A Serpent's Tooth: A Walt Longmire Mystery

6

One of the best ways I have discovered to get back in the good graces of your staff is to show up with a couple of boxloads of desserts and deposit them in the communal area near Ruby’s desk. I had done so and was now brooding in my office over a tepid cup of coffee that resided in my old-school Denver Broncos mug with the chip on the rim.

It was resting on a couple of magazines, and my forearm was lying flat on the desk with my chin propped on it as I slowly turned the mug by the handle and studied the chip, stained and grimy-looking from coffee residue.

“You could get a new one.”

I continued staring at my sole piece of office drinkware. “I don’t want a new one.”

The Cheyenne Nation leaned in my doorway, drinking a mugful himself. “Then what do you want?” He noticed the magazines under my arm. “Do you mind if I ask why you have the 1972 January edition of Playboy magazine on your desk?”

“I’m thinking of taking up airbrushing.” I waited a moment and then asked a favor. “Hey, do you think you could take Mr. Rockwell out for a walk long enough for me to talk to Cord about his mother?”

“Yes.” He waited and watched me continue to contemplate my mug awhile before asking, “Are you depressed because you missed chess with Lucian last night?”

“No.”

“Are you depressed because the Durant Dogies are retiring your number?”

“No.”

He nudged his sizable shoulder off the doorjamb and loitered. “Are you mad at yourself for that roundhouse punch that planted that farmer like seed corn?”

I thought about it. “I suppose.”

“Some seeds need planting.”

“It’s not going to make that boy and his sister’s lives any easier.”

He sipped his coffee. “How do you know that? It’s possible that now that he has been manhandled, he is less likely to manhandle.”

“That’s not how it works, and you know it.”

He considered his own mug, which obviously belonged to Vic and read in bold script PHROM PHILLY AND PHUCKING PROUD OF IT. “You could arrest them.”

“Tim Berg could arrest them.”

“Yes.”

I rose up and leaned back in my chair, hooking my foot under my desk again in an attempt to not imitate Buster Keaton. I listened to the geese honking and glanced out the window in time to see the tail end of a large V-pattern headed due south.

His smile lingered. “They are complex, those chambers of the human heart.”

“Yep, they are.” Henry stood there for a while, both of us saying nothing.

“You do realize that it is simply a myogenic muscular organ, right?”

I sighed and stood, leaving the copy of Playboy on my desk but folding and stuffing the gun magazine underneath in my back pocket. “I know it can carry a lot of weight.”

The Bear followed as I walked out of my lair and into the Turkish bazaar that had become my sheriff’s office. From somewhere, Ruby had procured paper plates and plastic utensils and even a triangular spatula that she was now using to divide up a pecan pie.

“How are the goods?”

The newly returned Saizarbitoria and Vic were sharing a bag of cookies and were seated on the bench beside the stairs; the Basquo was excited. “We should go back and buy more.”

“I bought them out.” I turned to Ruby. “Need I ask where our two lodgers are?”

She glanced at the old Seth Thomas on the wall above the stairwell. “Well, it’s 8:43, and I’d say they are downstairs watching the 8:43 showing of My Friend Flicka.”

“As opposed to the 7:13 or the 10:03 presentation?”

“Exactly.”

When Henry, Vic, Sancho, and I arrived at the base of the steps, the pair was still transfixed by the television on the rolling cart. I thanked the lucky star on my chest that Frymire had been able to find a dual-deck player that accommodated both DVDs and VHS tapes. A lot of our certification and training classes were still on videotapes, which I tried hard not to think about. “How’s the horse?”

We’d timed our entrance pretty well in that the end credit music was swelling, and the two looked over at us. Rockwell stood, the way he always did when Vic entered the room, to her unending puzzlement. “It is interesting that the story only changes in small ways each time the machine tells it.”

“I think you’ll find it’s exactly the same.”

The old man disagreed. “No; subtle but definitely different.”

“Uh-huh.” I made my way into the briefing room, pulled out one of the chairs, and sat. Vic and Santiago followed my lead, but Henry remained at the base of the steps.

Rockwell studied the Cheyenne Nation. “You have a savage with you.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Actually, he’s the most civilized of all of us.”

Henry made a show of waving at the crazy person.

“I was hoping that you might take a walk with him while I have a chat with Cord.”

Rockwell, probably weighing his odds, studied the Bear. “Where would we be going?”

The Cheyenne Nation spoke from the stairs. “Just down the block.”

The Man of God, Son of Thunder stood, gathered his coat from the chair beside him, and for the first time I noticed that he walked with a slight limp. “The cookies were delicious, but I could stand a real breakfast.”

Henry glanced at me and then back to Rockwell. “Sure.”

We all watched the unlikely pair do an exit dance at the foot of the stairs, with the Cheyenne Nation finally realizing the mountain man wasn’t going to allow the savage to get behind him.

We watched the two of them ascend, and then I turned to look at the young man. He was as earnest as usual but looked a little tired from watching the quadruple-feature of Flicka. “How you doin’, kiddo?”

“Good.” He smiled. “I’m hungry, too. Can we get something else to eat?”

“Soon, but I’d like to talk a few minutes if that’s okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

I leaned back in one of the plastic chairs, form-fitted to fit no one’s form. “I think I met some friends of yours over in South Dakota yesterday.”

“Who?”

“Eddy, Edgar, Merrill, and Joe Lynear.”

He smiled some more. “I do know them.”

“I also met some other members of the church—elders, I guess you would call them.” I waited a moment. “Any idea why it is that they would say they didn’t know you?”

His eyes dropped, and, trying to get a read on what was going on in his mind, I studied him.

He spoke slowly. “When you are banished from the First Order, you lose your seat in the celestial realm and are deemed a traitor. If they’ve decided I don’t exist, then that’s the best I can hope for.”

“What’s the worst?”

“Death.”

I glanced at Vic and Sancho. “They would try and kill you for leaving the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God?”

“For testifying against it.”

“Have you . . .” I had to choose my words carefully. “Known of them killing anyone?”

“I’ve never seen it, if that’s what you mean, but people disappear, especially since things changed.”

“People like you?”

He thought about that one. “My situation is different.”

“How?”

“I’m the One.”

“In what way?”

“Through lineage, I am the One of Three.”

I sighed. “Three what?”

“The One, Mighty and Strong.”

I could feel a headache coming on from all the cultspeak. “Who are the other two?”

“My brothers.” He then added, “My half-brothers. George and Ronald.”

I thought about how Eddy had referred to Edgar, and tried not to think about the tangled webs of ancestry within the Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God. “And are they still in the church?”

“Yes. You see, my father’s teachings are different from those of the Church of Latter-day Saints; they believe through the proclamation of Joseph Smith Jr. in 1832 that there will be a leader of the church who will come to set the house of God in order, that he will be the One, Mighty and Strong. According to my father, the mistake they make is that it will be one man, when in reality it will be three.”

“So you’re the One, and your brothers George and Ronald go by the titles of Mighty and Strong?”

“Yes.”

I rested my face in a hand and spoke through my fingers. “So, let me get this straight: your father is Roy Lynear?”

“Yes.”

“And does he know where you are?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “Then who sent your bodyguard, Mr. Rockwell, the Danite, Man of God, Son of Thunder?”

“I don’t know.”

I brought my face up to look at him. “Have you discussed this with Mr. Rockwell?”

“Yes, and he won’t say.”

“Well, I’ll take that up with him. In the meantime, do you remember the conversation you had with Nancy Griffith, the school psychologist?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, she told me that you said something about the possibility that your mother might be dead.” He didn’t say anything but looked at the blank screen on the television as if there might be some comfort there. “She mentioned that it might’ve been something that happened recently.”

He cleared his throat, then blinked and nodded with a disconcerting certitude. “She’s dead.”

I let that one settle for a while before continuing. “I’m sorry to have to ask these questions, Cord, but how do you know?”

His eyes glanced off mine for an instant. “She hasn’t come looking for me.”

“She was in the Butte County Sheriff’s Office a few weeks ago, asking for you.”

He nodded and continued to stare at the screen.

I glanced back at Vic and Saizarbitoria, sitting on the edge of their seats. “If she was killed, who do you suppose killed her?”

He stammered. “I . . . I’m not sure.”

“I think you are.” I reached behind me and pulled the gun almanac from my back pocket. “Is this yours?” He nodded as I leafed through the dog-eared pages. “You’ve got a lot of high-powered weaponry circled—any idea who you might want to use them on?”

His eyes went back to the TV, blank as the screen. “I get angry sometimes.”

“That’s normal; everybody gets angry.” I waited, but it didn’t seem as if he was willing to come forward with anything more. “Cord, if someone has done something bad to your mother, then I’m in a position to do something about it.”

We sat there in the silence for a while, and then he spoke again. “Those horses down at that ranch . . . They weren’t friendly like Flicka.”

I smiled at the change of subject. “No, those are loose range ponies and they don’t have that much interaction with human beings.”

His mouth moved, but no words came out for a moment. “Do . . . Do you think they can smell it?”

“Smell what?”

“The killing; do you think they can smell the killing on us?”

I was at a loss as to how to respond to that and discovered my hand had crept up to grip the lower part of my jaw. “What do you mean by killing?”

His eyes shifted to the floor, and but for the subject I could’ve sworn he was discussing the weather. “When we misbehaved one day, they took us out to one of the cattle ranches back in Texas, Mr. Lockhart’s ranch.”

“And who is Mr. Lockhart?”

“One of the elders of the church; he’s tall like you but with bristly hair.”

The man on the road with the black polo shirt and the crew cut.

“It was one of the places they took you if you were bad.” The intake of breath rattled in his lungs like tin siding in a high wind. “There was a metal rack that held the cattle. . . .”

“A squeeze chute?”

His eyes rose to mine but then sank again, and his voice grew quiet and almost inaudible. “It held the cattle still with their heads sticking out.” His cobalt eyes stared at the concrete floor. “They had a chain saw there, and they made us cut the heads off the cows.” He swallowed, but his voice was dry like a rasp. “While they were still alive—said it would toughen us up.”

• • •

I’d never met Bishop Goodman from the Church of Latter-day Saints and had never even darkened the doors of the church that made its home in the now-defunct carpet store at the south corner of the Durant bypass that reconnected with the interstate highway.

“He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Mormon church and its teachings.”

Henry Standing Bear and I were having lunch with the bishop at the Busy Bee Café, and I was watching Cord through the sometimes swinging door as he washed dishes in the kitchen like a madman. The madman we were discussing at present, Orrin Porter Rockwell, was asleep on a bunk in my holding cell. “So, he is a Mormon.”

“More than that.” Goodman glanced at the Bear. “When your friend came walking into the church, I thought I was having a vision. Not only is he the living embodiment of the historical figure physically, his understanding of the church is absolutely period as well.”

“Meaning?”

The tall, thickset man with an unruly head of hair adjusted his glasses and leaned forward. “The Mormon Church of Latter-day Saints has gone through a number of reformations, including disavowing polygamy in 1890 with the threat of excommunication, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of any of these things. His knowledge of the church seems to have had an arrested development and stops at around 1880. Also, his personal knowledge of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Ina Coolbrith . . . He even told me of a personal conversation he’d had with the explorer Richard Francis Burton when he was staying with Bishop Lysander Dayton in a village near the City of Salt Lake, and how, over the bishop’s objections, he had sent for a bottle of Valley Tan Whiskey. The two of them sat there all night, shot for shot, and Rockwell advised the Ohioan to sleep with a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun and to make a dry camp miles from any campfire and to avoid the main trail because they were choked with White Indians. No offense, but you know . . .” He looked at Henry. “Individuals who passed themselves off as real Indians so that they could prey on travelers on the roads to California.”

The Bear looked back at him. “None taken.”

He straightened in his chair and shook his head. “The man is a veritable storehouse of historical knowledge.”

I sipped my coffee. “Bishop Goodman, you don’t really believe that . . .”

“No, of course not, but if the man’s dementia has caused him to research the real Orrin Porter Rockwell to the point where he may be one of the world’s foremost experts, then he needs desperately to write a biography of the man.” He smiled. “If not an autobiography.”

“Maybe you should write it.”

“I might.” He thought about it. “Any idea how long he’s going to be around?”

I shrugged. “Oh, seventy-eight to ninety-seven months if the government has anything to say about it.” The bishop looked confused. “Kidnapping of any sort is a column-one federal offense.”

“Are you going to turn him in?”

“Not if he behaves himself; I mean he’s obviously as nutty as a pecan log, but he seems to dote on Cord and the kid calls him his bodyguard, so I don’t think he’s any real danger.”

Henry raised a hand to get Dorothy’s attention and a possible refill. “What did you find out from the IAFIS?”

I glanced at the puzzled look on Goodman’s face. “The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.”

“Ah.”

I looked back to the Bear and shrugged. “Nothing.”

He looked surprised. “Really.”

“I don’t know why you’re so amazed; it happens on the Rez all the time.”

“Yes, but this is a white guy.” He turned to Goodman. “No offense.”

The bishop nodded, still preoccupied with the thought of cowriting a historical religious epic. “None taken.”

• • •

We walked along the two blocks that were downtown Durant before the Cheyenne Nation broke the silence. “Is that the old jacket your parents bought you?”

I’d made a nod to the fact that the weather was cooling off and deigned to wear the thing. “Yep.”

We walked on. “I was trying to remember if I ever saw your father in a church.”

“You didn’t.”

“Ever?”

I shook my head. “Ever.”

“Why?”

“He just didn’t believe in organized religion.” I thought about it. “I don’t think he believed in much of organized anything.”

“Your mother did.”

“Yep.”

He studied me. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“This case appears to be concerning you, perhaps more than others, and I was just wondering if it has something to do with the religious aspect?”

“I don’t know.” I breathed a sigh. “I haven’t been in a church since Martha died, you know that. I’ve been in more sweat lodges than churches in the last five years.” He nodded but said nothing. “Like anything else, I think organized religion, like most human endeavors, is good when it’s doing good and I think it’s bad when it’s doing bad.”

“And you think these people are bad?”

“I think the people in charge are, yes.” The wind blew up Main, and I watched as the leaves trembled. “I’ve always been taught that religion is supposed to be a comfort to people, not a threat. I think these people have perverted something that’s supposed to be holy and turned it into a weapon.” I pulled in a lungful of the crisp air. “I think there’s a hierarchy at work here and quite a bit of megalomaniacal madness. I mean, the patriarch is climbing on his roof naked and building spaceships in his backyard.”

He smiled. “And you do not want them here?”

I stopped and looked at the cracks in the sidewalk and in my own logic. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because I do not approve of their methods.”

“Their methods or their beliefs?”

I stopped and turned to face him. “Well, one’s kind of responsible for the other, now, isn’t it?” He continued smiling, and I continued walking. “And stop grinning at me.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Well, nobody’s threatening Cord. . . .”

“Mostly because you haven’t formally told his father, who is lodged in the southern part of your county, that you have him.”

“That’s the next step.”

“So you are still concentrating on the missing woman?”

“Yep.”

We walked along. “Speaking of missing women, have you heard from your daughter lately?”

“No.” I stopped on the sidewalk and looked at him again. “Have you?”

“No.”

We continued walking. “I think she’s glad she bought that old tannery building; it’s got plenty of room, and since there are going to be three of them . . .”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets as we started up the steps leading to the courthouse. “The baby is due in January, yes?”

“Yep.”

“Lola.”

“Lola.” I paused for a moment. “I mean I don’t know if she’s told Michael. I think she wants it to be a surprise.”

A funny look played across his face.

I broke eye contact with him and looked back down the main drag at the banner proclaiming the impending homecoming festivities. “I told you, it’s something that Virgil said on the mountain.”

“Live Virgil or dead Virgil?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “I haven’t decided yet.” I glanced up at the Bighorns, at the new snow there. “He made some predictions about my life; about it not all being good.”

“Whose is?”

“This sounded a little more dire.” I watched the breeze pull at his hair—a wind that seemed to urge us southeast away from the mountains. “I guess I’m getting scary in my old age.”

He climbed a few stairs and turned to look at me. “You are truly concerned?”

“I suppose.”

“What would you like to do?”

I thought about it and shook my head. “Nothing. I mean there’s nothing I can do besides call Cady and tell her I’ve got a bad feeling and she should stay at home and hide in the closet.”

“I do not think she will do that.”

“Me either.”

“You put a great deal of stock in Indian prophecies?”

I grunted. “More and more these days.”

He stepped back down and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Then I will make one—she will be fine.”

I stared at him, wanting to believe. “You promise?”

“Yes; there are two things I know beyond any shadow of a doubt.”

“And they are?”

He started back up the steps. “That the future is uncertain, and that it can change.”

I followed after him. “And the other?”

“The most important thing about a rain dance.”

“Which is?”

He called over his shoulder. “Timing.”

• • •

“They have not delivered my fucking corsage yet.”

The Bear looked at me as we stood in the doorway of her office. “She wants to go to the homecoming ceremony Friday night, and she wants a corsage.”

“Black-and-orange, same as the Doggies.”

“Dogies.”

“Whatever.”

“Rockwell?”

She logged off her computer and tipped her chair back. “Cousin Itt is back in the holding cell communing with a higher power between viewings of My Friend Flicka.”

I pushed off. “I’m going to have a conversation with him and then make a run down to Short Drop and have a chat with Roy Lynear about his son and the possible whereabouts of Sarah.”

Her interest was immediately piqued. “Can I go?”

“If you promise not to shoot anybody.”

She smiled the wicked little smile she reserved for the more energetic aspects of our occupation. “Cross my hairs and hope to lie.”

I was not in the least comforted and, leaving them to discuss the finer points of shooting people, started off for the holding area.

Rockwell was reading from the old Book of Mormon and was seated on the bunk with the cell door open, his graying hair hanging down to the edge of the mattress pad and cascading over it. He didn’t move when I came in but continued to harken to the word.

“I see you got your book back.”

Pulling off a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses, he noted the page number and gently closed it. “It brings me comfort.”

“It’s probably worth a fortune with that inscription from Sara Rockwell.”

He folded the glasses and placed them in his vest pocket. “My mother.”

“Um.” I paused. “Yep.” I pulled up a chair. “That’s actually something I’d like to talk to you about.”

He set the book on the bunk beside him. “This is not the only time I have spent in a jailhouse, Sheriff Longmire.”

“I know Orrin Porter Rockwell spent eight months in the Independence, Missouri, jail.”

He nodded his head enthusiastically. “A horrid place with food unfit for dogs.”

His performance was spot-on, and I started wondering if maybe we could get the old guy a job in some outdoor drama in Utah. “Rockwell was there because he attempted to murder Lilburn Boggs, the governor of Missouri.”

He shook his head, and the pearly hair swayed back and forth. “Another act in which I had no part; the proof of said statement resides in the fact that the man survived. If it had been I, such would not have been the case.” He leaned forward. “I will tell you my theories on who was party to the attempted assassination; it was none other than the storekeeper, Uhlinger, who accused me of stealing the pepperbox pistol that was found that night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I would never have overcharged the weapon, which led to its being dropped upon firing. Another point being that with so many weapons at my disposal, why would I steal one from a local merchant who at first claimed that it had been stolen by Negro slaves and then by me?” He laughed. “Oh no, if you can find a suitable villain in the public’s eye, which we Mormons were at that period in time, and I think Philip Uhlinger did, then you are free as a proverbial bird.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Have I told you about fishing from the second-story window of the Centennial jail with corn dodgers? I never caught a Missourian, but I had numerous vigorous nibbles!”

“Mr. Rockwell . . .” I sighed, long and loud so that he would be aware of my mood. “You’ll excuse me for saying so, but I find it very hard to believe that you are approaching two hundred years old.”

He smiled, and there was a twinkle in his opalescent eyes. “I don’t look a day over a hundred and fifty, do I?” He sat forward. “My name is Orrin Porter Rockwell, and I was born June 28, 1813, in Belchertown, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, and was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple on January 5, 1846.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose with thumb and forefinger. “So, that’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”

“It is a strange one, yes?”

I looked up at him. “Yep, it sure is.”

“I will attempt to explain, Sheriff.” He edged forward on the bunk and rested his elbows on his knees. “I was the subject of a direct prophecy by the prophet Joseph Smith.”

“Which was?”

His face brightened. “As you mentioned, I had just spent eight months in a pestilential hellhole jail in Missouri. Filthy and starved beyond recognition, I made my way back to Nauvoo and arrived unannounced at a Christmas party at the great prophet’s home.” He stood, overcome with enthusiasm for his story. “I remember the soft and golden glow of the parlor oil lights as I stumbled into the room and the beaming face of the prophet. There were other men there, bodyguards to Joseph, who grabbed hold of me for fear that I might mean the great man harm.” He laughed. “Perfectly reasonable when you consider my appearance, but Joseph stepped forward and placed his hands upon my head, telling me that as long as I kept the faith and never cut my hair, no bullet or blade would ever harm me.”

“Like Samson.”

“Exactly, but something must have happened in that moment when the prophet laid hands upon me in that my rate of aging crept to a standstill; as near as I can tell, within the span of the last two hundred years I have aged only forty!” I stared at him. “Eighty-five years old and as strong as the day is long—is that not miraculous?”

“That’s one word for it.”

His eyes sharpened under the bushy brows. “You do not believe me.”

I spread my hands. “Well, you’ve got to admit that it’s a pretty fantastic story.”

“It is!”

“So, how do you explain the recorded death of one Orrin Porter Rockwell in 1878 due to natural causes, who was subsequently buried in a Salt Lake City cemetery?”

“It is a fundamental belief in our faith that no true believer shall be interred in the earth without a proper physical monument to indicate the site, but it is not I, sir—and it is the true Orrin Porter Rockwell who stands before you.” He limped out the open door and half-crouched beside me. “The burial of the nameless man was a clever ruse by the church in an attempt to keep the populace from pestering the prophet into another use of his miraculous powers as he had with me.”

I stared at him. “I see.”

“You still do not believe?”

“No.”

“What is it I can do to convince you?”

I sighed the way I always did when I’d reached the limits of my energies when dealing with crazy people. “To be honest, not a lot.”

He casually reached under his herringbone-patterned vest into his inside coat pocket, past the vintage eyewear, and pulled out a Colt 1860 Army model with a shortened barrel, deftly turning it in his hand in a flash and holding it out to me, butt first. “Here, shoot me with this, if you like.”

I sat there, looking at the black-powder pistol, more than a little concerned with the dexterity the old man had just displayed.

He thumped his chest with a broad hand, indicating a target for me. “I will not be harmed, I can assure you.”

I took the big pistol and examined the beautiful gleaming finish of the museum piece. “Have you had this the entire time you’ve been here?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes. I never take the air unarmed.” I thumbed open the cylinder, taking in the rounds. “Honestly, you may fire upon me at will.”

I rested the weapon in my lap and placed my face in my open hands. “Mr. Rockwell, do you have any other weapons on your person?”

• • •

I carefully placed the hog leg pistol along with a Navy-model .44, a Derringer, a wicked pair of brass knuckles, two knives of moderate length, and a frighteningly sharp Bowie knife with the initials OPR burnt into the hickory handle onto my desk.

Vic raised her head to look at me. “You didn’t search him?”

“We never formally arrested him.” I shook my head at myself. “It’s my fault more than anybody’s.” I slumped into my chair and looked at both Saizarbitoria and her. “He still claims to be the Orrin Porter Rockwell of frontier repute.” I gestured toward the assortment of weapons. “But faced with his personal armament here, I’m afraid it puts a new complexion on things.”

Ruby joined Sancho in the doorway as Vic sat in my guest chair and placed her boots on the corner of my desk as always. “So we’re putting Orrin the Mormon on the Evanston Express?”

I thought about the state psychiatric hospital in the southwestern part of Wyoming. “I hate it because he seems like a nice old guy.”

Vic’s voice was muffled as she spoke behind the fist at her mouth in an attempt to not burst out laughing. “He’s a nice armed-to-the-teeth old guy.”

Ruby volunteered, “And he’s very helpful.” We all turned to look at her, and she felt compelled to elaborate. “He takes out the trash, washes out the coffee mugs; he even raked the leaves on the lawn out beside the courthouse this morning.”

Santiago folded his arms on his chest. “Not to change the subject, Walt, but was there any mention of who it was that sent him?”

“No, I thought the first order of the day was to disarm him.”

The Basquo’s attitude was conciliatory. “How did he respond to having his weapons taken away?”

“Disappointed.” I looked at all of them and then down at the cache on my desk. “Not that his weapons were gone, but more that he was disappointed that we would think of taking them. He told me about being a federal marshal back in the day and that he’d be happy to help us in our investigation.”

Ruby took a step closer but shuddered as if the weapons might leap to action on their own. “Did you ask him about the Tisdale girl?”

“I did, and he wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

“How did he take to getting arrested?”

It was quiet in the room.

Vic looked up. “Tell me you arrested him.”

It was quieter in the room.

“Oh, Walt.” She got up and started through the doorway as Ruby and Sancho made way for her.

“Where are you going?”

Her voice carried from the hallway: “To arrest the son of a bitch.”

I looked up at my remaining staff. “I just couldn’t do it; he’s two hundred years old and he looked so depressed.”

Santiago nodded and walked over to my desk. “They’re loaded?”

“Yep.”

He picked up the shortened Army Colt and carefully examined it. “Looks like the real deal to me.”

“I think it is, too. We can check the thing for model numbers and manufacturer’s impressions; I’m no expert, but I’d swear it’s the genuine article.”

He fingered the edge on the Bowie knife. “Forged steel with a Damascus finish—looks like it was honed from a barrel stave.”

I nodded. “Common practice in the 1800s.”

Vic returned to the doorway, a little flushed from the run. “So, nobody’s going to be surprised that he’s gone, right?”