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

I ignored her and continued. “I’m going to place my deputy here in your house this evening, if you don’t mind, in hopes that the boy will return.”

She nodded, first looking at Vic and then settling on Double Tough. “That’ll be fine.”

I stood and gave my Powder Junction deputy his command. “I’ll come by at around eleven to spell you, if that sounds good.”

He picked up another cookie and nodded. “Yup.”

“And try not to eat all the cookies.”

He didn’t answer as he took a seat by the kitchen window, lifted his tactical binoculars to his eyes to view the pump house, and chewed.

• • •

Vic fed her uneaten pizza crust to Dog as she picked up a can from my Rainier stash and gulped. “Shit, I just wish someone around here would do decent pizza.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and the front on Dog’s head. “I checked the National Crime Information Center for info on Orrin the Mormon but so far he’s about as available as the Holy Ghost. I left a message at the local Church of Latter-day Saints—who knew there was one here—with Bishop Drew Goodman and even checked with social services over in Utah, but so far nobody’s ever heard of the kid.”

I sipped my own beer and flipped through the pages of the Mormon Bible. “This thing is probably worth a fortune.”

“What about the City of Belle Fourche’s traveling pants?”

I set my beer down. “I’ll call over to Tim Berg—the sheriff over there—and see if he has any ideas about the pants or the kid.”

She held her beer close to her lips and smiled the crocodile smile. “The human pencil holder?”

“Yep.” During classes at the National Sheriffs’ Association, Tim was famous for placing numerous pens and pencils in his prodigious beard and then forgetting them.

She looked up at the old Seth Thomas hanging on the wall of my office, the hands gesturing toward 10:45 like Carol Merrill from Let’s Make a Deal . “I was thinking about hanging around and seducing you, but my nose hurts, so I might take it home and go to bed.” She took another sip of her beer and then held the cool of the can to the spot between her eyes. “How do I look?”

I studied the two small wings of purple unfurling beneath her lower lids. “Like you coulda been a contendah.”

“Yeah, well, if I catch Orrin the Mormon I’m going to pound his head like a friggin’ bongo.” She stood and stretched, the dress hem riding up her thighs as she sang in a thick Italian accent, à la Rosemary Clooney, “Come on-a my house, my house. I’m-a gonna give you candy.”

I smiled up at her. “I thought your nose hurt.”

She backed into my office doorway and attempted to draw me forward by crooking an index finger. “It does, but I just remembered a great way to take my mind off it.”

I gathered up the detritus of our impromptu feast, crushed a few of the cans, and tossed them into the empty box—I knew I’d catch hell from Ruby if I left beer cans in the office trash. “I’ve got to relieve Double Tough in twenty-five minutes.”

“We could make it a quickie.”

I closed the box, picked it up, and walked around my desk to meet her. “What do you hear from the newlyweds?” Her face darkened beyond the black eyes, and I suddenly realized that clouds were gathering and lightning was flashing in the tarnished gold pupils. “What?”

“I’ve warned you about that.”

“What?”

She leaned against the door frame and downed the last of her beer. “Every time I talk about us, you talk about them.” She pushed off the frame and looked up at me, placing the empty can on the flat surface of my box like a smokestack. “I’m not going to get all Freudian and try and figure that out, so just stop. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She turned, walked past Ruby’s desk, and paused to curtsy, her hair, which she had grown out, striped with highlights. “By the way, you lost your shot at a quickie.”

She disappeared down the steps, and I heard the heavy glass doors swing shut as I called after her, “I kind of figured that.”

Dog, probably hoping for another crust, appeared at my leg as I took a few steps down the hall toward the holding cells and the back door. “C’mon, you want to go to the Dumpster?” I glanced over my shoulder and noticed he’d sat. “I’ll take that as a no?” He didn’t move, so I continued on my own. “Well, you’re going over to Barbara Thomas’s place here in a few minutes whether you like it or not.”

I pushed open the heavy metal and carefully nudged the broken portion of concrete block that we all used to prop open the door, which saved the staff the ignominious march around the building to the front entrance that Vic had deemed “the walk of shame and ignorance.”

In the distance I could hear my undersheriff ignoring our two red-blinking traffic lights as she sped through town.

Balancing the empty Rainier on the box, I started toward the Dumpster just as a sudden breeze kicked up, which spun the can off the cardboard surface like an aluminum tumbleweed. It skittered across the street toward the fence at Meadowlark Elementary.

“Well, hell.”

I continued on my way, slipped the trash under the plastic lid, and then started the trek across the street; I figured that if beer cans weren’t allowed in the sheriff’s office trash, they probably shouldn’t linger next to the elementary school fence either.

The little bugger was continuing to bump against the chain-link, and it took two tries before I got hold of the thing. Feeling the weight of the day, I placed an elbow on the top bar of the fence and stood there enjoying the temperature drop of the evening. It was getting late in the season, and the nights were getting cooler. I thought about what Nancy had said about the weekend, tried to remember what my number had been, and then reminded myself to call the Bear and tell him about the honors that were being bestowed on us Friday night.

I shivered just a little and figured the first frost would be pretty soon and I’d be switching over to my felt hat. I let my mind wander again, this time to what Vic had said, wondering if it was true. Her youngest brother had married my daughter a few months back, and I was hearing from Cady less and less. Delving into a little Freudian slip of my own, I wondered if that anxiety had intertwined with my worries about being even more involved with my undersheriff lately. I didn’t consider myself a prude, but the difference in our ages and the fact that I was her boss continued to intrude on my thoughts.

She’d been even a little more volatile as of late, and I wasn’t quite sure what that was about.

I allowed my eyes to drift across the freshly mowed east lawn of Meadowlark Elementary when I noticed that somebody was swinging on the playground, his body hurtling into the freshening air, each effort accompanied by the clanking of the chains that supported the swing. He was facing in the other direction, but I could see that he was skinny, startlingly blond—and missing his pants.

2

I had to time it right because I was only going to get one chance.

Keeping behind him, I’d stealthily made my way across the lawn and could only hope that I’d be able to withstand the impact when he swung back. He probably was only a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, but he had velocity on his side.

Figuring I’d have only an instant before he sprinted for it again, I’d fastened one side of a pair of handcuffs to my own wrist and was holding the other open and ready to snap closed. By my reckoning, even as fast as he was, Orrin wasn’t going to be able to drag my two hundred and fifty pounds very far.

I was maybe ten feet behind his backward arc as he peaked and went forward. I could hear him humming as he skimmed through the air, and I ran forward to position myself a little ahead of the angle of trajectory in hopes of not absorbing the entirety of his velocity, but it didn’t really do any good.