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

I chewed on the inside of my lip and watched as the wind caught one of the plastic flowers and sent it tumbling toward us. “I’m afraid so.”

“And the adopted boys?”

I stooped and caught the blue plastic lily between my fingers. “Will be farmed out to foster homes.”

He moved up beside me and stood there, his rough-out boots near my knee. “Kind of a mess, hmm?”

Henry Standing Bear and I watched as the Division of Criminal Investigation techs carefully removed the body of Sarah Tisdale from under the roadside marker at the entrance of East Spring Ranch where her remains had been reburied. Edgar Lynear had tried to convey that to me the best he could in our conversation in Butte County, and Wanda Bidarte Lynear’s performance on the side of the road had raised my suspicions, but it had been Dale Tisdale’s remark about never laying a body to rest in the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God that had sealed the deal.

It had taken me an awfully long time to find that ungrateful child, but I finally had.

My voice sounded a little sharp as I spoke. “Most certainly a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

He said nothing for a while but then spoke gently. “There are no other bodies?”

I studied the plastic flower in my hands and twirled it by the stem. “No, thank goodness.”

The Cheyenne Nation stood there beside me, his hair loose with the breeze, and we listened to the sound of the shovels. “I think goodness had very little to do with it.”

I carried the flower toward the crowd at the edge of the police tape, looking through the half-dozen people that were curious about DCI’s undertakings, finally spotting the older woman with her arm over the young man, both of them seated on the tailgate of an International pickup.

Saizarbitoria caught the tape and lifted it, allowing us escape from the sad scene. “Ruby called and wanted to know if it would be okay to release Frymire’s personal effects to his family.”

I nodded my head. “Sure.”

“They’re planning on having the services next Thursday.”

“All right.” We both stood there having so much to say with the limited resource of language to say it. I finally came up with something we could address. “Any word on Double Tough?”

“He lost the eye.”

I nodded some more and stuffed the blue flower in my coat pocket.

“Supposedly they want to ship him back to Durant Memorial on Monday.”

“Do you mind going and getting him?”

He made a face and then smiled. “Don’t you think they’re going to want to send an ambulance?”

“I do. I also know Double Tough well enough to know that he’d rather ride with one of us.”

I moved on to Eleanor and Cord, still seated on the tailgate a little away from the tiny crowd. When I got there, they were talking between themselves in low voices, and I waited a few steps away until the owner/operator of the Short Drop Mercantile looked up.

“Sheriff.”

“Hey.” I waited, and the boy finally lifted his face to look at me, his eyes red-rimmed. “How are you doing, young man?”

He didn’t say anything, letting his gaze drop back to my legs.

Eleanor pulled him in closer. “I was telling him how you said his grandfather was very brave in confronting those men.”

“I couldn’t have done it without him.” I adjusted my hat so it blocked the sun from my eyes. “Still closing the Mercantile?”

She watched the boy closely and then turned her face to look at me. “Now that I’ve got help, I thought I’d try and keep it open.”

I smiled. “Can I talk to you privately for a moment, Mrs. Tisdale?”

She glanced at her grandson and watched as Henry sidled onto the tailgate on the other side of the youth. “Hey, Cord, did I ever tell you about the time I punched the sheriff here in grade school and loosened one of his teeth?”

He glanced at the Bear as I led Eleanor a few steps away, downwind, where the breeze would carry our words to Nebraska where no one would care what we said. She pulled up and stopped, gathering the cloth jacket she wore a little tighter around her shoulders, the pearl strand that held her glasses bumping against her exposed neck.

I took a deep breath, aware that now might not be the best time to bring up the subject but also aware that there might not be another chance. I gently placed a hand on her arm and led her even further away, finally stopping where the entrance road to the ranch tapered off into a culvert. “You sent him.”

She turned and looked at me. “What?”

“Dale Tisdale . . . Orrin Porter Rockwell, your husband—you’re the one who sent him looking for her, and that’s how he accidentally discovered your grandson.”

Her lips tensed, and we stood there looking at the DCI technicians as they brought evidence bags to the site. She took another step forward but then turned slightly to the side, and I could see her face again. “We didn’t even know he existed, but after Dale sold East Spring to that bunch I figured the least he could do was find his daughter.”

“He did more than that.”

“Yes, he did.” She gathered her fingers together and clutched them to her mouth, speaking through a fist. “I didn’t know who else to call. I knew that Dale had connections to those people, and I thought he was the only one that could find out what had happened to Sarah.” She turned the rest of the way and spoke to me, face to face. “Do you know what it’s like to have someone like that in your family?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s a living, breathing hell. You never know if they’re alive or dead, if what they’re telling you is the truth. Finally, I just gave up and decided to live my life the way I saw fit.” She stepped backward, and her eyes were fierce. “Who are you to judge me?”

“I’m not—I’m just trying to find out what happened and why.”

The fire in her eyes smoldered and then dampened as she glanced back toward the truck, where the Cheyenne Nation continued his animated storytelling by smacking a fist into his open palm.

“I killed him.”

I stepped around her and down the slope a bit to face her at eye level, as it seemed we were always finding ourselves. “He made choices; sometimes they were good ones and sometimes they were bad, but he made them himself. He was possibly the most abstract individual I’ve ever met, but he was committed.”

Rubbing a hand over my face, I could feel the resistance of a couple of days of beard growth. “I sometimes think that it’s not our enemies that we resent in life, but rather friends we have who stood quietly by and did nothing. You couldn’t say that about Dale—he threw himself into the fray over and over again.” Her head dropped, and I brought up a hand to raise her chin. “I think it was the last great adventure of his life; an opportunity for redemption. . . .” I glanced past her shoulder toward the truck, then returned my eyes to hers. “And then he got to meet his grandson.”

I looked out toward the open country beyond the collapsed chain-link fence. “A friend of mine called those made-up people that Dale became Legends. . . . I think he got caught up in that so much that he wasn’t enough for himself, but in the end I think that he rose to the occasion and became bigger than all those imaginary selves, bigger than Orrin Porter Rockwell. Dale Tisdale finally became legendary—big enough so that he could die as himself.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then studied me. “It’s a good thing you hold political office.”

I smiled back at her. “It wasn’t meant to be a speech.”

“I’m glad of that.” She stuck her hand out to me. “Friends again?”

I took her hand and put the blue plastic lily in it. “I’m not giving back the twenty-fifth volume of Bancroft’s Works , but I thought maybe I should remind you that Bishop Goodman has the Rockwell Book of Mormon.”