A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery

4

“How long do you think?”

Double Tough was as flapped as I’d ever seen his unflappable self. “An hour at the most.”

I thought about it. “He’s on foot. Couldn’t have gotten very far; the question is—did he go south or east?”

“You go one way and I’ll go the other, but the highway or surface roads? The little idiot’s so uninformed that he could be walking along the center stripe of I-25.” We were moving toward the doors now, passing the reception area where I’d found Double Tough asleep only minutes ago. “Do you want to call in more staff?”

“No, we’ll . . .”

The phone on Ruby’s desk rang, and the two of us looked at each other, my deputy the first to vote. “We could ignore it.”

I sighed. “That’s not the sheriffing thing to do.” I strode back to the desk and snatched it up. “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

The line buzzed and then became clear. “Walt?”

“Yep?”

More buzzing, and then the voice again. “This is Wally Johnson down here on the Lazy D-W.”

I recognized his voice—I had heard Wally many times at the National Cattlemen’s Association, where he served as counsel. “How can I help you, Wally?”

Buzzing. “I’m sorry, I’m on this damn cordless down at the barn. You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve got a couple horse thieves down here.”

I waited a few seconds and then attempted to establish some priorities. “Wally, is this something we could discuss tomorrow?”

His turn to pause. “You mean you want me to let them go?”

I thought about the location of Wally and Donna’s ranch, just a little south of town on the secondary road. “You mean you’ve got them got them?”

“Yes.”

I glanced over at Double Tough and marveled at our good fortune; five more seconds and we would’ve been out the door. “Is one of them a skinny kid, blond with blue eyes?”

“Yeah, says his name is Cord.”

“Who is the other one?”

There was a brief scrambling and some conversation in the background, and then the rancher came back on the line. “Old fella, says his name is Orrin Porter Rockwell, though I kinda find that hard to believe.”

I thought of the Book of Mormon in the young man’s possession. “Orrin the Mormon.”

“Excuse me, Walt? Darn this cordless.”

“Nothing.” I readjusted the little cradle on Ruby’s phone against my shoulder. “You say you’ve got them there?”

“Yeah. Bruce Eldredge is staying with us on his way back to Cody and was coming home from a friend’s house and said there were two idiots out in the north pasture running around trying to catch the horses by hand. Hell, Walt, that’s rough stock. They’re lucky one of those horses didn’t kick their brains out.”

“Can you hold them till I get there?”

“Sure. Donna’s got a shotgun on them right now, but the kid came up to my truck and volunteered your number; said you were probably looking for him.”

“And the other one?”

“He’s a pretty old, hippie-looking fellow, and he’s still winded from chasing those horses all over the damn place. . . . I thought he was going to have a heart attack.” There was some talking in the background. “What?” More talking. “Yeah, yeah, that’s probably true.”

“Wally?”

The rancher came back on the line, but I could hear his hand cupping the receiver to his mouth in an attempt to keep this portion of the conversation between the two of us. “The boy says that it wasn’t anything like My Friend Flicka.” His voice dropped even lower. “Walt, I’ve only been around this kid for twenty minutes, but he’s something strange on that movie; I think he’s brought it up about twelve times, and he’s carrying an old VHS tape of the film with him.”

• • •

When we got to the Lazy D-W, the two outlaws were sitting in the calving shed adjoining the main barn, the place where cowboys stayed on call during the time in the early spring when the cow mothers did their duty. I’d seen all kinds of calving sheds in my life, some just dirt-floor lean-to shanties with a snubbing pole in the middle to heated buildings with entertainment centers and rows of comfortable sofas on which to sit back and while away the half-sleep hours through the nights when most heifers decide to thicken the herd.

The Lazy D-W was the latter and not the former, and through the glass panel in the breezeway door I could see our two would-be horse thieves watching My Friend Flicka in studious rapture.

I glanced at Wally and especially at Donna, still holding the shotgun.

There were rumors about Donna Johnson. In my experience you couldn’t swing a dead trench coat without hitting all kinds of folks who claimed to have worked for the CIA, but I’d heard the rumors about Donna, and my suspicions that she had indeed been employed by that organization were based on the fact that she never talked about it.

Never.

She shrugged. “It was the only place we had a VCR.”

I studied the old man seated next to Cord on the edge of one of the leather sofas; he was smallish with silver hair hanging past his shoulders that feathered into a dark brown, and with a beard that stretched to the third button of his old-fashioned tab-collar shirt. Around his neck was a scarf with a pattern that made it look almost like a prayer shawl.

He was the man who had waved at me on the street in Durant.

I glanced at the screen and could see Roddy McDowall on the back of a horse racing hell-bent for leather across the green hills of a cinematic Wyoming—read Utah. Rockwell was leaning forward with his wrists resting on his knees and his gnarled hands gripping imaginary reins.

You didn’t see hands like that much anymore. The fingers were thick, and I could see where the knuckles, especially those of the fore- and middle fingers, had been broken numerous times. There was only one type of activity that would sustain that kind of mutation; so whatever type of hippie Orrin the Mormon was, he hadn’t been a peace-loving man.

Pushing the door open, I stepped into the room with Double Tough covering the doorway.

Cord immediately stood and smiled at me. “Hi, Sheriff.”

The older man ignored us completely and began imitating the movements of the horseman on the screen, exerting a body English in an attempt to keep young Roddy in the saddle.

Cord looked up at me as I watched the Orrin character. The boy glanced back at the man and then up to me again. “He’s never seen the movie before.”

I smiled. “You mean this movie?”

He started to speak but then stopped. “There are others?”

I stared at the young man’s face just to make sure he wasn’t pulling my leg. “Yep.” I glanced back at Double Tough and watched as he put a thumb and forefinger at the corners of his mouth to keep from smiling as I turned back to the boy. “Thousands of them, probably millions.”

He stood there, looking at me askance, and then gestured toward the television. “Like this?”

“Well, not exactly like this, although I think there are a couple of sequels to this one. . . .”

“What’s a sequel?”

Behind me, Double Tough smothered a laugh.

“Um . . . Look, we’ll talk about that later.” I gestured toward the oblivious man with my chin. “You know this fellow?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He kidnap you?”

“I . . . I guess.”

I rested the web of my thumb on the hammer of my Colt. “He did or he didn’t?”

“Well, he asked me to go with him, but I told him I’d rather stay, and then he said we ought to go. So, I did.”

That probably wasn’t going to hold up in court. “Where were you going?”

“He didn’t say.”

I shook my head. “Are you in the habit of following people just because they tell you to?”

We both turned when the man who called himself Orrin Porter Rockwell made a noise in his throat as the horse on the screen leapt into a corner fence and fell, tangled and kicking. Cord’s eyes turned back to me. “Him I do.”

“He’s a friend of yours?”

“He’s my bodyguard.”

I tipped my hat back on my head and stared at the young man. “You have a bodyguard?”

He shrugged. “I guess; he looks after me.”

“Where’s he been for the last few weeks?”

“Looking for me.”

I sighed and glanced past the boy to the man. “Well, I guess he found you.” I took a few steps, placing myself directly in the man’s line of sight.

He leaned to the side and then shifted over to where he could get a better view, completely ignoring me.

“Sir?”

His face stayed on the screen, so I reached around behind me and punched the button, turning off the set.

A cry escaped him again, and he was immediately on his feet with his hands between us, but it wasn’t a threatening gesture; rather, the fingers were splayed with palms up in a beseeching manner. “Sir, please . . .” Like the boy, his eyes were the amazing thing about him, but whereas the young man’s were like sapphires, his were a pale blue almost to the point of being white. Opals. “The horse is endangered.”

I stood there looking at the irises, unable to help myself, at least until the smell got to me, forcing me to lean back a little. “He’ll be fine; at least he has been the other twenty-seven times I’ve seen it.” I turned and hit STOP, then EJECT, and pulled the tape out, returning it to the cardboard sleeve.

Rockwell’s eyes followed my hands as if I were holding the Hope Diamond.

“Mr. Rockwell, I presume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Danite, Man of God, Son of Thunder?”

He actually smiled. “Yes. Do you know me, sir?”

“Only by reputation. I’m going to need you to come with us, Mr. Rockwell.”

His grin faded. “Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

“I won’t be arrested.” I started to reach toward his shoulder, but he dipped and took a half step back. “I won’t have hands laid upon me neither.”

We stood there looking at each other, the age-old standoff between arrestor and arrestee, the moment where everybody both inside and outside the law had to commit. I smiled, pretty sure I could take him; anyway, I didn’t think I wanted to expose the boy to a wrestling match, so instead I leaned down a little and gazed into the luminescent eyes as I brought the videotape up between us. “I’ll let you watch the rest of Flicka.”

• • •

“Orrin Porter Rockwell.”

Double Tough’s voice carried across the room to my ears, muffled under the blanket that covered my face. It was my turn on the wooden bench. “Find anything?”

I smiled as he continued to punch buttons on the keyboard of Ruby’s computer like a monkey trying to find a way to fit the square pegs in round holes. “Well, yeah. . . .”

“Still having fun?”

I listened as he leaned back in the desk chair. “He’s a murderer.”

“I know. According to history, about a hundred people and the attempted assassination of the governor of Missouri, for one.”

I joined him at the computer, where there was a photo of a man who appeared to be a forty-year-old version of the one watching My Friend Flicka in the basement. Double Tough leaned back in his chair and pointed. “That’s him; he’s younger there, but that’s him.”

“Well, that would figure.” I looked over his shoulder. “Since according to this, he’s two hundred years old.”

The similarity was uncanny and patently impossible.

“When I read the name in the book some warning bells went off, but not loud enough to really catch my attention; then when Cord referred to him the way he did, I started putting two and two together.” I gestured with a hand, introducing Double Tough to one of the most intriguing and mythical historical figures of the American West. “Meet Orrin Porter Rockwell, Danite, Man of God, Son of Thunder, and the strong right arm of the prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons, Joseph Smith Jr., and Brigham Young.”

“No shit.”

“The Danites were kind of a Mormon vigilante arm that exacted what they called Blood Atonements, and he was one of the chieftains, but he was also a mountain man, a gunfighter, and even a deputy marshal at one point.” I leaned in even further and read the description. “‘He was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent.’”

Double Tough straightened up and stretched his back. “He’s also very fond of My Friend Flicka.”

“Yep, a true devotee.”

“And as Lucian would say, and I would second, crazy as a waltzin’ pissant.”

“That, too.” I yawned. “I’ll have Vic run his prints through the IAFIS and we’ll find out which bin he escaped from; then we’ll go from there.”

“What about the kid?”

“I don’t know. His grandmother wants him, but we’ve got to find the mother.”

“Wouldn’t that be South Dakota’s job?”

I folded my hands into church and steeple, burying my nose in the front door. “Strictly speaking.”

• • •

“No fucking way.”

I raised my hat up and looked at my undersheriff, who, despite the landscape, appeared to be enjoying driving my truck, and then shifted around to glance at the Cheyenne Nation studying the ancient copy of the Book of Mormon in the backseat.

“Let me guess: these sublime surroundings do not meet with your picturesque approval.”

I’d told Henry Standing Bear that our numbers were being retired at the high school this weekend, and the rambling conversation that ensued had included the jaunt to South Dakota, and the Bear had decided to come along.

Vic nodded. “What’s the next town in the land that time forgot?”

I glanced around, getting a reading. “Beulah, at the state line.”

“Does the scenery change a lot at the border?”

“Not particularly.” I shook my head and looked at her, noticing how the two black eyes were transmuting to purple and yellow. “Haven’t you ever driven this way?”

“Not sober.” After a moment of smiling at herself and at Henry in the rearview mirror, she spoke again. “So what’s in Beulah, other than a Shell station?”

“Ranch A.”

“What the hell is Ranch A?”

I raised my hat up to block the full-on sunshine that slanted through the side window and thought about how the sleeping portion of the trip might be formally over. “A is for Annenberg.”

She threw me a little tarnished gold over the purple and yellow. “Annenberg as in the Philadelphia Annenbergs?”

“Yep.” I gestured to the right. “Just over those gently rolling hills is one of the most beautiful ranches in all of Wyoming—evidently the Annenbergs thought it was a nice place to stop.” I placed my hat back over my face as the Bear finished the salvo.

“Maybe you need to get out more.”

• • •

The Butte County Sheriff’s Department is in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and is right on the main drag of Route 85, but Tim Berg’s house was off that beaten path. A beautiful Craftsman facing Hanson Park, the house was made such mostly due to the ministrations of his red-headed wife, Kate. It was all forest green and oiled wood with hanging baskets and multilayered flower beds that exploded from the rich South Dakota soil like vegetative fireworks.

As Vic parked the truck, Henry and I stepped over the painted curb, and I raised a hand to the woman in Bermuda shorts and a Sturgis tank top, who ignored me completely, wheeled a barrow around the corner of the house, and disappeared.

I allowed my hand to drop as Vic joined us on the manicured lawn. “Somebody you don’t know?”

I shrugged and crossed the sidewalk, climbed the stairs, and knocked on the screen door. “Open up, it’s the law.”

From inside, a man’s voice answered. “It’s the law in here, too.”

“Well then, let’s have a convention.”

“I’ve got beer.”

The sheriff of Butte County was drinking a Grain Belt Nordeast at his kitchen table and watching a Duck Dynasty marathon on A&E on a tiny black-and-white television that looked like it got the same kind of reception as the one I used to have in my cabin back home before Cady had ordered DIRECTV. “Watching a family reunion, Tim?”

He reached out and turned off the reality show. “You know, Walt, even the women on this show have beards. Or maybe it’s the reception.” He shook hands with Henry and glanced up and saw Vic. He grinned broadly through the hair on his face, looking all the world like a happy hedgehog and not all that different from Orrin Porter Rockwell or the guys on TV. “Hey, good-lookin’!”

She peeled off his Minnesota Vikings ball cap and smooched his bald spot. “You in here drinking beer and watching must-see TV while your wife does all the work outside?”

“Kinda looks like it, don’t it?” He quaffed the Grain Belt and resettled his hat. “You guys want a beer?”

“Nah, we’re working.” I pulled out a chair and sat, as the Bear and Vic did the same. “Anything more on the boy’s mother?”

He nodded. “A few things; the folks in that compound up north still say they don’t know who she is, but the librarian over here, Pat Engebretson, says what sounds like the same woman came in and was wanting to use the phone books to try and find a number—and that’s the one that was scribbled on the bottom of that piece of paper you’ve got.”

“It’s her mother who hasn’t seen her in seventeen years; she lives down in Short Drop in the southern part of Absaroka.”

Tim nodded. “Well, Pat says that some young fellers showed up in a scours-colored Chevy pickup and hustled her out of there toot sweet.”

I studied his beer and regretted my choice not to have one. “Any idea who they were?”

“Well, when I had my little confrontation with the kids up north, they were driving a pickup remarkably of that description.”

Henry smiled, crossing his powerful arms across his chest. “Not showing a lot of reserve, are they?”

Tim took a paper towel from a holder on the table and wiped up the condensation from his beer that was staining the surface of the woven place mat. “Not their style.”

“Anything else?”

“Yup, I was up north talking to some of the ranchers where they’re running that Bakken pipeline . . .”

Vic interrupted. “The what?”

“Bakken shale oil pipeline from North Dakota; they’re running it through here, around the Black Hills, and then over your way and down to the crude oil storage hub in central Oklahoma—move 200,000 barrels of oil a day. At least they will when they get it finished here in a few years. Anyway, I was talking to Dale Atta, who has a ranch north of here, and he said that he saw that same truck that day up on the ridge that separates his place from theirs; that it was still there when he got done really late that evening, but that it was gone the next morning.”

“Where’s the ranch?”

“I can show you easier than tell you.” He pushed the beer away. “But first, I’ve got somebody I’d like you to meet.” He stood and walked to the back door. “We can walk; it’s not very far.”

Henry, Vic, and I looked at each other and then followed Tim outside; Kate, having unloaded her barrow full of compost at the far corner by the fence, turned and wheeled past us.

Tim raised a hand. “I’m going to introduce ’em to Vann Ross.”

She stopped, looked at all of us, and trundled on. “This will all end badly.”

We watched her go and then turned to look at Tim, who stroked his beard. “She doesn’t approve of this particular investigation.”

I took a deep breath and shot it from my nose. “My wife and I had a few of those disagreements.”

He looked at me, curious. “How did they end?”

“Badly.”

• • •

Through a gate at the back, we entered what probably had been an alleyway but through disuse had evolved into an overgrown path that ran along the back of all the houses facing Hanson Park.

As we walked, I asked, “Who’s Vann Ross?”

Tim smiled and continued on. “Oh, I better let Vann speak for himself.”

At the end of the block, the street butted into a hillside and there was a fence like those on the other lots, perhaps not in as good a shape, but higher. From the angle in the alley, you could see that the structure was roughly of the same vintage as the Bergs’ but had not weathered the years as well. Some of the windows were broken, and it looked as if they had been patched with sheets of cardboard. Large areas of shingles were missing from the roof, and the rusted gutters hung from the eaves.

I watched as Tim knocked on the gate. “Hey, Vann, it’s Tim Berg and I’ve got some folks who would like to meet you.”

There was no sound from inside.

Vic ventured an opinion. “Maybe he’s not home.”

Tim knocked again. “He’s always home—hey, Vann!”

There was a noise, almost as if someone was banging away from inside an old iron bathtub, and then the sound of someone mumbling, at which point the gate nudged away from us with a metallic sound; it opened inward about four inches to reveal a very tanned and wrinkled elf in a faded pair of hibiscus-patterned, pink-and-baby-blue-colored Hawaiian shorts.

“Hello, Timothy, how are you?”

The sheriff nodded. “I’m good, Vann, and you?”

“Fine, just fine.” Pulling the hair at his eyebrows, he looked past Tim toward Vic, the Cheyenne Nation, and me. “Who are your friends?”

“Just some folks who would like to see your handiwork.”

Vann Ross glanced at us again but especially at Henry. “They’re not from the government, are they?”

“No.”

He seemed satisfied and opened the door just wide enough to allow us entry.

I have seen many strange things in my tenure as the sheriff of Absaroka County, my duty in Vietnam, and even my time spent in California, but nothing could’ve possibly prepared me for Vann Ross’s backyard. There was junk piled against the outer perimeter and poles poked up through the rubble periodically to hold up what looked to be netted camouflage, the kind we used in the military to hide vehicles, aircraft, and other equipment from surveillance planes. All of this was pretty weird but paled in comparison to what took up most of the backyard: twelve perfectly formed and frighteningly realistic spaceships.

They were of different shapes and sizes but all made of what looked to be aircraft-grade aluminum, and there were hatchways and navigational bubbles that had been salvaged from other planes.

Henry and I looked at each other.

Vic mumbled. “Fuck me.”

The spaceships looked like they had been constructed from old science-fiction drawings I’d seen on the covers of Popular Mechanics and Astonishing Stories, some elongated like futuristic cigars and others assembled into saucers that could have been poster children for the United States Air Force Blue Book.

Vann beamed in appreciation of our stunned faces, while Tim walked over to the nearest vehicle, which was named The Dan. “Looks like you’re about to finish the last one.”

The tiny and what I took to be at least eighty-year-old man stepped next to the sheriff and patted the riveted aluminum. “She’s almost finalized.” He smiled, revealing a set of perfect teeth. “I think she’s my best one yet.”

The Dan had the look of a mother ship and was about thirty feet long with large, tear-shaped observation windows that were most likely cannibalized from a PBY Catalina. I walked down the length of the thing, ducking under the circumference of a nearby saucer, and looked in the windows, where I could see rows of plastic seats with tubular handles sticking out to the sides.

“The seats are out of Subaru Brats; they had those in the beds of those little trucks. . . .”

“I remember.” Still running a hand over his creation, I nodded. He pointed toward the aerodynamic stabilizers at the rear of the ship. “Of course, when it’s finished I’ll stand it up on its end for takeoff.”

“Of course.” I took the extra moment to get a good look at him and studied his face. He was definitely in his eighties, but the bone structure was fine. There was a small dimple at the end of his nose and curls of gray hair escaped from under a formless hat that might’ve been a Stetson Gun Club at some point. Evidently he spent a great deal of time out of doors, working in the reflection of the spaceships, because his skin was roasted like a coffee bean. “You did all of these yourself, Mr. Ross?”

He nodded, and his voice took on a fervent quality as he again plucked at his eyebrows. “I did; each one is named for one of the twelve tribes of Israel.”

Henry joined us, and I glanced at Tim, but he was looking at the toes of his boots and smiling. “How long have you been at it?”

“Since 1957.”

The Bear nodded his head solemnly. “Amazing.”

I looked carefully up and down the thing, but for the life of me I couldn’t see any air intakes or exhaust ports. “Where are the engines?”

He smiled at my naïveté. “It doesn’t need them; it will ascend by divine power.”

“Ahh.”

He looked around. “I’m sorry to be so careful. I sometimes liberate parts from Ellsworth Air Force Base on the other side of Rapid City, and I’m afraid they’ve taken exception to my combing through their salvage yard over the years.”

I fingered a seam. “I bet.”

He noticed my interest. “I’ve used Ace Hardware heavy-duty gutter caulking to stand up to the rigors of interplanetary travel.”

I concurred, sage-like. “A wise precaution.” He seemed to want more, so I added, “My father used to say that extra dollar a tube is always worth it.”

He fussed with his eyebrows yet again. “You see, Adam will return to Earth to take us away within the rapture and convey us to the twelve planets that have been reserved for us.”

“Wow.” I really wasn’t sure of what else to say.

His eyes were drawn back to Henry. “Yes, and when the great battle arises between the races of black and white, he will return and those who are true believers will be taken with him.”

The Bear looked at the elf. “That would be Adam, of Adam and Eve fame?”

“Yes.” He patted Henry’s arm. “You see, the Lamanites are going to help us overcome the Coloreds.”

Henry and I looked at each other. “And have we got a timeline on that?”

He seemed a little disappointed that I’d asked and was giving his eyebrow hell. “It was supposed to be the millennium in 2000; there were a couple chances before that one, but it was the big one. Then in 2003 we were not struck by the planet Nibiru. . . .”

“Right.” I nodded as Vic and Tim joined us.

“December 21st, 2012, didn’t work out either, but I haven’t lost hope.”

Henry nodded in a comforting fashion. “One should always have faith.”

Vic interrupted. “Vann, Tim here was telling me about your wonderful talent, the one with dogs?”

He turned back to me, nodding with a great deal of enthusiasm. “In my free time, I teach dogs how to talk. I use mental telepathy and can get them to say words like hello, squirrel, and hamburger.”

• • •

“He’s a relatively harmless old eccentric who keeps to himself and writes editorials to the newspaper as the One, Mighty and Strong, the Lion of Judah, and the King of Israel. He also calls in on local radio shows a lot.”

Vic pursed her lips. “Hell, I’d tune in for that.”

“You saw how tanned he is?”

We were walking back to Tim’s house on the return route in the alleyway. “Yep, I figured he got it working on the saucers; did he do all the aluminum work, welding, and riveting himself?”

Henry piped up. “And caulking, do not forget the caulking.”

Tim nodded his head and stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. “He did—he’s very popular around the neighborhood; you bring him anything and he can fix it. But did you see his tan?” Berg stopped and turned sideways to look at us. “Well, he wasn’t always so popular around here. About twenty years ago the One, Mighty and Strong back there got a revelation from God saying the true believers were going to be taken to the City of Enoch on the North Star. Supposedly God tells Vann that they need to prepare for the journey by protecting themselves from getting burned on reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, so they should get a good, all-over suntan.”

Vic covered her face with a hand. “Have you ever noticed it’s the people you don’t want to see naked who are always taking their clothes off?”

“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.”