed surface of the Chevrolet’s floor. He turned to look at me and then walked around the vehicle, systematically unlocking and opening each door, looking inside and then closing it.

He finished his investigation, had circled the vehicle, and, leaning against the quarter-panel, stopped beside me. “Nothing.”

I nodded, still staring at the back of the beat-up truck. “Inside the substation, did you smell kerosene?”

“Yes.”

When I extended my hand, he’d already pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and handed it to me with Verne Selby’s number punched in and ringing. I held the device to my ear and waited through five rings before Verne’s wife, Rebecca, answered their phone.

She whispered. “He—hello?”

“Rebecca, it’s Walt. I need to speak with Verne.”

There was a rustling of sheets, and her voice rose. “Walter, do you know what time it is?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t and I don’t mean to be rude, but gimme Verne.”

I heard her talk to the judge, and after a moment I heard his voice. “Hello?”

“I need a warrant.”

He cleared his throat. “Now?”

“Now.”

“I can get the paperwork going in the morning. . . .”

“Right now. I’m going into East Spring Ranch down near Short Drop with or without a warrant—you can back me up with some paperwork or I can just go in there on my own. I’m in Powder Junction right now, and either way I’m headed south in a few minutes.”

I could almost see him nodding into the receiver. “I’ll fax it to the sheriff’s substation.”

I took a breath, staring at the powdery paint of Double Tough’s unit but refusing to look at the burned-out corpse of a structure across the parking lot. “Send it to the town hall instead.”

• • •

“We are waiting?”

“We are not.” We were standing at the counter of the Powder Junction Town Hall with Brian Kinnison, in anticipation of the warrant, when the Bear sabotaged me by handing me his cell phone again.

I looked at him, but he gestured for me to talk and walked away.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I sighed. “I’m going in there and none too friendly.”

“Then what?”

“I’m going to find out what’s going on, and I’m going to get who did this.”

I could hear her struggling to get her boots on. “You need help.”

“I’ve got help.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be gone in five.” I walked over to Henry and handed the phone to him. “Here.” Vic was still yelling on the other end. I returned to the counter just as Brian was pulling the papers out of the fax machine. He put them on the flat surface and looked at me.

“You’re sure these people did this?”

“Yep, I am.”

“You want me to alert the militia?”

I half-smiled, in spite of myself. “I didn’t know you had a militia.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall and smiled back. “Seems like a good time to start one up.”

I stuffed the warrant in the inside pocket of my jacket, which wafted the smell of a dead campfire, sat my water-mauled hat on my head a little straighter, and started out the door. Henry was waiting for me as I hit Powder Junction’s one-block boardwalk, and I could see he was thinking. I stepped up even with him and asked. “Why the substation? Why not just take the bit? They had to know this was going to start a war.”

“Yes.”

“But why him? I was the one pushing; I’m the one most likely to go after them.” I patted the papers in my pocket. “This guarantees it.”

“Yes.”

“They thought they could steamroll us out here in the middle of nowhere and get away with it?” I stuck an index finger toward him. “Don’t say yes.”

He grunted. “I am hoping that is not the case.”

I gestured to the tiny street. “Because he was closer?”

The Bear shrugged. “We are only forty minutes away.”

“Twenty, according to Vic.”

He nodded. “We should be going; I think I can keep you from shooting people, but I am not sure I can dissuade her.”

I climbed in on the driver’s side and pulled the door closed behind me as the Bear slung himself in. I watched as he reached over, pulled the Remington Wingmaster from the brace that held it against the dash and transmission hump, and jacked the breech of the twelve-gauge like a sidekick in some bullshit TV show where they did such things a dozen times. The unspent shell went flying into the back, unlike on TV, and I looked at him. “We might need that round.”