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

Also by Craig Johnson

The Cold Dish

Death Without Company

Kindness Goes Unpunished

Another Man’s Moccasins

The Dark Horse

Junkyard Dogs

Hell Is Empty

As the Crow Flies

For N.B. East (1938–2011),

who taught me how important the words are.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!

KING LEAR , ACT 1, SCENE 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Every once in a while you’ve got to step into the epic, even if it means getting your boots a little muddy; what I know about religion, gas, oil, and Hughes drill bits you could put on the head of a Polycrystalline diamond, but I was fortunate enough to get help from the folks down at the Casper office of the Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission to steer me in the right directions so that I could sip from the Teapot Dome.

Also helpful were Drew Goodman, who helped me with the religious implications of handling the snakes, David Nickerson, who held the medical kit, and Benj Horack for the .410 snake charmer.

The Teapot Dome Oil Field is a wild place and you need snake gaiters on your boots and a trusty shovel, but it’s even better to have serpentine guides like my own Gail “Coral Snake” Hochman, and Marianne “Diamondback Rattler” Merola. Winding their way through the editing is Kathryn “King Cobra” Court and Tara “Tiger Snake” Singh, copyeditor Barbara “Black Mamba” Campo and Scott “Desert Horned Viper” Cohen. The open road can also be dangerous but not when you’ve got a pack of charmers like Carolyn “Copperhead” Coleburn, Maureen “Multibanded Krait” Donnelly, Ben “Puff Adder” Petrone and Angie “Anaconda” Messina.

And, as always, the little Asp I always hold to my breast, Judy.

1

I stared at the black-and-orange corsage on Barbara Thomas’s lapel so that I wouldn’t have to look at anything else.

I don’t like funerals, and a while ago I just stopped going to them. I think the ceremony is a form of denial, and when my wife died and my daughter, Cady, informed me that she was unaware of any instance where going to somebody’s funeral ever brought them back, I just about gave it up.

Mrs. Thomas had been the homecoming queen when Truman made sure that the buck stopped with him, which explained the somewhat garish ornament pinned on her prim and proper beige suit. Next week was the big game between the Durant Dogies and their archrival, the Worland Warriors, and the whole town was black-and-orange crazy.

The only thing worse than going to the funeral of someone you knew is going to the funeral of a person you didn’t; you get to stand there and be told about somebody you had never met, and all I ever feel is that I missed my chance.

I had missed my chance with Dulcie Meriwether, who had been one of Durant’s fine and upstanding women—after all, I’m the sheriff of Absaroka County, so the fine and upstanding often live and pass beyond my notice. On a fine October afternoon I leaned against the railing leading to the First Methodist Church, not so much to praise Dulcie Meriwether—or to bury her—but rather to talk about angels.

I reached out and straightened Barbara Thomas’s corsage.

One of the jobs of an elected official in Wyoming is to understand one’s constituency and listen to people—help them with their problems—even if they’re bat-shit crazy. I was listening to Barbara tell me about the angels who were currently assisting her with home repair, which I took as proof that she had passed the entrance exam to that particular belfry.

I glanced at Mike Thomas, who had asked me to bushwhack his aunt on this early high plains afternoon. He wanted me to talk to her and figured the only way he could arrange running into me was by having me stand outside the church and wait for the two of them as they departed for a late lunch after the service.

I was trying not to look at the other person leaning on the railing with me, my undersheriff, Victoria Moretti, who, although she was trying to work off a hangover from too much revelry at the Basque Festival bacchanal the night before, had decided to take advantage of my being in town on a Sunday. The only person left to look at was Barbara, eighty-two years old, platinum hair coiffed to perfection, and, evidently, mad as a hatter.

“So, when did the angels pitch in and start working around your place, Mrs. Thomas?”

“Call me Barbara, Walter.” She nodded her head earnestly, as if she didn’t want us to think she was crazy.

As Vic would say, “Good luck with that.”

“About two weeks ago I made a little list and suddenly the railing on the front porch was fixed.” She leveled a malevolent glance at the well-dressed cowboy in the navy blazer and tie to my left, her youngest nephew. “It’s difficult to get things done around home since Michael lives so far away.”

As near as I could remember, Mike’s sculpture studio was right at the edge of town, and I knew he lived only two miles east, but that was between the two of them. I adjusted the collar of my flannel shirt, enjoying the fact that I wasn’t in uniform today, figuring it was going to be the extent of my daily pleasure. “So, the angels came and fixed the railing?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

She nodded again, enthusiastically. “Lots of things—they unclogged my gutters, rehung the screen door on the back porch, and fixed the roof on the pump house.”

Vic sighed. “Jesus, you wanna send ’em over to my place?”

I ignored my undersheriff, which was difficult to do. She was wearing a summer dress in an attempt to forestall the season, and a marvelous portion of her tanned legs was revealed above her boots and below the hem. “Have you ever actually seen the angels, Mrs. Thomas?”

“Barbara, please.” She shook her head, indulging my lack of knowledge of all things celestial. “They don’t work that way.”

“So, how do they work?”

She placed the palms of her hands together and leaned forward. “I make my little list, and the things just get done. It’s a sign of divine providence.”

Vic mumbled under her breath. “It’s a sign of divine senility.”

Barbara Thomas continued without breaking stride. “I have a notebook where I number the things that have to be done in order of importance, then I leave it on the room divider and presto.” She leaned back and beamed at me. “He works in mysterious ways.” She paused for a moment to glance at the church looming over my shoulder and then altered the subject. “You used to go to services here, didn’t you, Walter?”

“Yes, ma’am, I used to accompany my late wife.”

“But you haven’t been since she passed away?”

I took a deep breath to relieve the tightness in my chest the way I always did when anybody brought up the subject of Martha. “No, ma’am. We had an agreement that she’d take care of the next world if I took care of this one.” I glanced at Mike as he smoothed his mustache and tried not to smile. “And there seems to be enough to hold my attention here lately.” I turned my eyes back to her. “So you haven’t ever seen them?”

“Seen who?”

“The holy handymen, for Christ’s sake.”

Barbara looked annoyed. “Young lady, you need to watch your language.”

I drew Barbara’s attention away from a sure-shot, head-on, verbal train wreck. “So you haven’t actually seen the angels then?”

“No.” She thought about it and stared at the cracks in the sidewalk, the strands of struggling grass having abandoned the hope of pushing through. “They do take some food out of the icebox every now and again.”