A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery wl-9

by Craig Johnson

  “Okay.”

  She turned, walked past Ruby’s desk, and paused to curtsy, her hair, which she had grown out, striped with highlights. “By the way, you lost your shot at a quickie.”

  She disappeared down the steps, and I heard the heavy glass doors swing shut as I called after her, “I kind of figured that.”

  Dog, probably hoping for another crust, appeared at my leg as I took a few steps down the hall toward the holding cells and the back door. “C’mon, you want to go to the Dumpster?” I glanced over my shoulder and noticed he’d sat. “I’ll take that as a no?” He didn’t move, so I continued on my own. “Well, you’re going over to Barbara Thomas’s place here in a few minutes whether you like it or not.”

  I pushed open the heavy metal and carefully nudged the broken portion of concrete block that we all used to prop open the door, which saved the staff the ignominious march around the building to the front entrance that Vic had deemed “the walk of shame and ignorance.”

  In the distance I could hear my undersheriff ignoring our two red-blinking traffic lights as she sped through town.

  Balancing the empty Rainier on the box, I started toward the Dumpster just as a sudden breeze kicked up, which spun the can off the cardboard surface like an aluminum tumbleweed. It skittered across the street toward the fence at Meadowlark Elementary.

  “Well, hell.”

  I continued on my way, slipped the trash under the plastic lid, and then started the trek across the street; I figured that if beer cans weren’t allowed in the sheriff’s office trash, they probably shouldn’t linger next to the elementary school fence either.

  The little bugger was continuing to bump against the chain-link, and it took two tries before I got hold of the thing. Feeling the weight of the day, I placed an elbow on the top bar of the fence and stood there enjoying the temperature drop of the evening. It was getting late in the season, and the nights were getting cooler. I thought about what Nancy had said about the weekend, tried to remember what my number had been, and then reminded myself to call the Bear and tell him about the honors that were being bestowed on us Friday night.

  I shivered just a little and figured the first frost would be pretty soon and I’d be switching over to my felt hat. I let my mind wander again, this time to what Vic had said, wondering if it was true. Her youngest brother had married my daughter a few months back, and I was hearing from Cady less and less. Delving into a little Freudian slip of my own, I wondered if that anxiety had intertwined with my worries about being even more involved with my undersheriff lately. I didn’t consider myself a prude, but the difference in our ages and the fact that I was her boss continued to intrude on my thoughts.

  She’d been even a little more volatile as of late, and I wasn’t quite sure what that was about.

  I allowed my eyes to drift across the freshly mowed east lawn of Meadowlark Elementary when I noticed that somebody was swinging on the playground, his body hurtling into the freshening air, each effort accompanied by the clanking of the chains that supported the swing. He was facing in the other direction, but I could see that he was skinny, startlingly blond—and missing his pants.

  2

  I had to time it right because I was only going to get one chance.

  Keeping behind him, I’d stealthily made my way across the lawn and could only hope that I’d be able to withstand the impact when he swung back. He probably was only a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, but he had velocity on his side.

  Figuring I’d have only an instant before he sprinted for it again, I’d fastened one side of a pair of handcuffs to my own wrist and was holding the other open and ready to snap closed. By my reckoning, even as fast as he was, Orrin wasn’t going to be able to drag my two hundred and fifty pounds very far.

  I was maybe ten feet behind his backward arc as he peaked and went forward. I could hear him humming as he skimmed through the air, and I ran forward to position myself a little ahead of the angle of trajectory in hopes of not absorbing the entirety of his velocity, but it didn’t really do any good.

  I’d been an interior lineman at USC, a Marine investigator in Vietnam, and had taken my share of body blows, but that had been an awfully long time ago, when I had been in better shape and a lot younger. The impact of his bony back into my chest wasn’t so bad, but he had curled one of the brogans up under the seat and it planted itself firmly in my crotch.

  As luck would have some of it, the cuff had closed around the kid’s upper arm, which wasn’t as big as the joint at his elbow, and had latched secure. I had fallen backward and pulled him with me, but as soon as we hit the ground, he’d jumped up and, as I’d anticipated, started off. My arm was the only thing he moved, and he yanked himself backward on top of me as he tried the opposite direction, perhaps thinking he would have better luck. My arm crossed my chest after he tromped across me, but at the moment, all I could do was massage my groin and lie there like a ball and chain.

  I guess he’d gotten the best of my patience at that point, because I remember curling my bicep and pulling his face in close to mine. “You need to quit that. Now.”

  He looked terribly scared, but he kicked at me some more, so I finally stood in a hunched fashion and breathed out my final word on the subject. “Stop.”

  He pulled back from the word, and I was sure he thought I was going to hit him.

  I took a deep breath. “Are you all right?”

  He fidgeted, flung his loose hand back and forth, and looked at my chest, finally nodding his head. “Yes.”

  His voice was higher than I would’ve thought, but I was just glad he could speak. “What’s your name?”

  He looked around nervously, still looking for an avenue of escape, but seeing none, he kind of collapsed into himself and muttered, “Cord.”

  I stood fully upright, and the fear played across his face. I was anxious that the populace not be treated to the sight of a grown man massaging his groin, handcuffed to a teenager in nothing but a shirt in the elementary school playground close to midnight. “C’mon Cord, let’s go get you some clothes.”

  • • •

  When I got him back to the office, I planted him in my guest chair and recuffed him to the arm. Dog watched us from across the room with a great deal of interest. “I’m, um . . . I’m going to go get you some clothes, so just wait here till I get back.”

  I vaguely remembered Ruby having had a clothing drive for the Methodist Women’s League a month back, and that there were still a few bags of assorted clothing downstairs out of which I might find something to fit the young man.

  Passing my dispatcher’s desk with Dog in tow, I stopped for a moment to phone Double Tough and inform him that the great Mormon manhunt could be called off. As I stood there talking to him, Dog and I both heard some noise from down the hallway and turned to see the boy had fallen in his attempt to drag the chair along with him out the back door.

  “I gotta go.”

  I walked into the hallway, picked him up, and sat him back in the chair, then picked up the chair and walked him back into my office. I set the chair in its original location, called Dog, and told him to sit, which he did. “That is the K-9 unit of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department, and he’s trained to deal with any kind of situation. I can’t say what he might do, but I would advise you not to move. Is that clear?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good.” I glanced at Dog, who I’m sure was wondering what the heck I was talking about. “Stay. And . . . Guard.”

  He canted his head, looking at me as if I were an idiot, which of course I was.

  The kid was looking at Dog as if the beast might go for his throat at any moment, which, of course, he wouldn’t, but a nod being as good as a wink in most cases, I turned and went down the steps and rifled through the grocery bags, finally coming up with a Denver Broncos T-shirt and, more important, a pair of gray sweatpants with a hole in only one knee.

  I’d started back up the stairs when I heard
another commotion. I got to the first landing at the corner of the building near the front door in time to see Double Tough laying hands on both boy and furniture.

  The solid deputy turned with a comical look on his face as he sat the young man in the chair. “I guess you can add theft of municipal property to his list of offenses.”

  I joined the group—Dog was standing there wagging. “Some guard dog you are.”

  We carried the prisoner and chair back to my office, where I uncuffed him and led him to the bathroom in the hall, the one without a window, handed him the clothes, and nudged him inside as I closed the door behind him. “Get dressed.”

  Producing a plastic bag of oatmeal cookies, Double Tough crossed his scuffed ropers, leaned against the wall, and smirked at me. “Have a cookie.” I did, as he studied me. “Call up Health Services?”

  I thought about it. “Not at midnight. I’ll just wait until morning and then give Nancy Griffith another ring.”

  He waited a moment. “You want, I can stick around up here. There’s nothing going on down at the Junction, and Frymire’s girlfriend is visiting him.”

  “I thought he married her.”

  “Not yet.” He chewed his cookie.

  “There’s no need, I’ll just stick around.” I noticed the crestfallen look on his face. “Unless you really want to stay up here.” I waited for a moment. “Things getting pastoral down there in Powder Junction?”

  “Uh-huh, other than some yokels driving around over near the East Spring Draw and being unneighborly.” He judged the look on my face. “Nothing big; new owners, and they’re a strange bunch—Texans.” He glanced behind him at the bathroom. “You gonna put him in the holding cell for the night?”

  “Yep.”

  He stretched and yawned, covering his face with his hand. “You better lock the door.”

  • • •

  He stared at the open cell and then up at me, and I was struck by how young the kid looked; I was estimating his age at fifteen, but he might’ve been younger. “You’re not trustworthy, or I’d let you sleep out here on the bench in the waiting room.” I gestured for him to go in. “Anyway, the bunks are a lot more comfortable; I should know.”

  He strung his fingers around the bars of the open door. “What if I promise?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He stared at my chest. “What if I promise to not run off?”

  “Well, considering your track record, I don’t know you well enough to trust you.”

  He thought about it for a second, and then the words poured from him like a teletype machine. “‘Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.’” He glanced up at my face for only a second. “Corinthians four:two.”

  I stared back at him and nudged him with my hand. “Get in the cell.” And then added, “Walt Longmire, quarter past twelve.”

  He stepped inside but turned as I closed the door. I reassured him: “Don’t worry, I’m going to gather up a few blankets and sleep right out here.”

  “Can I have the Bible? I saw it on your desk.”

  I thought about arguing religious semantics with him but instead just locked the door; then I retrieved the blankets and his book from my office. I handed it to him through the bars. “Who’s Orrin?”

  The return words were wooden, just as they’d been when he’d quoted scripture. “The Destroying Angel and Danite: Man of God, Son of Thunder.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded and suddenly felt very tired. “Get some sleep.”

  “I’d rather read.”

  I felt my shoulders slump but then gathered an old floor lamp that I’d used for just that purpose from the corner of the room and brought it over to the bars, switched it on, and directed the light into the cell. “There.”

  I flipped off the overhead fluorescents, pulled the mattress off of the bunk in the other cell, dragged it around to the floor, and piled on the blankets and a pillow. I sat on the mattress, pulled off my boots, and covered up. The kid was studying his book and was seated on the far bunk: “Don’t worry; we’ll get you out of here tomorrow.”

  He continued to turn pages in the Mormon Bible, his face close to the good book, but I could hear him plainly in that high voice of his: “Actually, I’m okay.”

  • • •

  “So this is Orrin the Mormon?”

  I spoke from beneath the blanket that covered my head. “He says his name is Cord.”

  “As in music or firewood?”

  “Firewood, I think.” I peeled the blanket down from my face and looked up at my undersheriff, now having sprouted two fully blown black-eyed Susans. “Oh my. . . .”

  She leaned against the bars and looked in at the kid, the web of her thumb hitched onto the grip of her Glock. “Yeah, I know, I know—it looks like I went all ten rounds at the Blue Horizon.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “Boxing venue in North Philly.” She gestured toward the sleeping young man. “He talks?”

  I sat up against the wall. “He does.”

  “You get anything more out of him other than a first name?”

  “Not really.”

  She gestured toward the book lying next to the boy. “Who’s Orrin?”

  I repeated Cord’s mantra from last night: “The Destroying Angel and Danite: Man of God, Son of Thunder.”

  Vic shrugged. “Does Orrin have to say that every time he answers the phone?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What’s he doing with Orrin’s book?”

  I yawned. “We really didn’t get a chance to cover that.”

  She watched the young man breathe for a few moments, and her face softened just a little. “Nancy is here from Hell’s Services; you wanna roust the fool on the hill out for a confab, or what?”

  “I’d like to talk to her first.”

  She pushed off the bars and walked down the hall. “Then get up. I’ll get you a cup of coffee, and you can join the in-crowd at Ruby’s desk.”

  When I got to the bench at the reception area, I was still holding a blanket around me as I collapsed against the chief therapist for Health Services and then slid down to rest my head in her comfortable lap. “I’d like to commit myself.”

  She looked down at me with big, liquid brown eyes. “Commit yourself to what?”

  “Getting more sleep, for a start.” Nancy had been a good friend of Martha’s, and I’d depended on her prowess in dealing with the more delicate aspects of domestic and child-related problems over the years. “We have a little dogie who’s been thrown out on the long trail.”

  She continued to look down at me and started singing:

  “Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies

  It’s your misfortune and none of my own

  Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies

  You know that Wyoming will be your new home.”

  Vic stared at the two of us. “What the fuck?”

  Nancy smiled. “It’s the Durant High School fight song.”

  Vic nodded. “That’s likely to strike fear into the hearts of your opponents.”

  I interrupted. “I guess he’s been living in Barbara Thomas’s pump house for the last two weeks.”

  Nancy nodded. “I wouldn’t mind living at Barbara’s—it’s a nice place.”

  “His name is Cord, and we can’t seem to find anything to indicate that anybody’s looking for him. He’s carrying the Book of Mormon, and he quotes scripture.”

  “How old?”

  I sat on the ground by Nancy’s sensible black flats. “Fifteen, maybe.”

  She looked up at Ruby and Vic. “There are a lot of LDS splinter sects, fundamentalist polygamy groups that parted ways with the Mormons—Warren Jeffs stuff. There are a bunch in Utah, but there are also a few in southern Colorado, Arizona, Texas, and even one over in South Dakota.” She sighed, and her eyes returned to me. “Have you ever heard of the term Lost Boys?”

  Vic was the first to answer. “The vampire movie?”r />
  Nancy shook her head. “No.”

  I ventured an opinion. “Peter Pan?”

  She shook her head again. “Mormon castoffs; they’re the boys that get kicked out of these groups for what the elders deem inappropriate behavior, but mostly just to make room for the older men so that they can have their pick of the younger women as multiple wives.”

  “Charming.”

  “As far as I know the nearest polygamy group is in South Dakota.”

  “He was wearing a pair of pants that were from the Department of Sanitation in Belle Fourche.”

  “Probably got them from Goodwill or the Salvation Army.” She thought about it. “Is that Butte County?”

  “Yep.” I waited. “What?”

  “I’ve got a friend over there who works for the school system, and he mentioned something about one of those LDS splinter groups.” She thought about it some more. “Something like the Fundamentalist . . . no, the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God.”

  Vic sighed. “Oh shit, not more sheep.”

  I reared up, glancing at Ruby. “See if you can get Tim Berg on the line by the time I get back from the Busy Bee.” I looked at Nancy. “It won’t do any harm to the boy to get in touch with these people, will it?”

  The therapist shook her head. “Chances are they’re the ones who tossed him out. I can’t see them wanting him back.”

  “Well, at least we can get some information on the kid.” I stood and folded my blanket. “Would you like to make the acquaintance of the Latter-day dogie while I go out and get us all some breakfast?”

  “Ready when you are.” She stood. “Do I have to do it through bars?”

  “The keys are hanging in the holding cell, but I wouldn’t turn my back on him for an instant—he’s a jackrabbit.”

  She saluted. “Roger that.”

  • • •

  The proprietor of the Busy Bee Café folded her arms and glared at me from the narrow aperture of the partially open door. “We’re closed.”

  I had looked through the windows and noticed that there wasn’t anybody else inside. “What do you mean, you’re closed. You haven’t been closed in thirty years.”