A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (26 page)

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.

The house was down by the Middle Fork of the Powder River, set back in some Russian olive trees and red willow. Two-story and large for the area, it probably had been built as a ranch headquarters seventy-five years ago, but as the town had crowded in, the ranch had up and left. The clapboard was covered in a black spray of mold where the overgrown trees rested on the surface. Overall, the impression was one of decay; just the kind of place where two bachelors might live.

“It’s the House of Usher.”

There was a late-model Chevrolet parked in the driveway with plates that read
FRY
, which lead us to believe that there was no reason to call first; the only disturbing thing was that the driver’s-side door hung open. I parked in front of the bridge at the edge of the high grass. “They need a lawn mower.”

We got out and walked to the driveway. Vic went to the overloaded mailbox and pulled out a handful of assorted mail. “What they need is a wrecking ball.”

Henry looked at the windows, empty except for the Rebel flag hanging in the front. Still holding the shotgun, he took a few more steps forward and made his stand at the end of the driveway.

Vic sifted through the mail, dividing it into two groups as I joined her at the box. “Anything?”

“The usual crap, but there are handwritten letters to Chuck from an address in Sheridan in a spirally script with little hearts dotting the i’s.”

“So the fiancée exists?”

“Apparently.”

“Anything else?”

She stuffed the lot back into the mailbox. “I swear it’s only guys that get the Victoria’s Secret catalog.”

Saizarbitoria joined us. “Would someone mind explaining to me what it is that we’re supposed to be doing?”

Vic growled. “Social call.”

The Basquo looked at the Cheyenne Nation still standing at the end of the driveway with the scatter gun. “You bet.”

We all joined the Bear like the Bighorn Mountain Mod Squad. “Reservation warrant?”

Henry was referring to the old method of planting somebody at the back door to yell “Come in” as you banged on the front. “No, we’ll just knock, and if nobody answers we go in.”

My undersheriff frowned as she checked her Glock. “Inadmissible; we find a body in there then we need this to be by the book.”

Sancho interrupted. “A body?”

I glanced at Henry, knowing well his habit of squirreling away ammunition. “Do you still have some of those extra shells in your pockets?”

“I do.”

Saizarbitoria wasn’t going to let it go. “What body?”

“Didn’t Frymire say something about needing more twelve-gauge ammo?”

The Bear nodded. “I believe he did.”

“Whose body?”

Henry turned and regarded the young man. “What body, whose body—is life really worth so many questions? Let us just go down there and shoot or be shot, shall we?” We watched as he blithely flipped the shotgun onto his shoulder as if it were a parasol in a fancy dress competition and paraded down the grass strip between the two gravel tracks in his worn moccasins as if it were a garden path—Sunday in the Park with Bear.

The Basquo glanced at me and pulled out his own sidearm as we started after the Cheyenne Nation. “How did we win?”

I shook my head. “I’m not so sure we have.” I paused at the vehicle and peered inside, but there was nothing out of the ordinary; no blood, not even keys.

Pushing the door shut, I looked at the house; the storm door which had the glass busted out was open along with the main door—even more disturbing.

The front porch was a little rickety, and more than a few boards gave way as I took the point position. I stuck to my plan and knocked, loud and clear. I waited, but there was no answer—Henry reached over and gently pushed it the rest of the way open to reveal a living room.

There was a large, flat-screen television on a stand in front of the curtained front window with a number of devices attached to it with cables and what looked like plastic guns. Vic moved past me and knelt down to look at the stack of cartridge covers. “Looks like the boys are gamers.”

Henry fanned out to the entryway that appeared as if it led to an abbreviated dining room as Saizarbitoria and his Beretta moved past into the kitchen.

I started getting the feeling that I should have my sidearm out, too.

Vic stood and looked around at the art held against the walls with thumbtacks; a few wildlife prints, posters from movies I’d never seen, and a silhouette target with the majority of his eleven-point heart shot out. She shook her head. “Men.”