A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery

by Craig Johnson

  She peeled off his Minnesota Vikings ball cap and smooched his bald spot. “You in here drinking beer and watching must-see TV while your wife does all the work outside?”

  “Kinda looks like it, don’t it?” He quaffed the Grain Belt and resettled his hat. “You guys want a beer?”

  “Nah, we’re working.” I pulled out a chair and sat, as the Bear and Vic did the same. “Anything more on the boy’s mother?”

  He nodded. “A few things; the folks in that compound up north still say they don’t know who she is, but the librarian over here, Pat Engebretson, says what sounds like the same woman came in and was wanting to use the phone books to try and find a number—and that’s the one that was scribbled on the bottom of that piece of paper you’ve got.”

  “It’s her mother who hasn’t seen her in seventeen years; she lives down in Short Drop in the southern part of Absaroka.”

  Tim nodded. “Well, Pat says that some young fellers showed up in a scours-colored Chevy pickup and hustled her out of there toot sweet.”

  I studied his beer and regretted my choice not to have one. “Any idea who they were?”

  “Well, when I had my little confrontation with the kids up north, they were driving a pickup remarkably of that description.”

  Henry smiled, crossing his powerful arms across his chest. “Not showing a lot of reserve, are they?”

  Tim took a paper towel from a holder on the table and wiped up the condensation from his beer that was staining the surface of the woven place mat. “Not their style.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yup, I was up north talking to some of the ranchers where they’re running that Bakken pipeline . . .”

  Vic interrupted. “The what?”

  “Bakken shale oil pipeline from North Dakota; they’re running it through here, around the Black Hills, and then over your way and down to the crude oil storage hub in central Oklahoma—move 200,000 barrels of oil a day. At least they will when they get it finished here in a few years. Anyway, I was talking to Dale Atta, who has a ranch north of here, and he said that he saw that same truck that day up on the ridge that separates his place from theirs; that it was still there when he got done really late that evening, but that it was gone the next morning.”

  “Where’s the ranch?”

  “I can show you easier than tell you.” He pushed the beer away. “But first, I’ve got somebody I’d like you to meet.” He stood and walked to the back door. “We can walk; it’s not very far.”

  Henry, Vic, and I looked at each other and then followed Tim outside; Kate, having unloaded her barrow full of compost at the far corner by the fence, turned and wheeled past us.

  Tim raised a hand. “I’m going to introduce ’em to Vann Ross.”

  She stopped, looked at all of us, and trundled on. “This will all end badly.”

  We watched her go and then turned to look at Tim, who stroked his beard. “She doesn’t approve of this particular investigation.”

  I took a deep breath and shot it from my nose. “My wife and I had a few of those disagreements.”

  He looked at me, curious. “How did they end?”

  “Badly.”

  • • •

  Through a gate at the back, we entered what probably had been an alleyway but through disuse had evolved into an overgrown path that ran along the back of all the houses facing Hanson Park.

  As we walked, I asked, “Who’s Vann Ross?”

  Tim smiled and continued on. “Oh, I better let Vann speak for himself.”

  At the end of the block, the street butted into a hillside and there was a fence like those on the other lots, perhaps not in as good a shape, but higher. From the angle in the alley, you could see that the structure was roughly of the same vintage as the Bergs’ but had not weathered the years as well. Some of the windows were broken, and it looked as if they had been patched with sheets of cardboard. Large areas of shingles were missing from the roof, and the rusted gutters hung from the eaves.

  I watched as Tim knocked on the gate. “Hey, Vann, it’s Tim Berg and I’ve got some folks who would like to meet you.”

  There was no sound from inside.

  Vic ventured an opinion. “Maybe he’s not home.”

  Tim knocked again. “He’s always home—hey, Vann!”

  There was a noise, almost as if someone was banging away from inside an old iron bathtub, and then the sound of someone mumbling, at which point the gate nudged away from us with a metallic sound; it opened inward about four inches to reveal a very tanned and wrinkled elf in a faded pair of hibiscus-patterned, pink-and-baby-blue-colored Hawaiian shorts.

  “Hello, Timothy, how are you?”

  The sheriff nodded. “I’m good, Vann, and you?”

  “Fine, just fine.” Pulling the hair at his eyebrows, he looked past Tim toward Vic, the Cheyenne Nation, and me. “Who are your friends?”

  “Just some folks who would like to see your handiwork.”

  Vann Ross glanced at us again but especially at Henry. “They’re not from the government, are they?”

  “No.”

  He seemed satisfied and opened the door just wide enough to allow us entry.

  I have seen many strange things in my tenure as the sheriff of Absaroka County, my duty in Vietnam, and even my time spent in California, but nothing could’ve possibly prepared me for Vann Ross’s backyard. There was junk piled against the outer perimeter and poles poked up through the rubble periodically to hold up what looked to be netted camouflage, the kind we used in the military to hide vehicles, aircraft, and other equipment from surveillance planes. All of this was pretty weird but paled in comparison to what took up most of the backyard: twelve perfectly formed and frighteningly realistic spaceships.

  They were of different shapes and sizes but all made of what looked to be aircraft-grade aluminum, and there were hatchways and navigational bubbles that had been salvaged from other planes.

  Henry and I looked at each other.

  Vic mumbled. “Fuck me.”

  The spaceships looked like they had been constructed from old science-fiction drawings I’d seen on the covers of Popular Mechanics and Astonishing Stories, some elongated like futuristic cigars and others assembled into saucers that could have been poster children for the United States Air Force Blue Book.

  Vann beamed in appreciation of our stunned faces, while Tim walked over to the nearest vehicle, which was named The Dan. “Looks like you’re about to finish the last one.”

  The tiny and what I took to be at least eighty-year-old man stepped next to the sheriff and patted the riveted aluminum. “She’s almost finalized.” He smiled, revealing a set of perfect teeth. “I think she’s my best one yet.”

  The Dan had the look of a mother ship and was about thirty feet long with large, tear-shaped observation windows that were most likely cannibalized from a PBY Catalina. I walked down the length of the thing, ducking under the circumference of a nearby saucer, and looked in the windows, where I could see rows of plastic seats with tubular handles sticking out to the sides.

  “The seats are out of Subaru Brats; they had those in the beds of those little trucks. . . .”

  “I remember.” Still running a hand over his creation, I nodded. He pointed toward the aerodynamic stabilizers at the rear of the ship. “Of course, when it’s finished I’ll stand it up on its end for takeoff.”

  “Of course.” I took the extra moment to get a good look at him and studied his face. He was definitely in his eighties, but the bone structure was fine. There was a small dimple at the end of his nose and curls of gray hair escaped from under a formless hat that might’ve been a Stetson Gun Club at some point. Evidently he spent a great deal of time out of doors, working in the reflection of the spaceships, because his skin was roasted like a coffee bean. “You did all of these yourself, Mr. Ross?”

  He nodded, and his voice took on a fervent quality as he again plucked at his eyebrows. “I did; each one is named for one of t
he twelve tribes of Israel.”

  Henry joined us, and I glanced at Tim, but he was looking at the toes of his boots and smiling. “How long have you been at it?”

  “Since 1957.”

  The Bear nodded his head solemnly. “Amazing.”

  I looked carefully up and down the thing, but for the life of me I couldn’t see any air intakes or exhaust ports. “Where are the engines?”

  He smiled at my naïveté. “It doesn’t need them; it will ascend by divine power.”

  “Ahh.”

  He looked around. “I’m sorry to be so careful. I sometimes liberate parts from Ellsworth Air Force Base on the other side of Rapid City, and I’m afraid they’ve taken exception to my combing through their salvage yard over the years.”

  I fingered a seam. “I bet.”

  He noticed my interest. “I’ve used Ace Hardware heavy-duty gutter caulking to stand up to the rigors of interplanetary travel.”

  I concurred, sage-like. “A wise precaution.” He seemed to want more, so I added, “My father used to say that extra dollar a tube is always worth it.”

  He fussed with his eyebrows yet again. “You see, Adam will return to Earth to take us away within the rapture and convey us to the twelve planets that have been reserved for us.”

  “Wow.” I really wasn’t sure of what else to say.

  His eyes were drawn back to Henry. “Yes, and when the great battle arises between the races of black and white, he will return and those who are true believers will be taken with him.”

  The Bear looked at the elf. “That would be Adam, of Adam and Eve fame?”

  “Yes.” He patted Henry’s arm. “You see, the Lamanites are going to help us overcome the Coloreds.”

  Henry and I looked at each other. “And have we got a timeline on that?”

  He seemed a little disappointed that I’d asked and was giving his eyebrow hell. “It was supposed to be the millennium in 2000; there were a couple chances before that one, but it was the big one. Then in 2003 we were not struck by the planet Nibiru. . . .”

  “Right.” I nodded as Vic and Tim joined us.

  “December 21st, 2012, didn’t work out either, but I haven’t lost hope.”

  Henry nodded in a comforting fashion. “One should always have faith.”

  Vic interrupted. “Vann, Tim here was telling me about your wonderful talent, the one with dogs?”

  He turned back to me, nodding with a great deal of enthusiasm. “In my free time, I teach dogs how to talk. I use mental telepathy and can get them to say words like hello, squirrel, and hamburger.”

  • • •

  “He’s a relatively harmless old eccentric who keeps to himself and writes editorials to the newspaper as the One, Mighty and Strong, the Lion of Judah, and the King of Israel. He also calls in on local radio shows a lot.”

  Vic pursed her lips. “Hell, I’d tune in for that.”

  “You saw how tanned he is?”

  We were walking back to Tim’s house on the return route in the alleyway. “Yep, I figured he got it working on the saucers; did he do all the aluminum work, welding, and riveting himself?”

  Henry piped up. “And caulking, do not forget the caulking.”

  Tim nodded his head and stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. “He did—he’s very popular around the neighborhood; you bring him anything and he can fix it. But did you see his tan?” Berg stopped and turned sideways to look at us. “Well, he wasn’t always so popular around here. About twenty years ago the One, Mighty and Strong back there got a revelation from God saying the true believers were going to be taken to the City of Enoch on the North Star. Supposedly God tells Vann that they need to prepare for the journey by protecting themselves from getting burned on reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, so they should get a good, all-over suntan.”

  Vic covered her face with a hand. “Have you ever noticed it’s the people you don’t want to see naked who are always taking their clothes off?”

  “Uh-huh.” Tim continued walking, and we followed. “As the story goes, Vann was married at the time to two women, Noemi and Big Wanda, and they had some kids—well, there they all were up on the roof of the house with no clothes on; caused quite a stir.”

  “I bet.”

  “They started praying up a storm for God to send ’em a flying saucer in the middle of the night, and when that didn’t happen, Vann told ’em that he might’ve missed the landing spot and that they should all go over to the city park and wait for the spaceship.” Tim stopped at his gate and undid the latch. “The old sheriff, Pete Anderson, said things must’ve gotten pretty busy over there ’cause Big Wanda claimed to have had sex with an extraterrestrial, which Vann interpreted as her being resurrected, whereupon he got another revelation that they should pass the resurrecting around by having sex first with one of his wives and then the other. Evidently, it was only when he got divine instructions to have sex with his dog that he started having his doubts.”

  Tim went inside as Vic turned to me and the Bear. “You know what I said about all the crazy people being in our county?”

  “Yep.”

  “I take it all back.”

  We followed Tim through the gate—I stopped to make sure the latch was secured.

  To my surprise, Kate was sitting under an umbrella at a round table with five glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. She and Tim were in conference as he pulled out a chair and sat.

  “. . . Because it’s my job.”

  She shook her head as we joined them. “He’s just a harmless old man, and I don’t see why it is that you had to go down there and get him all wound up.”

  “We didn’t wind him up; besides, he likes showing off his spaceships.” He glanced at Vic. “Especially to pretty girls. You gotta admit it’s much better than ‘You wanna come up and see my etchings?’”

  “Yeah, as lines go.” Vic swirled her ice cubes with her tongue. “What’s a Lamanite?”

  The Cheyenne Nation poured himself a glass and handed me the pitcher. “Lamanites are American Indians, sworn enemy to the Nephites, both of which, according to the Book of Mormon, are descendants from the persecuted Jews of Jerusalem who migrated to America in 600 B.C.”

  I smiled and poured myself an iced tea. “So, you’re Jewish?”

  “Imagine my surprise.” He squeezed a piece of lemon into his tea and continued. “There was a war between the two tribes in 428 A.D. and we, the Lamanites, wiped out the Nephites. Then, about fourteen hundred years later, an angel by the name of Moroni, son of Mormon, a Nephite, reveals himself to Joseph Smith and gives him the golden plates to translate.”

  Vic leaned into me. “You know that part about Catholicism being crazy?”

  “Yep.”

  “I take all that back, too.”

  The Bear set his glass on the table with a sense of finality. “And that is how Mormonism began.”

  Tim looked suspicious. “How come you know so much about Mormons?”

  “I read the Book of Mormon in the truck from Durant to Belle Fourche.”

  Berg ran a hand through his beard. “That’s a lot of reading.”

  “I am a quick study.”

  I interrupted the theological conference. “The visit with Vann Ross was all pretty entertaining, Tim, but I was just wondering why we went up there?”

  “Well, I got to thinking about that bunch from north of town, especially when I saw that same scours-yellow truck heading down our street. Hell, Vann Ross’s been around here since, like he said, in the fifties.” He thought about it. “Except, I think there was a stint at a mental hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. . . .”

  Kate’s voice was a little sharp. “Your point?”

  “Well, I remember when we had to pick him up for the little fiasco in the park and did the paperwork. Hell, everybody around here called him Vann or Mr. Ross for so long I don’t think anybody knew his last name.”

  Her voice grew even sharper. “Which is?”

  Tim’s eyes clicked
to mine. “Lynear.”

  Vic was the first to react. “Oh, crap.”

  Tim nodded. “Yup.”

  “So he’s related to the individuals you had the run-in with and the one we met in Short Drop?”

  “His son is Roy, the one you were telling me about, and Roy’s sons are George over in your county and Ronald in mine.”

  “Oh, boy.” Vic coughed a laugh. “Okay, so we’ve got space cadet Vann Ross, the king of all loonies, living down the street, one crazy grandson living on a compound here in Butte County, and the son and another grandson who have taken up residence in our county, with a fifteen-year-old who’s also a grandson, somehow tangled up in all of this?”

  I sipped my iced tea. “Yep.”

  Henry pulled his dark hair back and captured it in the leather tie he kept in his shirt pocket for just such occasions. “Are all of them as . . . colorful, as Mr. Vann Ross Lynear?”

  We all, with the exception of Kate, nodded.

  “My question, then, would be what is the crime we are investigating?”

  I thought about it. “Right now, I’m focusing on the missing mother, Sarah Tisdale.”

  Henry grunted. “Hhnh. And our next step would be?”

  I turned to look at him and then Tim. “You say a rancher with a place adjacent saw members of the compound up there fooling around?”

  “He did.”

  “Was it on his property or theirs?”

  “Unfortunately, theirs.”

  I leaned back in my chair and listened to it creak in protest. “What are the chances of us getting a warrant?”

  “In the greater flourishing of time.”

  “That’s the problem with warrants, isn’t it?” I turned and looked at both Vic and the Cheyenne Nation. “Do you know that we are at the geographic center of the entire United States?”

  She glanced at Tim and Kate and then back to me. “You’re not having the urge to build spaceships, are you?”

  “Belle Fourche, South Dakota, is the geographic center of the United States.”

  Vic continued to look doubtful. “I thought that was Kansas.”

  “That’s contiguous, but since 1959 . . .”