A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery

by Craig Johnson

  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.”

  “How long?”

  “We might hold them till the end of the day, but then they’re going to post and walk.”

  I sipped some more coffee. “Can Verne stall on setting bail?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, he heard the name Gary Spencer and folded like a card table at a bake sale in a high wind.”

  “They’ve got a lot of money.”

  “I know; I’ve seen their armaments.”

  “No, I mean a lot of money.”

  “More than you can make at a bake sale?”

  “Enough to try and buy me off last night.”

  “I’ve bought you off before.” She shrugged and picked up her mug again, winking over the lip. “Cheap.” She continued studying me. “A lot a lot?”

  “Yep.”

  “What, are they printing hundreds down there at East Spring Ranch?”

  “Maybe.” I sighed and sipped some more; apparently it was helping. “They also seemed to know an awful lot about me.”

  “Who?”

  “Lockhart.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “The quiet man?”

  “Up until last night; he got real talkative on the porch of The Noose.”

  “He probably thought you were going to hang him.”

  I pulled the ATM slip from my shirt pocket and handed it to her. “He made a convincing argument that he and his group had nothing to do with setting fire to the sheriff’s substation.”

  “Just this? ’Cause this can mean that just one of them was there.”

  “No, Eleanor says they were there the whole evening.”

  “Then it was somebody else from the group; I mean, how many of them are there down there in that nest?”

  “That’s a good question.” I reached over to my coatrack, pulled my jacket on, and slipped the warrant from the inside pocket. “I think I’ll find out.”

  She continued sipping her coffee, and I watched the wheels turn as she watched my wheels turn. “What are you thinking about?”

  “What you said, about the number of people down there.” I unfurled the fax like a Biblical scroll. “Have you ever seen any women or children in the compound down at East Spring?”

  “Personally, I’ve only gotten as close as the Mexican Grand Prix at the front gate.” She thought about it. “We saw some over in Butte County—the rat patrol and the girl at the table—but not here.” She thought some more and ventured. “So far, Big Wanda is it.”

  I nodded and came around the desk with her following. “There were clothes out on the line at the house and toys in the yard, but I didn’t see any women or children.”

  “It was in the middle of the night when you went back there.”

  “Maybe that’s it.” Waiting at her office door while she grabbed her own coat, I rolled the warrant up and stuffed it back into my jacket. “But maybe not.”

  “Something else.”

  I stopped and looked at her. “What?”

  “They’re expanding their operation. I put out a query and got contacted by the sheriff departments of both Garden County, Nebraska, and Hodgeman County, Kansas.”

  I thought about it. “Why in the world would they need all these compounds stretched across the Rocky Mountain West down to Oklahoma?”

  She shrugged and passed me in the doorway. “I guess that bake sale business is good.”

  • • •

  Saizarbitoria and Henry were sipping coffee in the dispatcher/reception area as Ruby talked on the phone. The Bear looked a little tired, and I told him so.

  “Not as bad as you do.”

  I nodded. “I guess you kept my deputy alive long enough for them to jump-start him.”

  The Cheyenne Nation smiled. “Yes.”

  “We’re going up to the airport to see him off—you want to come?”

  “I need to call The Red Pony to make sure somebody can cover for me.”

  I sometimes forgot about the Bear’s going concern, his bar out by the Rez. “We’ll tell him you send your love.”

  He continued to smile and shook his head in mock sorrow. “Please tell Double Tough that I do not think it is going to work out between us, but that we will always have Powder Junction.”

  “Lunch at the Bee for a planning meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  I started down the steps. “See both of you in a half hour.”

  “Walt?”

  Ruby’s voice froze me two steps down. “Yep?”

  “Dottie over at the courthouse says a platoon of lawyers just hit the beachhead at Verne’s office, led by Gary Spencer himself.”

  Vic looked up at me. “Change of plan?”

  I glanced at the Basquo and the Bear. “Change of plan. Meet us in Powder Junction in an hour.”

  The phone rang and Ruby stared at it, then at me. “And if I should be confronted with the posse of lawyers and the second greatest legal mind of our time?”

  I shrugged. “Get an autograph; just make sure it’s not on a subpoena.”

  • • •

  He looked like hell. They had him so bandaged up it was almost impossible to tell who he was, but the one eye looked directly at me as they rolled him on a gurney under the slowly rotating blades of the helicopter. “How you doin’, troop?”

  The bandages pulled at one side.

  “So you want me to find you a co-deputy down in Powder Junction, blonde, about five-seven?”

  He actually nodded.

  “I’ll handle the interviews myself.”

  Vic punched my arm as the engine kicked in, and they loaded him into the elaborate confines of the medical chopper, locking the gurney to the floor. We both joined him until they were ready to take off and were grinning like possums. I leaned my face down next to his, just so I could speak and have him hear me. “I know you’re hurting, but I’ve got to find out—did you see or hear anything last night?”

  His voice was ragged and breathy. “Quiet.” Maybe I was doing nothing but assuring myself that he could still speak, but his words became stronger. “Stopped a few milk trucks trying to avoid the scales and bunch of kids earlier, gave a warning, speeding, gave drunk ride home, read a little, went to bed, nine. . . .” He tried to move an arm, but they had him pretty well trussed up. “Next thing, woke up in van.”

  I smiled and placed my mouth next to his ear again and spoke over the roaring of the helicopter. “Good thing; if you’d awakened with Henry’s mouth on you, you might’ve suffered irreparable psychological damage.”

  The EMTs pushed us away, and I took Vic’s arm and ushered the both of us back to my truck, parked at a safe distance. I hung on to my hat as the blast of the engine lifted the thing skyward and it hovered there for a moment before pivoting and climbing in a direct line along the mou
ntains, headed south.

  She shielded her eyes out past the bill of her cap and watched the flight-for-life get up to speed at about a hundred and fifty feet. “What’d he say?”

  “Nothing special, a few traffic stops on some milk trucks, some kids, a drunk, and home and cot by nine.”

  “What did you expect? They’re CIA, this is what they do.”

  I turned and looked at her. “Are they CIA?”

  She walked around the front of my truck. “C’mon, if you’ve got a quarter, I’ll give you the audiobook version on the way to Powder Junction.”

  I took the bypass and jumped on the highway in an attempt to avoid the county courthouse and the litigious dangers that lurked there. Ruby’s voice sounded from my radio.

  Static. “Walt?”

  Vic started to reach for the mic, but I raised my hand and stopped her. “Wait.”

  Static. “Walt, it’s Ruby.”

  Vic studied me. “What?”

  “Wait.”

  Static. “Walt?”

  I boosted my speed up to a hundred and hit the light bar. “Have you ever known Ruby to not use impeccable radio procedure?”

  Vic looked at the two-way. “They’re there.”

  “Yep.”

  Static. “Walt, if you can hear me, make a stop somewhere and call in.” There were some voices in the background and then Ruby again, this time a little sharp. “He doesn’t have a cell phone.”

  The radio went dead, and Vic settled in with her papers still in her lap as I pulled out past an eighteen-wheel tanker and shot by, easing back into the right lane. “Are you going to hit the siren?”

  “They’ll hear it at the courthouse.”

  “My, aren’t you crafty.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  She pulled her lipstick container from her shirt pocket. “The sample powder we took on the ridge in South Dakota did turn out to be quick lime.”

  “So, if they killed her and buried her there, they moved her?”

  She looked at the papers in her lap. “Yeah, I mean if this stuff was on the surface . . . But where?”

  I reached over and tapped the stack. “What else have you got?”

  “Nothing.”

  I glanced at her. “Nothing?”

  “Yeah, but it’s the pattern of nothing that’s interesting. All of these guys have state or federal connections, assorted former jobs with the State Department, various think tanks. . . .”

  “I refuse to believe that Gloss was a part of any think tank.”

  “Energy. He was involved with the oil industry in Oklahoma, then overseas in Iraq, Iran. . . . Even had a few fingers in Venezuela, Bolivia, and, of course, Mexico.”

  “What about Lockhart?”

  “He was the one in State and even served on a few influential Pentagon policy panels, but then he jumped ship and started working for a Texas-based corporate intelligence agency called the Boggs Institute that bills itself as a shadow CIA—which to me sounds like shadow bullshit. They engaged him as a chief geopolitical strategist, and I guess he was quite an asset for them with little ol’ clients like the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and the Marines.”

  “My Marines?”

  “Your Marines; I thought you’d enjoy that. Anyway, it was all milk and honey until those intelligence leaks a few years back when the Boggs Institute was exposed as just a bunch of money-grubbing assholes.” She read from one of the sheets. “‘With a geographical determinism that a lot of people mistook for predictive powers.’”

  “What Henry Kissinger used to refer to as geopolitics?”

  She nodded as she continued reading. “‘The supposed amoral, dispassionate concern with national interests like mineral and energy access.’”

  “What happened to this marriage made in hell?”

  “Some of Lockhart’s e-mails got leaked—a bunch of connections to a lot of CEOs of some really big corporations.”

  I thought about it. “Seems like that would just add to his worth.”

  “Not these leaked e-mails, which also included handy information for high-powered business travelers in search of brothels in Eastern Europe and Asia that specialized in child prostitution.”

  She glanced at me, but I didn’t say anything.

  “The Boggs Institute dropped him like a hot Mr. Potato Head, but he got picked up by a consortium of import/export businesses that dealt with consumer goods.”

  My hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Has the ring of legitimacy.”

  “Until they started expanding into tanker ships and crude oil; they reported more than a few shipments light, and Lockhart was called on the carpet before the Securities and Exchange Commission and put on notice. He supposedly retired shortly after that.”

  “Free to pursue his other sordid interests?”

  She sighed. “There’s also a little more on Gloss, but it doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “What did you find?”

  “The only criminal activity on the guy is a censorship by the Texas Gas and Oil Conservation Commission concerning some work he was doing in Mexico. I guess he was subpoenaed and gave sealed testimony to the Texans before they gave him the boot and told him he could never do business in the Lone Star State again.”

  “Must’ve been something pretty bad.”

  “For Texans to not want to do business with you? No shit.” She shuffled through the stack and then threw it onto the floor in the back—she was left holding only a single sheet of paper. “There’s information on all these guys, but just enough, never too much. I mean a shitbird like Gloss without a record? It just doesn’t make sense.” She placed an elbow on the sill and lodged a boot on my dash, something she always did when thinking troubling thoughts. “The connecting points are the government and the petroleum industry; all of them have ties with one or both of these things.”

  I shook my head. “But why here? I mean you can tell me they got religion, but . . .”

  “It’s gotta be oil, Walt.”

  “Double Tough says there’s no oil around here, at least nothing worth drilling for.”

  “Have you checked that with anybody else?”

  “Hell, he said they can’t give the Teapot Dome away.” I eyed her with a sad little pit growing in the center of my stomach as the whirr of the tires on the pavement and the continued roar of the engine were the only sound. “What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m just sayin’. . . .”

  “Double Tough was a project foreman for an entire coal-bed methane operation down here, so I would assume that he’s intimate with the geology of the entire area.”

  “Or?”

  I stared at her and then returned my eyes to the road. “Look, I know we’re in the suspicion business, but . . .”

  “You said a lot of money, Walt—a lot of money.” She looked at the sheet of paper in her lap. “He was in the energy industry.”

  “So, we’re just going to arrest everybody in southern Absaroka County who’s worked in the energy industry? We better expand the jail.”

  “He’s ex-military, too.”

  She read from the paper. “Even had a few fingers in Venezuela and Bolivia. Sound familiar?” She studied the side of my face. “He never put any of that in his application or job history, nothing.”

  “You’re saying he’s in on it? So, what, he set fire to himself?”

  “I knew this was how you were going to react, and I wasn’t even sure I was going to tell you until I had more to go on.” She turned her face and looked south, and we listened to the ten cylinders, pulling us along at a hundred miles an hour. “When’s the last time you heard from Frymire?”

  I looked at the back of her head, a little confused by the turn of conversation. “The last time I dropped off checks—about two weeks ago.”

  “Nothing since?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you find it funny that nobody’s heard from him except Double Tough, and the word from him is
that Chuck is hitting the road with the fiancée that no one has met and moving it all, lock-stock-and-star to an undisclosed location in Colorado?”

  I took a deep breath and then snorted at the thought. “Look, we’ve both been going without sleep, but that’s just crazy.”

  “Maybe.” She unlodged her boot and turned in the seat to look at me. “I hope I’m wrong; I’m praying that I’m wrong, but I’d feel a lot better if we made a run over to the house they rent and talked to Frymire. How ’bout you?”

  I didn’t say anything and kept driving.

  • • •

  Saizarbitoria’s unit was parked in the lot beside the Suburban, and he and Henry, drinking coffee in cups from the Sinclair station by the highway, were standing, studying the debris inside the burned-out husk of the Quonset hut.

  As we pulled up, the Basquo came to my window. “Hey, boss, has Ruby been trying to get hold of you?”

  “Yep, you?”

  “Yeah, I answered and then some pompous asshole got on and wanted to know where you were.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Started beating the mic on the dash and telling them that they were breaking up and that I’d call back when I got in range.”

  “Now I know all your secrets.

  “You bet.” He looked around at the wreckage, pulled a hand up, and cinched it on his Beretta in reaction. “Somebody definitely set that fire; you can see from the scoring on the char that it burned hottest at the beginning.”

  I took his coffee and had a sip myself. “Where did you learn such things?”

  “Frymire—remember? He was the fire investigation guy over in Sheridan.”

  I could feel my undersheriff’s eyes boring into the back of my head.

  The Cheyenne Nation’s voice was low. “What is the plan, assuming we have one?”

  “These guys don’t like the heat, so they’re going to call in the lawyers and piss on the fire—I can’t have that.” They both nodded, and I looked at Victoria Moretti, who was studying us with her Browning tactical boot back on my dash. “But first I need to make a quick stop.”

  • • •

  None of us knew where the house was, and we couldn’t call into the office without alerting the gaggle of lawyers to our whereabouts, so the Cheyenne Nation had a brainstorm and looked in the phone book.