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

I had slept on it again, as there wasn’t any room anywhere else. The hard wood, barely covered with a thin pad and threadbare carpeting, was killing my back, but at least I had had company. I reached over and scratched the belly of the beast that happened to be sleeping with his paws in the air, which displayed his more personal attributes. “He’s very faithful.”

Looking nowhere near as tired as I felt, she sat with her back against the bookcase. “So am I, and look what it gets me.”

“Were you up all night?”

She shuffled the papers in her lap. “Yes.”

I peeled the blanket back and started to stretch; my back ached but not nearly as much as my left knee, which had been worrying me since my adventures on the mountain last May. I rolled over and looked at her, still equipped with the bad-hair-day cap from last night. “You wear it better than I do.”

She glanced at me and then reached down and, giving me a nonverbal critique on the current state of my hair, handed me my hat. “I was just booking and researching scumbags, you were having the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, I am to understand.” She kept looking at me and grinned. “As your undersheriff, it is my duty to inform you that you are looking more and more like an unmade bed.”

I propped myself up on one elbow and placed my smoky, water-stained hat on my head. “Better?”

“An unmade bed at, say, Bob’s Flophouse by the river.”

I yawned. “Right.”

“The kind you rent an hour at a time?”

“Got it.”

She nodded as if she’d finished a report. “I have news.”

I pointed at the stack of papers. “It looks like.”

“More important than this crap.”

I struggled my way into a sitting position, which disturbed Dog, who also rose, licked my face, then gingerly stepped over Vic, and, likely in search of a second or third breakfast, disappeared out the door. “What could be more important than this?”

“Like Lazarus risen from the grave . . . Double Tough is alive.”

I turned and stared at her. I’d been thinking about nothing else as I’d drifted in and out of sleep all morning, half-convincing myself that what had happened last night hadn’t, but it just wouldn’t wash. “If this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

She shook her head. “They hit him with the defibrillator in the EMT van and the fucker popped back to life—I swear to God.” She turned and sat Indian-style. “They say that Henry breathing for him all that time must’ve kept him going long enough for them to bring him back with a couple thousand volts. I told him he probably had a disease from all the places that the Bear’s mouth had been.”

I could feel the swelling of heat behind my eyes and a ballooning in my chest as I sat there—almost as if coming back from the dead myself. “He can talk?”

“No, at least not yet.” The emotion was about to overwhelm her, too, but she laughed and wiped a bit of moisture from the corner of one eye—I had the feeling she wasn’t telling me everything. “I mean, he’s half covered with second- and third-degree burns, and he’s going to lose the eye—but he’s alive.”

I felt a tear streak down the side of my face and watched as she half-sobbed another laugh.

“Uh oh, the waterbed has sprung a leak.” She put her hand on my face and continued smiling, even as the tears were now streaking her own. “He squeezed my hand, you know, when I told him about getting cooties from Henry. I mean he’s screwed up; nobody goes through something like that without sustaining some kind of brain damage and with him how can you tell, but he squeezed my hand when I was joking with him.”

“Billings?”

She looked at her wristwatch. “No, Denver. They’re taking off with him in about an hour if you want to go up to the airport and see him off.”

“I do.” I pushed the blanket away and slowly stood. “That’s two out of his nine lives that we know about.”

She glanced back toward the reception/dispatcher area. “Everybody wanted to wake you up and tell you, but Ruby wouldn’t let us. So I waited till you turned over.”

“I don’t think I turned over.”

“I don’t care.” She smiled fully, crinkling her eyes and showing that canine tooth to full advantage, wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and took her customary seat. “You got the good news; you want the bad news now or when we head to the airport?”

“Now.” I again pointed at the stack of papers. “This stuff?”

She shook her head. “The elusive Orrin the Mormon is once again at large.”

“Junior or Senior; please don’t say both.”

“Cousin Itt.”

I slumped into my chair. “This is getting embarrassing.”

There was more than a little accusation in the next statement. “It’s because we’re running the place like a revolving door; the kid is in and out going to work, and the two of them are endlessly watching My Friend Fucking Flicka , so you turn your back for an instant and he takes French leave.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighed. “I mean he’s relatively harmless, or as harmless as you can be when armed like a commando, but it’s starting to insult the credibility and professionalism of the department; I think it reflects badly when schizophrenic derelicts and arrested peoples are using the jail like the Kum & Go.”

I smiled. “Agreed.”

“We looked for him in the beds of all the trucks.”

“Good thinking.”

Her face came up, and the smile had returned. “Double Tough’s alive.”

I laughed. “Yep.”

She came around the desk and roosted in front of me, but this time I kept a hand on the edge, determined not to have a repeat of the Flying Wallendas. She leaned forward and put her arms around my shoulders, pulling me in. Despite all common sense, I found my own arms rising up and folding around her in a return embrace and thought about what this might lead to if we had been at my cabin. Her lips tickled my ear as she whispered, “I’m not sure if I’m happier that he’s alive or that I don’t have to watch what you were going to do to yourself.”

I pulled back and placed my forehead against hers. “Thank you.”

She softly head-butted me and then leaned back a respectable distance, placing her hands on the stack of papers that she had placed on the desk. “Speaking of people trying to get out of jail . . .”

“They didn’t escape, too, did they?”

“No, they’re doing it the old-fashioned way, with lawyers—makes Orrin the Mormon’s technique seem honest and forthright.” She stood and looked down at me. “You want some coffee? I want some coffee.”

I nodded my head as she went out, calling after her, “Big lawyers?”

The answer ricocheted off the hallway walls. “Shephard, Baldwin, Coveny, and Spencer over in Jackson.”

“Gary Spencer?”

After a moment she came back in with two mugs. “The big dog hisself.”

“Well, hell.”

She sat the coffees on my desk and thumbed through the papers. “They’re suing the county, the department, and mostly you for unlawful arrest, excessive force, harassment . . . all of which is supported by your actions in South Dakota and in the bar last night.” She picked up her new Philadelphia Flyers cup—the hockey season had just started—and sipped her coffee. “You’ve got to stop hitting people.”

I sipped my own and thought about my actions as of late. “There was only one or two . . .”

“Three, including the chopping and channeling you did to Gloss’s nose—twice.”

I tried not to look her in the eye. “That second time was an accident.”

“Tell it to the judge.” She set her mug down and continued perusing the papers. “They’ve pretty much called you everything but a Baptist and say you sleep with your dog—which I wouldn’t have believed until I came in here this morning.”