A Serpent's Tooth by Craig Johnson

Author:Craig Johnson [Johnson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Western, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Amazon: B00AFPVQQW
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 2013-06-04T05:00:00+00:00

9

“They say that as you get older, you need more sleep.”

I felt myself coming back as if from death. I was trying to climb out of a hole, but something large and feathery kept landing on my chest and pushing me deeper into the earth. Catching my breath, I’m pretty sure I snorted and then spoke through my hat. “Actually, you need less, which might explain the end result.” I pulled my hat from my face. “I thought I locked that door.”

“It doesn’t have a doorknob. How could you lock it?”

She had a point.

Rolling over, I lay there on my side on the stack of blankets and pillow I’d liberated from the jail. “What time is it?”

“Daytime.” She sat in my guest chair with a stack of papers under one arm and two mugs in her hands. She looked down at me, and it looked like the multicolor bruises under her eyes were just about gone. “Why didn’t you sleep in the jail—the kid goes to work at five.”

“There was no room at the inn.” I coughed again, half expecting feathers to fly out of my mouth. “I don’t know, all his stuff is in there. It felt like trespassing.”

She handed a mug down to me. “Here, mother’s milk.” I sat up and hunched against one of my bookcases, taking the coffee as she smiled. “So, the staff is dying to know how you single-handedly captured public enemy number old.”

I mainlined the caffeine and tried to clear my mind, buying time with clever repartee. “Huh?”

She nodded her head toward the holding cells, and I noticed she was wearing a ball cap, which was trouble as it indicated a bad hair day. “Cousin Itt.”

“Oh . . . Yep.”

She sipped from her mug and pulled the papers from under her arm. “Where did you find him?”

I told her she was never going to believe me if I told her and then did.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

I raised a hand. “As God is my witness.”

“He was in the truck all afternoon, even when we were down in Short Drop?”

“Twice.”

She settled in the chair with the papers in her lap, crossed her legs, and bobbed a tactical boot about a foot from my head. I wondered if she was going to kick me. “You went back?”

I sipped my coffee. “I did.”

“Alone.” She looked out the window, and I was pretty sure she was going to kick me now. “In the middle of the night.”

I gestured with my mug toward the holding cells. “With Cousin Itt.”

“You took him with you?”

I yawned, even though it was probably a bad move. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The tarnished gold focused on me, and I was pretty sure it was the same look pythons give you just before they crush you to death and eat you. “And?”

“Roy Lynear claims Wanda is one of theirs but not his wife; however, it turns out she is Tomás Bidarte’s mother.”

She pursed her lips, and I had to fight to concentrate.

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