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

Stepping around Vic and back onto the landing, I reached up and pulled the short cord, lowering the folding stairs, and flipped the bottom section down, placing the spring-loaded rails on the scuffed, worn floor. I put a foot on one of the treads to test if it would hold my weight and then gripped the rails and started up.

It was dark in the attic, but there was a string hanging within arm’s reach, so I pulled it, immediately illuminating the rafters with no insulation.

I backed down the steps and looked at the two of them. “Dead raccoon.”

Vic smiled. “Natural causes?”

I glanced at Henry, but he was no longer paying attention.

“I’d wash my hands if I were you.”

Vic started down the steps, and I spoke in a low voice. “I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.”

She stopped and turned as Henry continued downward. “Look, it was a perfectly reasonable line of inquiry, all right?”

“I was just joking.”

She turned and started off again. “Wasn’t funny.”

There was a scream from downstairs, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the Cheyenne Nation. Vic leapt down the steps Glock-first, and I even found my hand on my sidearm as I half-leapt, half-tumbled down the steps after her. There was a young woman standing in the entryway with a pizza box on the floor at her feet and the Bear with a hand out in an attempt to quiet her. She screamed again when she saw us but then placed a hand on her chest and leaned against the wall in an attempt to catch her breath.

Vic holstered her weapon and looked back at me. “The fiancée.”

Figuring it was my party by default and that I should welcome her to it, I stepped past Vic and Henry, and stuck out a hand of my own. “I’m really sorry about this; I’m Walt Longmire, Chuck’s boss.”

Her hand stayed on her chest, and she breathed deeply, finally pulling some of the blondish-brown hair away from her face. “Grace Salinas.”

I smiled. “Hi, Grace.” I looked down at the box leaking pepperoni and melted cheese. “Sorry about the pizza.”

“Oh, it was some promotion they were supposed to be having over at the Sinclair station. They called and said we’d won a free pizza and that we could come over and pick it up, but when I got there, I had to pay for it. Not much of a promotion.” She smiled back but then looked concerned. “You’re here about the shooting?”

Vic and the Bear glanced at me, and I continued to look at her. “Shooting . . .”

“This morning—the raccoon?”

“The dead one in the attic?”

“I told him not to shoot it, but it was keeping us up at night. He killed it this morning—I figured you were here because of that.”

“Not precisely, but is Chuck around?”

She glanced in the living room as if he should have been there. “He’s here somewhere; I just ran out to get the pizza.” She stooped and began scooping the pie back in the box. “If he went back to bed . . .”

“I don’t think so; we were just up there.”

She stooped for the box and started past us toward the kitchen. “Well, he’s got to be around here somewhere.”

Saizarbitoria was standing in front of the closed back door next to a table and chair; he leaned on the facing and smiled a stiff smile. The young woman considered him and then turned back to me. “Boy, the gang’s all here. Really, is there something wrong?”

Sancho widened his eyes in the brief instant we had before she turned back and looked at him. I, in turn, made strong eye contact with Vic.

“Excuse me, Grace?”

Her eyes returned to me. “Yes?”

“How about you accompany my undersheriff back out front for a moment—I’ve got some things I need to discuss with Sancho.”

“Sure.” She studied me for a while and then started off as Vic followed her out. “I just can’t figure where he got to.”

The Basquo waited until he was sure she was gone and then stepped back, opening the door behind him enough so that I could see Frymire, in a pair of boots and a bathrobe, lying in the backyard with a shovel still in his hands.

14

Saizarbitoria, the low man on the totem pole, drew the duty, and I sent him to wait with Grace in her car until the Ferg and the Powder River EMTs arrived. Ferg would drive the distraught young woman home to Sheridan, and Sancho would stay with Frymire.

The rest of us were kneeling beside my deputy’s body and trying to piece together what had happened. “He shot the raccoon, went down to dig a hole in the backyard, and somebody caught him out there?”

The Cheyenne Nation carefully lifted the flannel bathrobe, saturated with blood. “With a knife, a very large one, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.” He released the robe, and we watched as it settled back against the dead man’s body. “Between the second and third ribs, up and to the side—professional.”

I thought about the conversation I had had with Lockhart on the boardwalk in front of The Noose, and about professionalism, but mostly I thought about Bidarte and the knife that he’d stuck in the pole between Henry and me.

The Bear looked toward the stream, where the assailant would’ve most likely set up observation. “He waited, watched the house, called, and when she went out for the pizza, he went in.”

Vic continued for him. “And when he wasn’t in the house, caught him digging a hole in the backyard. But why was the door of his truck left open, the front door, the back door . . . and why take the chance and leave her alive?”

I nodded toward the house. “She was supposed to find him.”

Henry sighed. “And call you.”

I watched as Vic’s jaw set, the way it always did before the storm. “This was a delaying tactic?”

I stood. “They’re counting on this slowing us down enough so that they can clean up and get out of here or at the least get the lawyers between them and us.”

“They didn’t have a reason to kill Double Tough, but they had one to kill Frymire?” She stood. “What makes you think they’re not already done and gone?”

I pointed at Frymire’s body. “This.”

“So, now what?”

The Cheyenne Nation also stood. “We go after them.”

The elongated canine tooth trapped part of her lower lip as she smiled at both of us. “Now we’re talking.”

We piled in my truck, and Vic flipped up the center console in order to sit in the middle to allow the Bear to have her coveted shotgun seat. She stared at the dash as Henry slammed the door behind him, lodging the butt of the shotgun between his feet.

“Something?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’re not suspecting one of us now, are you?”

She stared at the dash, still distracted. I waited for a moment and then started the truck, spinning around on the other side of the bridge and flipping on my lights and siren as her hand came up. “Why try and kill Double Tough?”

I rocketed down Powder Junction’s main street, a smattering of traffic darting for the curbs so that I could pass. “We’re not on that again, are we?”

She made a sound and threatened me with the hand as I waited, glancing at Henry, the two of us at a loss.

“Something he said.”

“Who?”

“Double Tough. What’d he say about last night?”

I made the turn onto 192 and headed southeast. “Nothing important—he said he didn’t see or hear anything.”

“Before that, he said something about a traffic stop.” We were just passing the burnt wreckage when she slapped me in the chest. “Stop!”

I hit the brakes. “What?”

She gestured toward the ex-station. “Pull in here—pull in!”

I did as she said and watched as she crawled over Henry, yanked the door open, and ran toward what was left of the structure.