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

by Craig Johnson

  “I bet you do; everybody in the county wants that Mustang.” I studied her—she had a rag tied around her head in the front like Rosie the Riveter, and she was wearing a pair of coveralls she must’ve borrowed from Ray—she looked hot, as she always did.

  “You’re enjoying this, right?”

  “Among my Uncle Alphonse’s numerous, nefarious enterprises, he had a chop shop on Christian Street where I used to do lube jobs.”

  “I bet you did.”

  She smiled and disappeared under the car again. “I was very good at it.”

  “I bet you were.” I caught the Basquo’s eye as he stood with his fists on his hips. “Anything at all?”

  He sighed. “Nothing.”

  I nodded and fingered the flap on the largest cardboard box beside me. “Well, we need to put it all back together as fast as we can, since I promised Tomás that we’d let him drive it back to East Spring later this afternoon.”

  Vic’s head reappeared like a snapping turtle. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” I flipped the flap open and looked inside. “I’m sure we can get Ray to help us put it back together.” Reaching into the box, I moved some of the newspaper that surrounded a metal housing. “What’s this?”

  Saizarbitoria peered over the top of the station wagon. “That’s that differential yoke I was talking about—the one we found in the spare-tire well. I didn’t look at it closely, but it’s huge and weighs a ton, so I don’t think it goes on the Plymouth.”

  With both hands, I ripped the cardboard and looked at the massive piece, then turned it over. From this angle, it looked like nothing that could possibly go on any automobile, but especially this one.

  Vic rolled the rest of the way out from under the Plymouth. “What is that thing, anyway?”

  I looked more closely at the piece of industrial equipment. “This is a polycrystalline diamond Hughes tricone drilling bit.”

  10

  Before Howard Robard Hughes Jr. became a business magnate, engineer, aviator, film producer, philanthropist, Jane Russell’s bra inventor, and all-around loony, he was the nineteen-year-old inheritor of 75 percent of Howard Robard Hughes Sr.’s empire. Like most billionaires, Howard Hughes was not a self-made man; the backbone of his fortune was built upon the development of the modern oil drilling bit already patented by the family company, Hughes Tool, in 1909. Being a pretty shrewd Texas oilman, H. H. Sr. had made the lucrative decision to lease the bits rather than sell them after he commercialized them.

  I’m not sure if Junior ever came to Wyoming, even though Paramount offered to sell him Shane, the film they’d made in Jackson Hole, because it was so far over budget. Hughes turned down the opportunity even though he hadn’t seen it. Rumor had it that Paramount had settled on the loss and was going to turn the movie out to pasture as just another oater when Howard finally viewed the rough cut of the film. He offered to buy it outright, Paramount reconsidered, and the rest, as they say, is cinematic history.

  If Hughes never made it to Wyoming, however, his daddy’s invention did; I’d seen it the summer I spent roughnecking after my senior year in high school, which was another part of my father’s campaign to teach me the value of higher education. All the lessons had taken, and I’d spent the next four years as an English major at the University of Southern California in an attempt to never return to the oilfields; so far, it had worked.

  The two-cone roller bit—and, more important, its descendant, the three-cone roller bit—looked like the mouth of one of Frank Herbert’s giant sand worms in Dune, and with the addition of diamonds it appeared to have gone gangsta.

  Double Tough spelled it out for Vic and me, his Appalachian drawl fitting the description. “One hundred seventy thousand dollars if it’s a penny.”

  I studied the toothy-looking piece of heavy equipment that had taken two of us to lift onto the desk of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Office Substation in Powder Junction—our version of the French Foreign Legion and possibly the most depressing place in the world. I glanced up at a massive, yellowed map of the area so old that the interstate highway didn’t even appear on it. I noticed a cot in the back room through the open door and assumed this was where Double Tough was sleeping while Frymire had his fiancée in town. “Do you guys ever think about fixing this place up a little?”

  He ignored me, rolled one of the teeth in the device, and picked a thick fingernail at one of the diamonds. “Polycrystalline, but they’re diamonds nonetheless. Hell, I only seen one of these one other time and that was down in Bolivia.”

  I sipped coffee from the cracked Hole in the Wall Bar mug. “I’ll kick in some county money if you want to get a rug or something.”

  Vic’s voice rose behind me. “Look who’s talking about home décor.”

  Double Tough’s shoulder muscles rolled as he took the device and turned it over, looking at the manufacture marks from under the bill of his ball cap. “Hughes Christensen, that’s the real deal.”

  “The Cadillac of drill bits?”

  He glanced up at Vic, standing by the desk. “More like a damn Lamborghini.”

  She smiled. “Did you know they made tractors before they made cars?”

  “No shit.” His eyes shone as he visually caressed the bit. “The Chinese are makin’ a bunch of cheap stuff, but that right there is the real deal.” He whistled through his teeth. “Directional drilling and antiwhirl technology; that ol’ boy’ll go just about anywhere you want to point it.”

  I set the mug on the corner of his desk. “Water?”

  His eyes came up. “Yeah, but it’d be like plowin’ yer field with that Lambo.” He smiled. “The car, not the tractor.” He studied the shaft of the beast. “It’s got a lease mark here. I’ve still got some connections in the biz and I can give ’em a call to try and find out who it was leased to.”

  “Why not call Hughes Christensen?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. . . .”

  I glanced up at Vic, standing by the desk with her arms folded as she reached over, picked up the receiver, and handed it to him. “Fuck it—get ’em in trouble.”

  The ex-roughneck shrugged and began dialing.

  I walked over to the window in the door and looked through the sun-faded, peeling decal of our star, past the weather-beaten station wagon at the playground across the street. We hadn’t planned to be looking out the window at a public school from every office we had, but that’s how it had panned out.

  Vic joined me at the door as Double Tough spoke on the phone. “Why would they have something like this, and why would it be hidden the way it was?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She paused to pick up the box that the bit had been in, partially crushed and filled with Mexican newspapers. The side read MISSION TORTILLA ROUNDS, RESTAURANT STYLE, IRVING, TEXAS. “Do you think they had it and forgot about it?”

  Tapping the lid of the box with a forefinger, I laughed. “If you had a one-hundred-seventy-thousand-dollar piece of equipment” . . .

  She finished the statement for me as she looked at the vehicle belonging to the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God. “. . . in the spare-tire well of that piece-of-shit Brady Bunch station wagon, no, I wouldn’t forget about it. I’m betting that’s why they are more interested in the car than in Big Wanda.” She pulled one of the wadded newspapers from the box and stretched it flat. “Ciudad Juárez, they’ve got a sale on tire-tread sandals.” She glanced around and when it became apparent that I wasn’t paying any attention to her, she nudged me with an elbow. “Hey.”

  “Yep?”

  “Thanks for not sending me down here—I think I might’ve slit my wrists.”

  I looked through the dirt on the window and realized the majority was on the inside. “I liked it when Lucian sent me down here, but you’re welcome.”

  “What’re you thinking about?”

  “I’m wondering how the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God is all of a sudden paying off
hundreds of thousands of back taxes up and down the Great Plains.” I let out a long, slow exhale. “Something is going on with these people.”

  “Ya think?”

  I did think and turned and looked at Double Tough as he hung up the phone.

  “They’re going to call me back, and I have to admit that it was fun telling them this had to do with a criminal investigation and they better do it pronto.”

  I nodded. “They say they’re drilling a new water well over at East Spring Ranch—is there any reason why they would use a bit like this for that kind of application?”

  He considered. “Well, it’s a rock bit; I guess if you were bound and determined to drill a water well in one spot you might use it if you ran into a lot of rock.”

  “Like down here in the southern part of the county?”

  “I guess.”

  I studied him. “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not; why not just move the well? Anyway . . .” He gestured toward the Diamond Jim Brady of bits. “It’d be overkill to use a piece of equipment like this.”

  “So what would you use it for?”

  “I told you: oil, gas, something worth big money.”

  I thought back to the detailed description I’d given him at the beginning of the conversation. “Could you drill oil or gas with the kind of rig I described seeing down at East Spring, the one on the back of the Peterbilt?”

  “Not here, no way.” He shook his head, and I watched as his mind sank into the ground, plummeting through the strata he knew so well. “It’s all tapped out, at least the stuff that’s easy to get to. You’d have to drill almost twelve thousand feet before you got to the Niobrara shale, Shannon and Sussex formation above that; you’re talking about a ten-thousand-foot vertical well with possibly a five-thousand-foot lateral section, and setting up the equipment to sell the oil, you’re looking at a good ten million dollars just to get started.” He sat on the corner of the desk and placed a hand lovingly on the bit. “Do your friends over in East Spring Ranch have that kind of money?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Anyway, they’d have to permit that kind of activity through the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, especially if they were God-fearing and law-abiding.”

  “Well, the jury is still out on at least one of those.”

  Vic joined us in staring at the bit. “What would you do with the oil?”

  Double Tough laughed. “Tanker trucks or, better yet, a pipeline.”

  “Have you seen any activity like that down here?”

  “No, but I haven’t been looking.”

  “But you say there isn’t enough oil to bother with?”

  He shook his head. “Not on an industrial scale.”

  I glanced back out the window—a familiar pickup filled to the gills with men had pulled in behind the station wagon. “Right now I have to go return some rightful belongings.”

  I started toward the door but watched as he rolled the bit over on the table with a loud thunk. “That include this?”

  “Not unless they ask for it.”

  The phone rang, and he reached for the receiver. “What’re you gonna do?”

  Vic tossed the box to the floor and followed as I turned the knob and pushed open the door. “Go fishing.”

  • • •

  Roy Lynear was seated on his throne atop the Super Duty and was holding a somber sort of court. “Hello, Sheriff.”

  “Mr. Lynear.”

  He leaned forward, and I watched as Lockhart, the guy with the crew cut, got out of the driver’s side and stood by the door. Another man stood at the front corner of the bed and looked at Vic and me; it was only after a moment that I noticed the swollen eye and recognized him as the guy I’d punched in South Dakota. “My driver is Mr. Tom Lockhart, and I believe you’re acquainted with Mr. Earl Gloss?”

  I studied him for a moment and then looked back at the driver, the grip of a semiautomatic just visible under a navy Windbreaker. I returned my eyes to Lynear. “I was hoping to see Mr. Bidarte; I was hoping he was doing better.”

  The big man glanced back at Gloss, who immediately started for the station wagon. “I think he’s thrown himself into his work at the ranch; some men respond that way.” He tried to keep my attention, but I watched as the man with the swollen face walked to the back of the car and tried the rear door, which was locked.

  I thought about tossing the keys to Vic, but she’d stepped to my left to keep an eye on Lockhart. I started toward the station wagon and watched as Gloss’s eyes widened and he glanced at his boss, then to me again, before reaching toward the small of his back. “Just so you know; I won’t have hands laid on me again.”

  I paid no attention and kept coming, watching out of the corner of my eye as Vic countered to face the other man. “Really.”

  I was putting my hand in my jacket pocket when Gloss slipped a late-model, expensive-looking .45 from his waistband and pointed it toward me. “Don’t come any closer.”

  I wasn’t too concerned, seeing as how I could tell it wasn’t cocked. Granted, any capable marksman could pull the hammer back if there was a round in the chamber, but I got the feeling from Gloss that he was not a member of that group, at least not with a uniformed, armed officer bearing down on him.

  He raised the pistol a little higher, directing it toward my face. “I’m not telling you again.”

  Sometimes, you can slap a sidearm out of a shooter’s hand; it’s a roll of the dice because sometimes you can’t and then they shoot you. But I was feeling full of piss and vinegar and took the chance. Gloss’s pistol flew through the air and into the soft dirt on the far bank of the barrow ditch between the road and the school parking lot.

  Standing close to him, I dangled the keys between us and then bent over to unlock the tailgate of the old station wagon.

  Gloss glanced at his gun, a good twenty feet away. “You had no right to do that.”

  I turned the key, the rear window whirring down with a herniated whine, and then lowered the door. “Just for the record, I had every right. Just because you can carry a sidearm, doesn’t mean you can brandish and threaten a sworn officer.” I tossed him the keys and then stepped back.

  He glanced at Lynear for a moment and then reached in, immediately opening the spare well where the drill bit had been. He pulled out of the station wagon and quickly shook his head.

  “Lose something?”

  “I just don’t like driving without a spare.”

  I addressed Lynear, coolly watching from the mountaintop of his mobile throne. It was easy to see who was the brains of the outfit: “Did you ever get your drill rig running?”

  His head canted to one side. “Unfortunately, we’re still working on it.”

  “I received a call from the county assessor’s office about the logistics of your water well, and they wanted someone to run down with a GPS and get the exact location of the drill site.”

  He didn’t smile. “Is that so?”

  I went ahead and smiled—I’m friendly that way. “I volunteered for the job.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  I gestured toward Vic, still facing the driver. “We’ll be there tomorrow—if you can make arrangements for someone to meet us at the gate around noon.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “If not, I’ll just run through it.”

  Lynear nodded, and I got the feeling we’d made progress in clarifying our relationship, but our stare-down was interrupted by Gloss having moved from the station wagon and going for his pistol at the far side of the ditch. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  He stopped at the sound of my voice. “That’s my gun.”

  “Yep, it is, and we have another law here in Wyoming concerning unauthorized firearms brought onto school property—it comes with a mandatory sentence—and that weapon, now, is most certainly on school property.”

  He glanced at the autoloader, gleaming in the dirt like an unobtainable tr
easure. “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

  “I guess decide if that pistol is worth five to seven years in Rawlins—it’s a nice enough town, but I’m not sure if the accommodations at the maximum security prison are all that great.”

  Vic, still standing off the driver, volunteered in a loud voice, “Fish sticks and Tater Tots on Fridays.” I think she even winked at Lockhart.

  Lynear’s voice intoned from the truck, “Earl, I think it’s time we were going.”

  Gloss circled around, careful to go to the front of the wagon in order to avoid me, then threw open the door of the Plymouth and climbed in. “I want my gun back.”

  “Just as soon as I check the serial numbers and you show me a Wyoming or Texas permit for carrying it.”

  He slammed the door and probably would’ve headed out in a tire-squealing, fishtailing, thunder-roading display if the tired Satellite’s ignition hadn’t given out with a terminal and diminutive click.

  I glanced at Lynear. “You guys have any jumper cables?”

  • • •

  Back in my office, Vic examined Gloss’s Wilson Combat Supergrade Classic, jacking the slide mechanism over and over and spitting shiny .45 dumdum rounds onto my desk with a determined ferocity. “It would’ve hurt if he’d shot you, you know?”

  “Right.”

  She held up one of the pursed, open-tip rounds. “These hurt worse than normal, you know that, right?”

  “Right.”

  She was pissed, but she kept her voice low so that no one else in the outside office could hear her. “You’re a moron; you know that too, right?”

  “Right.”

  “If that shitbird had shot you then I would’ve had to shoot everybody, which doesn’t really concern me, but after that I would’ve had to lift your two-hundred-and-sixty-pound—”

  “I’m down to two-forty-five.”

  She shot an index finger at me. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Right.”

  “—ass off the roadway and load you into your unit, drive at the speed of light in hopes that you would not leak all your precious bodily fluids out onto the floor mats and die.” She leaned back in my guest chair, her eyes like twin black holes with surrounding solar flares, swallowing everything, and all I could think was how ferociously gorgeous she looked—thoughts that if were voiced would, most likely, put my life in jeopardy again.