A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery (9 page)

“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 . . .”

Tim, who was looking at me a little oddly, too, finished the statement. “Um, yup . . . when they included Alaska and Hawaii. There’s a big visitors center down by the river.”

“But the actual, geographic point is farther north, right?”

He nodded and sighed. “About twenty miles, actually.”

Henry, getting with the plan, joined in. “I have always wanted to see that.”

Tim leaned back and looked at the sun, well past its zenith. “We’ve got the rest of the afternoon to get up there.”

I glanced at Kate and then back to him. “You’re not going.”

He immediately raised his short hairs. “All right now, Walt. Lookie here . . .”

“We’re sightseeing, we got lost, and that’s going to be a heck of a lot harder to sell if we’re in the company of the county sheriff.” I turned back to Vic. “Haven’t you always wanted to see the geographic center of the United States?”

She started shaking her head no, then converted it into a nod and buried her face in her hands. “No fucking way.”

The road to Dale Atta’s place was straight up Route 85 and then onto Camp Creek Road. Tim had called ahead, and when we got to Atta’s place the genial rancher had already drawn us a quick map and told us how to get to the outer hay fields where he had been working when he’d seen his neighbor’s truck. He warned us that the road, or what there was of it, was pretty rough leading onto the ridge and that there was only one way up or down.

I navigated the furrows and tried to avoid the areas where there might be irrigation lines and a center pivot as we made our way along a rapidly flowing creek bed. Vic kept an eye out for the pickup in question.

“What the hell are scours?”

Henry was quicker to answer, even though his nose was still in the Book of Mormon. “Calf diarrhea.”

“Oh, gross.” We bumped along in four-wheel-drive low, so as to do the least amount of damage to the rancher’s field. “So, I’m looking for a truck the color of butt butter?”

“You got it.”

“Have I told you how disenchanted I’m becoming with the romantic vision of the American West?”

I gestured toward the limitless vista outside the windshield. “And here you are in the very heart of it.”

I steered us across a bridge that had been made from an old freight car, a common practice in our part of the world, and pulled up to a number of strands of barbed wire with a steel sign affixed, which read
KEEP OUT, PRIVATE PROPERTY
, followed by
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
.

I slowed the truck to a stop and looked at the shiners riding shotgun. “Feel like doing something unlawful?”

She cracked the passenger door open and climbed out. “Always, and all ways.”

I was surprised that there was no padlock and watched as she pulled the lever, releasing the pole the fence was attached to and pulling it wide so that I could drive through as the Cheyenne Nation intoned from the back. “So, how did she get the black eyes?”

Vic’s shiners had turned out to be not as bad as I’d thought, but there were still traces of a rainbow underneath her eyes. “The runaway ran over the top of her.”

“And she did not shoot him?”

“She was unarmed at the time.”

The Bear grunted. “Lucky kid.”

I drove through the opening and then watched as she started to reattach the gate, stranding herself on the other side, but then realized her mistake and quickly stepped through, capturing the pole in the loop and leveraging it shut.

She climbed back in. “Don’t say it.”

The trail was rough with more than a few large boulders we had to ease over, but we finally got to the ridge, a desolate spot with only a few copses of Black Hill pines, stunted and bowed from the crippling wind.

I pulled the Bullet to the right, where there was a space between some of the ragged trees, and parked. The wind was blowing so hard that it was difficult to open the door, but once I did I snagged my field glasses from the pocket in the back of my seat. I cranked my hat down tight and stared off through the binoculars to the northwest, the direction from which the gusts seemed to be coming. I could see the fresh-turned earth where the Bakken pipeline Tim had mentioned had been bored along the surface of the land, cutting diagonally from northeast to southwest toward Wyoming. Deceivingly durable, the surface of the high plains held the marks of man almost as long as the land itself marked those same men.

Henry drifted toward the center of the ridge, and Vic joined me at the tailgate. “NFW.”

“It is pretty desolate.”

The Cheyenne Nation had walked toward a small wreath of rocks to the west so I followed a broken path and stopped before entering the bowl of soft earth. From this vantage point, I could see that Henry was staring at one of the towers that Tim had mentioned. It sat at the corner of another county road near the hillside leading to the ridge. There were a few trees in the area that were making believe they were green, and it was painted to blend in. “See anybody?”

“Yes, someone watching us with a pair of binoculars.”

Henry, of course, didn’t need binoculars, but I couldn’t see any movement in the area, aside from a small cloud of dust on the far horizon.

I raised my own and adjusted the eyepieces enough to see an individual at one of the windows of the tower before he darted away. Then my eye was drawn to a vehicle racing down the powdery road, but still too far away to make identification. I handed the binoculars to Vic as she joined us. “Keep an eye on that, and let me know if it’s who I think it is.”

She raised the glasses. “How could they have found out about us so quickly?”

The Bear pointed toward the tower and then turned and approached the dirt bowl we’d walked past. I followed him and then his gaze. There were boot prints in the area, and tire tracks where you could see they had backed in.

His voice was low. “Why back into a place with a pickup unless you were unloading something?

A small line of powder on the lee side of a fist-sized clump of dirt stuck with a few stalks of buffalo grass caught my eye.

Vic’s voice challenged the wind as she called over her shoulder. “Are scours a kind of muddy yellow?”

“Yep.”

“It’s them.”

I sighed. “How long to get here and up the road we came in on?”

“At the rate they’re going, ten minutes, tops.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Not enough time to exhume what could be a body, even if we knew where to dig.”

I walked over to my undersheriff. “Hey, have you got a lipstick on you?”

She lowered the binoculars and looked at me. “I do, but I don’t think it’s your shade.”

“Gimme the top, would you?” She did, and I walked back and kneeled, gently pushed a little of the white powder into the elongated plastic top, and then smelled my finger.

“Quick lime?”

“Yes.” I carefully put the makeshift container in my shirt pocket, started toward my truck, and called back to Henry. “C’mon, we better not let them catch us at this exact spot.”

We set about the business of getting off the ridge, unable to hurry because of the boulders. We’d gotten to the last straight, but I was pretty sure we weren’t going to make it. We arrived at the gate, and I could see them approaching from the access road on the other side. I figured they’d meet us on the bridge, if we gunned it.

When I got to the gate, I rolled to a stop and turned to Vic. “Undo the gate but don’t bother with putting it back; just throw yourself into the bed as I drive through.”

“Got it.”

She was out like a Philly flash. The Bear climbed out, too.

“Where are you going?”

He grinned the wolf smile. “What, stay in here and miss all the fun?”

Henry shut the door behind him, and I watched as Vic popped the lever on the gate and threw it aside with enough force that I had no trouble driving through. I heard the two of them clambering into the bed as I got to the bridge, but the Chevy roared up the incline and halfway across before I could get that far. He slid to a stop about a foot from my bumper and leaned on the horn.

There were four of them, two in the cab and two standing in the bed. The ones there were holding Winchester carbines while the passenger displayed a revolver and threw me what he considered to be a dangerous smile. The driver was probably the oldest of the bunch at maybe eighteen, and he popped the clutch, jumping the two-wheel-drive half-ton forward in a threatening manner.

Evidently, they weren’t intimidated by the stars on my doors or the light bar on top.

Advance party.

A pack.

I heard a clattering on the top of the cab and looked in the rearview mirror, and was treated to Victoria Moretti’s legs spread in a shooting stance, Henry next to her, leaning against the roof. I turned my eyes back to the Chevy and sat there waiting, looking at them.

After a moment, the passenger, who had a mop of black hair falling over his face, leaned out the side and yelled, “Back up!”

I shook my head no.

There was a brief conference with the driver, who had the same hairdo as his passenger, only blond—must’ve been the style of the month. “We can make you!”

I didn’t move, and the driver leapt the half-ton forward again, now only inches from the front of my truck. He revved the hopped-up engine, the exhaust brapping—no mufflers.

The problem with the younger generation is that they confuse horsepower and torque. Most people think horsepower, which can lead to higher top speeds, is the most important—but the thing that gets you there is torque. Neither one of us was likely to reach top speed on the limited length of the bridge, and I was reminded of Mark Twain’s adage: thunder is impressive, thunder is loud, but it’s lightning that gets the job done, even in one-mile-an-hour increments.

I pulled my transmission selector down and inched forward in granny gear, four-wheel low. He answered by unleashing the clutch on the half-ton and crunching into my rubber-padded, traffic-pushing grille guard.

I kept an even pressure on the accelerator, just enough to hold the three-quarter-ton in place. He was getting angrier as I held him steady, and he gunned probably four hundred horses forward, causing the rear end the Scours Express to emit blue smoke and kick its heels slightly sideways.

Mistake.

I waited until he’d reached the farthest point on the pivot and then nudged the broad nose of my 450-foot-pounds of torque forward.

He had two wheels pushing—I had four.

It was time the young men had a lesson in physics.

Slowly and achingly, I drove him back at an angle. He slammed on the brakes, but I already had him moving and there was little chance that, with my extra weight, I was going to be stopped.

The driver’s-side rear wheel was the first to go off, and I have to admit that I found the looks on the faces of the boys who were standing pretty amusing. I kept the pressure on and watched as they leapt from the truck onto the surface of the bridge. The Chevrolet kept going backward.

There was a pretty heated conversation going on between the two in the cab, especially when the driver’s-side front wheel also went over the edge. I kept pushing, and the Chevy looked as though it was just getting to the point where I thought it might go over and fall on its side into the shallow creek four feet below. The conversation had reached the screaming-teenager stage when the mouthy passenger started making moves to open the door and climb out.

It was then that I heard someone walking over the top of my truck and watched as a pair of moccasined feet stepped down onto the cowl and strode across the hood. The Cheyenne Nation placed a hand on the grille guard and then lightly leveraged himself onto the wide, wooden planks of the bridge.

I let off the accelerator and watched as he made it to the door of the tipping truck before the kid could get it open.

The two who had abandoned ship were standing a little ways away, still holding their weapons but unsure as to how to proceed. One started to take a step forward but then thought better of it.

The mouthy passenger made the mistake of shoving his pistol toward the Bear, but he simply snatched it out of the kid’s hand and casually tossed it into the water. I could see the veins in the young man’s neck as he screamed at Henry, but the Bear just stood there looking at him. After a moment, the teen had to pause to catch his breath, and Henry took the opportunity to say something, which caused the driver to join the high-volume vitriol.

The Cheyenne Nation turned to look at Vic and me, shrugged his shoulders, and then casually, almost dismissively, reached down and grabbed the rocker panel in both hands. I don’t know how much weight it was or how much effort it took, but the Chevy rose in his grip, jerked once, and then gracefully tipped over the side, landing in the mud with a tremendous splash.

The near wheels were only a few feet from the bridge, and the dry side of the USS
C-10
was a couple of feet higher than the wooden surface. The two still in the truck were scrambling to get out the passenger-side window as Vic and I joined Henry in surveying the damage.

“I thought you were trying to save them.”

He sighed. “Me, too.”

The passenger’s legs and feet were wet, but the driver was soaked as their truck bucked a few times and then died in its watery grave. The passenger, who on closer inspection might’ve been Hispanic, was, of course, the first to speak. “You’re gonna have to pay for that!”

I glanced at the pair who had been in the bed and who were still standing at the far end of the bridge, and watched as Vic, with her sidearm hanging in her hand, turned to face them.

I swiveled my gaze back to the two U-boat commanders. “I doubt it.”

The driver whined. “You pushed us off the bridge!”

I threw a thumb at the Cheyenne Nation. “Actually, he did.”

The passenger was back at it. “Well, somebody’s gonna have to . . .”

I held up a finger. “You know, back when I was doing my initial training at the Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas, Wyoming, long before either one of you were born, one of the first things a crusty old instructor taught me about dealing with the public, and that would be you, is that we can argue as long as you’d like—and then I win.”

They didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so I continued.

“If you keep running your mouths, I’m going to haul the bunch of you down to Belle Fourche and throw you in jail for interfering with a law-enforcement official and his sworn duties, let alone brandishing weapons in an unlawful manner.”

I could feel Vic looking at the side of my face; she loved it when I made up laws, and I could almost hear her wondering if there was a way to brandish weapons in a lawful manner.

I let the dust on that one settle before sticking my hand out. “Would you like some assistance in exiting the vehicle?”

The passenger spit in the distance between us. “We don’t need no help from you.”

I shrugged and gave the cadre of gunmen at the end of the bridge a hard look and then started back toward my truck with the Cheyenne Nation and my undersheriff in tow as the driver called after us. “Hey, could you give us a ride?”