We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
– WILLIAM RALPH INGE, OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS, 1922
If you walk around with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
– UNKNOWN
IN THE MONTH SINCE SHE’D BEEN REPORTED MISSING, Opal Scarlett-or her body-had not turned up. Not only that, but her car was missing. It wasn’t that she was missed for sentimental reasons. She was missed because she held the keys to so many projects, so many relationships, so much history. Not until she was gone did most people within the community realize how integral Opal Scarlett was to so many things. Opal was on the board of directors for the bank, the museum, the utility company, the Friends of the Library. She was one of three Twelve Sleep County commissioners. Her annual check to fund the entirety of the local Republican Party had not arrived. The GM dealer had already taken the order for her new Cadillac, and it sat in the lot with a SOLD sign on it.
Joe kept expecting something to happen. A call from a ranch downriver saying a body had just washed up on the bank. A postcard from some faraway island, or a phone call to one of her sons to bark an order-something.
None of those things had happened. Opal’s status was in a dread state of limbo and rumors that were starting to fly had practically destabilized the entire valley.
Joe had carefully read the report issued by Sheriff McLanahan’s office, and he had spoken at length to Robey Hersig. It didn’t make sense that her body had not turned up. The river was, as Tommy had pointed out, surprisingly low and slow. Spring runoff hadn’t started yet. There were places near town where a person could walk across the river, hopping from stone to stone. The likelihood of Opal’s body washing downriver without being seen was remote.
Joe had heard some of the theories being bandied about town. Three garnered prominence:
Tommy Wayman threw her in the river, all right, but that was after he strangled her and weighted the body down with stones;
Hank was driving by and happened to see Opal crawling out of the river around the bend from where Tommy threw her in. Hank saw his opportunity and bashed her over the head with a shovel and took the body back to his side of the ranch and buried her, thinking he would eventually get the ranch from Arlen; and
Opal was fine. The brief swim scared her, though, and when she reached shore she got in her car, drove to Vegas, and found a young lover named Mario. She’d be back, eventually. There was even a reported sighting of her from a county resident who swore he saw her with a tall, dark young man in a casino on the strip. The report was credible enough that McLanahan dispatched Deputy Reed to Las Vegas, where he ran up an expense account that created a minor scandal at the city council meeting.
Joe stood on the sidelines with growing frustration. This wasn’t his case in any way and his involvement was peripheral. But it drove him crazy that no progress had been made. He suggested to Robey that maybe he could be involved in the official investigation, and Robey shook his head no, saying the sheriff wanted no outside interference. “Since when would we call in the game warden for a missing-person’s investigation?” Robey asked. And Joe knew better than to bring it up with Director Pope. Joe wasn’t sure he could help the investigation along. But he knew he’d feel better if he was a part of it.
SINCE THAT MORNING in April, details started to leak out about how the Thunderhead Ranch had been run and the difficulties and complications that were resulting from the matriarch’s disappearance. Joe had an appointment with Robey Hersig the next evening to discuss what was going on. Robey had been cryptic in his request for a meeting, and Joe had been intrigued.
“We may have something brewing here that none of us anticipated,” Robey had said to Joe on his cell phone. “The more I dig into it, the worse it gets.”
“So tell me about it,” Joe said.
“Not over the phone, no way.”
“Are you serious? Do you think someone may be listening?”
“You never know,” Robey said, hanging up.
AFTER FEEDING NATE Romanowski’s falcons after school, Joe took Julie and Sheridan to the Thunderhead Ranch so Julie could go home. As they drove down the road they were met by a yellow Ford coming the other way. There was something familiar about the driver, Joe thought, something about the pinched, hard look to his face that triggered a sour familiarity, but Joe couldn’t place it. Unlike most people on a back road, the driver didn’t wave or stop. In his rearview mirror Joe watched the yellow Ford drive off.
“Who was that?” he asked Julie.
She shrugged. “It wasn’t one of our trucks.”
As they neared the ranch house, Julie said to Sheridan, “Did you ask yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Ask what?” Joe said, turning his attention to the girls but still suspicious about the Ford.
Sheridan turned to Joe. “Is it okay to do a sleepover at Julie’s in a couple of weeks?”
Sleepovers were all the rage among the eighth-graders, Joe knew. Scarcely a weekend went by without an invitation to Sheridan to sleep over at someone’s house, along with five or six other girls. It was a group thing, a pack thing, and Joe was helpless before it. He gratefully turned over all planning and coordination to Marybeth. Marybeth rued the change in her oldest daughter from preferring the company of her family to the company of her friends.
Joe said, “Why are you asking me?”
“Because Mom may not let me,” Sheridan admitted.
This was not a place Joe wanted to go. “We’ll have to discuss it later.”
“Come on, Dad…”
He hated when she did that, since his inclination, always, was to give in. Sheridan had the ability to rope him in with such ease that even he was shamed by it.
“Later,” he said.
“I’ll call you,” Sheridan sighed to her friend, patting Julie on the arm. Julie gave Joe a pleading look, and he shrugged as if to say, It’s out of my hands.
THE NEXT WEEK, JOE WAS ON A MUDDY TWO-TRACK IN the breaklands doing a preliminary trend count on the mule-deer population when he got the distinct feeling he was being watched. It was a crisp, dry morning. A late-spring snowfall was melting into the inch-high grass as the morning warmed, and the moisture was being sucked into the parched earth. By late afternoon, he was afraid, the ground would be as bone-dry as it had been all year. It would take much more rain and snow to turn back the relentless slow death of the soil caused by the fifth straight year of drought.
He had been counting pregnant does all morning. Most of the fawns wouldn’t be born until June, but from what he could tell so far it would be another bad year for the deer population. A good year could be predicted if there were eighty fawns per one hundred does, or 80 percent. So far, the ratio had been 40 percent pregnant does. The drought-not hunting or development-was severely affecting the population. He would need to recommend fewer deer licenses for the area, which would not make him very popular among the local hunters.
Joe surveyed the horizon to see if he could spot who was watching him. He saw no one, and shrugged it off.
His cell phone rang.
“Guess who this is?” said Special Agent Tony Portenson of the FBI.
Portenson was originally from Brooklyn, and his accent, if anything, had become more pronounced the longer he was stationed in the Wyoming field office.
“Hello, Tony. Where are you?”
“I’m in your town.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Joe said, knowing Portenson had been trying for three years to get a transfer out of the West to someplace more exciting, someplace where there were gangsters and organized crime, maybe even terrorists. Over the years, Portenson had bored Joe for hours with his complaints regarding the poor quality of crime he had to deal with out of his office in Cheyenne: cattle rustling, methamphetamine labs, murders of passion on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Portenson asked.
“I’m out in the field counting deer.”
“Jesus, I wouldn’t want to interrupt that.”
Joe could hear Portenson turn to someone, probably his partner, partially cover his phone, and say, “The guy is counting deer. No shit. Counting deer.”
“I’m counting antelope too,” Joe said.
“They can wait. They aren’t going anywhere, I’m sure.”
“The pronghorn antelope is the second-fastest mammal on the face of the earth,” Joe said. “So that wouldn’t be correct.”
“I’m at that place with the corny name,” Portenson said. “The Burg-O-Pardner. Meet me in ten minutes.”
“It’ll take me twenty.”
“I’ll order breakfast in the meantime.”
TONY PORTENSON WAS sitting in a booth in the back of the restaurant when Joe entered. He looked up from his plate of biscuits, gravy, and bacon and waved Joe back. Portenson was dark, intense, and had close-set eyes and a scar that hitched up his upper lip so that it looked as if he was always sneering. When he smiled, the effect was worse. Sitting across from him was an earnest, fresh-faced, wide-shouldered younger man with buzz-cut hair. His partner, Joe assumed.
“Have a seat, Joe,” Portenson said, standing and offering his hand. “This is Special Agent Gary Child.”
Rather than sit with Portenson or Child, Joe retrieved a chair from a nearby table and pulled it over.
Portenson wore standard FBI clothing-tie, jacket, and slacks, which made him stand out in Saddlestring as if he were wearing a space suit.
“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Portenson said to Child.
Child nodded and looked at Joe with a mix of admiration and disdain. The FBI had a low opinion of local law enforcement that was so ingrained it was institutionalized. Although Joe operated on the margin of the sheriff’s department and was rarely involved with the town cops, he was considered local and therefore less than proficient. Portenson had obviously briefed Child on both cases they’d been involved in before, probably between complaints about the wind and the snow he had to put up with during his long assignment in Wyoming, Joe thought.
“So,” Portenson said as they all sat back down. “What is the fastest mammal?”
“The cheetah,” Joe said.
“Does that mean a cheetah can chase down a pronghorn antelope?”
“Conceivably,” Joe said, “if they lived on the same continent. But they don’t.”
“Hmmpf.”
“What brings you up here, Tony?” Joe asked, assuming it would be either about the Scarletts or…
“Have you seen your buddy Nate Romanowski lately?” Portenson asked, getting right to it.
Joe felt a tingle on the back of his neck. “No.”
“You’re telling me he just vanished from the face of the earth?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I hadn’t seen him. And before you ask, no, I also haven’t heard from him.”
Portenson exchanged glances with Child.
Child said, “Let me set the scene. Two men are murdered. Although the condition of their bodies is deteriorated almost beyond recognition, the theory of our medical examiner is that they were each killed by a single gunshot wound to the head from an extremely large-caliber handgun. The bodies were obviously moved from where they were killed. Meanwhile, your friend Nate Romanowski was known to pack a.454 Casull revolver and was at odds with at least one of the murdered men. And according to you, he just vanished?”
Joe stifled a smile. “I have a tough time envisioning Tony here as the good cop in the good cop/bad cop scenario,” he said. “This is more like bad cop/worse cop. Is this a new FBI strategy, or what?”
Child didn’t waver. “We could bring you back for questioning.”
“Go ahead,” Joe said. “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know where Nate is, and I haven’t been in contact with him.”
Portenson wiped gravy from his lips with a paper napkin and studied Joe closely.
“What?” Portenson said.
“I can’t believe you came all the way here to ask me about Nate,” Joe said. “It seems like a waste of your time.”
“Look,” Child said, leaning toward Joe, his eyes sharp, “we don’t need to explain to you why we do anything. We’re asking the questions here, not you.”
“Then I’ve got deer to count,” Joe said, and started to push his chair back.
“Okay, okay,” Portenson said, holding his hand out palm-up to Child. “Sit back down, Joe. That’s not why we’re here.”
Joe sat.
“Actually, I just figured since we were up here I’d yank your chain a little. See if you had any new information on Mr. Romanowski.”
“I told you I don’t.”
“I believe you,” Portenson said, sighing. “Although I am going to get that guy.”
Joe nodded that he understood, although he didn’t think Portenson would succeed.
Child sat back in the booth. By the look he gave Portenson, it was clear he didn’t like the way his boss had changed tracks.
“Are you up here on the Scarlett case?” Joe asked.
Portenson looked back blankly. Joe outlined Opal’s disappearance, and the battle between the brothers.
“That’s sick,” Portenson said, “but that’s not why we’re here.”
“We’re here on a fucking wild-goose chase,” Child said sullenly.
“Get used to it,” Portenson said to him like a weary father. Then he signaled the waitress for his check.
“Double murder down in Mississippi,” Portenson said. “Some hunting guide killed his clients, stole the couple’s car, and took off. The car was found in Rawlins last month in the parking lot of the state pen, meaning it crossed state lines, which is where we come in. A couple of days later we got a report that an old truck was stolen from the same place.”
The waitress brought the check and Portenson gave her a U.S. government credit card and asked her to charge three packs of Marlboros to it as well.
“My tax dollars at work,” Joe said.
Portenson ignored him and continued. “After the old truck was stolen, it was seen south of Casper in the middle of fucking nowhere. Same day, somebody shot a cowboy off his horse in the vicinity. Left a wife and two kids. We don’t know whether there’s a connection or not. But since the guy was headed north, we thought we’d ask around. Does any of this ring any bells? The stolen truck is a light yellow ’ninety-four Ford with rust spots on the doors. Wyoming plates.”
Joe shook his head. There was something familiar about the description but he couldn’t place it. “What’s the guy’s name?”
“Ex-con named John Kelly,” Child said from memory. “John Wayne Kelly.”
“I’ve not heard of him,” Joe said.
Portenson leveled his gaze at Joe. “My brethren are breaking up al-Qaeda cells and saving humanity. Me? I’m trying to figure out who shot a lonely cowpoke off his horsey. Does anyone but me see the disparity in that?”
Child snorted a laugh.
Joe shook his head at Portenson’s attitude. “I bet that cowboy’s widow and kids would like you to find out who did it.”
“Aw fuck, Joe,” Portenson said. “You’re ruining the mood.”
“Have you talked to the sheriff?”
Portenson snorted while he signed the charge slip. “We sent him the file but I’m delaying actually talking to him as long as I can.”
“He’s changed yet again,” Joe said.
“I heard he’s a cowpoke now,” Portenson said, curling his lip in disdain.
“Something like that,” Joe said.
“How could he get worse?”
“I can’t explain it,” Joe said, pushing back. “Good to see you, Tony.”
“Good to see you, Joe. And don’t forget to give me a shout if Mr. Romanowski shows up.”
Joe nodded again, shook Child’s hand, and got a cup of coffee to go on the way out.
JOE AND MARYBETH DID THE DISHES AFTER DINNER while Sheridan and Lucy watched television in the family room. Joe had made chili and the kitchen smelled of tomato sauce, garlic, spices, and ground beef.
“It was too salty, wasn’t it?” he asked, scrubbing the cast-iron pot he liked to use for chili, since it was huge.
“A little,” she said. “Did you rinse the beans? Sometimes they pack them in so much salt that if you don’t wash them thoroughly…”
“Ah,” he said, “that was the problem.”
“It was good, though,” she said. “I do wish you could learn to make a smaller pot, maybe.”
Since he didn’t know how to make a pot of chili for less than a dozen people, and every time he tried to make less it was a disaster, Marybeth had filled two Tupperware containers of it for the freezer. Actually, Joe didn’t really want to learn how to make less chili at a time, since he liked having leftovers available, especially these days, when he was never sure when Marybeth would be home from her office or if dinner would be planned. But he didn’t want to tell her that. And, like most men, he wanted her to think he was largely incompetent in the kitchen.
“What do you think of Sheridan going to the Scarlett’s for a sleepover?” Marybeth asked. Sheridan had brought it up during dinner.
Joe scrubbed harder. “Julie seems like a nice girl,” he said. “It’s the rest of her family who’re nuts.”
“I know what you mean. I got calls today from both Arlen and Hank. Each wants me to meet with him and see what I can do to streamline their business operations.”
“Both of them, eh?”
“Both of them.”
“Uh-oh.”
Since Opal’s disappearance, sides had been forming in Saddlestring and the county. People were either pro-Arlen and anti-Hank, or vice versa. Both brothers kept close track of who was with them, and who was against them. Arlen preferred the Saddlestring Burg-O-Pardner for his mid-morning coffee, where he could chat with the town fathers. Hank never set foot in the place. Likewise, Hank liked his shot and a beer at the Stockman, often accompanied by several of his ranch hands. Arlen never darkened the door of that bar.
The town was just big enough that there were two of most things-two feed stores, grocery stores, banks, hardware stores, auto-parts stores, lumber stores-so the brothers could choose. In the instance that there was only one business, such as the movie theater and medical clinic, one or the other brother claimed it outright and the other traveled north to the next larger city-Billings, Montana.
Since the Scarletts spent a lot of money in town, the choice between pro-Arlen or pro-Hank was an important business decision, and one not made on a whim. Marybeth had told Joe about it, how her clients agonized over which brother to court. It was just as important, she said, that when a brother was chosen, not a single kind word be spoken about the other. That was considered disloyalty, and reason to pull their business. The loyalty to one brother or the other extended to their ranch hands as well, and merchants had to keep track of who worked for whom.
Now, with calls from both brothers on the same day, Marybeth would have to make the same decision so many of her clients had made.
THERE WERE RUMORS of war on the Thunderhead Ranch. The stories filtered through the community every day. The word was that Hank and Arlen had each hired more men than they needed for normal ranch operations. No one doubted the new men could serve as soldiers in an all-out range battle for ownership and dominance of the family ranch. Locks were put on gates, and harsh words exchanged over the fences. Sugar was poured into the gas tanks of ranch vehicles. Irrigation valves were turned off, or turned on when they shouldn’t be, or the water was diverted from one side of the ranch to the other.
Robey told Joe that Arlen’s new foreman claimed that someone from Hank’s side had taken a shot at him, the bullet entering his open driver’s-side window, barely missing his nose, and exiting the open passenger’s-side window. Since there was no proof that a shot had been fired other than the foreman’s account and only soiled Wranglers to confirm he’d been scared, McLanahan filed away the complaint.
Then two of Hank’s men charged they’d been run off the highway by a pickup clearly belonging to Arlen Scarlett. But no pickup matching the description could be found.
An editorial in the Saddlestring Roundup ran a long list of bulleted items that had reportedly occurred between the two brothers on the ranch. The editorial ended with the sentence, “Will it be necessary to call in the Wyoming National Guard to prevent a full-fledged bloodletting?”
“SO, WHO YOU gonna choose?” Joe asked.
Marybeth frowned and shook her head. “I wish I didn’t have to choose either.”
“That’s an option, isn’t it?”
“Not really. They’d both see it for what it was-a snub. Arlen and Hank insist on a choice.”
Left unsaid was the fact that whichever choice she made would generate a good deal of revenue for her business, and therefore benefit the family. Marybeth was routing as much as she could into college funds for Sheridan and Lucy, and having either Hank or Arlen on her client list would boost her earnings. Since Joe’s salary was frozen at $32,000 by the state, there was little he could do to contribute to the college funds, which made him feel guilty and ashamed.
“My mother and Arlen both serve on the library board,” Marybeth said. “They’re pretty good friends. I think Arlen expects me to go with him, and I know my mother does.” She sighed. “I’ll probably go with Arlen.”
Joe cringed. Last fall, Marybeth’s mother, the former Missy Vankueren, had married Bud Longbrake, one of the most prominent ranchers in the valley. It was her fourth marriage, and she had traded up each time. Missy had taken to her new role-that of landed matriarch-with an enthusiasm and panache that Joe found both truly impressive and frightening. She seemed to be on every board and volunteer effort, the cochair of every fund-raiser. She was even involved, somehow, in the new addition to the Twelve Sleep County Museum, which was to be called the Scarlett Wing. Missy had never liked Joe much, and the feeling was mutual, although a kind of grudging respect had formed on both sides. She thought her daughter could have done better for herself. Joe tended to agree with that, but didn’t necessarily want to hear it said. Again.
“Arlen is pretty persuasive, and we could certainly use the business. But I really don’t want to get involved with either one of them. It’s a classic no-win situation,” she said, folding her washrag over the edge of the sink.
“Speaking of which,” Joe said, “I got two messages from headquarters today. I meant to tell you about them before dinner.”
She looked at him and arched her eyebrows.
“The first one was from Randy Pope. He wants me to re-submit all of my expense logs for the past four years. Four years! He says I still hold the record for the most wrecked vehicles in the department.” In Joe’s career, he had totaled three pickups and a snowmobile.
“Yes,” she said, prompting him for the second.
“And an anonymous tipster called the 800-POACHER line claiming that he knew of a guy who had dozens of game-animal mounts in his home that were taken illegally in Wyoming and all over the world. The RP-that’s ‘reporting party’ to you civilians-said the violator is prominent, a real criminal. The RP said this guy has done enough bad things to justify confiscating all of his property and equipment and fining him out the wazoo.”
“Yes…”
“The alleged poacher is Hank Scarlett,” Joe said. “The anonymous caller knows enough about game and fish regulations to cite wanton-destruction statutes. He also said many of the animal mounts at Hank’s hunting lodge are clearly illegal.”
“Anonymous caller?” Marybeth said, smiling. “Or Arlen?”
“I’d guess one and the same,” Joe said.
“And there was an e-mail sitting in my in-box from Randy Pope referencing the tip on Hank. It says, Wait for my authorization before proceeding on this.” The message infuriated Joe. Never in his career had a supervisor injected himself so deeply into his day-to-day job, much less the director of the department. In six years of working under Trey Crump, Trey had never once told Joe to hold up on doing his job. And just what in the hell was Randy Pope waiting for before providing authorization? Or was it, as Joe suspected, simply a maneuver to once again remind Joe Pickett who was running the show, like the request for back expense logs?
She stepped up to Joe and put her hands on the tops of his shoulders. “We’re going to be tangled up with these people whether we want to be or not, aren’t we?” She meant the Scarletts.
“Yup,” Joe said, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”
He hesitated for a moment. That one came out of left field, but she knew him so well.
“I do want to find out what happened to Opal,” he said. “There’s something not right about it.”
“There’s something not right about the whole Scarlett clan,” she said. “They’ve got a hold on this valley that scares me. It doesn’t matter if you’re with Arlen or Hank, the fact is everyone feels obligated to be with one or the other. There’s no middle ground, no compromise.”
As she spoke, Sheridan came into the kitchen.
“You guys decide about Friday night?”
Joe and Marybeth looked at each other.
“What we’ve decided,” Marybeth said, “is that this valley is much too small.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sheridan asked, looking from her mother to her father, obviously embarrassed to see them holding one another next to the sink.
The night suddenly split wide open as Maxine awoke from her customary sleeping place in the doorway of Joe’s office and barked furiously at the front door, the fur on her neck and back bristled up like a feral hog’s. Joe, Marybeth, and Sheridan all turned to the door, and Lucy scrambled from the couch to join them.
“Maxine!” Joe commanded. “Maxine, stop it!”
But the dog kept barking, her barks echoing sharply through the house. She clearly thought somebody was outside.
“What is it?” Marybeth asked Lucy. “Was there a knock?”
“I thought I heard something hit the door,” Lucy said, looking away from the television. “It sounded like a little rock hit it.”
Joe slipped away and strode across the living room. It wouldn’t be that unusual to have a night visitor; people often showed up late to report an incident or turn themselves in. But that usually happened in the fall, during hunting season, not in the spring.
He clicked on the porch light and opened the door. No one. He stepped outside on the porch, Maxine on his heels. The only thing he could see, in the distance, was a pair of red taillights growing smaller on Bighorn Road traveling east, toward the mountains, away from town.
“What was it, honey?” Marybeth asked.
Joe shook his head. “Nobody here now, but it looks like someone was.”
“Dad,” Lucy said, coming outside with her sister, “there’s something on the door.”
“Oh My God,” Sheridan gasped, her hands covering her mouth. She recognized it.
So did Joe, and he was taken aback.
A small dead animal had been pinned to the front door by an old steak knife with a weathered grip. The creature was long and slim, ferretlike, with a black stripe down its back. It was a Miller’s weasel, a species once thought extinct. It was the animal that had led to Sheridan being terrorized years before, and Marybeth being shot.
And somebody who knew about both had stuck one to his front door.
THE NEXT MORNING JOE WENT FOR A RUN, FED THE horses, retrieved the newspaper, walked the girls out to the school bus (via the back door, so they wouldn’t have to see the Miller’s weasel on the front), and paced back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, waiting for eight A.M., when he called headquarters in Cheyenne and asked for Randy Pope. He was angry.
“The director is in a meeting,” Pope’s receptionist said, her tone clipped. Joe didn’t think he liked Pope’s receptionist; there was something off-putting and chilly about her.
“Can you please get him out of it?”
“Is this an emergency?”
It is for me, Joe thought. So he said, “Yes,” knowing Pope wouldn’t agree.
Joe listened to Glen Campbell sing about the Wichita lineman while he held. The music was another addition since Pope had taken over, but the choice of songs belied not only another era, but another planet.
Pope came on. “Make it quick, Joe.”
“Someone killed a Miller’s weasel and stuck it to my front door last night,” Joe said. “I tried the emergency number there in Cheyenne last night and they told me you were not to be disturbed.”
“That’s right, Joe,” Pope said, an edge in his voice. “I was at a dinner at the governor’s mansion. It was a get-to-know-you dinner, and I informed dispatch I was not to be interrupted.”
Joe sighed. “Randy, if you’re going to be my supervisor and require me to get authorization from you for every move I make, you need to be available. Either that, or loosen up the reins and let me do my job.”
Marybeth passed by the doorway to his office holding the newspaper. She cocked an eyebrow, cautioning him.
“That would be Director Pope,” Pope said, his voice flat. “Tell me again what happened and what you want to do?” Joe could discern he was measuring his words carefully. Joe vowed to try to do the same. Every time he talked with Pope he ran the risk of saying something that could get him reprimanded or suspended.
“There is a dead Miller’s weasel stuck to my front door with a knife…”
“That house is Game and Fish property,” Pope interjected. “It doesn’t belong to you personally.”
Joe stopped pacing and shut his eyes. This is what Pope did, his method-he’d say something so blatant and obvious that it killed the purpose of the conversation in the first place.
“I know who the house belongs to,” Joe said wearily. “And since you own it, how about a new furnace? How about that? How about putting some insulation in the walls and sealing up all of the cracks where the wind blows through?”
Marybeth was hovering in the hall, listening and not trying to hide it. He could tell she was amused, but also concerned.
“Joe…”
“Right, you don’t want to talk about that,” Joe said to Pope. “So how about we talk about the animal on the front of my, um… our door. The Miller’s weasel is an endangered species, as you know. But it’s more than that. This is personal.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
Again, Joe closed his eyes for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should count to ten, or resign immediately. Or drive to Cheyenne and shoot Pope in the heart, which would be the best alternative-or at least the most satisfying.
“I need your authorization to investigate it,” Joe said quietly, trying to keep anger out of his voice. “You said in your memo that you want to be informed prior to me opening any new investigations, so I’m informing you. I want to ride to where the last colony of Miller’s weasels are, and see if I can find any evidence of who was up there to kill one. Then I might need some help from our investigators to trace the knife. I can start interviewing people around here today to see if anyone saw the vehicle or knows who did it.”
The line was silent for a moment. Joe could picture Pope sitting back in his chair, maybe putting his feet up on his desk.
“Joe?” Pope said.
“Yes?”
“There’s a big difference between asking for authorization and telling me what you’re going to do,” Pope said. “This is a good example of the kind of problem I have with you and some of the other game wardens. You act as if you’re the Lone Ranger in your district, that you and you alone decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. No other law-enforcement officer has that luxury, Joe. Everyone else has to get authorization to proceed. Can you imagine a sheriff’s deputy showing up at work in the morning and saying, ‘Gee, I feel like going out on the interstate highway today and catching speeders and playing highway patrolman instead of staying in the county and following up on all of these annoying complaints.’ Can you imagine that, Joe? It’s time you realized this isn’t how things are done in the real world, where we have to justify our existence to the legislature and the public. Why is it you think you’re special?”
“It’s my problem,” Joe said, opening the front door and staring at the animal pinned to it, the little body now starting to stiffen. “Like I said, it’s personal. Whoever did this didn’t just happen to find a Miller’s weasel. He went looking for it, and left it here as a message. I haven’t disturbed it since last night in case there are fingerprints or other evidence.”
Pope said, “Do you plan to chase the culprit down and shoot him like you did that outfitter in Jackson? Like you’re some kind of cowboy or gunfighter? That’s not how we do things anymore, Joe. This is a new agency, and a new era.”
A new agency and a new era. Another one of Pope’s catchphrases.
Joe had trouble finding the right words to say. He knew he was turning red. When he looked up at Marybeth, she was gesturing frantically for him to “zip it” by sealing her own mouth with an imaginary fastener.
“Call the sheriff,” Pope said crisply. “That’s what you should have done last night. Ask him to investigate this. It’s his jurisdiction, after all.”
“Sheriff McLanahan is not competent to investigate this,” Joe said.
Pope chuckled drily. “Now, I doubt that, Joe. I’m sure he can handle it. The good people of Twelve Sleep County would never have elected him if he was the buffoon you make him out to be. And this is part of the problem, too. It doesn’t help with our community-relations outreach when our people refer to the locals as incompetents. We need all the support we can get, Joe. You need to learn to work with…”
Joe punched off and slammed the receiver down with so much force that the earpiece broke off. He couldn’t listen to another word.
Marybeth obviously heard the end of the conversation and the crash and looked in the door as he tried to fit the pieces of the phone back together. Wires were still attached to the pieces.
“It’s busted,” he said, angry with himself.
“I see that,” Marybeth said. “We can get a new phone. But it’s not the phone I’m worried about.”
As Joe pressed the pieces together, the handle shattered and covered his desktop with shards of plastic.
Joe said darkly, “Maybe I need a new job.”
Marybeth said, “Phone repairman is definitely out.”
SHERIFF KYLE MCLANAHAN arrived at Joe’s house at ten-thirty that morning, driving the oldest pickup in the county fleet, his one-eyed Blue Heeler dog occupying the passenger seat.
Joe went outside to meet him.
The sheriff climbed slowly out of his pickup, as if he’d aged twenty years since he left town. The dog scrambled out behind him, and ran through the gate to Maxine so both dogs could sniff each other for a while.
That seemed to be McLanahan’s intent with Joe as well, to sniff at him.
“That’s it, eh?” McLanahan asked, pointing over Joe’s shoulder at the Miller’s weasel on his door.
“That’s it,” Joe said, watching McLanahan pull on his jacket.
“Happened last night, huh?”
“Yup.”
“But you waited until this morning to call.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Woulda helped if you’d called last night,” McLanahan said, entering the yard and shuffling past Joe. “Before the blood dried and all the evidence was fouled up. I suppose you’ve touched the knife handle, and opened the fence, all of that.”
“I’m afraid so,” Joe said, embarrassed.
McLanahan turned to him stiffly. He moved as if he’d just dismounted after a long horseback trek. “D’you know who did it?”
Joe shrugged. “Someone who wants to send a message. You remember the history on that Miller’s weasel.”
McLanahan nodded. “Well,” he said, reaching up and smoothing both sides of his mustache with a meaty index finger in a surprisingly effete gesture, “I ain’t got much to go on, since you already fouled up the crime scene and you can’t tell me anything.”
“Nope, I guess you don’t,” Joe said, frustrated.
McLanahan ambled back toward his pickup. “You let me know if something else happens, all right? Or if you hear anything about who mighta’ done this? You’ll call, right?”
Joe sighed. “I’ll call.”
The sheriff opened the door of his truck to let his dog bound in, then stopped suddenly and looked up at the sky. Joe followed McLanahan’s gaze, puzzled. A V of geese was outlined against a massive cumulous cloud.
“I like to watch the geese,” McLanahan said, as if it were something profound. Then he looked back at Joe and squinted his eyes. “Next time, call me right away. Don’t wait twelve hours, pardner.”
“A MILLER’S WEASEL?” ROBEY ASKED, SITTING BACK in the booth at the Stockman bar. “No shit. Where would someone even find one?”
Joe sipped his beer, his third of the night thus far. It was Saturday night. The Stockman bar in downtown Saddlestring was a long, narrow chute of a place that stretched back the entire length of the city block. It was a classic, old-fashioned western bar with dusty big-game mounts on the walls, a dark knotty-pine interior, a mirrored backbar, and an entire wall of ancient black-and-white rodeo photos. Between the bar and the pool tables in the back was a pod of private booths with red-vinyl-covered seats and scarred tabletops emblazoned with local cattle brands, graffiti, and the initials of patrons dating back to the 1940s.
Joe said, “There’s a small population of them in the Bighorns. I transplanted them there myself. Not many people know where they are, or how to find them.”
Robey stared at Joe. “That’s more information than I needed to know,” he said, since what Joe had done was a federal crime. It was illegal to interfere with an endangered species.
The Miller’s weasels were originally discovered in the proposed path of a natural-gas pipeline, shortly after Joe had been named game warden of the district. Their discovery resulted in the deaths of four outfitters and a local care-taker of mountain cabins, and a firestorm that destroyed friendships and relationships and ended about as badly as it could have with Marybeth being shot by Wacey Hedeman. Once the species had been verified, there followed a brief flurry of national and international publicity to Twelve Sleep County that had long been forgotten on a large scale but continued to burble under the surface in the county and the state.
“Odd news about Wacey Hedeman, huh?” Robey said, glancing at Joe and then away from him, as if he didn’t want to press Joe for a reaction.
Joe nodded.
“Is Marybeth okay with that?”
“I think so,” Joe said. “It brought everything back again, of course. The past never just goes away, does it?”
Robey shook his head.
“You couldn’t see the vehicle, read a plate?” Robey asked.
“Just the taillights.”
Robey whistled. “There were a lot of folks who weren’t real happy with you back then. People on both sides of the issue. But it’s hard to believe someone has held a grudge this long, someone you wouldn’t know about.”
“That’s why it bothers me so much,” Joe said. “Right in front of my girls too,” he added, his voice rising. “It really shook up Sheridan. She recognized the animal right off. In fact, she even said she wondered if someone wasn’t threatening her. And that pisses me off, to involve my family like that.”
Robey sat back, his eyes searching Joe’s face. “Let’s hope this was an isolated incident. It’s odd that whoever did this waited six years to get back at you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the timing doesn’t make sense,” Joe said. “But what better way to get me right where I live? I mean, I’m the game warden. What worse kind of thing can someone do than stick a dead animal on my door? And especially that particular animal?”
“Stay alert,” Robey said. “That’s all I can say. I’ll do the same. Maybe one of us will hear something.”
Joe nodded.
“But, Joe, if you figure out who did it, please run it by me or call the sheriff before you do anything. Don’t go trying to take care of it on your own, okay?”
Joe signaled for two more beers from the bartender, not answering yes or no.
“Joe,” Robey said, “it’s no secret the situation you’re in with your new director. The word is out that he’s watching every move you make. He’s even made a couple of discreet calls to my office, and the sheriff’s office, to try to dig something up on you. He doesn’t know we’re friends.”
“I’m not surprised,” Joe said. He’d suspected Pope might be investigating him on the sly. That was the way he operated. Again, Joe felt the politics of his job crushing down on him. It was not what he had signed on for. He was battling within a system he didn’t like or respect anymore.
Robey said, “There are some things you’ve been involved in that probably won’t help you if this Pope guy digs too deeply. Like about Nate Romanowski? Or a certain Forest Service district supervisor whose death was remarkably ruled a suicide a few years back?”
Joe knew it was true. Robey knew more than he probably wanted to. As county prosecutor, Robey was aware of things that he likely wished he wasn’t. But as a good man, one who valued actual justice as opposed to process, Robey had chosen simply not to ask certain questions of Joe when he had a right, and a duty, to ask them. Because of that, Joe was fiercely loyal to his friend.
THE TOPIC TURNED to the purpose of the meeting in the first place.
“It’s the curse of the third generation,” Robey said, shaking his head and absently rolling the beer bottle between the palms of his hands. “I don’t know if there is a worse thing in the West than that.”
Robey paused and glanced up at Joe. His face looked haunted. “Did I ever tell you the main reason I left private practice and ran for county attorney?”
“Let me guess,” Joe said facetiously. “Would it be… the curse of the third generation?”
“That would be it,” Robey said. “It’s a pattern you can pretty much predict. When I first got my license, I was involved in way too many of these cases, and it just about killed me. It works this way: A matriarch or patriarch establishes the original ranch, and passes it along to the firstborn. The heir inherits land and power, and it feels different to him because he didn’t have to fight for it or earn it. It’s his by birthright, but he’s close enough to the founders that the initial struggle still resonates. But from then on, everything starts to get comfortable. This works the same way with family-owned companies. But if we’re talking about ranches, and we are, it gets more personal than if it was a shoe factory, because on a ranch everyone lives together and eats together. Sometimes, the second generation is smart and appreciates what they’ve got and how they got it, and plans ahead. You know-they form corporations or partnerships or something.” Robey paused to take a long pull of his beer before resuming, and Joe marveled at how engaged his friend was with the subject, how much he had obviously thought about it, how it concerned him.
“So,” Robey contined, “the third generation inherits a going concern but they really don’t give a shit about how they got it. The third generation splinters. A couple of the sons and daughters want to keep the place, and the others want to do something else. So when it comes time to figure out who owns what, the lawyers are called in to battle it out. It’s like couples who divorce without considering the best interests of the children because they’re so bitter. But instead of children, we’re talking about the ranch itself. There is only so much land in the world, it’s finite. Especially good, scenic, or productive land that can’t speak for itself. The litigation gets so messy that sometimes it’s unbelievable. Other people want that land, that asset. So we’ve got brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. You can really see the worst in human nature in a situation like that, and you just want to grab those idiots and knock their heads together and say ‘Wake up! Look what you’re doing to a place your ancestors put all of their sweat and blood into!’”
Robey rose and pretended he was grasping litigants by their necks and smashing their heads together. Joe looked around to see if anyone at the bar was watching. Fortunately, they weren’t.
Joe said, “And when it comes to our situation here with the Scarletts and the Thunderhead Ranch, we’ve got the curse in spades, right?”
“It’s like the curse has gone nuclear,” Robey said. “In this case, the original ranch was established in the eighteen-eighties, which was when most of the big ranches got going in our part of the country. Before statehood, and before homesteaders started spreading their wings. For the Thunderhead Ranch, a man named Homer Scarlett left West Virginia and used a small inheritance to buy what was then a small five-thousand-acre ranch on the river.”
“That would be the original Thunderhead Ranch?” Joe asked.
Robey shook his head. “Nope, the Thunderhead was the ranch next door at the time. Homer Scarlett, the great-grandfather, acquired it through somewhat dubious means-I think he won a big chunk of it in a poker game or something-and added it to his own holdings. He picked up five or six other small ranches along the way, and kept adding on. He was ruthless, from what I’ve heard. But he was also a hell of a businessman, because he thrived when others around him were going broke. As he added property, he put them all under the umbrella of the Thunderhead Ranch, I guess because he liked the name. Pretty soon, Scarlett owned sixty thousand acres outright and another hundred thousand acres on long-term lease from the government. He used his influence to make Saddlestring the county seat, and for a while there they almost renamed this town Scarlettville. Did you know that?”
Joe shook his head. “No. How do you know all of this?”
Robey laughed wearily. “Because I’m on the museum board and a few weeks ago we took a tour through the new Scarlett wing that’s scheduled to be dedicated next month. In fact, your mother-in-law was on the tour. It’s a damned nice addition to the building, and there is a special room to honor the family. Opal insisted on the display, and provided the photos and documents.
“Anyway,” Robey continued, “Homer had a son named Henry and two daughters named June and Laura. In those days, it was a lot simpler than it is now, and Henry assumed control of the ranch because he was the only male heir. There wasn’t any squabbling about control, even though the daughters legally had the same claim to it. Henry Scarlett took it over in the mid-nineteen-thirties, and the two daughters got nice little cottages on the ranch. June and Laura never married, so they produced no heirs. Henry had a couple of sons, though, named Wilbur and Dub. Dub died in combat at Normandy, so Wilbur had a clear line.”
“And Wilbur married Opal,” Joe said. “Who eventually had three sons.”
“Right.”
“So when did Wilbur die?”
“Early 1970s,” Robey said. “He was driving a truck across an old bridge over the river on the ranch when the bridge collapsed. I read about it. He was pinned inside the vehicle, and drowned in six inches of water.”
“And Opal got everything?”
Robey signaled for two more beers. “The whole thing lock, stock, and barrel. If Wilbur specified which one of his sons got the place, or if he had plans to divide up the ranch-no one knows. There wasn’t a will.”
“So where are we now?” Joe asked.
“We are in limbo, ownership hell,” Robey said. “Arlen claims Opal assured him the ranch would be his because he’s the oldest. Hank says Opal told him the same thing, and that she never trusted Arlen. Opal has two lawyers here in town, and both thought the other took care of the estate planning, but it turns out neither did. The ranch is a corporation with Opal Scarlett as its sole owner, with no management agreement, no will, no nothing.”
“What’s it worth?” Joe asked, thinking of the vast acreage, the meadows, the buildings, the twenty miles of riverfront.
“Tens of millions,” Robey said. “An appraisal will need to be done, but we know we’re in the mid-teens. If it were put up for sale, there would be buyers from all over the country and the world. These days, all the rich corporate guys want to own a ranch.”
Joe whistled.
“Until Opal’s proven dead and there’s a court order-or a will is found-nothing can be done to establish ownership or a succession plan,” Robey said. “Those brothers just continue to live out there in conflict. They could decide to sell the place and pocket the money, or one could buy it outright from the other. But in order to do that, they’d need to sit down and talk like human beings. Instead, they’ve both hired lawyers, accountants, and soldiers of their own, and they’re preparing for battle. My fear is that the war won’t make it as far as a courtroom, that it’ll start breaking out all over this valley.”
In the meantime, Robey said, the case against Tommy Wayman was also in limbo. He told Joe that although Tommy had confessed to tossing Opal in the river, the lack of a body prevented him from filing charges. In a legal holding action, Robey had persuaded Judge Pennock to order Tommy to stay in the area and check in weekly until the situation could be resolved.
Joe said, “This is about a lot more than the money, isn’t it?”
Robey looked quickly around the room to see who had entered since they started talking and that no one appeared to be eavesdropping. He leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said, “Joe, Opal was a damned monster. That’s what I’m finding out, the more I dig into it. She played those two brothers against each other all of their lives, telling one he was the favorite and that he’d get everything, denigrating the other, and vice versa. No wonder Wyatt is nuts, if he grew up with all of that going on around him. Arlen and Hank each really, honestly believe it is his personal destiny to control the ranch, and to continue the Scarlett legacy. That’s what they both call it, with a straight face, the ‘Scarlett legacy.’ Even Wyatt uses that term, easy as pie. According to Hank, Opal distrusted Arlen so much that she hired a third lawyer in secret to draw up a will giving Hank the whole place, but the lawyer was instructed not to come forward until Opal was declared dead. Hank says he’d rather ‘Mother’ show up than have her declared dead, of course, but if she doesn’t, he’s absolutely confident the ranch will be his. That’s how crazy these brothers are.”
“A third lawyer?”
Robey laughed, clearly not believing there was one. “Hank claims it’s Meade Davis. You ever hear of him?”
Davis was one of Saddlestring’s oldest and most prominent lawyers. So prominent, in fact, that Joe couldn’t recall his ever taking a case. Davis was involved in real estate, convenience stores, and he owned the cable television company.
“Davis winters in Arizona,” Robey said. “He isn’t back yet. We’ve tried to track him down but his phone’s disconnected and the registered letters we sent were returned. We’ve got a request in with the sheriff down there to find him, but so far no luck.”
Joe sat back, sipped his beer, thought of the implications. Robey was clearly agitated.
“So Wyatt is out of it for sure?” Joe asked. “It’s completely between Arlen and Hank? And Wyatt is okay with that?” He thought of Wyatt’s tears on the floor of the sheriff’s office; the heartbreak of a giant.
“As far as I can tell, Wyatt just wants Opal to come back and cook him his meals,” Robey said. “He misses her. And he doesn’t seem to care about the dispute either way. When I talked to Arlen, he actually referred to Wyatt as the ‘turd in the punch bowl.’ He has no respect for his youngest brother, but Wyatt adores Arlen. And Hank, for that matter.”
Joe thought about that and wondered if anyone really knew Wyatt.
“I understand some anonymous tipster contacted the IRS and turned Arlen in for tax evasion,” Robey said. “We were contacted by the feds about it earlier this week with a request to provide background.”
“Hank,” Joe said.
“Or one of Hank’s people. But that’s just the start of it. I got a visit this morning from Roger Schreiner. He was scared shitless.”
“Roger Schreiner? The accountant?”
“Yup. He’s working for Hank’s side of the operation and he got a letter accusing him of playing a part in an illegal conspiracy to defraud Arlen. The letter even cited the RICO statutes, which means he’s liable for triple damages if he’s found guilty. Roger says he’s innocent as the day is long, but he’s scared to death of going to court because he’s not sure how far his firm will back him.”
“Arlen,” Joe said.
Robey nodded.
Joe told Robey about the 1-800-POACHER tip he’d received earlier, naming Hank.
“Oh, man,” Robey said. “What could that mean if it’s true?”
Joe said, “Tens of thousands in fines, but that’s not what would hurt Hank the most. What would hurt Hank would be the confiscation of the equipment used to poach the animals, meaning his airplane, vehicles, and guns. And even worse for him, his license to guide and hunt could be revoked. Since he runs a big hunting operation in at least three locations, it would put him out of business.”
Robey shook his head. “Jesus,” he said. “This is getting even nastier than I thought.”
Joe snorted. “Of course, before investigating Hank I need proper authorization from my supervisor, which I’m still waiting for.”
“You’re kidding,” Robey said flatly.
Joe just looked at him. He hated feeling the way he did. Pope’s management of Joe stripped away both his independence and his confidence. But that was Joe’s problem, not Robey’s.
“And you know what?” Joe said, pointing the mouth of his bottle toward Robey. “I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet in regard to Scarlett versus Scarlett.”
Robey nodded. “We haven’t, because the next stage in the war will be more of what Arlen started in going after the surrogates of the other brother, like Hank’s accountant.”
“Or,” Joe thought out loud, “Arlen’s future management consulting firm-MBP Management.”
Robey sat back. “You think?”
“It fits,” Joe said.
And the door opened and in walked Hank Scarlett with a ranch hand. Joe watched as Hank mumbled hellos to men seated at the bar and then took the stool at the end that used to belong to ex-sheriff O. R. “Bud” Barnum, before Barnum went away. Hank’s tiny eyes, set close together in his thin face, burned like coals as they swept the room, settled for a moment on Joe, then moved on. He was doing inventory, Joe thought, seeing who in the Stockman was in his camp, and who wasn’t.
“Speak of the devil,” Joe said, his eyes narrowing. As he stared at Hank Scarlett, things started to tumble together and click. Six years before, Hank had been one of the most vocal opponents of calling in the feds when the Miller’s weasels were discovered, and he publicly blamed Joe for the intrusion of biologists, endangered-species advocates, and environmental groups that came as a result. Hank felt the issue would be best resolved locally, meaning: All the animals should be secretly killed. That’s how he’d always proceeded with endangered species.
In addition, Hank knew the Bighorns as well as anyone in Wyoming-even better than Joe, because he had hunted and explored every inch of them. If anyone knew where the colony of Miller’s weasels thrived in the wilderness, it was Hank. The fact that Marybeth had chosen to work for Arlen in Hank’s mind put Joe in his brother’s camp, even though it wasn’t the case.
“Joe, I don’t like that look on your face,” Robey said.
Joe didn’t realize he had any look at all.
“If you think Hank had something to do with that Miller’s weasel, you had best keep it to yourself until you can prove something,” Robey said.
Joe thought about the animal on his door, the steak knife pinning it there, the single streak of dark red blood that coursed down and pooled in a crack. And of Sheridan’s horrified expression when she realized what it was, what it meant.
“Excuse me,” Joe said, and slid out of the booth.
“Joe…” Robey said, his voice hard, but Joe didn’t turn around.
He approached the bar. Hank had his back to Joe, although the man Hank had come into the bar with watched Joe intently. Joe measured Hank’s companion, met his eyes dead-on. This one is a thug, Joe thought. There was nothing cowboy about him. He was tight through the chest, and his rolled-up sleeves revealed enhanced forearms with coils of cablelike muscle writhing under tattooed skin. His face was thin and pinched, his mouth full and rubbery. He had a soul patch under his lower lip and a ponytail. He wore the wrong jeans and his boots were black Doc Marten lace-ups, not real working cowboy boots. The man’s hat was Australian outback, not cowboy. And there was something about him, Joe thought, something familiar. When he looked at the man’s face he saw somebody else he was familiar with, or the shadow of that person. But Joe couldn’t remember if he had ever seen this man before.
The beer Joe had been drinking with Robey surged through him, deadening what should have been self-preservation warning bells going off like a prison break.
“Hank,” Joe said, to Hank’s back.
“Is there a problem here?” the man with Hank said in a low southern accent.
“I was talking to Hank,” Joe said, looking from the ranch hand to the mirrored back bar, to see that Hank saw him and was staring back with his dead sharp eyes.
The ranch hand spun on his stool and rose to his feet, but Hank said, “It’s okay, Bill, he’s just the game warden.”
Bill relaxed, stepped back, sat down.
Hank took a long drink from his glass of bourbon, then swiveled around, not getting up. Joe was three feet away, and he tried not to let his face twitch as Hank frowned and leveled his gaze on him.
“What can I do you for, Game Warden?” He said Game Warden with detached sarcasm. Hank’s voice was high and tinny. He bit off his words, as if speaking them were painful in itself.
“I wanted to ask you about something that happened at my house,” Joe said.
Hank flicked his eyes toward Bill, then back. His voice was a low hiss. “I don’t believe you’ve met our local game warden before, Bill. He’s the one who arrested our last governor for fishing without a license, and shot and killed both Wyoming’s greatest stock detective and our best outfitter. He’s sort of our own Dudley Do-Right. Joe, this is Bill Monroe, my new foreman.”
Monroe snorted and squinted and showed his teeth, which were white and perfect replacements for teeth that had been knocked out sometime in his career.
Joe looked at Hank, felt his rage build. Hank’s face was still slightly yellow-bruised from his fight with Arlen a month before. His nose was askew.
“Bill,” Joe said, trying to stanch his fear, “why don’t you take a walk? Go out and buy some new cowboy clothes, or something? I need to talk to Hank here.”
“Fuck you,” Monroe said.
“Settle down,” Hank said without looking at Monroe. “What was that about your house? I’d like to have a drink in peace.”
“Somebody stuck an animal on my door,” Joe said. “A Miller’s weasel.”
Hank stared for a moment, then smiled with his mouth. “I’m not exactly sure why you’re asking me about that, Game Warden. Do you think I had something to do with it?”
“That’s why I brought it up,” Joe said. “My daughter was pretty upset.”
Hank said, “Her name is Sheridan, right?” Saying her name as if it were the first time he’d ever enunciated it. “She’s Julie’s friend, isn’t she? I’ve seen her. She’s a nice girl, from what I can tell. Not as damned goofy as her father. Why would I want to upset my daughter’s best friend?”
Hank was enjoying himself at Joe’s expense. And Joe felt humiliated. But it made Joe even angrier, because he sensed there was something Hank knew about the incident.
Joe said, “Hank, I don’t care what you say about me to your rent-a-wrangler here. But don’t screw with my family.”
Hank smiled.
Monroe rose again, said, “‘Rent-a-wrangler’?”
“Sit down,” Joe said to Monroe, his voice harsh. “Or I’ll make you sit down.” As he said it he couldn’t believe it had come out of his mouth. But it worked, and Monroe leaned back on his stool, poised on the edge, ready to lunge forward if necessary. His eyes bored into Joe’s face like dual twin lasers, something was going on behind those eyes that was violent and seething. Joe thought, I’ve got to watch out for this guy.
Hank chuckled drily. “That sounded a lot like a threat, Joe. That’s big talk from a state employee. Especially one who has sided with my brother. Or at least his wife has. I’d watch what you say, Game Warden.”
“I haven’t sided with anyone,” Joe said. “Neither has Marybeth.” He still couldn’t believe that he’d threatened Monroe that way. “But if it was you, this is the end of it. Don’t come to my house again, or send any of your…” Joe thought about it for a second, then forged on. “… wranglers to my home. If you do, things are going to get real western, Hank.”
Hank started to answer, then didn’t. He looked away, then turned to Monroe and said, “Settle down.”
Monroe seemed as if he were about to explode. He clenched his fists and glared at Joe as if trying to figure out whether to strike with his left hand or his right. If he did either, Joe thought, there would be trouble, and he’d likely come out on the worst end of it.
Hank said, “You’ve had a few beers, I can tell. And I can see you’ve been listening to Robey Hersig over there, hearing how Arlen should get the ranch and I shouldn’t. So I’ll let this go for now, and pretend you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Which you don’t. But let me tell you something, Game Warden.”
Hank paused, letting the clock tick. Eventually, Monroe turned his head to hear what he had to say. Joe was rapt.
“The Thunderhead will be mine,” Hank said. “Nothing you, or your lovely wife, or anybody can do about that. So get used to it.”
Then Hank leaned forward on his stool, looking up at Joe under scarred eyebrows, and said, “My family was here a hundred years before you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye. We own this place. We stuck. The rest of you come and go, like lint. Goddamned lint. So don’t poke your nose where it doesn’t belong. This ain’t your fight.”
He swiveled on his stool, turned his back to Joe, and sipped at his glass of bourbon.
Joe felt Robey tugging at his sleeve, saying, “Let’s sit down.”
But Joe found himself staring at the back of Hank’s sweat-stained Stetson, and thought of his daughter looking at the animal pinned to his front door. He said, “It better not have been you, Hank. And by the way, we got a call on you. I’ll be out to see you soon.”
For the first time, Joe saw a slight flicker of fear in Hank’s face in the mirror.
THEY FINISHED THEIR beers, and Robey spent most of the time telling Joe not to react, not to get mad, but to cool down and let the process work. Joe only sort of listened. He was furious that Hank had gotten the best of him, and even angrier that he’d opened himself up to it. He knew better than to create a confrontation when he was unprepared. But something in Hank’s eyes and demeanor had told Joe that he knew more than he let on. So if for no other reason than knowing that, it had been worth it.
The night went on. Robey was drunk, and repeating himself about the curse of the third generation. Joe called Marybeth on his cell phone, woke her up, and said he’d be home soon. She was groggy, and not happy with him.
Hank left the Stockman without looking back, although Monroe paused at the door and filled it, glaring at Joe, letting cold air in, which normally would have resulted in shouts from the patrons. But because Monroe was with Hank Scarlett, no one said a word.
JOE LEFT WITH Robey, and they both marveled at the night itself, how two grown men with families had drunk the night away, how unusual it was for them. They blamed the Scarletts for creating a situation where they felt it necessary-even justified-to do so. Robey started in on a soliloquy about drinking in general, and how intrinsic it was to living in the mountain west, how important it was to understanding the culture and isolation, but Joe said good night and sent him home, wishing there were a cab he could call for his friend, but taxis didn’t exist in Saddlestring.
As he searched for the ignition key on his key ring in the dark in the tiny parking lot behind the Stockman, Joe had an almost disembodied reaction to the sound of approaching footfalls crunching through the gravel, each step gaining in volume, realizing at the last possible second that someone was upon him. He turned with a frown and glimpsed the flash of a meaty fist in the moonlight before it struck him full in the face, the blow so powerful that his world went red and spangling white and his head snapped back and cracked the driver’s-side window of his pickup. He staggered to his left and felt his legs wobble, sidestepping furiously to regain his balance. The man who hit him mirrored his movements and snapped another blow out of nowhere. The explosion Joe felt on his cheekbone was tremendous-it seemed to make his brain erupt with sudden flashes of orange. Blood flooded his nose and filled his mouth from the back of his throat, tasting hot and salty. His legs gave out, and he was down on his hands and knees, gravel digging into the palms of his hands, pebbles under his skin. The attacker stepped back and delivered a kick to Joe’s stomach as if kicking an extra point in football, and Joe felt himself momentarily lifted into the air. When he came down, all his limbs were rubbery and his bloodied face smash into the pavement. His ribs burned and he knew instinctively that a few of them might be broken. He thought: Get under the truck. Roll out of harm’s way. But in his confusion he rolled the wrong way, his arms and legs askew, and he was farther away from his pickup than when he started. That apparently confused his attacker, who yelled, “Stupid fucker,” in exasperation as Joe found himself on the black Doc Marten lace-up boots, stopping Monroe from kicking him again. Monroe leaped back, getting clear, and Joe tried to rise but he couldn’t get beyond a clumsy crouch because his bloodied head swooned, and he rocked back in slow motion and fell, splayed out like a gut-shot animal on the asphalt of the parking lot. Despite the booming pain in his head, Joe thought, You’ve beaten me.
He heard a shout from across the parking lot. Instead of another blow, he heard the slow crunching of gravel as Monroe walked away and Hank saying, in the shadowed distance, “Yeah, that’s enough.”
JOE WAS HELPED to a sitting position. He leaned back against his truck tire. His benefactor was Hank.
“Here,” Hank said, handing Joe a bandanna from his pocket. “Use that to clean off your nose and mouth.”
Joe took it.
“I called the sheriff a minute ago. Somebody ought to be here any minute.”
“You called?” Joe asked.
“Damndest thing,” Hank said, squatting down by him. “When I saw what Bill was doing, I told him to stop and he ran off. I don’t know where he went.”
“You said, ‘Yeah, that’s enough,’ ” Joe said.
“Right.”
“You said it like you ordered and approved of the damage so far.”
Hank cocked his head to the side in an exaggerated way, said, “I have no idea what you mean, Joe. Bill was acting on his own there. If I could find that damned Bill, I’d be the first to testify at his trial that he attacked you for no good reason.”
“Hmmm,” Joe said, not believing Hank, but having no way to prove otherwise.
“‘Hmmm,’” Hank mocked. “Maybe you shouldn’t have called him a rental wrangler, or whatever it was you said. You must have really made him mad.”
“Yup,” Joe said, cringing against a headache that was barreling through his head from the base of his neck.
Deputy Reed pulled into the parking lot. He got out and bathed Joe in the light of his flashlight, said, “Who the hell did this?”
THE NEXT MORNING, a warrant for arrest was issued on Bill Monroe, age unknown, last known address Thunderhead Ranch.
ON FRIDAY EVENING, NEARLY A WEEK AFTER THE beating, Joe drove Sheridan to her sleepover with Julie Scarlett on the Thunderhead Ranch, his thoughts echoing what Marybeth had said: This valley is getting too small.
His body still ached each time he turned the wheel of the pickup, even though it turned out his ribs were bruised, not broken after all. But his right eye was still partially swelled shut, and his nose felt detached, as if it were floating around his face like a slow bird, trying to find a place to land.
Joe had spent the last week in the field, repairing fences and signage for public fishing access and walk-in areas. The maintenance needed to be done, but it wasn’t urgent. The primary reason for keeping his distance from town was to avoid anyone seeing him and asking what had happened to him. He knew the beating was already a bit of a joke with McLanahan, who had worked long and hard on a description of what had happened, calling it, “The Fistfight at the KO Corral,” which the sheriff thought sounded western and funny. In a response to an e-mail from Pope asking if Joe was, in fact, injured in a brawl, Joe wrote back: “It takes two to brawl. I’m fine.”
While fixing signs and fence, he had seen no other people, which was how he wanted it. Instead, he stewed and thought about what had happened. He should never have challenged Hank without anything concrete to challenge him with. He had tipped his hand, lashed out because of the Miller’s weasel. Hank was much too experienced in trench warfare, and Joe came off like a rank private. Looking back, he thought of the look in Bill Monroe’s eye, a look of peeled-back hatred that still gave Joe the chills when he recalled it. And the humiliation of being beaten up hung over his head, darkening the sun. He was ashamed, humiliated, violated. The worst thing was when Lucy looked at him at the breakfast table and made a face similar to the one she had displayed when Maxine vomited a bag of jerky on the carpet. Or when Sheridan cocked her head to the side and asked, “Somebody beat you up? Jeez, Dad.” It didn’t help that Marybeth was quietly disdainful of what had happened, shaking her head and expelling a little puff of breath every time she looked at him.
EACH DAY SINCE the beating, Joe had called headquarters and asked for Randy Pope when his e-mails went unanswered. Joe wanted authorization to proceed on the 800-POACHER tip on Hank Scarlett. The director was out of state at a national conference in Cleveland, the receptionist said.
“They don’t have telephones in Cleveland?” Joe asked.
That morning, before leaving his house for the field, Joe called again and got a message on the receptionist’s phone saying she was “either on another line or away from her desk.”
“Joe Pickett here,” he said on her voice mail. “Again. Calling for Randy Pope. Again. Wondering if he realizes he has crossed over the line from bureaucratic micromanagement to obstruction of justice.”
Joe had also called the sheriff’s department throughout the week to check on the status of the investigation into Bill Monroe.
“That Bill done hit the highway” was how Sheriff Kyle McLanahan sized it up.
JOE GLANCED OVER at Sheridan as he drove. Her overnight bag and rolled-up sleeping bag were on the floor. She looked back with an expression that said, “What?”
“I’m taking you to the main ranch house, right?” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“And there will be other girls there?”
“A few.”
“And the reason we’re going to the main ranch house, not Julie’s father’s house, is that she actually lives at the main house, right?”
Sheridan nodded her head, as if she were engaged in a competition and speaking would make her lose points.
“Sheridan, I’m not crazy about this idea,” Joe said.
“I know,” Sheridan said.
“It was one of Hank’s men…” He couldn’t say who beat me up.
“I know,” she said. “But I’ve never even seen Julie’s father, Hank, on Uncle Arlen’s side of the ranch.”
Joe cringed inside. He didn’t want his daughter to think he was scared of Hank, or Hank’s man, and it wasn’t just fright anymore. He knew he was capable of violence if he saw Hank or Bill Monroe again.
“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have had Julie to our house for a sleepover,” he said.
“Because she invited me and some other girls,” Sheridan said. “That’s how it works.”
Joe sighed. Recently, he had begun to encounter some of the same intransigent behavior from Sheridan that Marybeth had been dealing with for the past year. Sheridan was closemouthed, sullen, and, more often than not, sarcastic. Where had that little chatterbox gone? The one who verbalized everything? The little girl who once provided play-by-play commentary of her own life in wild bouquets of words? Joe had to admit that her moods hadn’t bothered him as much when they’d been directed at her mother. But now that they extended to Joe too he didn’t like it. He always had a special relationship with his older daughter. Deep down, he thought it was still there. But they had to get through this early-teen thing. At the recent parent-teacher conference, Sheridan’s English teacher, Mrs. Gilbert, asked him and Marybeth if they knew what was worse than an eighth-grade girl. They shrugged, and the teacher said, “Nothing on earth.”
“ARLEN WILL BE around the whole time, right?” Joe asked.
Sheridan did a quick eye-roll, so fast he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it. “Yes. And so will lots of employees. Not to mention Uncle Wyatt.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t mention Uncle Wyatt,” Joe said, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. “He’s kind of an odd guy, from what I can tell.”
Sheridan said, “I’ll avoid him. I always do.”
“What about her mother?” Joe asked. He’d heard that Julie’s mother, Hank’s ex-wife, lived in a small cabin on the ranch in order to stay involved in Julie’s life.
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Sheridan,” Joe said, exasperated, “what do you know?”
Which really made her clam up.
Joe said, “Sorry,” and kept driving. He knew Marybeth had extracted enough information out of Sheridan to give the sleepover her stamp of approval. But he wanted to know the details too.
As he drove, the motor hiccupped and the check-engine light came on.
“What’s wrong with the truck?” Sheridan asked.
“It’s a piece of crap,” Joe said.
THE MAIN RANCH house was a lumbering stone castle of a home with sharp gables and eaves and the look of a building that belonged not in Wyoming on a river but on some country estate in England. Towering hundred-year-old cottonwoods shrouded the home on all sides, the spring leaves having burst out just that week. Joe approached the home from the east on a firm graded and graveled three-track that snaked through heavy trees. He could see assorted out-buildings through the timber; old sheds, a tall barn that was falling down, an old icehouse built of logs.
As they crossed a bridge over a little stream made manic by snowmelt, Joe saw what looked like an old chicken coop tucked away in an alcove facing the road, and noticed the windows had glass in them and the roof had a new set of shingles. It puzzled him that the Scarletts would maintain a chicken coop, and he was about to say so when Sheridan said: “That’s where Uncle Wyatt lives.”
Joe stopped the truck.
“Wyatt lives in a chicken coop?”
“That’s what Julie told me,” Sheridan said. “He keeps odd hours, so instead of waking everybody up all the time, he lives in there. I guess he doesn’t mind.”
Joe looked at his daughter. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Sheridan nodded grimly. She was of an age when the last thing she wanted to do was admit that her parents might be right.
“Julie’s my friend,” she said.
“We can still back out,” Joe said.
“No. I’m not doing that.”
ARLEN GREETED THEM in the ranch yard wearing an apron and cleaning his hands with a towel. There was a smudge of white flour on his forehead. He strode across the yard and stuck his hand out to Joe, who climbed out of his pickup. Julie was right behind Arlen, beaming at Sheridan and running around to her side of the truck.
“My God, your face,” Arlen said, booming.
Joe looked over. Sheridan and Julie were packing the sleeping bag and overnight bag into the house and chattering. He wanted to talk to Arlen but didn’t want the girls overhearing him.
For a few moments, Joe had forgotten about his injuries. After shaking Arlen’s hand, he reached up and touched his closed eye with the tips of his fingers. Now that Arlen mentioned it, his face hurt again.
“That’s what Bill did, eh?” Arlen asked, reaching out and cupping Joe’s chin in his big hand so he could look closely at the damage. Joe didn’t like another man touching him that way and turned away as if checking on Sheridan. That was something about the Scarletts that grated on Joe, he realized. These people thought they owned everything in the valley, even the game warden’s face.
“Guess they haven’t picked him up yet, huh?” Arlen said. “Does Sheridan know who did it?”
“Nope,” Joe said. “Not by name.”
Arlen said, “When Bill Monroe showed up a couple of weeks ago he came to me first to ask for a job. My impression of him was that he was trouble with a capital T. I turned out to be right. I guess when I sent him on his way he drove up the road and Hank hired him.”
Joe nodded.
“I’m a pretty good judge of men,” Arlen said. “Hank’s got a couple of other new men over there I’d put firmly in the ‘thug’ or ‘cutthroat’ category. If I see Bill slinking around the ranch anywhere, I’ll call right away.”
“Arlen, let me ask you something,” Joe said. “How safe is it here right now? I mean, with the problems between you and Hank, and Hank’s new men? Do you feel okay about things?”
“Joe, it’s perfectly safe around here,” Arlen said, his voice low. “In fact, I’d wager it’s safer than just about anyplace I can think of. Safer than your own house, if you don’t mind my saying so. I heard about that little gift on your door…”
Joe felt his face flush when Arlen said it. He’d never liked the implication that he couldn’t protect his own family, and Arlen seemed to be implying that, if indirectly.
“Sure, Hank wouldn’t throw me a rope if I were drowning,” Arlen said. “But despite everything that’s wrong with that guy, and it’s a lot, he desperately loves his daughter. I don’t blame him, the girl is a gem. Hank still pines for Doris, his ex-wife. Doris is in the kitchen in there now, helping me bake some nice bread,” Arlen nodded toward the main house. “Hank wouldn’t let anything bad happen to his wife or his daughter and by extension, to her friends. He wants them to think he’s a good guy. He needs allies. He believes one of these days they’ll all come to their senses and move back to his place.” Arlen smiled at the absurdity of the notion.
“Besides,” he said, arching his eyebrows, “not every man on Hank’s payroll is loyal to Hank, if you know what I mean. If Hank was going to try something, I’d know about it well in advance.”
Arlen’s words had the ring of truth, especially that last bit of news. Arlen was a schemer, and he obviously had an informant in Hank’s camp.
“What’s the deal with Wyatt?” Joe asked, turning his head toward the road they had just come in on. “Sheridan said he lives in that chicken coop.”
Arlen laughed. “It’s much nicer than that, Joe. Wyatt’s got it all fixed up now. You make it sound like he’s sleeping in there with chickens. There are no chickens in there anymore.”
“Still…”
“It’s odd, I’ll grant you that,” Arlen said. “But Wyatt has always marched to the beat of his own drummer. The man just doesn’t sleep, or when he does, it’s for an hour at a time. He used to keep us up all night wandering around the house, puttering, doing his hobbies. Wyatt has a lot of interests, and almost all of them”-Arlen rolled his eyes, then settled them back on Joe-“stink. Everything Wyatt does stinks.”
Despite himself, Joe smiled at the way Arlen said it.
“He’s either making model planes and spacecraft, which smell of glue and oil paint, or he’s tanning hides or reloading bullets. Taxidermy is his newest obsession. Those chemical smells can get to you.”
JULIE AND SHERIDAN came back out through the front door with an adult woman in tow. She was dark and attractive, Joe thought, but there was something hard about her. Her eyes took him in. Her expression didn’t reveal what her conclusion was about him.
“I’m Doris Scarlett, Julie’s mother,” she said, extending her hand.
“Joe Pickett.” Her fingers were long and cool. She didn’t wear a wedding ring.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “We’re going to get these girls to bake some bread, and then some cookies. We thought we’d have a few more girls coming out, so we have more than enough dough to roll in there.”
“Lindsay, Sara, and Tori can’t make it,” Julie told Sheridan, who had caught what Doris had said about the other girls.
Joe wondered if the other parents were concerned about the situation at the Scarletts, or if it was happenstance that the other girls weren’t there. He thought, as he often thought: What would Marybeth do here? He decided Marybeth would proceed with what they’d already decided, that Sheridan could spend the night with her best friend. Arlen had assured Joe things were fine. And they appeared fine.
“Nice to meet you too,” Joe said to her. She smiled and nodded, and turned and went back into the house. Joe could tell the introduction was for his benefit, at Sheridan’s instigation, to assure him that things were okay, that she and Julie were well supervised.
Arlen said, “When Hank and Doris started having trouble, Mother let Doris and Julie move across the ranch to the guest house. Hank doesn’t like it one bit, but at least he can see his daughter from time to time. Mother really doted on that girl.”
Arlen stood there, something obviously on his mind, making it awkward for Joe to turn and go.
Arlen said, “Now I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t mind.”
“Fire away.”
“I heard someone called and reported my brother Hank had committed some pretty serious game violations. That he had illegal mounts and species displayed at his house. Do you know anything about this?”
Joe thought: Now I know for sure who made the call. But he said, “I got the report. I’m waiting on authorization to proceed.” It embarrassed Joe to say that.
Arlen searched Joe’s face. “Authorization?”
Joe knew he was on thin ice as he proceeded, Arlen being a new Game and Fish commissioner. But why protect Randy Pope?
“You might have heard,” Joe said, as diplomatically as possible, “the agency director has assigned himself the job of being my immediate supervisor. He reserves the authority to okay my actions and duties.”
“And he hasn’t done so,” Arlen said, his voice cold.
“No sir, in this case…”
Arlen turned on his heel and walked back to his house. “Wait here,” he said over his shoulder to Joe. “I’ll be right back.”
Joe leaned back against his pickup, wondering what kind of trouble he’d just gotten himself in now.
SHERIDAN CAME OUT of the house to hug him good-bye. As he pulled her into him, he leaned down and whispered, “I can still take you home.”
She stepped back and raised her eyes to him. “Dad, I’m the only girl who showed up. I can’t leave. Don’t you understand?”
Joe looked at her, wanted to insist she get her things and climb back in, but he saw his growing daughter in an admirable new light.
“Then at least promise to call immediately if you need anything, okay?”
“That would be easier to do if I had a cell phone,” she said, her eyes triumphant.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Joe said, sighing.
Arlen appeared at a window on the second floor of the main house holding a telephone. He leaned out of the window, and gestured a thumbs-up to Joe.
“What’s that about?” Sheridan asked.
“Hank,” Joe said.
JOE SLOWED AS he cruised by Wyatt’s chicken coop. The place looked dark and buttoned down, the window curtains pulled tight.
His cell phone burred and he plucked it from its mount on the dash and said, “Joe Pickett.”
“Hold for Director Pope,” said Pope’s administrative assistant.
Joe smiled. That hadn’t taken long.
“Pickett,” Pope said brusquely, “I want you to proceed with that 800-POACHER tip as soon as possible.”
“Gee,” Joe said, “what’s the hurry?”
Silence. Joe could imagine Pope gritting his teeth, having just concluded his call from Arlen.
“Just get right on it,” Pope said.
“It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“What do you mean it will have to wait?”
“I’ve got to get home and write up my daily report,” Joe said. “My supervisor demands it by five P.M.”
“Oh, for God’s sake…”
“And you need to get me a new truck. This thing is ready to fall apart,” Joe said, looking at the temperature gauge, which was in the red. “I don’t think it’ll last the month.”
“Another truck!” he said, as if Joe were asking Pope to pay for it out of his own pocket instead of simply assigning another from the fleet. “We’ve had this discussion, I believe. You’ve damaged more government property than any other single game warden in the state, as you know. The damage case file we’ve got on you is…”
“I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up,” Joe said, tapping the phone against the side of his head before punching off.
His visit to Hank would need to wait, Joe said to himself, until his daughter was off the Thunderhead Ranch.
THE WORD THAT POPPED INTO SHERIDAN PICKETT’S mind that evening, as the Scarletts sat down to dinner in the old dining room of the main ranch house, was Gothic. Ranch Gothic. Not the kind of Gothic she was used to, like those black-clad Goths in school who painted their nails and lips black and looked amazingly silly in P.E., but the older definition of Gothic, the kind she’d read about in novels. Until now, that definition had always been beyond her grasp, because she’d never encountered it. She never thought there was anyplace in Wyoming ancient enough or sinister enough to be considered Gothic. Until now. An image of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations wearing her wedding dress and riding a horse across the meadow outside popped into Sheridan’s head. She almost giggled at the thought but she was too on edge.
A ROILING BUT invisible cloud seemed to hang in the air of the dining room and throughout the house. She imagined the cloud to be made up of violent past emotions. The whole place, she thought, could use a good airing out.
The décor within the main ranch house had obviously not been changed-simply added onto-since it was built. The walls and wallpaper were dark and the trim ornate, the cornices were hand carved, each doorway a custom lark of intricate woodwork. Ancient wagon-wheel chandeliers hung from high ceilings on rough chains. The kitchen was big enough that when the cast-iron cookstoves were replaced by modern ovens there was no need to throw the old ones out. The dining room and sitting room were close and stuffy, with old paintings on the wall of Wyoming and Scottish landscapes. Sheridan had found herself staring at an entire wall of framed black-and-white photographs in the living room.
“This is the Scarlett Legacy Wall I told you about,” Julie had said, sweeping her hand through the air. “There are pictures here of all of my relatives.”
Sheridan had looked at her friend, expecting to see a smile on Julie’s face when she said “the Scarlett Legacy.” But she was serious, and much more solemn than Sheridan had seen her before. It was as if Julie had been schooled to be solemn in front of that wall the way a good Catholic would cross herself in midsentence as she passed by a cathedral.
Julie pointed out the photos of her great-great-grandparents who had founded the ranch, then her great-grandparents. Prominent within the display was a portrait of Opal Scarlett as a girl, the photo tinted with color to redden her cheeks and bring out her blue eyes. Even then, Sheridan thought, she looked like a tough bird. Her eyes, even through the blue tint, were sharp and hard and gave off a glint, like inset rock chips. In the photo, though, Opal had smiled an enigmatic smile that was disarming. Sheridan had only met Julie’s grandmother a couple of times before and had never seen the smile.
The high school portraits of Arlen, Hank, and Wyatt were fascinating, she thought. It was telling seeing Julie’s dad and uncles at ages more closely resembling her own, so she could look at them more as contemporaries than old men. Arlen looked then as he did now: handsome, confident, full of himself, and a little deceitful. Hank wore a fifties-style cowboy hat with the brim turned up sharply on both sides, his face sincere, serious, earnest, dark. It was the face of a boy who looked determined to stake a claim, a hard worker who would not be stopped. Wyatt looked big and soft, eager to please, proud of a mustache that was nothing to be proud of. Something about his face seemed wounded, as if he’d already met great disappointment. He was not a guy, Sheridan thought, you would pick first for your team if you wanted to win. Arlen would be, though, if the competition was a debate. And Hank would be the choice if there was a chance a fight might break out.
“Your dad looked cool,” Sheridan said.
Julie nodded. “He can be,” she said simply.
“But you live here with your uncle.”
“I moved to be with my grandmother and my mom.” Julie shrugged. “But my grandma, well, you know… she’s gone.”
AS SHE SAT across from Julie at the massive table that at one time fed twenty “strapping ranch hands,” as Arlen put it, Sheridan felt as if she were in a place and with people who shared a mutual faded glory that she wasn’t a part of.
She tried not to stare at Arlen or Wyatt as they ate, but she did observe them carefully. Wyatt tore into his food as if he were a starved animal. He pistoned forkfuls of food into his mouth with a mechanical fury, as if he couldn’t wait to complete his meal and punch off the clock. Arlen was leisurely, urbane, continuously refilling his wineglass before it was empty.
Julie appeared to be oblivious to both of them, picking at her food. She seemed put out by something. She kept stealing glances at Sheridan, and Sheridan had the feeling she was somehow disappointing her friend.
Sheridan was uncomfortable. It wasn’t the food, which was very good: steak, salad, fresh hot rolls with butter, garlic mashed potatoes, apple cobbler for dessert. Uncle Arlen was a great cook, and he told both girls so repeatedly.
It was interesting when Julie’s mother, Doris, returned from the kitchen with a plate filled with the cookies Julie and Sheridan had baked. As she served Sheridan, Doris leaned down and spoke in a tone so low the others at the table couldn’t hear her.
“This place used to weird me out as well,” she said. “But you eventually get used to it.”
Sheridan nodded but didn’t meet her eyes.
BEFORE THEY WATCHED a DVD movie and went to bed, Uncle Arlen told them stories with a fire crackling in the fireplace. He was a good storyteller. He knew how to use words and inflection and would look right into Sheridan’s eyes as he made a point, as if it were the most important thing in the world that she hear him and hear him now.
Sheridan had been seated next to Julie on a bear rug at Arlen’s feet. The way Julie walked over, collapsed on the rug, and turned her immediate attention to her uncle suggested to Sheridan this Story Time was a very common occurrence.
“Tell about Grandpa Homer,” Julie had asked her uncle. And he complied. About how Homer had to confront a bear (“You’re sitting on it,” Arlen said). How he fought with the Indians. When Homer stood up to the ranch hands-there were dozens of cowboys living on the ranch back then-and told them either to get out or shape up when they threatened to walk off the job unless they got more pay and better food.
To hear Arlen tell it, the Scarlett family had been involved in everything that had ever happened in the valley, and in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming. While haughty newcomers either tried to overreach and failed or panicked and ran, the Scarletts provided the grounding force. When locals ran around like “chickens with their heads cut off” about a drought, fire season, flash floods, or the fact that the world seemed to have passed Saddlestring by, the Scarletts were there to provide context, experience, and wisdom. Sheridan was aware of how Julie kept looking over at her as Arlen talked, as if to say, “See how lucky you are that I’m sharing this with you?”
Arlen called it “oral history,” and said he repeated the stories to Julie over the years so she could continue the tradition when she got older. “It’s sad that families don’t hand down stories anymore,” Arlen said. Then, shaking his head and clucking, he said, “Of course, maybe they don’t have much to tell.”
That stung Sheridan, because at the time he said it she was thinking she didn’t really know much about her own parents, where they came from, and therefore where she came from. Well, there was Grandma Missy, but she reminded Sheridan of some of the popular girls in her school. Missy was whatever she was at the time, but there wasn’t much more to her than that. Sheridan remembered her grandmother being the aristocratic wife of a real estate developer turned politician in Arizona whom they’d never seen. That’s when she first knew her, when her grandmother insisted she and Lucy call her “aunt.” Then Grandmother Missy moved to Wyoming, and now she was on the huge Longbrake Ranch. She’d done okay for herself, but Sheridan had no idea where she’d come from.
And she didn’t know much about her dad. Until that moment, when Arlen said it, she hadn’t given it much thought. Her dad didn’t talk much about growing up, but Sheridan always felt that it couldn’t have been too good. Once, when she asked him about his mom and dad, her grandparents whom she’d never met, he said, simply, “My parents drank.”
She had looked at him, waiting for more that never came.
“That’s one reason I wanted to be a game warden,” he said at the time, gesturing toward Wolf Mountain, as if he were explaining everything. There was also a hint about a younger brother, who would have been Sheridan’s only uncle. Something had happened to him. A car accident.
Unlike the Scarletts, who passed down everything, Sheridan’s family seemed to be starting anew, creating their own legacy and tradition. She didn’t know which was better. Or worse.
However, the longer Arlen talked, the happier Sheridan was that the family oral history in her household seemed to have started when her dad met her mom. What Arlen presented seemed to be too heavy a burden for a girl as shallow and frothy as Julie to carry on. It would be nice, though, to know more.
AS SHERIDAN AND Julie had gone upstairs for bed, Sheridan had noticed the pair of binoculars on a stand near a window in the hallway and had asked about them.
In response, Julie parted the curtain and pointed out across the ranch yard into a grove of trees, where Uncle Wyatt’s chicken coop could be seen in the distance.
“That way Uncle Arlen can check to see if Wyatt is around,” Julie said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“My grandma used to tell me stories,” Julie said to Sheridan when both girls were in Julie’s room for the night. “She’d tell me about my great-grandfather Homer, and my grandfather, her husband. And about my dad and my uncles. She had this really pretty voice that would put me to sleep. I really miss her, and that voice.”
Sheridan didn’t know quite how to respond. The Julie she knew from the bus and school-impetuous, fun loving, charismatic-was not the Julie she was with now. This Julie was cold, earnest, arrogant, superior-but at the same time very sad. She didn’t think she liked this Julie much, although she did feel sorry for her. This Julie just wanted to tell Sheridan things, not have a conversation. Although Julie’s monologues had, at first, been interesting, Sheridan had reached a point where she wished her friend would not make it so completely about her.
“You probably don’t know what it’s like to be a part of a famous family,” Julie said. “I mean, if it weren’t for the Scarletts, there would be no Saddlestring, and no nothing out there. Like, without us, you wouldn’t even be here. No offense, of course.”
“Of course not,” Sheridan said, sarcastically.
“You don’t have to be like that,” Julie said, sounding insulted. “I’m just telling you what is, you know? That’s what my grandma used to do. She made sure I knew I was special, and that my dad and uncles are special too. We have the Scarlett Legacy and nobody can take it from us. I’m the sole heir, that’s what she told me from the time I was little, how special that is.”
Sheridan simply nodded. This was going to be a long night.
“I miss her,” Julie said.
SHERIDAN LAY WIDE awake in her sleeping bag on the floor of Julie’s bedroom. Julie was next to her in a sleeping bag of her own. It was one of the rules of sleepovers: both the guests and the host slept on the floor, so there would be no jockeying or fighting over the bed. Sheridan could hear Julie’s deep, rhythmic breathing. Her friend was asleep.
Sheridan felt both scared and guilty. The house itself frightened her, and she felt silly about it. What Julie’s mom had said about “getting used to it” helped a little, but not much. The house was so big, so dark, so creepy. There were sounds, the soft moaning of old boards in the roof, the pop or squeak of a floorboard. She thought of what Julie had told her once about Uncle Wyatt rambling through the hallways in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep. She wondered if he was out there now.
And there was something about how Julie, Doris, Arlen, and Wyatt looked at one another, as though they were sharing a secret. It was probably just intimacy, she knew. Her own family probably displayed the same thing to strangers, a familiarity so comfortable that others could only wonder what was going on. But in this case, she felt remarkably like an outsider.
Jeez, she thought, her dad had given her a chance-more than one chance, actually-to back out of this sleepover.
Now, though, she tried to persuade herself there was no need to be scared. It had been years since she had felt this way. She wondered if it was the house, or the odd way Julie had acted, those photographs, the dinner, what? Maybe a combination of all of them. She wished she had a cell phone. Really wished it. If she had one, she could call her dad to come get her.
Then the guilt came in. Where she once saw Julie and thought of royalty, it seemed what Julie had inherited was a kind of genetic disease. The poor girl had been reared by relations who disliked one another, a kind of parents’ committee made up of her separated father and mother, her uncle, grandmother, and a number of domestics and ranch employees who treated her with barely disguised contempt simply for who she was. She grew up isolated from other kids, in the middle of a simmering stew of anger and resentment. That she’d turned out halfway normal was a testament not only to her mom but also to Julie herself. And it wasn’t as if Julie had lots of friends, even though it seemed like it at school. When it really mattered, like tonight, Julie had only one friend: Sheridan. No one else showed up.
Julie needed Sheridan’s friendship and understanding. Sheridan vowed to try harder to give it to her. She only wished she didn’t have the feeling Julie needed much more than Sheridan could provide.
SHERIDAN HAD TO go to the bathroom but didn’t want to get out of bed to do it so she lay there in the dark, studying the ceiling, wondering if she could hold out all night. And deciding she couldn’t.
She slid out of her bag wearing her pajama pants and a T-shirt. Julie didn’t wake up, even when Sheridan stepped over her and took a thin fleece blanket from Julie’s bed to wrap herself in against the chill in the house. Opening the bedroom door, Sheridan stuck her head out and looked both ways in the hallway. It was dark, although there was some kind of light coming from the first floor, down the staircase. There was a bathroom at the end of the hall next to Arlen’s bedroom. Although his door was closed and there was no light under it, Sheridan thought it best to go downstairs to use the guest bathroom.
SHERIDAN PADDED DOWN the stairs in her bare feet, wrapping the blanket around her. She found herself drawn to the Scarlett Legacy Wall, and specifically to the tinted photo of Opal she had seen earlier that night. It was one of those portraits that drew you in, she thought. Something about that woman’s eyes and that confident but mysterious half-smile. She broke away and quickly used the bathroom, washed up, crept out, and shut the door. Since the bathroom didn’t have a cup near the sink and she wanted a drink of water, she followed the light.
The kitchen was empty and stark, and she had the feeling the light hadn’t been left on by mistake. Then she saw the loaf of bread and a knife on a cutting board on the counter, the cold cuts near it, and wondered who had been up making a sandwich but wasn’t there now. And she decided she was in the process of scaring herself silly, so she must stop it. The main house of the Thunderhead Ranch wasn’t simply the home for Julie and Uncle Arlen. It was also the business headquarters of a large enterprise. Employees could come and go. Maybe one of them wanted a midnight snack, she thought. There was nothing frightening in that.
Nevertheless, when she heard a set of deep men’s voices outside approaching the house, Sheridan reached out, grasped the handle of a steak knife from a collection of them near the cutting board, and pulled it inside the blanket. As the front door swung open and heavy boots scraped the hardwood floor in the living room, Sheridan had a choice to make: either dash through toward the stairs and be seen by the men, run out the back door into the ranch yard, or stay where she was.
She quickly reasoned that just as there was nothing wrong with making a snack in the middle of the night, there was nothing wrong with her getting a drink of water from the kitchen sink. But she would also keep the knife under her wrap, and return it later when the coast was clear.
She recognized one of the voices as Arlen’s. The other was unfamiliar, a guttural but syrupy southern drawl. They were coming toward the kitchen. She would be caught unless she made the decision-now-to run out the back door into the ranch yard. She froze.
Arlen was saying, “So he’s got all you boys building fence…” when he swung the kitchen door open and saw Sheridan standing there by the counter. He was obviously startled, and what Sheridan took as genuine anger flashed across his face for a brief second. Then his semiauthentic smile returned.
“Sheridan, what are you doing up?” he asked.
“I wanted a drink of water,” she said as boldly as she could.
The man with Arlen squeezed into the kitchen behind his host, his eyes fixed on her. He was medium height, rangy, with pinched-together eyes, a taut skeletal face, and thin lips stretched over a big mouthful of teeth. His brown ponytail spilled down his back from beneath his hat over the shoulders of his denim jacket.
Arlen stepped aside stiffly, as if embarrassed by the situation he was in. “Sheridan, this is Bill,” he said.
“Bill Monroe,” the man said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sheridan Pickett.”
His voice, Sheridan thought, chilled her to the bone-and the way he looked at her, with familiarity even though she was sure she had never seen him before. She was glad she had the knife hidden under the blanket in her fist.
Then it hit her. “How’d you know my name is Pickett?” she asked.
The question made the man blink, as if it startled him. Uncle Arlen looked over, intrigued.
“Why, everybody’s heard of Sheridan Pickett,” the man said, making a lame joke as if he were saying the first thing that popped into his mind while trying to think of something better. “Actually, I believe Arlen here might have said your name.”
Sheridan didn’t reply, and felt threatened the way Monroe looked at her, with a kind of leering familiarity.
“I don’t remember saying anything,” Arlen said. “But whatever…”
“Or maybe I heard it from Hank,” the man said with sudden confidence, as if he liked this version much better. “Yeah, I heard it from Hank. You’re a friend of Julie’s, right?”
“Right,” Sheridan said.
Bill Monroe nodded knowingly, then tilted his head to the side without once taking his eyes off her. “That’s what it is,” he said. There was an awkward silence. Sheridan wanted to leave, but the men crowded the door. Obviously, Arlen expected her to go back to bed. Bill Monroe-who knew what he wanted? Whatever it was, he wouldn’t stop staring at her, sizing her up. He scared her to death.
Then she thought: the man knows both Arlen and Hank, and knows them well enough that he could say Hank’s name in Arlen’s house without retribution. What did that mean?
Finally, Arlen said, “Well, Sheridan, did you get your drink? You can take a glass of water upstairs with you if you want. I was about to make a couple of sandwiches for Bill and me while we talked a little business. Can I make you one?”
“No, thank you,” Sheridan said.
“Good night,” Arlen said, stepping aside as she sidled around the counter and headed for the doorway.
“ ’Night,” she replied. She was close enough to Bill Monroe as she passed to smell him-tobacco smoke, dust, and bad sweet cologne.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Bill Monroe said to her back.
As she went up the stairs, she looked over her shoulder to see him watching her carefully, a hint of a smile on his lips, and for a second it felt as if a bolt of electricity had shot through her.
WHEN SHE AWOKE she could hear Julie still sleeping beside her, a burr of a snore in her breathing. Her dreams had been awful, once she finally got to sleep. In one, a vivid dream, Bill Monroe was outside their house, on the lawn, looking through the window at Lucy and her as they slept.
In another dream, Sheridan went back out into the hallway in the dark to where the window was and parted the curtain. A yellow square could be seen through the distant trees, the light from Wyatt’s chicken coop.
She raised the eyepieces of the binoculars to her eyes and adjusted the focus tight on the square. Then something or somebody passed by the window inside, blocking out the light like a finger waved in front of a candle flame. And when the person passed, she could see the slightly smiling face of a woman, her expression paused in mid-conversation.
It was Opal Scarlett.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, IN THE CHILLED HIGH-ALTITUDE predawn, J. W. Keeley labored up a rocky hillside on the western slope of Wolf Mountain with a bucket full of creek water in each hand. He walked carefully, the soles of his Docs slick in the dew on the grass, trying not to slosh water on his pant legs.
When he reached his pickup he lowered the buckets to the ground, then rubbed his gloved hands together hard, trying to work the soreness out of them from the bucket handles. It would be a little while before the sun broke over the mountain and he could see well enough to finish up.
While he waited, he leaned over the hood of his pickup and raised the binoculars to his eyes. Over a mile away were the house, the garage, the little barn, the single blue pole light. As the sky lightened, the white picket fence around the front lawn began to emerge. He couldn’t see much behind the place yet. He knew there was a steep hill, and a red-rock arroyo back there.
Inside the house, the family slept. Except for the oldest girl, of course. She was still at the Thunderhead Ranch.
Keeley lowered the field glasses and used the back of his glove to soak up the snot running out of his nose. He would never get used to the cold, he thought. Even when it should be nearly summer, when the grass was coming up and the trees were budding, it still dipped below freezing most nights. Sure, it got warm fast once the sun came out. In fact, it heated up so quickly and with such thin-air intensity that he found himself short of breath at times. It felt as if there were nothing between him and that sun, nothing to mute the heat and light. Like air, for example.
He wished it weren’t so far down the slope to the little creek. He’d need to make a few more trips with those buckets. He had a mess to clean up. The bed of his pickup was wet and sticky with blood and clumps of hair.
MORE THAN ONCE since he’d been in the Bighorns, he thought about that cowboy in the Shirley Basin, the one he’d shot. When he recalled that morning, he shook his head and looked at the ground, not out of remorse but because an act like that was such a bold and reckless chance to take. A smile would break across his face and he had to make sure no one was looking, because he was infused with the kind of raw dark joy that he’d felt only once before in his life, with that hunter from Atlanta and his wife.
But that cowboy, well, maybe that had not been the smartest thing. There was a highway within view, and someone could have seen him. Hell, there could have been someone in the cowboy’s truck, waiting for him. Keeley hadn’t checked out that possibility at the time.
That he had just raised the rifle and shot the way he did, as easy as it was, as slick as it was, man…
Maybe it was smart after all, he figured. Anyone investigating the shooting would look at the cowboy’s friends and family, try to figure out who didn’t like him, whom he owed money to, that sort of thing. The randomness of the act accomplished a couple of things. It reminded Keeley that he had ultimate power over those who fucked with him. Anybody could get angry, or let himself be insulted. But it took someone with big brass balls to do anything about it. Recalling that morning made him think harder about what he was doing, and what he was about to do. He couldn’t be impulsive again, for one thing. No more lashing out, no outbursts. He had to be cool and smart.
That was the difference, after all, between him and those assholes in Rawlins, even the late Wacey Hedeman. Damn, he wished he’d been there to see that, when Wacey took his last chew. It wasn’t quite the same thrill when it happened offstage, even though in the end the result was the same.
LUCK WAS HIS lady, though. Luck and cool and a purpose. They’d all come together, like whiskey, ice, and water to form something perfect. For five long hot years at Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s only maximum security prison, he’d had to just fucking sit there and stew. The more the rage built inside, the colder he got on the outside. He’d learned about what happened to his brother Ote through a letter from their mother. Two years later, after Mama died, he found out about Jeannie and April from his shit-for-brains lawyer. While he cooled his heels at Parchman Farm, what remained of his family was being taken from him one by one and there was nothing he could do about it. His frustration and anger was white-hot, and in some ways it was the purest emotion he’d ever felt. But he channeled it, tucked it inside himself. And waited. His reward for holding his emotion in, he felt, was coming now. Events were finally breaking in his favor. Getting hired by Hank Scarlett within a day of hitting town, what was the likelihood of that? Plus, Keeley knew how this small-town stuff worked. Normally, he would have attracted a little bit of attention, being so different and all. But two things were happening. One, the coal-bed methane companies were hiring just about any warm body they could find, so there were lots of new faces in town. Hard men, like himself. Many were from the South, like him. Second, the feud between Hank and Arlen took center stage in Twelve Sleep County, and the new men Hank was hiring were lumped into the category of thugs. No one cared about the individual makeup of Hank’s private little army, just the fact that the army existed.
Keeley couldn’t imagine any other scenario in which he could have been hired as a ranch hand with practically no ranching experience. The closest he’d ever come to cows, he thought, was eating a cheeseburger. But Hank had looked him over the way a coach evaluates on-field talent, said the word sinewy, then asked his name.
“Bill Monroe,” Keeley had said, thinking of the first name that popped into his head.
“Bill Monroe,” Hank repeated, “you’ve got yourself a job.”
One of these days, Keeley thought, somebody was going to be a bluegrass fan and ask him twice about his name. But so far it hadn’t happened.
THERE HAD BEEN that morning two weeks ago, Keeley recalled, when he watched Joe Pickett through the scope of his rifle and nearly pulled the trigger. Hank had sent him out to drive the fence line and check the locks. The game warden was out counting deer when Keeley saw the familiar green pickup. Hunkering down in a tangle of brush, Keeley placed the crosshairs of the rifle scope on Joe Pickett’s nose.
The game warden seemed to sense he was being watched, the way he looked around. But he never saw Keeley.
It would have been simple. Easier than the cowboy. The game warden would never even know what hit him. Keeley had flipped the safety off, pressed his cheek harder into the stock of the rifle, and begun to squeeze the tigger…
Then he thought better of it. That was the problem; it was way too easy. He didn’t want to kill him from a distance, without Pickett knowing who had done it or why. The why was important.
Even the week before, when he had Joe Pickett down on the pavement behind the Stockman bar, it would have been easy to stomp him to death. Hank couldn’t have stopped him.
But he didn’t want to just kill the man. He wanted to destroy him first. That would take more time.
IT HAD BEEN quite a surprise to meet Joe Pickett’s daughter the night before, Keeley thought. She was kind of a little cutie, he had to admit. Too bad he couldn’t see her better, but she was all wrapped up in that blanket that way.
How old did Arlen say she was? Fourteen? That would be about right.
Then he thought: April Keeley would be twelve if she were alive today.
But she wasn’t.
And he knew who was responsible for that.
IT HADN’T TAKEN Keeley long to size up the situation on the Thunderhead Ranch. It was Hank versus Arlen, and Hank was hiring. Hank’s employees would be expected to do a hell of a lot more than ranch work if it came to it. There were standing orders to confront any of Arlen’s men if they were stupid enough to cross over to the east side of the ranch for anything. There had already been a few spitting contests of sorts, with Hank’s men threatening Arlen’s men and vice versa. Keeley had taken out some dumb Mexican irrigator who was working for Arlen. The Mexican never even knew what hit him. He just woke up in Twelve Sleep County Medical with a concussion from a two-by-four.
Keeley was lying low since he’d thumped the game warden. By working for Hank in the open and Arlen behind the scenes, Keeley had assured himself he would be in the middle of anything that happened between the two brothers, and he might be able to use his unique position to manipulate the outcome. He knew he had stumbled upon a great opportunity. And not only was he smarter than those dick-weeds down in Rawlins, Keeley thought, he was also smarter than those two brothers.
NATE ROMANOWSKI. KEELEY had heard the name spoken in quiet tones enough times around the ranch and in the bars in town that he was concerned. This Romanowski guy was a friend of Joe Pickett’s and he wasn’t someone to screw around with. He was rumored to be behind the murders of two men, one being the former county sheriff. Hank said he’d heard Romanowski carried a.454 Casull handgun made by Freedom Arms, the second-most-powerful pistol on earth, and he could hit what he was aiming at up to a mile away.
But Romanowski was nowhere to be found. No one had seen him in six months, and with the outlaw falconer gone or missing, Keeley knew it would be easier to get to the game warden.
KEELEY WAS RINSING off his knife and bone saw in one of the buckets when he noticed movement at the house on Bighorn Road. Yup, someone had turned on the porch light.
He put the saw and knife on the tailgate of his truck, wiped his hands dry on his jeans, and picked up the binoculars again. He focused on the front door.
AT THE SAME moment on the Thunderhead Ranch, there was a shout.
“Girls, time to get up,” Arlen called from downstairs. “What do you want for breakfast?”
Julie moaned and rubbed her eyes. “Are you hungry, Sherry?”
“No,” Sheridan said, rolling over, feeling the hardness of the steak knife under the sleeping bag where she’d hidden it the night before. “I had a really bad dream. I just want to go home.”
Which was true.
As Julie dressed, Sheridan peeled back the bag and looked at the knife in the morning light, feeling suddenly sick. She let the flap drop back over it before Julie could see what she had been doing.
“You don’t look good,” Julie said, looking over while she brushed her hair. “Your face is completely white.”
“I don’t feel very good all of a sudden.”
“What’s wrong?”
Sheridan hesitated. Should she tell her? She knew at that moment that no matter what, things would never be the same between her and Julie Scarlett.
No, she decided, she couldn’t tell her that the knife she’d taken from the kitchen matched the one that had pinned the Miller’s weasel to her front door.
“I’LL GET THE PAPER IF YOU’LL MAKE COFFEE,” JOE said to Marybeth as he yawned, snapped on the porch light, and looked outside through the window on the front door.
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Marybeth said from the kitchen. Then: “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, sitting on a bench to pull on his boots.
“What were you worried about?” she asked.
He smiled. She knew him so well. If he couldn’t sleep it was because he was concerned about something. Nothing else ever kept him awake.
“I hope it wasn’t Sheridan’s sleepover,” Marybeth said.
Joe had to proceed cautiously here. In fact, it had been about Sheridan’s sleepover. He kept thinking his daughter was in over her head with the Scarletts, but that she would never admit it. Something was brewing besides coffee, he thought.
“Just a lot of things,” Joe said.
He clamped on his cowboy hat and cinched the belt on his bathrobe against the morning chill and was three strides down the cracked concrete pathway in his front yard when he realized he was being watched. He froze, and felt the hair on his neck stand on end.
He looked quickly at the road. There were no vehicles on it, and no one was parked. Wolf Mountain, still in shadow, loomed to the north, dominating the view. Then he felt more than saw something in his peripheral vision. Something big and black, hanging above the ground. Joe snapped his head to the side.
Then to the other side.
For a moment, he thought he was surrounded and he wished he’d brought his weapon.
He realized what it was, and his stomach surged and he felt sick.
Four elk heads-the Town Elk-had been mounted on the posts of his picket fence, facing inward toward his lawn. Toward him. The tongue of the big bull elk stuck out the side of its mouth, pink and dry. All eight cold black eyes were open.
Joe tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
Whoever had done this had hit him where he lived in more ways than one. Not only had he killed and beheaded four popular animals in Saddlestring that he was responsible for, but he’d brought the heads out to his own home and stuck them on posts to taunt him. To humiliate him. To frighten him and his family. He was telling Joe nothing was off-limits, and that he didn’t fear or respect him. He was bringing it right to him, and shoving it in his face in front of his family.
He was disgusted as well as angry. Who in the hell was he up against who would do something like this?
“Joe?” Marybeth was at the door.
His first impulse was to run back and physically turn her around before she could see the heads.
“Oh My God,” she whispered. “Joe…”
He was too late.
In the distance, above the thumping of his own heart and Marybeth’s gasps, he could hear an engine start up. They were being watched by someone, all right.
Unfortunately, Wolf Mountain was covered by a spider’s web of old logging roads. Unless he knew specifically where the vehicle had been parked, he would never be able to track the driver or drivers down.
“Who is doing this to us?” Marybeth asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Joe, what can we do about it?”
“I don’t know that either,” he said.
“I hope you get rid of those things before Lucy gets up and sees them.”
Joe nodded.
“This is awful,” she said. “It’s getting worse.”
“Yup.”
“What if he doesn’t stop?”
Joe went to Marybeth and took her in his arms.
“Joe, what if he doesn’t?” she said into his shoulder.
“He’ll stop,” Joe said, with no confidence in his words.
A FEW MINUTES later, Marybeth came out the front door again to find her husband walking across the lawn in his robe, cowboy hat, and boots, holding a severed elk head aloft by the antlers.
“Come in and get dressed, Joe,” she said, distressed. “Look at yourself. What if someone drives by and sees you?”
Instead of answering, Joe held the head up. “This really pisses me off, Marybeth.”
“Come in, Joe…”
JOE WAITED FOR the dispatcher to patch him through to the sheriff, who was having morning coffee with the rest of the “morning men” at the Saddlestring Burg-O-Pardner.
He drawled, “Sheriff McLanahan. What can I do you for, Joe?”
“Somebody cut the heads off of four elk and stuck them on my fence,” Joe said. “They were the Town Elk. All four of them.”
“Jeez,” McLanahan said. “I was beginning to really like those critters.”
“They’re all dead now. You want to come look at them?”
“Naw,” McLanahan said. “That ain’t necessary. I seen plenty of elk heads before. Shoot, they’re on just about every wall in town!”
“Now they’re in my yard.”
“That’s not very neighborly.”
“No, it’s not very neighborly,” Joe said, loud enough for Marybeth to hear. She looked up and grimaced. “Sheriff, it wasn’t neighbors. It was the same guy who pinned that Miller’s weasel on my door. He’s upping the ante.”
“Are you sure it was the same guy? How do you know that?”
“It has to be.”
“So you’re speculating,” McLanahan said, pronouncing it “speck-u-late-un.”
“Who else could it be?”
“I don’t rightly know.”
“You ‘don’t rightly know,’” Joe repeated, feeling his neck flush hot.
Marybeth stood in the doorway, listening to Joe, shaking her head as if to say, This valley is getting too small for us.
KNOWING HE WOULD need a front-end loader to dig a hole deep and wide enough to dispose of the massive elk heads, Joe angrily carried three of them into the back of his truck and drove them deep into the timber of Wolf Mountain, where he disposed of them. Although insects and predators would make short work of the hide, flesh, and soft parts, leaving only the skulls and antlers, the act of dumping the heads like bags of garbage went against everything he stood for. The last head he’d dragged behind his garage and covered with a tarp to ship to state forensics. It was possible, although not probable, that they could find a human hair or fiber that could lead them to the killer.
He was not in the mood for a cell phone call from Randy Pope. When Joe saw who was calling on the display, he considered not answering. But it was early Saturday morning. The headquarters office in Cheyenne was closed. It could be something important.
“Yes?”
“I’m at home, Joe,” Pope said, not trying to disguise his indignation, “when I get a call from a sobbing reporter from the Saddlestring Roundup. She asks me if I have any comment on the slaughter of four elk in the middle of town. She says the bodies are in the park for all to see, but the heads are gone. She says little kids are bawling.”
Joe closed his eyes. On the underside of his lids, he saw red spangles.
“She also tells me the sheriff said the local game warden says the heads turned up at his place.”
“That’s true,” Joe said.
Pope hesitated a moment before shouting: “What in the hell are you doing up there? Can’t you even protect wildlife in the middle of your goddam town?”
Joe couldn’t think of how to answer that. He opened his eyes to the sky, hoping for a sign of some kind.
“This will hit the wires, Pickett. It’s the kind of juicy story the press loves. Four poor innocent animals. And it will all come down to the fact that the local game warden can’t seem to do his job. But they won’t call you, Joe, they’ll call me!”
“Somebody is trying to destroy me,” Joe said, not liking the paranoid way the words sounded as they came out.
“I’d say that somebody is you!” Pope shouted. “Have you been out to Hank Scarlett’s place yet?”
“No.”
“Just what in the hell are you doing?”
Joe sighed. “Cleaning up the mess.”
Pope was so angry he sputtered, not making sense. Joe didn’t ask him to repeat himself. Instead, he closed the phone and threw it as far as he could into the trees.
Before he left the timber, though, he reluctantly walked back and retrieved it. He felt like leaving his own head in the brush. Pope, and most of the people in town, would probably endorse that concept.
FROM WOLF MOUNTAIN, Joe drove to the Thunderhead Ranch to pick up Sheridan. He was used to how Sheridan looked after sleepovers-wan and exhausted-but he quickly perceived there was something more to her demeanor. That’s when she told him about meeting Arlen and Bill Monroe in the kitchen, and about the bad dreams she had when she went back to bed.
“Who?” Joe asked suddenly, startling her.
“Bill Monroe.”
“He’s the man who beat me up,” Joe said.
“Oh, Dad…”
It tore him up inside, the way she said it. He wished he hadn’t said anything. At that moment, he hated his job, hated what had happened in that parking lot, hated that Sheridan even had to know about it. And he hated Bill Monroe.
He thought: What was Bill Monroe doing in Arlen’s house? Wasn’t Bill Hank’s man? Then he remembered what Arlen had said about having an informer in Hank’s camp. He also knew Arlen had misled him about Monroe’s role.
When she showed him the knife she had taken from the Scarlett kitchen and hidden in her overnight bag, Joe pulled to the side of the road to examine it.
“It looks like the one that was stuck in our door, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Pretty close,” Joe said, turning it over. The length and design were the same. The dark wood handle seemed more worn, though.
He looked up at her. “Sheridan, what are you thinking about this?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll feel really bad if the knives are from the same set, but I’ll feel bad if they aren’t and I took the knife. I already feel bad about being suspicious of my best friend’s family. Do you know what I mean?”
Joe nodded. “I know what you mean, darling.” At that moment, he was proud of her for what she’d thought about and done, and profoundly sad for her what she’d discovered.
Joe asked about the dreams, hoping to change the subject. “So you dreamed you saw Opal Scarlett alive, huh?”
“Um-hmmm.”
“What did she look like?”
“Are you going to make fun of me?” Sheridan asked, raising an eyebrow at her father.
“Nope,” he said. “Remember when I promised to pay more attention to your dreams no matter how goofy they seem at the time?”
“Yes.”
“I’m doing that. Just don’t give me any woo-woo stuff,” he said.
“She looked kind of pleasant, actually,” Sheridan said. “Like a nice old lady. Nicer than I remember her. But I didn’t really see her, you know.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I just spent too much time last night staring at a portrait of Julie’s grandmother on the wall. It’s a pretty interesting picture. I let her eyes get to me, I guess, so when I finally got to sleep that’s what I dreamed about.”
“Bill Monroe is the name of a famous bluegrass singer and bandleader,” Joe said. “Some people called him the Father of Bluegrass. Ever hear of the ‘high lonesome sound’?”
Sheridan looked at him as if he’d swallowed a bird.
“Really,” Joe said. “Dig in the glove box. I think I’ve got The Very Best of Bill Monroe in there.”
She opened it and rooted around and brought out a CD case with a black-and-white photo of a man playing a mandolin in a suit and tie with a cocked cowboy hat on his head. “This looks awful,” she said. “And it isn’t the Bill Monroe at the ranch either.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“I wonder if they’re related in some way?” Sheridan asked, turning the case over and reading the back. The look of distaste remained on her face. Joe was pleased they had digressed somewhat from their earlier discussion. He didn’t like seeing Sheridan troubled.
“Listen to it before you decide,” he said.
“Have you been listening to the CD I made you?” she asked.
“A little, not much,” Joe confessed.
“You need to get with it,” she said. “You need to know what’s good.”
“So do you. Put that on.”
“Hmmpf.”
Joe thought it was odd Hank had hired a man with a southern accent named Bill Monroe.
“Footprints in the Snow” filled the cab.
Sheridan said, “Ew!”
WHEN THEY GOT home, Joe wrapped both the steak knife he had found stuck in his door and the knife Sheridan had brought home and sent them to the state forensic lab. He attached a note asking the staff to confirm that they were the same brand and lot number.
BY LATE MORNING, JOE WAS CRUISING EAST ON THE state highway that bordered the Thunderhead Ranch all the way to the Bighorn Mountains. It was one of those schizophrenic spring/summer/winter May days when storm clouds shot across the sky in fast motion dumping both slashing rain and wet snow as if ditching their payloads in a panic, then darting away leaving sunshine and confusion, only to be followed by a second and then a third wave of clouds doing the same thing. There was something wildly adolescent about days like this, Joe thought, as if the atmosphere were supercharged with hormones and just didn’t know what in the hell to do next.
There were five entrance accesses to Thunderhead Ranch from the state highway. Two were on the western half of the ranch, Arlen’s side. The other three were on the eastern half, Hank’s. The difference between the sets of entrances was Hank’s gates were closed and locked with heavy chains and multiple combination locks. To get to Hank’s lodge, one either needed permission to enter via the state highway, or went through Arlen’s side, where there were three different access roads. Joe didn’t know the status of those roads, but assumed they had locked gates as well.
After his frustrating conversation with Pope, Joe had done a quick inspection and review of the gear and paperwork he might need to search Hank Scarlett’s home. He put fresh evidence vouchers and envelopes in his briefcase, and made sure his digital camera and microcassette recorder were fully charged. He tossed two clean legal pads into his case for taking notes and making sketches, if necessary.
His plan was to call Hank and inform him that he wanted to come to his home for the purpose of doing a cursory inspection to determine if there was evidence of illegal mounted game animals. If Hank could produce documentation that the animals had been taken legally, Joe’s investigation would be over. If not, Joe would proceed with issuing citations or, if the infractions were serious enough, arresting him outright and taking him to the county jail. That would certainly raise some eyebrows in town, Joe thought.
In Joe’s experience, the only people who denied him permission to search were those who had something to hide. Simple as that. Not once had anyone refused him entrance who hadn’t violated the law. In that case, Joe had always been able to obtain a search warrant signed by Judge Pennock in Saddlestring within the day and come back.
Pulling off the highway onto the gravel two-track that led to the second of three locked gates on Hank’s side of the ranch, Joe parked, snatched his cell phone from the dashboard, and called.
The phone rang only twice before a voice answered and said, “Thunderhead East.”
The voice sounded familiar, Joe thought. Deep, southern.
“Is this Bill Monroe?”
“Who wants to know?”
“You’re answering a question with a question. Let’s stop that right off. Again, is this Bill Monroe?”
Hesitation. Joe guessed Monroe had recognized his voice.
“You aren’t supposed to be around anymore, Bill,” Joe said. “Both Hank and the sheriff claim you left the state after attacking me. You pounded me pretty good, Bill. What I want to know is if it was your idea or if Hank put you up to it? Not that it’ll matter in the end, when I arrest you and put you in jail, but I am wondering.”
Silence.
“And what are you up to with Arlen? What’s that about?”
Joe hoped Monroe wouldn’t hang up on him.
“If you tell Hank about me meeting with his brother, there’ll be blood on your hands. I’m the only one keeping them from going at each other.”
Joe heard the truth in that. If Bill was Arlen’s inside man, it was not a good idea to expose him. Yet.
“I’m making a deal with the devil,” Joe said.
“Call it whatever you want.”
“Bill, let me talk with Hank, please.”
A beat, three beats, then a mumbled “Hold on.”
Joe heard the handset clunk down on a table. He felt a wave of sweat break over his scalp. There was no way to prove it was Bill Monroe, he thought, unless he caught him outright. But the behavior of the man who answered was evasive enough that he thought he had his man.
He could hear voices in the background, then the heavy sound of boots on hardwood.
“Hank Scarlett,” Hank said.
“Hank, this is Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. We have an anonymous tip alleging you have game mounts in your home that were taken illegally. The tip also alleged evidence of violations that might have occurred in Alaska at your outfit up there. I’d like to come out to your place and have a quick look around to assure the department there is no merit to this tip.”
“That’s interesting,” Hank said. “I bet I know who called.”
“I have my suspicions as well,” Joe said. “But it doesn’t matter. The call was placed with some pretty specific details in it, and my director has authorized me to come out and take a look. Mind if I check it out?”
Hank didn’t hestitate. “Yes, I mind.”
Joe said, “Look, Hank, I’m at the gate to your place. If you’d send one of your men out here or give me the combination of the locks, I could be at your place in fifteen minutes and we can get this all cleared up.”
“This is private property,” Hank said, his voice flat. “Don’t that mean anything to you?”
“Yes, it does. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Every entrance is locked. You can’t come out here unless you bust the locks and enter illegally. And if you do that, I’ll have you arrested, Mr. Game Warden.”
He said it with such calm assurance, Joe thought. It unnerved him, but he continued. “Hank, is Bill Monroe still out there? I thought that was him who answered.”
“Nope,” Hank said. “Just somebody who musta’ sounded like him.”
“I can get a search warrant and be back out within a few hours. Are you really going to make me do that?”
Joe could almost feel Hank smile on the other end, that cold smile he had, the one he reserved for people beneath him. “Yes, Mr. Game Warden, I’m really going to make you do that.”
And he hung up.
JOE SPEED-DIALED Robey Hersig and got his voice mail.
“Robey, I’m on my way down from the Thunderhead Ranch. Hank refused access, so I need a warrant drawn up as soon as possible and signed by Judge Pennock. And when I come back, I may need a couple of deputies to help look around, if you don’t mind coordinating that with the sheriff.”
Robey came on the line, saying he had just stepped into his office. Joe repeated what he’d left on the voice mail.
“I’m meeting with the judge this afternoon,” Robey said. “Will that work?”
Joe said it would.
“I wonder why he’s being so cantankerous,” he said, then chuckled, “but I guess that’s just Hank.”
“Or he’s guilty as sin,” Joe replied. “And his friend Bill Monroe is out there too, answering his phone for him.”
“Really?”
“That’s another reason why I might need the deputies.”
“So you don’t do something over-the-top to the guy?”
“No,” Joe said. “So he doesn’t beat me up again.”
JOE SPENT THE afternoon at his home trying to put epoxy over all the cracks and holes in his drift boat. He kept his cell phone on and in his front breast pocket. He was ready to drop everything on a moment’s notice and meet the deputies at the entrance to Thunderhead Ranch.
Robey didn’t call until a few minutes to five.
“The judge won’t sign the warrant until he sees the documentation for probable cause.”
“What?”
“That’s what he said, Joe.”
“He’s never asked for documentation before. What does he want, the transcript of the tip? That’s all we can provide him.”
“I guess so.”
“But a tip is a tip. I told you everything in it.”
“Joe, I’m just the messenger here.”
“Oh, I thought you were the county prosecutor,” Joe said, immediately feeling bad that he’d said it.
“Fuck you, Joe.”
“I’m sorry. What is it, is the judge hooked up with Hank? Or is he just shy about doing anything if the name Scarlett is involved?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” Robey said.
“Robey…”
He hung up.
Joe angrily tossed his phone into the boat, where it clattered across the fiberglass bottom.