A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery

EPILOGUE

I hate funerals, and it seemed like today I had a passel to go to; the only good thing was that I had company inside the perimeter of the POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS tape that surrounded us.

Henry studied me as I drove Vic’s beat-up unit, a large manila envelope and a small white box lying on the center console between us. “Any word from South Dakota?”

I nodded. “Tim Berg says they raided the compound in Butte County and took the few women and children left there into protective custody. They confiscated the equipment and foreclosed on the property after the payments on the back taxes fell through.”

“Same story in Nebraska and Kansas?”

I parked, and Henry and I got out of the vehicle. Pushing off the speed limit sign, I walked toward the two-lane blacktop and the roadside marker. “All the assets have been frozen, and without money the whole thing is shutting down.”

“What about the Lynear family?”

I studied the tiny cross with the plastic white and maroon chrysanthemums, daisies, and blue lilies. The ever prevalent Wyoming wind kicked at the horizontal piece of wood of the makeshift cross, causing it to gesture with a will that almost seemed its own. “There are enough charges to put the whole bunch away, but chances are they’ll all end up back in Texas where they started; without the money from the oil scams, I’m betting that that won’t last long either.”

“But that is Sheriff Crutchley’s problem.”

I chewed on the inside of my lip and watched as the wind caught one of the plastic flowers and sent it tumbling toward us. “I’m afraid so.”

“And the adopted boys?”

I stooped and caught the blue plastic lily between my fingers. “Will be farmed out to foster homes.”

He moved up beside me and stood there, his rough-out boots near my knee. “Kind of a mess, hmm?”

Henry Standing Bear and I watched as the Division of Criminal Investigation techs carefully removed the body of Sarah Tisdale from under the roadside marker at the entrance of East Spring Ranch where her remains had been reburied. Edgar Lynear had tried to convey that to me the best he could in our conversation in Butte County, and Wanda Bidarte Lynear’s performance on the side of the road had raised my suspicions, but it had been Dale Tisdale’s remark about never laying a body to rest in the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God that had sealed the deal.

It had taken me an awfully long time to find that ungrateful child, but I finally had.

My voice sounded a little sharp as I spoke. “Most certainly a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

He said nothing for a while but then spoke gently. “There are no other bodies?”

I studied the plastic flower in my hands and twirled it by the stem. “No, thank goodness.”

The Cheyenne Nation stood there beside me, his hair loose with the breeze, and we listened to the sound of the shovels. “I think goodness had very little to do with it.”

I carried the flower toward the crowd at the edge of the police tape, looking through the half-dozen people that were curious about DCI’s undertakings, finally spotting the older woman with her arm over the young man, both of them seated on the tailgate of an International pickup.

Saizarbitoria caught the tape and lifted it, allowing us escape from the sad scene. “Ruby called and wanted to know if it would be okay to release Frymire’s personal effects to his family.”

I nodded my head. “Sure.”

“They’re planning on having the services next Thursday.”

“All right.” We both stood there having so much to say with the limited resource of language to say it. I finally came up with something we could address. “Any word on Double Tough?”

“He lost the eye.”

I nodded some more and stuffed the blue flower in my coat pocket.

“Supposedly they want to ship him back to Durant Memorial on Monday.”

“Do you mind going and getting him?”

He made a face and then smiled. “Don’t you think they’re going to want to send an ambulance?”

“I do. I also know Double Tough well enough to know that he’d rather ride with one of us.”

I moved on to Eleanor and Cord, still seated on the tailgate a little away from the tiny crowd. When I got there, they were talking between themselves in low voices, and I waited a few steps away until the owner/operator of the Short Drop Mercantile looked up.

“Sheriff.”

“Hey.” I waited, and the boy finally lifted his face to look at me, his eyes red-rimmed. “How are you doing, young man?”

He didn’t say anything, letting his gaze drop back to my legs.

Eleanor pulled him in closer. “I was telling him how you said his grandfather was very brave in confronting those men.”

“I couldn’t have done it without him.” I adjusted my hat so it blocked the sun from my eyes. “Still closing the Mercantile?”

She watched the boy closely and then turned her face to look at me. “Now that I’ve got help, I thought I’d try and keep it open.”

I smiled. “Can I talk to you privately for a moment, Mrs. Tisdale?”

She glanced at her grandson and watched as Henry sidled onto the tailgate on the other side of the youth. “Hey, Cord, did I ever tell you about the time I punched the sheriff here in grade school and loosened one of his teeth?”

He glanced at the Bear as I led Eleanor a few steps away, downwind, where the breeze would carry our words to Nebraska where no one would care what we said. She pulled up and stopped, gathering the cloth jacket she wore a little tighter around her shoulders, the pearl strand that held her glasses bumping against her exposed neck.

I took a deep breath, aware that now might not be the best time to bring up the subject but also aware that there might not be another chance. I gently placed a hand on her arm and led her even further away, finally stopping where the entrance road to the ranch tapered off into a culvert. “You sent him.”

She turned and looked at me. “What?”

“Dale Tisdale . . . Orrin Porter Rockwell, your husband—you’re the one who sent him looking for her, and that’s how he accidentally discovered your grandson.”

Her lips tensed, and we stood there looking at the DCI technicians as they brought evidence bags to the site. She took another step forward but then turned slightly to the side, and I could see her face again. “We didn’t even know he existed, but after Dale sold East Spring to that bunch I figured the least he could do was find his daughter.”

“He did more than that.”

“Yes, he did.” She gathered her fingers together and clutched them to her mouth, speaking through a fist. “I didn’t know who else to call. I knew that Dale had connections to those people, and I thought he was the only one that could find out what had happened to Sarah.” She turned the rest of the way and spoke to me, face to face. “Do you know what it’s like to have someone like that in your family?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s a living, breathing hell. You never know if they’re alive or dead, if what they’re telling you is the truth. Finally, I just gave up and decided to live my life the way I saw fit.” She stepped backward, and her eyes were fierce. “Who are you to judge me?”

“I’m not—I’m just trying to find out what happened and why.”

The fire in her eyes smoldered and then dampened as she glanced back toward the truck, where the Cheyenne Nation continued his animated storytelling by smacking a fist into his open palm.

“I killed him.”

I stepped around her and down the slope a bit to face her at eye level, as it seemed we were always finding ourselves. “He made choices; sometimes they were good ones and sometimes they were bad, but he made them himself. He was possibly the most abstract individual I’ve ever met, but he was committed.”

Rubbing a hand over my face, I could feel the resistance of a couple of days of beard growth. “I sometimes think that it’s not our enemies that we resent in life, but rather friends we have who stood quietly by and did nothing. You couldn’t say that about Dale—he threw himself into the fray over and over again.” Her head dropped, and I brought up a hand to raise her chin. “I think it was the last great adventure of his life; an opportunity for redemption. . . .” I glanced past her shoulder toward the truck, then returned my eyes to hers. “And then he got to meet his grandson.”

I looked out toward the open country beyond the collapsed chain-link fence. “A friend of mine called those made-up people that Dale became Legends. . . . I think he got caught up in that so much that he wasn’t enough for himself, but in the end I think that he rose to the occasion and became bigger than all those imaginary selves, bigger than Orrin Porter Rockwell. Dale Tisdale finally became legendary—big enough so that he could die as himself.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then studied me. “It’s a good thing you hold political office.”

I smiled back at her. “It wasn’t meant to be a speech.”

“I’m glad of that.” She stuck her hand out to me. “Friends again?”

I took her hand and put the blue plastic lily in it. “I’m not giving back the twenty-fifth volume of Bancroft’s Works, but I thought maybe I should remind you that Bishop Goodman has the Rockwell Book of Mormon.”

“I’ll get it back.”

I turned her around and placed my arm over her shoulder, tacking her through the wind and back toward Cord. “I bet you will.”

• • •

Henry studied me as I drove Vic’s unit, glancing periodically at the large manila envelope lying on the center console between us, and the small white box. “What about Lockhart, Gloss, and that bunch?”

I set the cruise control as I took the on-ramp to I-25, discovered it didn’t work, and kept my foot on the accelerator. “It’s an interstate jurisdiction, so the FBI field office in Casper is in charge.”

He continued to study me. “The Department of Justice.”

“Yep.”

“The Department of Justice, clients of the Boggs Institute that employed Mr. Lockhart?”

“The same.” I glanced around at the clutter that accompanied Vic’s vehicle and thought about how the thing appeared to be more of a rolling nest than a police unit.

“Kind of a mess, hmm?”

My voice sounded a little sharp as I spoke. “Most certainly a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about that either.”

He didn’t say anything more to me as we drove the forty miles back to Durant, but he looked at me questioningly as I took the early exit and jumped on old Highway 87 and turned south. After a few miles, I pulled over to the side of the road under the Lazy D-W ranch gate.

I slid the heavy envelope from the loose piles of refuse on the console and handed it to him, motioning for him to place it in the large rural-delivery mailbox.

He stared at the name on the envelope and then his eyes came back to mine. “What is this?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I simply do not wish to be party to mail fraud.”

I looked down the road. “Oh, it’s not fraudulent.”

He felt the heft of the thing. “This is the file on both Lockhart and Gloss?”

“Maybe.”

He smiled the close-lipped smile that was his trademark, the one with no warmth in it. “You are sacrificing them to Donna Johnson?”

I shrugged. “You live by the trench coat, you die by the trench coat.” I sighed, adjusted my hat, and lodged my chin in the web of my hand. “Donna Johnson can make their lives miserable.” I turned my head to look back at him. “I think they deserve that.”

He reached out, opened the mailbox door, and deposited the envelope inside. He closed it, even going so far as to raise the flag.

• • •

I dropped Henry off at the office where he could grab his ’59 Thunderbird for the last ride of the season. He said he wanted to accompany me over to Durant Memorial, but that he had a full Indian uprising out at The Red Pony and that if he didn’t get out there and relieve the bartender who was covering, he would likely find the place burned to the ground.

“Please don’t mention buildings burning to the ground.”

He leaned on the door of the Baltic Blue convertible he called Lola, the gloom of evening reflecting the available light off the T-bird’s glossy flanks. “Sorry.” His face hardened a little with the next statement. “Does it bother you that Big Wanda is gone?”

I thought about it. “Not so much; Tomás told me that he had had her taken away.”

“And the body of Tomás?”

I stared through the windshield and looked south, over the rolling foothills of the Bighorn Mountains to the plains of the Powder River country, my perspective down low among the sagebrush and the buffalo grass, racing across the ground until in my mind’s eye I could see the tall man, his blood pouring into Sulphur Creek like an offering.

“You mean the lack thereof?”

“Yes.”

The Division of Criminal Investigation had combed the area, but they didn’t know it as well as I did—and they didn’t have an Indian scout. “I was thinking about taking a drive down to Sulphur Creek in the morning and looking for a sign.”

“What time?”

“Early.” I leaned slightly out the window of the SUV and turned my head, listening to the distant roar of the high school football game at the southern end of town. When I glanced back at Henry, I noticed his face had been drawn in that direction, too.

“Worland . . .” He thought for a moment. “Warriors?”

I nodded. “Go, Dogs.”

He murmured back. “Go, Dogs.”

“They’re retiring our numbers at halftime.”

A puzzled look spread across the Cheyenne Nation’s face. “I hardly remember my number.”

“Then you won’t miss it.”

“No, I would imagine not.”

“Thirty-two.”

He nodded his head and smiled. “Ahh . . . Yes.”

We listened as the band played the Durant Dogies’ fight song, and there was more cheering. “Do you think things were simpler back then?”

The Bear stared at the macadam surface of the parking lot. “No.”

“No?”

“No.” He fished the keys from the pocket of his jeans and drew open the door of the concours vintage automobile. He settled himself in and hit the starter on the motor of the big square Bird.

He said something more, and the rest of his answer hung there in the slight breeze. I watched in the side-view mirror as both the stately beasts made the right on Fort and the left on Main and headed out toward the Rez. Listening to the sounds drifting up from Hepp Field, I was drawn back to those days when the only thing I had to concern myself with was making sure that our star quarterback, Jerry Pilch, didn’t get flattened.

Henry Standing Bear was right.

I pulled the old unit into gear and drove over to Durant Memorial. Isaac Bloomfield was drinking coffee and leafing listlessly through a five-month-old copy of Wyoming Wildlife at the reception area.

“How come you’re not at the game, Doc?”

“Not my idea of a game. Anyway, I’ll be here when the breaks, sprains, strains, and bruises show up.” He studied me and the small white box in my hands. “I want to tell you how sorry I am.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

“I suppose it’s an occupational hazard, but you hate to see something like this happen.”

My head nodded of its own volition.

“You’re going to want to see him before they take his body away?”

I nodded some more and watched as he closed the wrinkled magazine and brought the Styrofoam cup of coffee with him. We pushed our way through the double swinging doors of the Emergency Room’s inner sanctum and made our way toward room 31, the makeshift morgue.

Isaac opened the door and ushered me inside but then closed it after me; he knew my practices.

You think you’d get used to it, but you don’t; the lifeless form of an animal not unlike yourself. There is, appropriately enough, an otherworldly stillness to the dead and especially when it is someone young.

I placed a hand on the bare shoulder, feeling the coolness of the flesh, another reminder that the spirit that was here was now gone. I had hired the young man from a good family over in Sheridan, and he had been a fine officer. Next Thursday they would put his body in a grave, another casualty in the war I’d been fighting for almost my whole life.

All for a few gallons of crude oil.

As the saying goes, a cynic is the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Toy soldiers like Gloss and Lockhart would never understand the value of a single human life in comparison with their strident beliefs in geopolitical positioning. They had never been forged in the fire of battle where you learn that the only thing left in those stark and startling moments and the reason you fought in the first place was for the man next to you, your brother in arms.

I wished that I could take Gloss and Lockhart with me when I made what would feel like a long drive to the next county on Thursday, so that I could introduce them both to Chuck Frymire’s family and let them look into the bereaved eyes of the young man’s mother and father and fiancée, in order to see for once where that value lies.

When I came out, Isaac was flipping through some papers on a clipboard. He looked up at me, seeing me for the loosely stacked mess I was, watching for cracks, fissures, and faults. “You still look tired.”

“You mean for the last thirty years?”

A sad smile crept across his lips. “Would you like to read the report?”

“I’ll give you a quarter if you read it to me.”

He stared, unsure. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, private joke.”

His eyes dropped to the clipboard, and he read, “‘Single, thrusting action wound with a circular defect surrounded with a margin of abrasion with the predictable langer or cleavage lines. . . .’” He paused, and his brows collided together on his face. “It was a very long knife.”

“You still have it?”

“I do.”

I started past him toward the room across the hall. “I’m going to need it.”

The old-world eyes went back to the sheet of paper and then he flipped the copy over, reading again, “‘Muscle and tissue were cut at an oblique angle with the resulting gaping injury with the muscles retracting and eversion at the skin edges; damage to the abdominal viscera and exsanguinations resulting in an internal hemorrhage.’” He slipped the clipboard under his arm and picked up his cup of coffee as I looked back at him. “‘Complications in association with peritonitis, sepsis infection along with damage to the uterus.’”

I withheld comment.

He sipped his coffee. “She’s in remarkable shape, especially considering her condition.”

My hand paused on the handle of the door. “You just said she was in remarkable shape.”

“She is.” He sipped his coffee some more. “For a woman who was seven weeks’ pregnant.”

I stood there, looking at him. “Was?”

“Was.” He pulled the cup away from his face and scrutinized me. “I thought you knew.”

“Um . . .” I could feel the dryness in my mouth as I tried to speak. “Kind of.”

He waited a moment and then rephrased his statement. “You didn’t know.”

I took a breath, in hopes that I wouldn’t pass out. “No.”

He glanced at the door I was about to go through. “I don’t suppose you’d care to return to the blissful state of ignorance in which you were as of a minute ago?”

I leaned against the doorjamb, still feeling more than a little weak in my knees. “So that she can tell me herself.”

The doc nodded. “Yes.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“It’s very possible that she’s unaware, in which case I will inform her, but either way it’s between the two of you, and I am removed from the equation, which I desire most greatly.”

I gathered my strength and smiled at him as I carefully pushed open the door, finally remembering to mumble some words. “You bet.”

It was dark except for the light coming from the dusk-to-dawns in the parking lot outside. In an attempt to keep the room from being too stuffy, Isaac must’ve raised the window a few inches to let in a little fresh air, a practice of his that drove the nurses crazy.

She was asleep and breathing steadily, the IV at her side set on a steady drip.

I stood there in the middle of the room and listened to the vague sounds of the football game drifting through the space at the bottom of the window.

I looked at her and rubbed my hand over my face; finally, I lifted the guest chair from against the wall and quietly placed it beside the bed. My legs carried me around and seated me before I collapsed.

Her cheek made a small movement, and she swallowed.

I was as quiet as I’d been in the jungles of Vietnam.

She settled against her pillow, and I studied her.

My God, she was beautiful.

I don’t know how long I sat there watching her. I could feel myself nodding off and even went so far as to rest my elbow on the bed, cupping my chin in my hand and studying her some more.

The noise from the ball game reached a distant crescendo and then subsided—the Dogies must be putting a pasting on the Warriors. I thought about what Henry Standing Bear had said when I asked if he thought that those early times in our youth had been simpler. He’d said no, but then had added—but we were.

The crowd roared again, and I opened the white cardboard box and carefully removed the dyed chrysanthemums, tied together with ribbons. I breathed in the scent of her along with that of the black-and-orange corsage that I carefully placed on the pillow beside her head.