As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the
ground, but the live timber burgeons with
leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another
dies.
– HOMER, ILIAD
I wished to possess all the productions of nature, but I wished life with them. This was impossible.
– JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
ARLEN SCARLETT WAS DISTRACTED. MARYBETH COULD tell. Though he was looking at her across her desk with the well-practiced face of an eager-to-please canine, his mind was clearly elsewhere. Even as she explained that she had broken Opal’s code when it came to her record keeping for the ranch, something Arlen should have been ecstatic over, his mind was elsewhere.
The previous week, Arlen had shown up at Marybeth’s office with five banker’s boxes full of paperwork-envelopes, statements, invoices, files. He complained he could not make hide nor hair of them. Opal had kept the books on the ranch, he said, and she’d never explained to anyone how she did it. Arlen claimed he had no true idea if the ranch made money and if so how much, or if they were in trouble.
Marybeth had reluctantly agreed to take a look at the contents of the boxes to see if she could find a method in Opal’s madness.
“It didn’t really take me as long as I thought it would,” she explained to Arlen, who looked at her but not really. The antenna of a cell phone extended out of a snap-buttoned breast pocket of his white cowboy shirt. Even though he never looked down at it or reached up for it, Marybeth got the distinct feeling the phone was what he was concentrating on, even as she spoke. He was waiting for a call.
“At first,” Marybeth said, “I couldn’t figure out why she filed things the way she did. It seemed like random collections of paper held together with rubber bands. Some of the papers went back years and some were as current as two months ago, just before she… went away. All in the same bundle. It was obvious she wasn’t using monthly P and Ls, or any kind of cash-flow records to keep track of things. But we know Opal was not the type of woman to maintain haphazard records, so I figured there must be some kind of formula she was using. It came to me last night,” she said, widening her eyes, trying to engage Arlen. “I realized she grouped records by season and category. It kind of makes sense, when you think about it. For example, you grow and sell grass hay, correct?”
Arlen nodded.
“Well, Opal’s approach was to start a file with a receipt from the first hayseed purchased for a specific meadow and go from there. She’s even put the purchase of a new tractor in that hay file if the tractor was used for cutting and baling. If one of your employees fell off the hay wagon and busted his arm, the workers’ compensation hearing materials would be put in the hay file.”
“We paid workers’ comp?” Arlen asked, surprised his mother had been so progressive.
“No, of course not,” Marybeth said, shaking her head. “Opal fought every single claim to the death. My point is that the only way to figure out what you’ve got here is to understand how Opal kept track of everything. It was her own system, and I still don’t have everything figured out yet, but I’m getting there. There are a few bundles of invoices I can’t assign to a specific project or category yet.”
“You’ve done a great job,” Arlen said. “I looked at that stuff for a month and couldn’t make anything out of it. My lawyer looked at it for ten hours, which he charged me a hundred dollars per hour for, and handed it all back and said there was no logic to it. But you figured it out. Damn, you’re good.”
Marybeth thought, Yes, I am.
“So?” Arlen said.
Marybeth arched her eyebrows, not sure what he was asking.
“Are we making money?”
“You’re making a ton of money.”
“Did you find anything that will help me in my battle with Hank?”
“Actually,” Marybeth said, “Hank’s side of the ranch seems to make more money than yours. It’s more efficient.”
Arlen said dismissively, “You mean he’s more ruthless.”
“If that’s possible,” Marybeth said, thinking of the workers’ comp claims.
Arlen’s cell phone rang and he jumped in his chair, clawing for it. Marybeth sat back and observed. He plucked the phone out of his pocket and stared at it for a moment while it rang. She realized he was unfamiliar with it, and didn’t know for sure how it worked.
“New phone,” he mumbled to her. “The buttons are so damned small…”
But he pushed one and held it up to his face, tentatively saying, “Yes? This is Arlen?”
From where she sat, Marybeth could hear a loud, deep voice on Arlen’s phone. As he listened, Arlen peered around her office. His expression was anticipatory.
“You’re here now?” Arlen said, looking at Marybeth as if she should be as amazed as he was at the identity of the caller. “You’re right outside on the street?”
Arlen signed off, dropped the phone in his pocket, and stood up. His face had drained of color.
“Meade Davis is outside,” Arlen said, referring to the lawyer Opal was rumored to have worked with to develop an updated will. “He just got back from Arizona today and he says everybody he meets tells him we’ve been looking for him. He said someone broke into his office while he was away and stole a bunch of records. But he says he’s got some news for me.” Arlen was clearly excited.
Marybeth said, “You’d better go meet with him, then. Maybe we’ll actually see a resolution to the dispute. Please let me know how it goes.”
“I will,” Arlen said, acting more nervous than Marybeth had ever seen him.
When he left her office his Stetson and barn coat were still on her couch, so she knew he would be back.
She stood up and watched him through blinds. He bounded outside and approached the dusty black Lincoln Continental that belonged to Meade Davis. Davis got out. He was portly, avuncular, with thinning hair and a white mustache and a quick smile. Arlen and Davis were of the same generation. Marybeth watched Davis shake Arlen’s hand, then place his other hand on it as well, as if offering condolences. Then he shook his head from side to side, and Arlen looked momentarily distraught.
It looked to Marybeth as if Davis was delivering bad news. Marybeth was surprised, but not as surprised, it seemed, as Arlen.
But Arlen quickly recovered. He spun Davis around, threw an arm over his shoulder, and they started walking away, Arlen bending his head toward Davis, putting his face in Davis’s ear, his jaw working, talking up a storm.
AN HOUR LATER, Arlen burst through her door. His eyes blazed.
“There was a secret will,” Arlen said excitedly. “Meade Davis drew it up last fall. Mother gave me the entire ranch, as I knew she would. Hank gets nothing.”
Marybeth was taken aback. But when she watched them it had looked like…
“Congratulations are in order, I guess.”
“You can say that again,” Arlen said, beaming.
“When I saw you outside, it looked as though Davis was telling you something awful. You looked unhappy with what he said.”
Arlen stared back at Marybeth as if frozen against a wall by a spotlight. He regrouped quickly, and fully, threw back his head and laughed too loudly for the room. “When he told me his office had been broken into and the will stolen, I thought Hank had beaten me once and for all. That’s probably what you saw. Then I realized that if Meade testifies to what it said, and what Mother’s wishes were, it’s as good as finding the will in the first place! You must have seen me before I figured that out.”
“That must be it,” she said, rising and holding out her hand. “Again, congratulations.” She said it not so much for Arlen but for the rest of the valley.
AFTER THE DINNER DISHES WERE CLEARED AWAY, Marybeth and her mother, Missy Vankueren-Longbrake, sat down at the kitchen table with cups of coffee. Joe had called from somewhere in the mountains to say he would be late and he would have to miss dinner because someone had reported a poacher allegedly firing at a herd of deer. Marybeth found it suspicious that the night her mother came to visit was the night Joe happened to be late.
Missy had retained her previous name and added the “Longbrake” after marrying local rancher Bud Longbrake six months before, saying she liked the way it sounded all together. Sort of patrician, she explained.
Sheridan and Lucy were in their room, ostensibly doing their homework. Missy favored Lucy, and Lucy played her grandmother like a musical instrument. Sheridan seemed to hold both of them in disdain when they were together because she claimed they fed off each other and thrived in a place she called “Girlieville.”
Marybeth had just told her mother about the Miller’s weasel stuck to the front door and the elk heads on the fence the week before. Missy shook her head in disgust while she listened. Marybeth knew Missy’s ire was aimed at Joe as much as the incidents themselves. It was no coincidence that Missy and Joe were rarely in the same house together. She tried to time it that way. The two of them had been operating under a kind of uneasy truce borne of necessity: they had to live in the same county and there were children and grandchildren involved, so therefore they couldn’t avoid each other. But they did their best.
“SO WHERE ARE the elk heads?” Missy asked, raising her coffee cup and looking at Marybeth over the rim.
“Joe buried them somewhere out in the woods. I think he was ashamed of them.”
“My God. You can’t imagine some of the things people are saying in town,” Missy said. “They loved those elk. The people can’t understand how someone could just shoot them right under the nose of the local game warden.”
“Mom, Joe’s district is fifteen hundred square miles. He can’t be everywhere.”
“Still…” Missy said, sighing. That “still” seemed to hang in the air for quite some time, like an odor. Then Missy leaned forward conspiratorially. “I can’t help but think it has something to do with the situation on Thunderhead Ranch. Your husband must have done something to make one side or the other angry.”
Missy said your husband instead of using Joe’s name when she was making a point.
“My guess is he angered Hank,” Missy continued. “Hank would do something like that. I’ve heard he’s hired a bunch of thugs to do his dirty work. I know Arlen pretty well and he’s a good man at heart, a good man. He’s the majority floor leader in the Senate, for goodness sake! We serve together on the library board.”
“I know you do,” Marybeth said, looking away.
“You don’t have to say it like that. I’ve had several long conversations with Arlen.”
“Mom, Joe and I have been here for six years and we can’t figure out all the history in this valley with the Scarletts. No one can who hasn’t grown up here. There’s just so much to know. Yet you’ve been here two and a half years and you’re an expert?”
Missy raised her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes. She had a glass doll-like face that belied her age. It tightened with arrogance. Marybeth hoped she hadn’t inherited that particular look.
“Some of us have the ability to get to the bottom of things quickly.” Her eyes flicked in the direction of Joe’s tiny office, then her voice turned to ice: “Some of us don’t.”
SHERIDAN INTERRUPTED THEM when she brought her math book and work sheet out of her room and asked Marybeth to help her with a problem.
“Don’t ask me,” Missy said, raising her coffee cup to her lips with two hands. “Math is like Greek to me.”
“That’s why I didn’t,” Sheridan said brusquely.
SHERIDAN RETURNED TO her room with her homework and closed the door. There was a long pause as Marybeth felt her mother assessing her, wearing the most profound and concerned expression. It was a look Marybeth knew always preceded some kind of dire statement. It was another look Marybeth hoped she didn’t share.
“I’m just thinking about the children when I say this,” Missy said, “so don’t take it wrong.”
Marybeth braced herself. She knew what was coming by the tone.
“But given what’s been happening here, with the dead animals and the severed heads and all, and the fact that whoever is doing this seems to be able to come and go as he pleases, I would strongly suggest-for the sake of your children and my grandchildren-that you pack up and move out to the ranch with me for a while.”
Marybeth said nothing.
Missy put down her cup, leaned across the table, and stroked Marybeth’s hand. “Honey, I don’t want to have to say this, but you’re putting your children in danger staying here. Obviously, there isn’t much your husband can do to stop it. Whoever is doing this has no qualms about coming right to your home, literally, and doing these things. What if they get worse? What if whoever is doing this gets worse? Can you live with that?”
Marybeth sighed, started to speak, then didn’t. Her mother had a point, and one she’d considered herself.
“I’ve got a five-bedroom ranch house,” Missy said, “meaning we’ve got four empty rooms. You and the girls would be safer there.”
“What about Joe?”
Missy made a face as if she’d been squirted in the eye with a lemon. “Your husband would be welcome, of course,” she said without enthusiasm.
Marybeth nodded, thinking it over.
“You deserve better. My granddaughters deserve better.”
“I thought this was about our safety,” Marybeth said.
“Well that too,” Missy sniffed.
MISSY LOOKED AT her watch and prepared to go. “Thanks for dinner, honey,” she said, pulling on her jacket. “Please think seriously about what we spoke about. I’ll talk to Bud to make sure it works with him.”
“You haven’t discussed it with him?”
Missy smiled and batted her eyes coquettishly. “It’s not a problem, dear. Bud doesn’t argue with me.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Marybeth nodded. She planned to raise the issue with Joe when he got home that night. It should be about an hour or so, she figured.
Sheridan and Lucy were now in their pajamas and they came out so Grandmother Missy could kiss them good night. Lucy was dutiful; Sheridan shot a glance at her mom about the good-bye ritual that Marybeth pretended she didn’t catch. Missy turned to go.
Marybeth was behind her mother and snapped on the porch light as Missy opened the front door.
Missy froze on the porch.
“Marybeth, who is out there?” she asked.
Marybeth felt her legs almost go limp. Oh, no, she thought. What now? The way her mother asked…
She looked over her mother’s shoulder. The porch light reflected back from the lenses of a pair of dark headlights as well as the windshield of a vehicle parked and pointed at the house in the dark.
“Someone’s just sitting there,” Missy said, backing up into Marybeth, “staring at us.”
“Come back in the house,” Marybeth said, stepping aside, thinking of the loaded lever-action Winchester rifle in the closet in Joe’s office.
When she looked at the profile of the vehicle in the darkness, she recognized the squared-off roofline and the toothy grille.
“Oh my,” Marybeth said, pushing past her mother onto the pathway that led through the lawn toward the gate.
She heard Sheridan come to the door behind her and say, “Who is it out there?”
“Nate!” Marybeth said over her shoulder.
“That’s not Nate’s Jeep.”
And it wasn’t, Marybeth realized as she went out through the gate and practically skipped to the driver’s-side window. It wasn’t Nate at all, and in an instant her fear returned, canceling out the surprisingly strong burst of elation. Instead of Nate Romanowski, a man she couldn’t see well slumped against the window from the inside, his cheek pressed against the glass in a smear of drool.
Marybeth felt foolish for jumping to conclusions. She rapped against the driver’s-side window with one knuckle.
Tommy Wayman sat up with a start, then turned and looked at her, his eyes wide for a moment until he seemed to recognize where he was, who she was.
She opened the door. “Tommy, are you all right? Why are you here?”
“Is Joe here?” the river guide gushed. She could smell the fetid smell of alcohol. As he spoke he moved in his seat and Marybeth could hear empty bottles clink at his feet.
“No,” she said, stepping back.
“I saw her,” Tommy said, his eyes comically widening, as if he’d suddenly remembered why he came in the first place and everything was just rushing back to him as he sat there. “I fucking saw her today!”
“Who?” Marybeth said coolly. “And please watch your language at my home.”
“Opal Scarlett!” Tommy hissed.
“What?”
“Opal. I saw Opal.”
“I doubt that,” Marybeth said to Tommy, then turned back to the grouping of her mother, Sheridan, and Lucy on the porch looking out. “It’s all right,” Marybeth said. “It’s Tommy Wayman. He’s drunk.”
Missy gestured “whew!” by wiping her brow dramatically.
“I really did see her,” Tommy said, reaching out and grasping Marybeth’s arm, imploring her with his eyes. “I need to tell Joe! I need to tell the world she’s alive!”
“You can wait for him out here or in his office,” Marybeth said, hoping Tommy would chose the former. “He should be home anytime now. I’ll call and tell him you’re here.”
“Tell him who I saw!”
Marybeth went back into the yard. This was the kind of thing she hated, these late-night adventures with drunken men who wanted to talk to Joe. Add this to the fact that someone was harassing them, and Missy’s idea about moving to the ranch sounded better all the time.
“Watch out for that guy,” Marybeth heard Sheridan telling Missy. “He throws old ladies in the river.”
“I’m not an old lady,” Missy said icily.
As Marybeth passed her daughter, trying not to smile at the exchange, Sheridan leaned toward her mother and said under her breath, “Nate, huh?”
Marybeth was grateful it was dark, because she knew she was blushing.
“SO YOU CLAIM YOU SAW HER EXACTLY WHERE?” Robey Hersig asked Tommy Wayman, who was drinking his second cup of coffee.
“I told you three times,” Tommy said, raising his mug with two hands but not successfully disguising how they trembled. “At that big bend of the river before you get to the old landing. Closer to Hank’s side of the ranch than Arlen’s. She was just standing there in the reeds looking at me as I floated by. Scared me half to death.”
Joe had been home an hour. When he heard what Tommy had to say, he called Robey and Sheriff McLanahan. McLanahan claimed he needed his “beauty sleep” and sent Deputy Reed, who was preferable anyway. The three of them sat around Joe’s kitchen table because there were too many big bodies to fit in his office. Marybeth went upstairs to read and the girls were in bed. Tommy was at the head of the table, nursing black coffee. He had asked Joe for a little shot of hooch in the coffee to “cut the bitterness,” but Joe had refused.
“She said something to you,” Robey asked. “What was it she said?”
“No,” Tommy said, shaking his head, starting to get angry at the repetition of the questions. “I said I thought she was telling me something, but I couldn’t hear the words over the sound of the river.”
Reed checked his notebook. “Earlier, you said she smiled at you. Are you serious? Is that really what you meant, that she smiled at you as you floated by?”
Reed looked from Joe to Robey and back to Tommy. He was clearly skeptical. “What kind of smile?” he asked. “A Hi-Tommy-happy-to-see-you-again smile? Or a Get-over-here-and-pay-me-my-fee smile?”
“Damn it,” Tommy said, thumping the table with the heel of his hand, “that’s what she was doing. And yeah, I guess it was sort of a, um, pleasant smile. Like she was, you know, happy.”
Reed rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
Although small details kept changing, which was very disconcerting if one wanted to believe Tommy Wayman’s story, the basic tale was the same: The outfitter took his fifteen-foot Hyde low-profile drift boat out on the Twelve Sleep River to do some fishing of his own after a pair of clients canceled. He brought along his cooler, which had been filled with beer for three. Fishing was good. The beer was cold. Tommy landed nothing smaller than twenty-two-inch rainbows on dry flies. He lost track of how many beers he had drunk after counting eleven, and how many fish he caught after twenty. He may have even dozed off. Yes, he did doze off, which wasn’t a good thing, generally.
Luckily, he thought to drop the anchor off the back of the boat before he settled back between the seats on a pile of life vests and took a little nap. No, he wasn’t sure how long exactly. Maybe a whole hour. When he awoke he didn’t know where he was at first. He raised the anchor and started to drift downriver, picking up speed. That’s when he saw her. Opal Scarlett, right on the shore, standing in thick brush. But close enough that he could see her face, even if he couldn’t hear what she was saying over the river sounds. He had drifted too far and was picking up too much speed to row back upstream to hear her words. Nevertheless, he had hollered back at her. “Turn yourself in, Opal, for Christ’s sake! Everybody thinks I drowned you in the river!”
“You said she was closer to Hank’s place than she was to her own house,” Robey said to Tommy. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
Tommy was getting annoyed with the questions, and a hangover of industrial strength was starting to settle in, which made him even tougher to deal with.
“The whole fucking thing strikes me as odd, Robey,” Tommy said. “What has she been doing out there for a month when she knows the whole county is wondering what happened to her?”
Reed reviewed his notes, sighing loudly. Tommy looked over at him.
“What?” he asked.
“When I first got here and wrote down your story, you said you were fishing and you looked up and there she was,” Reed said. “Then, an hour later, you say you passed out in your boat, and when you woke up there she was. Now you say you were drifting downriver and picking up speed, and you didn’t see her until you looked back and by then it was too late to go back. That’s three different versions of the same event, Tommy. Which one are we supposed to believe?”
Joe had noted the discrepancies as well. Tommy was turning red. Beads of sweat were breaking out on his scalp.
“The last one, goddammit,” he said. “It was the last one. The last version.”
“That doesn’t sound too credible,” Robey said, sounding more sympathetic to Tommy than Joe expected him to be.
“And what exactly was she wearing?” Reed asked, not kind at all. “You say she was in jeans and a plaid shirt. What color was the shirt?”
“Huh?”
“What color was it? You said earlier it was a certain color. Do you remember now?”
Tommy looked down at his coffee cup and mumbled something.
“What was that?” Reed asked.
“He said ‘light yellow,’” Joe repeated.
Reed rolled his eyes again. “Light yellow is the color of the shirt he originally claimed Opal was wearing that day he threw her into the river. Are we supposed to believe she’s been wearing the same clothes for a month?”
“Yeah,” Robey said, rubbing his jaw. “And I think you said earlier she was wearing a dress, didn’t you?”
“If I did, I didn’t mean it,” Tommy said.
“Tommy Wayman,” Deputy Reed said, snapping his notebook closed and shoving it in his shirt pocket, “you are full of shit.”
Tommy moaned and sat back in his chair.
“I did see her, you guys,” he said thickly. “I just can’t remember all of the little details ’cause I’d been drinking.”
Robey said, “Of course, it would just be a coincidence that if Opal were actually seen on her ranch then you’d be completely off the hook, right?”
Tommy looked from Reed to Joe to Robey and said, “Really, guys…”
“I’m out of here,” Reed said. “You want me to give Tommy a ride back to his house?”
“Really, guys,” Tommy said again as Reed helped him to his feet.
JOE AND ROBEY sat at the table. It was midnight, and Tommy Wayman and Deputy Reed had been gone for fifteen minutes. Joe had poured a bourbon and water nightcap for both of them.
“That was interesting,” Robey said. “I thought for a minute there we had something.”
Joe nodded.
Robey said, “I think he wanted to see her alive, so he did. She’s probably on his mind all the time, since he could wind up in Rawlins because of her. He probably dreamed she was there while he was passed out, and when he woke up he convinced himself she was there. Tommy is losing it, is what I think. I hope he holds together long enough to go to trial. He’s a good man, Joe. He drinks too much, but he’s a good guy.”
Robey looked up for a response. Joe stared at his drink, which was untouched.
“What? Something is bugging you.”
“Sheridan said she had a dream about something similar to Tommy’s. She said Opal was alive out on the ranch.”
Robey stared. “A dream, Joe?”
“Hey,” Joe said, raising his hand. “I know. But Sheridan’s had some dreams that turned out to be pretty accurate. She’s like Nate Romanowski that way,” he said, wishing immediately he hadn’t brought Nate into it.
“Speaking of…”
“Nothing,” Joe said. “Honestly. Not a word.”
MARYBETH CAME DOWN the stairs in her robe. Her blond hair was mussed. Joe could see one bare foot and ankle and she looked particularly attractive standing there. He was suddenly ready for Robey to head home.
“Are you guys about finished?” she asked.
Joe said, “Yup.” He was glad he was the one staying. He wondered if Robey had the same thought and guessed that he did. Go away, Robey, Joe thought.
“Did Tommy have anything interesting to say?”
Robey chuckled. “That was the problem, Marybeth. He had so many interesting things to say-so many versions-that in the end he had nothing. It was a waste of time.”
“Maybe I should have called Nancy to come get him,” she said.
“You did the right thing.”
“He scared us when we saw him out there,” she said. “With all the things that have been happening around here, we’re a little jumpy.”
“I understand,” Robey said.
Joe said nothing. It made him angry to think about it.
He saw Robey to the door. As they passed his office, Joe said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that search warrant for Hank’s place. Do we have it yet?”
Robey turned, his face wary. “You haven’t heard?”
“Not a thing.”
“Judge Pennock refused to issue it.”
“What?”
Robey nodded. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. The judge said we needed probable cause, that the anonymous tip wasn’t enough to search a man’s home. Even though you transcribed the call real well.”
Joe was confused. He’d never had a search warrant refused before.
“Judge Pennock and Hank are friends,” Joe said.
“I’m afraid so. I didn’t realize it before. They must be pretty close.”
Joe snorted. “If they are close, Pennock would have recused himself. It’s got to be more than that.”
“I don’t even want to speculate, Joe,” Robey said cautiously. “I have to appear before Judge Pennock all the time. I can’t push this one too hard or he could make my life miserable.”
“Can’t we go over his head?”
Robey suddenly looked very uncomfortable. “We could, but I hesitate to do so.”
“You ‘hesitate to do so’?” Robey’s choice of words was so formal and bureaucratic that Joe repeated them.
“Look, Joe,” Robey said, “there are things I will go to the mat with, as you know. There are some subjects, for example, I won’t discuss with you because I don’t want to know the answers. But this fight between Hank and Arlen… I don’t know. It’s so dirty, and so…” He searched for a word. “… epic, you know? I’m not sure how hard I want to come down on either side. And we’re just talking about what? The possibility someone may have taken some animals out of season? That’s not even a felony.”
As Robey talked, Joe felt his anger rise.
“How about if we try to enforce the law,” Joe said. “You know, on a lark?”
“Joe…”
“Enforcing Game and Fish regulations is what I do, Robey. I take it seriously, because I’ve learned if a man will do something illegal or unethical out in the field when no one is looking, he’s capable of anything, no matter who he claims to be, or how big a man he is in the county.”
Robey sighed, reached out, and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder to calm him. “Joe, sometimes I think you take things a little too far, you know? It seems like you think bad character is a crime. Again, we’re talking about some game animals that might have been poached.”
“No,” Joe said. “We’re talking about looking the other way because we don’t want to appear to take sides in a conflict. Well, I’m not taking sides, and I’m not looking away. I’m doing my job.”
Robey shook his head. The silence grew uncomfortable.
“I’ll run it by Tucker Fagan in Park County,” Robey finally said, sighing, referring to the new judge there. “Thunderhead is so big it’s in Park also, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you, Robey.”
“Good night, Joe. Sometimes you piss me off.”
JOE AND MARYBETH lay in bed facing each other. They talked softly so the girls wouldn’t hear them. Marybeth’s reading lamp was on low and the light cast a buttery glow on the side of her face and softly illuminated her blond hair. As they talked she stroked his forearm, rubbing it with her thumb.
She had broached the subject about moving the girls to the ranch. Joe had grunted at the idea.
“I know you don’t like it,” Marybeth said. “Frankly, neither do I. But if this continues…”
Joe started to argue, but caught himself. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t continue. And get worse. The sheriff’s department had done nothing he was aware of to investigate the incidents. His hands were tied by Pope to investigate himself. But enough was enough. This was his family, and his wife was talking about moving.
SHE HAD TURNED off her light and shifted to his side of the bed in the dark, her hands moving over him under the covers, her lips brushing his neck and ear. Joe liked it. He smiled in the dark.
They both froze when they heard the sounds.
A two-beat noise, a sharp snap, then a tinkle of glass downstairs.
“What was that?” Marybeth whispered.
Then the roar of a vehicle racing away on Bighorn Road.
Joe shot out of bed, naked, and cast back the curtain on the window. There were no lights outside, and no moon. The starlight was shut out by cloud cover.
He looked right on the road, the way to town. Nothing. Then left, nothing. But he could hear the motor, so how could it be?
Then he saw a flash of brake lights in the distance. Whoever had been outside was fleeing without his lights on, and revealed himself when he had to tap on his brakes at the turn that led to the foothills and the mountains beyond.
But aside from the brief flash of brake lights, he could see nothing about the vehicle itself, whether it was a car or pickup or SUV.
He cursed for two reasons: he could never catch who had been out there, and whoever had been out there had destroyed the mood in bed.
“What do you think that sound was?” Marybeth asked.
“I’ll go check.”
“Put some clothes on…”
JOE SNAPPED ON the lights in the living room. He had pulled on his robe, and he carried his.40 Glock loosely in his hand. He could see nothing amiss. He might have to get Marybeth to come down, he thought. It was one of those male/female things, like his inability to notice a new couch or when his daughters got a haircut unless it was pointed out to him. Conversely, he could see a moose in a faraway meadow on Wolf Mountain when it was a speck and Marybeth wouldn’t see it unless it charged her and knocked her down.
But when he walked near the front window, he felt slivers of glass dig into his bare feet and yelped in pain.
Then he saw the hole in the glass, like a tiny star. Someone had shot into their home.
He turned, visualizing the trajectory. The shot originated on the road and passed through the glass into the family portrait. Marybeth had arranged for it the previous summer. They had stood smiling against the corral fence rails so the mountains framed them in the background. In the photo, Joe thought they all looked a little uncomfortable, as if they were dressed for a funeral, and the smiles were forced. Except for Lucy, who always looked good. The portrait was slightly askew.
Joe limped across the living room, his feet stinging, and stared at the photo. The bullet had taken off most of his face and lodged into the wall behind the frame. Beneath the hole, his mouth smiled.
A chill rolled through him. Followed by a burst of rage.
Again, whoever was doing this had come right to his house and this time, in his way, he had entered it. The bullet hole in his face in the portrait was no coincidence. Joe thought, if Nate were around he’d ask for help now. But Nate wasn’t around, and Joe was officially prevented from investigating.
Screw that.
Marybeth came down the stairs looking at the bloody footprints on the floor. She followed them to where Joe stood.
Joe said, “You’re right. Let’s get the kids. We’re moving to the ranch.”
“Joe…”
“I’m going to get this guy.”
IT WAS ALMOST dawn when he felt her stir beside him. He was entangled, spooning, skin against skin, his leg thrust between hers, pulling her so tightly into him that he could feel her heart beat from where his hand cupped her right breast. His feet were bandaged. She was wide awake, as he was.
“It’s so personal,” she said in a whisper, “it scares me to death.”
“I’ll find him, Marybeth.”
She didn’t speak for a long time. As the minutes lapsed, he started to fear what she would say. He thought she might mention Nate Romanowski. That she wished Nate were there to protect them, instead of him. If she said Nate’s name, Joe wondered if he could go on, because he would feel that he had lost everything. Their tight little family was the only thing that anchored him to earth, the only constant. A breach could tear them apart and unmoor him to a degree he didn’t even want to imagine.
The sun slowly rose and backlit Wolf Mountain and fused the blinds with soft, cold gray light.
He was deep into melancholy when Marybeth said, “I love you, Joe Pickett. I know you’ll protect us.”
Despite the situation, Joe was suddenly filled with joy and purpose. He rolled over and kissed her, surprising her.
“What was that about?” she asked.
He tried to answer. The only thing he could come up with was “It’s about everything.”
But as he rose, the thought that they were running away came rushing back at him. And he hated to run.
SATURDAY BROUGHT THE GRAND OPENING OF THE SCARLETT Wing of the Twelve Sleep County Historical Society. The day was fresh with early summer, aching with sunlight, character provided by the new wildflower smells and the first bursts of pine pollen drifting down from the mountains.
Joe sat next to Marybeth on metal folding chairs set up in the parking lot of the museum. It seemed as if most of official Saddlestring and the county was there, including Missy and Bud Longbrake, who sat in the row in front of them and had saved seats for the girls. Although no usher greeted each arrival with an extended hand and whispered “Arlen or Hank’s side?” the effect was the same, with Hank’s backers on the right facing the podium and Arlen’s on the left.
On the raised podium itself, Arlen sat comfortably in a chair looking out at the audience, waving and winking at his friends. There was an empty seat on the other side of the podium. The chair was for Hank, as both brothers were supposed to speak at the event. The closer it got to ten A.M., when the wing was to be dedicated, the emptier the seat seemed to be.
JOE HAD AWAKENED in a foul mood that continued to spiral downward as the day went on. It had started when he opened his eyes in bed, looked around, and realized once again that his family was on the Longbrake Ranch instead of in their own home. It continued through breakfast, as Missy held court and pointed out repeatedly to his daughters how many fat grams there were in each bite they were taking. His black mood accelerated and whipped over into the passing lane when he started to contemplate just how ineffectual he had become; how useless, how he was no better than the bureaucrats he worked with.
Then there was the message on his cell phone from Randy Pope: “You left your house? Don’t you realize that is state property? What if it is vandalized even more while you’re gone? Do you plan to take responsibility for that?”
Joe seethed as he drove.
He was tired of following procedure, asking permission, seeking warrants, waiting for instructions, hoping for help.
No one, except him, was going to get him out of this.
As he drove his family to the grand opening, Joe made a mental list of things that were driving him mad. While he did so, he vaguely listened to Sheridan tell Lucy about the incredibly boring English literature class she was in. They were now reading Shakespeare, she said. Suddenly a thought struck him with such force that his hands jerked on the wheel and Marybeth said, “Was there a rabbit in the road?”
“No,” Joe said. “Something just occurred to me.”
“What?”
“About Opal. Something I never thought of before.”
“So…?”
“Sheridan,” Joe said, looking up into his mirror so he could see her face, “would you please repeat what you just told Lucy about the play you’re reading? The one about the king?”
AS THEY WAITED for the ceremony to begin, Marybeth said, “I’ve been thinking about your new theory.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not sure I buy it. Is Opal really capable of something that mean? With her own sons?”
Joe nodded. “Opal is capable of anything. Remember, she didn’t have any qualms about stretching a neck-high wire across the river. And you untangled her books. You know how secretive she could be.”
Marybeth shook her head slowly. “Joe, if you’re right…”
“I know,” he said.
Marybeth started to say something to him when she was distracted by the fact that most of the people in the crowd had turned in their seats and were craning their necks and pointing.
“Well, look who’s here,” Marybeth said.
“Who?”
Marybeth pointed at the black new-model Yukon that had entered the lot with a license plate that said simply ONE.
The driver’s door opened and a big man with stooped shoulders and an easy smile swung out. He began instantly shaking hands and slapping backs. He moved through the crowd with a slick expertise, never stopping long enough to be engaged, but making eye contact with each person and calling most by name.
Marybeth said, “He looks like he’s headed this way.”
In a moment, he was right in front of them.
“Joe Pickett?”
“Yup.”
“I’m Spencer Rulon.”
“Hello, Governor.”
“Call me Spence. C’mon, let’s go for a little ride. Is this your wife?”
“Yes. Marybeth.”
“Lucky man. Come along, Marybeth. We’ll be back before the hoopla begins.”
WYOMING GOVERNOR SPENCER Rulon drove and spoke with a kind of daredevil self-assurance that came, Joe thought, from being pretty sure all his life he was not only the smartest but the cleverest human being in the room.
“We’ve got ten minutes before I need to be back at the opening,” the governor said, roaring out of the parking lot and onto Main Street, making the turn on what felt to Joe like two wheels. “Then I’ve got to take the plane back to Cheyenne right afterward. A pack of snarling Feds are coming to meet with me at four o’clock about the wolf issue. They’re like hyenas when they smell blood, and since we lost that court case they’re circling what they think is a dying corpse. But we’re not dead yet. We’ll win.” He shook his head in disgust. “Feds,” he spat.
Joe fumbled for the seat belt and snapped it on securely. He shot a glance back at Marybeth in the back seat, who was doing the same thing.
Rulon looked over at Joe and flashed on his full-blast smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Joe Pickett.”
“Likewise,” Joe said, shaking the governor’s proffered hand while, at the same time, glancing out the windshield as they drove through a red light. Luckily, there was no cross traffic at the moment.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
Joe couldn’t think of how to respond, so he didn’t.
“How is that Scarlett situation going up here?”
“Not well,” Joe said.
“You know Arlen’s the majority floor leader, right?”
Joe nodded, trying to keep up.
“He explained everything to me after the session. About his brother and all. What a clusterfuck that is, eh?” Then he glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Sorry for the inappropriate language, ma’am.”
“It’s quite all right,” Marybeth said. “It’s a perfect description.”
“JESUS CHRIST!” the governor howled, hitting the brakes. “Did I just drive through a red light back there?”
Joe said, “Yes. It’s our only one.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you say something?” Rulon asked. “Why did you just sit there and watch me do it? And when did Saddlestring get a light?”
“We were through it before I could say anything.”
“Don’t let me do that again.”
Joe snorted. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
“I’m still getting used to my new ride,” Rulon said, patting the dashboard as if it were the head of a dog. “Pretty nice, eh? It gets twelve miles a gallon, a real gas-guzzler. A couple of my supporters asked me how I could drive a car like this when I’m a Democrat and I’m for energy conservation and the like. I explained to them I’m a Wyoming Democrat, which means I’m a Republican who just wants to be different and stand out from the crowd, and we’ve got a hell of a lot of oil in this state we want to sell at high prices. Besides, it’s comfortable, ain’t it?”
Joe nodded, wishing the governor had not fired his driver.
“You should see the state plane. It’s really a dandy. I didn’t think I’d use it much, but this state is so damned big it’s really a blessing.”
“I can imagine.”
“So, I’ve got a question for you,” Rulon said. “An important question I’ve been wanting to ask you since I got this job.”
Joe was surprised the governor even knew of him, much less actually thought about him.
“What’s it like working for Randy Pope?”
Joe thought, uh-oh. He did not want to be put in the position of talking about his boss to the governor. Besides, what Joe thought was no secret. His allegations about Pope were in the report he had submitted after he returned from Jackson Hole.
“Actually, that’s not the question,” Rulon continued. “That’s a question. The question is still to come.”
As he said it, he rolled down his window again and shouted at a woman carrying groceries from her car toward the door of her town house.
“Hey, you want some help?” he shouted at her. “I can send over a trooper if you do!”
She turned on the walk and grinned. “I’m fine, Governor,” she said.
“Hell, I can give you a hand myself. Do you have any more bags in the car?”
“No.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Have a good day, then, ma’am.”
He powered the window back up. “I do enjoy being the governor,” he said. Then: “Where were we?”
Joe gestured toward the digital clock on the dashboard of the Yukon. “We all probably ought to get back.”
“You’re right,” Rulon said.
And he stopped in the middle of the road, did a three-point turn through both lanes, and roared back down Main toward the museum.
“That was an illegal turn,” Joe said.
“Screw it,” Rulon said, shrugging, picking at something caught in his teeth. “I’m the governor.”
RULON STOPPED PARALLEL to Joe’s pickup in the parking lot.
“What a piece of crap,” Rulon said, looking at Joe’s vehicle. “They give you that to drive around in? It’s an embarrassment!”
“My last truck burned up,” Joe said, not wanting to explain.
Rulon smiled. “I heard about that. Ha! I also heard you shot Smoke Van Horn in a gunfight.”
Joe paused before opening the door. “You said you had a question for me.”
Rulon nodded, and his demeanor changed. He was suddenly serious and his eyes narrowed as if he were sizing up Joe for the first time.
“I’ve followed your career,” Rulon said.
“You have?” Joe was genuinely surprised.
Rulon nodded. “I’m endlessly fascinated by the kind of people I have working for me all around the state. I’m the biggest employer this state has, you know. So when I see and hear something out of the norm, I latch on to it.”
Joe had no idea where this was going. He shot a glance at Marybeth in the back seat, which she returned.
“So, here’s my question,” the governor said. “If you caught me fishing without a license, what would you do?”
Joe paused a beat, said, “I’d give you a ticket.”
Rulon’s face twitched. “You would? Even though you know who I am? Even though you know I could get rid of you like this?” he said, flicking an imaginary crumb off his sleeve.
Joe nodded yes.
“Get out then,” Rulon said abruptly. “I have to say hello to the rest of the people here.”
Joe hesitated. That was it?
“Go, go,” Rulon said. “We’re going to be late.”
“Nice to meet you, Governor,” he said, sliding out.
“You have a lovely bride,” Rulon said.
JOE AND MARYBETH returned to their seats.
Missy had been waiting for them and turned completely around in her chair.
“What was that about?” she asked.
Joe and Marybeth exchanged glances.
“I have no idea,” Marybeth said. “But I’m suddenly exhausted.”
TEN MINUTES BEFORE ten, when the grand opening was to begin, a dirty pickup rattled into the parking lot and disgorged Hank. Joe saw that the driver of the pickup was Bill Monroe.
“There he is,” Joe said, sitting up straight and pointing out the driver to Marybeth. “Just driving around wherever he wants to go. He’s not worried about McLanahan, and he’s not worried about me.”
“That’s Bill Monroe?”
“Yup.”
“Why does he look familiar?”
Joe snorted. “I thought the same thing at first. I told you that. But there is no way in hell we’ve ever met him or run into him before.”
“Still there’s something about him,” Marybeth said, and he knew she was right. He waited for her to recall where she’d seen him. She was good at those kinds of things.
As the pickup drove away, Joe searched the crowd for Sheriff McLanahan, who stood on the side of the podium talking to some ranchers on Hank’s side about the state of alfalfa in the fields.
Joe left his seat and strode over. “Hey, Sheriff.”
McLanahan looked up with his eyes, but didn’t raise his chin.
Joe said, “Did you see who was driving that truck? That was Bill Monroe. Aren’t you supposed to be looking for him? Isn’t there a warrant out for his arrest? That was him right there.”
Pink rose from under McLanahan’s collar and flushed his face. He looked away from Joe for a moment.
“Didn’t you see him?” Joe demanded. “He was right here in this parking lot. He dropped Hank off. Aren’t you supposed to be on the lookout for him?”
Joe stepped closer to the sheriff, talking to the side of McLanahan’s turned face, to his temple. “I know what you’re doing. You’re playing both sides, keeping your head down until it’s resolved between the brothers. But don’t you think it’s time you started doing something around here? Like arresting people who commit crimes, no matter what their name is or who they work for?”
McLanahan stared ahead, angry, his mouth set tight.
“How long can you sit back and watch geese fly? Or waste your time calling my boss and telling him I’m not doing my job?”
That made McLanahan’s face twitch. Yup, Joe thought, it was McLanahan after all.
“I’ve got an idea what might be going on with Hank, Arlen, and Opal,” Joe said. “You want to hear it?”
McLanahan hesitated, said, “Not particularly.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
With that, the sheriff turned on his heel and walked away, past the podium, around the corner of the museum.
Joe returned to the chairs and sat down next to Marybeth, who had seen the exchange.
“What are you doing, Joe?”
He shrugged. “I’m only half sure. But damn, it feels good.” JOE WAS INTERESTED to note the differences between the pro-Arlen and pro-Hank contingents. Arlen’s backers tended to be city fathers, professionals, merchants. Hank’s crowd looked much rougher than Arlen’s, consisting of some other ranchers, bar owners, mechanics, outfitters, store clerks. If it were a football game, Joe thought, Arlen’s folks would be cheering for the Denver Broncos and their upstanding players in their clean blue-and-orange uniforms. In contrast, Hank’s crowd would have spiked their hair and painted their faces black and silver and would be waving bones and swinging lengths of chain rooting for their Oak-land Raiders.
Joe and his family sat on Arlen’s side, but Joe didn’t feel completely comfortable about it. Especially after Marybeth told him about Arlen’s meeting with Meade Davis. And even more so after the cell-phone message he had received that morning from forensics at headquarters. He wished there were seats in the aisle between the two factions.
THE NEW WING, called the Scarlett Wing, was actually larger than the rest of the building it was attached to, which was how Opal had wanted it. The museum itself was like every little town museum Joe had visited throughout Wyoming and the mountain west: a decent little collection of wagon wheels, frontier clothing, arrowheads, rifles, tools, old books. The new addition had state-of-the-art interactive exhibits on the founding families of Twelve Sleep County, the historic ranches, the bloodlines that flowed through the community from the first settlers. In other words the Scarlett Wing was about the Scarlett family, and was simply a much larger version of the Legacy Wall in their own home that Sheridan had told him about.
The addition had been completed that week. An earthmover and a tractor still sat behind it. Grass turf had been so hastily rolled out to cover the dirt that the seams could be clearly seen. The manufacturer stickers on the windows had yet to be removed.
ARLEN TALKED FOR twenty-five minutes without notes, his melodious voice rising and falling, his speech filled with thunderous points and pregnant pauses. It was the speech of a politician, Joe thought, one of those stem-winders that, at the time you were hearing it, seemed to be all profundity and grace, but as soon as it was over, there was nothing to remember about it, as if the breeze had carried the memory of it away.
Despite that, Joe focused on what Arlen said about his mother:
“Opal Scarlett was more than a mother, more than the matriarch of Thunderhead Ranch. She was our link to the past, our living, breathing bridge from the twenty-first century to the pioneers who founded this land, fought for it, made it what it is today. And we celebrate her now with the opening of this museum…”
As Arlen spoke, Joe looked for Wyatt. Finally, he spotted the youngest brother, sitting off by himself, behind the podium. Arlen’s words had obviously touched him, because Wyatt’s face was wet with tears.
THE MAYOR INTRODUCED Hank Scarlett next.
Hank sat hunched over on the other side of the podium, leaning forward in his chair so his head was down and all that could be seen of it was the top of his cowboy hat. He was studying his notes with fervor. The paper shook in his hands. Nervous, Joe thought.
“Now would be a good time to go out to his place and see all of his poached game on display,” Joe whispered to Marybeth, “while he’s here and not there.”
“But you need a warrant,” she said.
HANK SHUFFLED TO the podium. There was something dark, mumbly, James-Dean-in-Giant about him, Joe thought. Hank followed Arlen with a crude but somehow more sincere and affecting message: “I ain’t much of a speaker, but when Mother asks you to say something you say ‘okay’…”
While he spoke he read from his notes, which were wrinkled and dirty in his hands. Joe guessed he had been reading them over and over for days.
“Mother lives and breathes the ranch and this valley,” Hank said. “It’s like the Twelve Sleep River runs through her veins instead of blood…”
He talked less than five minutes, but his tinny, halting delivery was more riveting than Arlen’s speech. Never, in the entire time they were there, did either brother acknowledge the other, even with a nod.
When he was through, Hank folded up his notes, stuffed them into the back pocket of his Wranglers, and walked off the stage. While Arlen came down into the crowd to shake hands, Hank walked away through the parking lot toward the street. The pickup driven by Bill Monroe appeared and took him away.
Joe looked around for McLanahan and saw him in the parking lot talking heatedly with Robey Hersig.
THE CROWD MILLED around after the speeches. Groups formed to take tours of the new Scarlett Wing, others headed toward the snacks and drinks set up near the museum entrance. A few made their way to their vehicles.
Robey, his face red and his eyes in a snake-eyed squint, marched up to Joe and stabbed a finger into his chest. “What are you trying to do? Burn every damned bridge behind you?”
“Stick around,” Joe said, smiling. “I’ve got a few more to go.”
Robey turned on his boot heels and strode away from Joe toward the parking lot.
“JOE, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’RE DOING THIS RIGHT,” Marybeth said. “This isn’t like you. You seem to be a little out of control.”
“You’re probably right,” Joe replied. “But it’s time to shake things up.”
She had lured him away from the crowd to a secluded place on the side of the addition. Joe felt his boot heels sink into the brand-new sod. There was real concern in her eyes.
“Joe, I see these people every day. I work for some of them. We have to live here.”
He tipped his hat back and rubbed his forehead where the sweatband fit. “I hate to give any credit to Randy Pope,” he said, “but he may be right about one thing, and that’s the tendency to go native if you stay somewhere too long.”
“I’m not following.”
“Think about what you just said. You’re starting to weigh my job and my duty against who we may offend. If that’s a problem, Marybeth, maybe we’ve overstayed our welcome here.”
Her eyes got wide, then she set her face. She put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. Joe rocked back and thought, Uh-oh.
“Listen to me, Joe Pickett,” she said. “Don’t you ever, for one second, think I would want you to compromise your principles or your oath in order for us to get along better here. I have never done that to you. If that was in my mind, I would have insisted on it years ago, before you and your stupid job put us in harm’s way again and again and AGAIN.”
Marybeth took a step forward and Joe took one back. She was now jabbing him in the chest. He wished she hadn’t said “stupid job.” But he didn’t point that out.
“Don’t you dare blame this on me,” she said. “I think your problem is your problem. You’re working for a man and an agency you don’t believe in anymore. You’re frustrated. You’re finding out that everything you based your career and your validation on might be built on a foundation of sand. It kills you that you’re thinking you’re just another government employee working for a government agency. And instead of admitting it or dealing with it, you’re lashing out. Am I right?”
Joe glared at her.
“Am I right?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “Just a little.”
“Okay, then.”
“It kind of pisses me off that you’re so smart,” he said, chancing a smile. “I must drive you crazy sometimes.”
She punched him playfully in the chest. “It is a burden,” she said.
AS THEY WALKED back toward the parking lot and the people, Joe said, “I’m still mad, though.”
“You don’t get mad very often, so I suppose you’re allowed to every once in a while.”
“There’s a lot going on here,” he said, gesturing toward the museum and the Scarlett Wing, but meaning the county in general. “We can’t see it happening because we’re too close. I think it’s right there in front of us, but we’re not seeing it because we’re looking for something else.”
Marybeth stopped and searched his face. “What are you talking about, Joe?”
“Where does Bill Monroe fit into all of this?” Joe said. “I can’t figure out his role in it. He’s Hank’s thug, but he seems to be working with Arlen too. How do you square that deal?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something struck me during those speeches,” Joe said. “I was wondering if you picked up on it.”
“What?”
“Think back. What was the biggest difference between how Arlen spoke and Hank spoke?”
“Arlen was articulate and Hank was not?” Marybeth said.
“Hank spoke of his mother in the present tense,” Joe said. “He said, ‘When Mother asks you to say something you say “okay.”’ Remember that?”
“Yes.” The realization of what Joe was getting at washed across her face.
“But Arlen spoke of his mother in the past tense: ‘Opal Scarlett was more than a mother, more than the matriarch of the Thunderhead Ranch…’”
“So what does it mean?”
Joe shrugged. “I’m not sure. But clearly, when Hank thinks of his mother she’s still around. That’s not the case with Arlen. As far as he’s concerned, she’s gone.”
JOE GLANCED UP and saw Arlen making his way through the crowd straight for them.
“Here he comes now,” Joe said, trying to get a read on what the purpose of Arlen’s visit might be.
Arlen ignored Joe and greeted Marybeth. “It’s so good you could come,” he said. He threw an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, then stepped back. “Thanks to your wife,” he said to Joe, “we are now within sight of making the ranch rightfully ours. She cracked the code in regard to Mother’s accounting system on the ranch.” Arlen gestured with his fingers to indicate quote marks around “cracked the code.”
“I heard,” Joe said.
“She’s quite a woman,” Arlen said.
“I agree.”
“You should be proud of her.”
“I am.”
Arlen stepped away from Marybeth, who had been grinning icily the entire time he was next to her. Arlen’s face was suddenly somber, the look he showed just before he commenced with a speech.
“I heard what happened at your home,” Arlen said. “I heard about those town elk. It’s a damned shame.”
Joe nodded, eyeing him carefully. “I decided this morning to involve myself in the investigation of your mother.”
“Oh?”
“Yup,” Joe said. “My boss said stay away from it, but I’m going to anyway. I have this idea that maybe things aren’t what they seem, Arlen. While I’ve been sitting on the sidelines, no progress I’m aware of has been made on the case. And at the same time, somebody has targeted my family. I think everything that’s happened is connected to Opal’s disappearance.”
Arlen had listened with hooded eyes and a blank expression, offering no encouragement. “Really,” he said. Arlen looked at Marybeth to gauge her opinion, and she stared back impassively. Joe noted the exchange.
“Really,” Joe said.
“Are you telling me this in the hope that I won’t inform Director Pope?”
“I don’t care what you do,” Joe said. “Pope knows about everything I do. The sheriff makes sure of that. Maybe someone else does too.”
“I see.” Arlen’s expression hardened, as if he were concentrating on giving nothing away.
“So I hope you can clear up a couple of things for me.”
Arlen didn’t respond.
“It would help if you told me what your relationship with Bill Monroe is,” Joe said. “I’m trying to figure…”
“That’s confidential,” Arlen interrupted.
Joe sighed. “He seems to work for Hank, but Sheridan saw him…”
“It’s confidential,” Arlen said in his most stentorian voice, cutting off debate, looking around to see if anyone had overheard them. No one appeared to be listening.
Joe stared at Arlen, taking new measure of the man. At his chiseled profile, his silver hair, his big lantern jaw and underbite, his darting eyes.
“You see that earthmover behind me?” Joe asked.
Puzzled, Arlen glanced over Joe’s shoulder. Marybeth looked at Joe.
“Yes, what about it?”
Joe said, “If I find out you’re playing me, which I’m beginning to believe you are, I’m going to get in that thing and knock this building down. And then I’m coming after you.”
Arlen’s mouth dropped open. He was truly surprised.
“I got a message on my cell phone this morning,” Joe said. “From forensics. The knife that was stuck in our front door matches the collection of knives in your own kitchen. Same model, same manufacturer. ‘Forged German CrMoV steel, ice hardened and glass finished,’ forensics said.”
Arlen said, “Many people have access to my home-employees, ranch hands…”
“Right,” Joe said. “And it appears Meade Davis seems to have changed his story to one you liked better. Anything to that? Do you think Meade Davis would stick with the latest version if I brought him in?”
It was amazing how icy Arlen’s eyes had become, Joe thought, how frozen the expression on his face. This was a different Arlen than the glad-handing speechmaker. This was the Arlen Joe had glimpsed in the sheriff’s office baiting his brother into violence, but acting as if he didn’t know what he was doing.
Jabbing his finger at Joe, Arlen said, “You have crossed the line making accusations like that. Do you realize who you’re talking to?”
“I realize,” Joe said. “It’s getting old.”
Arlen shook his head, contemplating Joe, but saying nothing. As if Joe was no longer worth his words.
Arlen turned to Marybeth. “You’ve lost my account. If you can talk some sense into your husband, you might have a chance to get it back.”
Marybeth’s eyes were fiery. “He has plenty of sense, Arlen. We can live without your money.”
ON THE WAY back to the Longbrake Ranch, Marybeth broke the silence.
“So you really think she’s still alive,” she said to Joe as they drove past the town limit toward the Longbrake Ranch. Sheridan and Lucy were touring the museum with Missy, so Joe and Marybeth had the truck to themselves.
“Yup,” Joe said. “I think she’s holed up somewhere on the ranch, just sitting back and watching what goes on. I can imagine her seeing what lengths her sons will go to to get the ranch. Seeing how much they love it and therefore how much they love her. Everything she’s done over the years fits the theory-the secret wills, the internalized accounting, her obsession with her legacy. It came to me when I thought about Tommy Wayman claiming to have seen her, and Sheridan’s dream. Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all. In both cases, they described the same thing. They said she was smiling.”
Marybeth was lost in thought for a few moments, then she asked, “Do you think Hank knows?”
“No.”
“Arlen?”
Joe shook his head. “Maybe, but I can’t be sure. I was hoping to smoke him out back there, but he’s too damned wily for me.”
After a few miles she turned to him. “There’s only one thing about your theory that might be wrong.”
“What?”
“I don’t think it’s about love at all,” she said. “I think it’s about hate.”
Joe said, “I don’t understand.”
“Look at them,” she said. “She raised them to hate each other and love her. What kind of mother does that?”
ON MONDAY MORNING, JOE PULLED ON HIS RED UNIFORM shirt and jeans for perhaps the last time, called Maxine, and drove out into the breaklands to finish up the mule-deer trend count he had started weeks before.
As he cruised down the state highway, he kept a close watch on the blunt thunderheads advancing over the Bighorns. The clouds looked heavy and swollen with rain. “Come on,” he said aloud, “keep on rolling this way.” By his count, it had not rained in twenty-five days. Maxine thought he was talking to her and got excited.
He had one more quadrant to go before submitting his report. The area butted up against the property line of the upper Thunderhead Ranch, Hank’s half.
When his cell phone rang, Joe opened it and expected to hear “Hold for Director Pope.”
But it was Tony Portenson. “Hello, Joe.”
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Joe asked, keeping the sarcasm out of his voice and wishing that years before he hadn’t given his phone number to the FBI agent.
“We got a call from a contact in Idaho,” Portenson said. “Someone matching the description of Nate Romanowski was spotted at a Conoco station in Victor, headed east toward Wyoming. I was wondering if perhaps you’d seen your old friend recently.”
Joe felt himself smile, but kept the grin out of his voice. “No, I haven’t seen or heard from him.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Joe?”
“Nope, I don’t do that.”
Portenson sighed. “I guess you don’t. But you’ll keep me informed if he shows up, right?”
“Nope, probably not.”
“At least tell him I want to talk with him, okay?”
“I’m sure he knows that.”
“You’re not very helpful, Joe.”
“He’s my friend,” Joe said. Then he quickly changed the subject. “Did you ever find that guy you were looking for? The one who shot the cowboy?”
Portenson’s voice dropped. “He’s still at large. We faxed the information to the sheriff’s department but haven’t heard anything from him.”
“I’m not surprised,” Joe said.
Portenson said, “Tell Romanowski I haven’t forgotten about him.”
BY THE TIME Joe found the southeast corner of the quadrant, the dark clouds had redoubled in scale and continued their advance. Thirty miles away, he could see spouts of rain connecting the clouds to the earth, an illusion that made it look as though it were raining up. Rain in any form was a revelation.
“Keep on rolling,” he said again, wishing he could see the secrets and motivations of the people in the valley with the same long-distance clarity.
Instead of mule deer, he happened first on a herd of thirty pronghorn antelope grazing and picking their way in the distance across the tabletop flat of a butte. Their brown-and-white camouflage coloring, which worked for eight months of the year, failed them miserably against the pulsing green carpet of spring grass and made them stand out like highway cones.
Joe fixed his spotting scope to the top of his driver’s-side window and surveyed the pronghorn. Antelope almost always had twins, and the little ones were perfectly proportioned, despite their size, and within days were capable of running as fast as the adults. He loved to watch them play, chasing other newborns around, scampering between the legs of their mothers like shooting sparks.
Joe swung the telescope and found the lead buck. As always, he stood alone facing his herd, prepared at any moment to wade into the throng to enforce his will on them or punish transgressions. As Joe admired the buck through the scope a puff of dust and hair shot out of the buck’s neck and the animal crumpled and dropped. A rifle shot followed, pow-WHOP, the sound of a hit, echoing across the sagebrush. In the bottom of his scope view, Joe could see the buck kicking out violently, windmilling his legs in a death dance.
“Man!” Joe shouted, amazed at what had happened right in front of his eyes.
The rest of the herd ignited as one and were suddenly sweeping across the top of the butte leaving twenty-nine streams of dust that looked like vapor trails in their wake.
Angry, Joe jumped out of his pickup with his binoculars. Antelope season was four months away. Before raising the glasses to his eyes, he swept the hills, trying to see the shooter. Was it possible the poacher didn’t know the game warden was in the vicinity? No, Joe thought, the odds were totally against it. In a district of fifteen hundred square miles, the chance of his actually being there to see the kill in front of his eyes were infinitesimal. The act was a deliberate provocation, a direct challenge.
He followed the long line of three-strand barbed-wire fence that separated the public Bureau of Land Management land from the Thunderhead Ranch. The fence went on as far as he could see. But behind it-on a ridge, partially hidden by a fold in the terrain-was a light-colored pickup he didn’t recognize.
He raised the glasses and focused furiously.
The pickup came into view.
It was an older model, at least ten years old, light yellow, rust spots on the door. The description was familiar to him, but from where? He didn’t take the time to figure it out. The driver’s-side door was open, and the window was down. A rifle rested on the sill, still pointing in the general direction of the butte.
A man stepped out from behind the door and waved.
Bill Monroe.
He waved again at Joe in a goofy, come-on-y’all wave.
Then Monroe stepped away from the pickup, set his feet, and pulled out his penis: a flash of pink against blue jeans. He urinated a long stream into the dirt in front of him, then leaned back in an exaggerated way, pointed at Joe with his free hand, and Joe could read his lips as he shouted: “This is what I think of you, Joe Pickett.”
A THUNDERCLAP NOT unlike the sound of the rifle shot boomed across the breaklands followed by a long series of deep-throated rumbles. Joe could feel the temperature dropping even as he drove, as the clouds pulled across the sun like a curtain shutting out the light, muting light and shadow.
He had plunged his truck over the rise into the saddle slope of a valley in pursuit of Bill Monroe. There were no established roads that would get him from where he had seen the shooting, across the top of the butte, to the border of the Thunderhead Ranch, so Joe kept his left front tire in a meandering game trail that pointed vaguely toward Monroe’s pickup and let the right tires bounce through knee-high sagebrush. He was driving much faster than he should have, the engine straining. Maxine stood on the bench seat with her front paws on the dash, trying to keep balanced.
Damn him, Joe thought.
Joe hated poachers, and not simply because they were breaking the law he was sworn to enforce. He hated the idea of poaching-killing a creature for sport with no intention of eating the meat. Joe took poaching as a personal affront, and to see it happen this way, to be mocked by Bill Monroe in this way…
And Bill Monroe was not yet running. He was still up there, outside of his pickup, on the far ridge, outlined against the roiling dark clouds. Monroe had plenty of time and distance before Joe got there, and he was in no hurry.
Maybe he wouldn’t run at all. Maybe he would wait for Joe, and the two of them could have it out. Joe thought that sounded fine to him.
He was halfway across the saddle slope when three things happened at once:
His radio came to life, the dispatcher calling him directly by his code number, saying he was to call Director Randy Pope immediately off the air.
The check-engine light on the dashboard flickered and stayed on while the temperature-gauge needle shouldered hard into the red.
And the clouds opened up with a clash of cymbals and sheets of rain swept across the ground with such force that the first wave of rain actually raised dust as if it were strafing the ground.
BILL MONROE WAS still on the ridge, standing in the rain as if he didn’t know it was soaking him. Joe was closer now, close enough to see the leer on Monroe’s face, see his hands on his hips as he looked down at Joe climbing up the slope, aimed right at him.
A moment later, there was a pop under the hood of the engine and clouds of acrid green steam rolled out from under the pickup, through the grille, and into the cab through the air vents. The radiator hose has blown.
Joe cursed and slammed the dash with the heel of his hand. He stopped the truck and the engine died before he could turn the key.
JOE OPENED THE door and jumped out of his crippled pickup. Despite the opening salvos of rain, the ground was still drought dry; the moisture had not yet penetrated and was pooling wherever there was a low spot. The rainfall was steady and hard, stinging his bare hands.
Joe looked up the slope at Monroe.
“What’s wrong with your truck?” Monroe shouted down.
“You’re under arrest,” Joe shouted back.
“For what?”
“For killing that buck. I saw the whole thing.”
Monroe shook his head. “I didn’t kill no buck.”
“I saw you.”
“I don’t even own a rifle.”
“I saw you.”
“Your word against mine, I guess.”
“Yup.”
“I understand you’re pretty convincing when it comes to Judge Pennock,” Monroe said.
Joe felt a pang in his chest. So Monroe was well aware of the rejected search warrant.
The rain hammered the brim of Joe’s hat and an icy stream of it poured into his collar and snaked down along his backbone.
“Good thing your truck blew up,” Monroe said. “You would have been trespassing on private property.”
The fence line was just in front of Monroe, Joe saw.
Then Joe realized Monroe wanted him to come over there onto the Thunderhead, where access had been previously refused by Hank. What would Monroe have done when Joe crossed the line? What had been his plan?
IT WAS AN odd thing, how sometimes there could be a moment of absolute clarity in the midst of rampant chaos. With the rain falling hard, his vehicle disabled, the dispatcher calling for him, and Bill Monroe grinning at him from behind the fence, at least part of the picture cleared up. Portenson’s call had reminded him of something.
The truck Monroe was driving was light yellow, ten years old, with rust spots on the door. Where had that description come from? Then it hit him.
Joe looked up at Bill Monroe, who wasn’t really Bill Monroe.
“You know who I am now, don’t you?”
Oh, God. Joe felt a chill.
“You’re John W. Kelly,” he shouted, dredging up the name Special Agent Gary Child had told him.
Monroe snorted. “Close,” he said.
“You shot a cowboy in the Shirley Basin,” Joe said, suddenly thinking of the.40 Glock on his hip and the shotgun in his pickup. Up there on the ridge, Monroe had the drop on him.
Monroe laughed. “I didn’t shoot no cowboy, just like I didn’t shoot no antelope buck.”
“I saw you.”
“It’s just too damned bad your truck blew up,” Monroe said. “Another two hundred fifty feet and you woulda’ been on private property. Who knows what would have happened.”
Joe started to answer when Monroe backed away from the top of the ridge. In a moment, Joe heard an engine flare and the grinding of gears before the truck drove off, leaving him there.
JOE STOOD IN the rain, thinking, running scenarios through his mind. They kept getting worse.
He got back inside the cab with Maxine. Even though the motor wasn’t running the battery still worked, as did his radio. He even had a cell-phone signal, although it was weak.
BEFORE CALLING RANDY Pope, Joe reached Bud Longbrake on the ranch. Bud had a one-ton flatbed with a winch and he was much closer to where Joe was stranded than any of the tow-truck drivers in town. Bud agreed to come rescue Joe, bring his truck back, and even lend Joe a ranch vehicle in the meantime. Bud was positively giddy when Joe talked with him.
“This rain just makes me happy,” he said. Joe could tell Bud was smiling by his voice. “It hasn’t rained this hard in three years.”
ROBEY WASN’T IN his office when Joe called. His secretary said he was trapped in his house because a flash flood had taken out the bridge that crossed over to the highway from Robey’s property. She told Joe that Robey’s phone was down now as well, as were most of the telephones in the valley, because lightning had struck a transformer and knocked the service out.
“What about his cell?” Joe asked.
“You can call it, I guess,” she said. “But I can see his cell phone sitting on his desk in his office. He must have forgotten to take it home with him last night.”
Joe rolled his eyes with frustration. “Please have him call me the minute he makes contact,” Joe said. “It’s important.”
“Will do,” she said. “Isn’t this great, this rain? We really needed it.”
“Yes,” Joe said.
THE NEXT CALL was to the FBI office in Cheyenne. Joe asked for Tony Portenson and was told Portenson was away from his desk.
“Tony, this is Joe Pickett,” he said on Portenson’s voice mail. “Can you please fax or e-mail me the file on John Kelly? I may have a lead for you.”
FURTHER DELAYING THE inevitable, Joe speed-dialed the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department and asked for McLanahan.
“McLanahan.” He sounded harried, high-pitched, and out of breath.
“Joe Pickett, Sheriff. I’m broken down on the border of the Thunderhead Ranch where I just had an encounter with Bill Monroe, although I don’t think that’s really his name.”
“I’m lost,” McLanahan said.
You sure are, Joe thought. He outlined his theory and told McLanahan about the yellow pickup and the investigation by the FBI.
McLanahan was silent for a moment after Joe finished, then said, “Are you sure you aren’t just obsessed by the guy?”
“What?”
“He’s the one who pounded you, right?”
“What difference does that make? You’ve got a warrant out for his arrest, even if I’m wrong about the rest of it. Why don’t you drive out there and take the guy down?”
McLanahan sighed. “Have you looked outside recently?”
“I am outside.”
“It looks like a cow pissing on a flat rock, this rain. We’re in a state of emergency right now. You can’t dump three inches of rain on a county that’s dry as concrete and expect it to soak in. We’ve got flash floods everywhere. Bridges are out. In town the river has jumped the banks in at least three places. We’ve got a mess here, Joe. I’ve got truckloads of sandbags on the way from Gillette. I can’t do anything until we get it under control.”
Joe thought, Man, oh man.
“I’ve gotta go,” McLanahan said. “Somebody just saw a Volkswagen Beetle float down First Street.”
JOE BREATHED IN and out, in and out, then direct-dialed Randy Pope’s office. He got the evil receptionist. The gleeful tone in her voice when he introduced himself told Joe all he needed to know.
“I told you I needed a new truck,” Joe said when Pope came on the line. “Because of this lousy equipment you gave me, a poacher and murder suspect has gotten away.”
Pope’s voice was dry, barely controlled. “Joe, when I ask that you call in immediately, I mean immediately. Not when you get around to it.”
“I was in pursuit of a murder suspect,” Joe said. “I couldn’t stop and call in at the time.”
“That was an hour ago.”
“Yes, and I called as soon as I could. I need to get this broken-down truck towed out of the middle of nowhere.”
Pope sighed, then said, “I got a call from Arlen Scarlett, Joe.”
Joe sat back. “I figured you would.”
“We’ve now got official protests lodged against you from both Arlen and Hank Scarlett. Think about it. The only thing those two seem to agree on is that you are completely out of control, and that reflects on me. You’re wasting time on a case totally out of our purview while game violations are going on in the middle of town.”
“And you’re only too happy to side with them,” Joe said.
“You’re fired, Joe,” Pope snapped.
He heard the words he had been expecting to hear. Nevertheless, Joe still had trouble believing it was actually happening.
Pope’s voice rose as he continued. “As of today, Joe, you’re history. And don’t try to fight me on this. You’ll lose! I’ve got documentation stretching back six years. Threatening a legislator and Game and Fish commissioner with property destruction and bodily harm? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”
“Do you really want to know or is that a rhetorical question?” Joe asked, his mouth dry.
“I won’t miss your cowboy antics,” Pope said. “This is a new era.”
“I’ve heard,” Joe said. He was tired of arguing with Pope. He felt defeated. The rain lashed at the windshield.
Pope transferred Joe to someone in personnel who outlined, in a monotone, what procedural steps were available for him to take if he wanted to contest the decision. Joe half listened, then punched off.
IT WAS THREE hours before Bud Longbrake showed up in his one-ton. The rain had increased in intensity, and it channeled into arroyos and draws, filling dry beds that had been parched for years, even rushing down the game trail in what looked like a river of angry chocolate milk.
Joe watched the one-ton start down the hill, then brake and begin to slide, the wheels not holding. Bud was driving, and he managed to reverse the vehicle and grind back up the hill before he slid to the bottom and got stuck. Bud flashed his headlights on and off.
Joe understood the signal. Bud couldn’t bring the one-ton all the way across the basin to pull the truck out.
“Fine,” Joe said, feeling like the embodiment of the subject of a blues song as he slid out of the truck into the mud carrying his shotgun, briefcase, and lunch and walked through the pouring rain to the one-ton with Maxine slogging along, head down, beside him.
“Fine!”
WHEN BUD PULLED INTO THE RANCH YARD, HE splashed through a small lake that had not been there that morning and parked the one-ton in his massive barn.
Joe saw Marybeth’s van in there also. She was home early. As he entered the house through the back door they used to access their new living quarters, Marybeth looked up, saw his face, and sat down quickly as if her legs had given out on her.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Let’s go into the bedroom and shut the door,” she said.
HE TOLD MARYBETH he’d been fired, and her reaction was worse than he anticipated: stunned silence. He would have preferred that she yelled at him, or cried, or locked herself in their room. Instead, she simply stared at him and whispered, “What are we going to do now, Joe?”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said, lamely.
“I guess we knew this would happen.”
“Yes.”
“When do we tell the girls?” Marybeth asked. “What do we tell them.”
“The truth,” he said. That would be the hardest part. No, it wouldn’t. The hardest part would be that Sheridan and Lucy would expect him to say not to worry, that he would take care of them as he always had. But he couldn’t tell them that and look them in the eye.
DINNER THAT EVENING was one of the worst Joe could remember. They sat at the big dining room table with Missy and Bud. Missy’s cook, a Latina named Maria, had made fried chicken and the pieces steamed in a big bowl in the middle of the table. Bud ate as if he were starved. Missy picked at a breast that had been skinned and was made specially for her. Joe had no appetite, even though it was his favorite meal. When he had been employed, that is. Marybeth was silent. Sheridan spent dinnertime looking from her mom to her dad and back again, trying to figure out what was happening. Lucy was oblivious.
The rain roared against the roof and sang down the downspouts. Bud said a half-dozen times how happy he was that it was raining.
AFTER THE DISHES were cleared, Joe asked Bud if he could borrow a ranch pickup.
“Where are you going?” Missy said. Now that they were under her roof, Missy felt entitled to ask questions like that.
“I’ve got birds to feed,” Joe said.
“Have you looked outside?” Missy said with an expression clearly meant to convey that he was an idiot.
“Why? Is something happening?” Joe said. He really didn’t have the patience to deal with his mother-in-law tonight.
Marybeth shot him a cautionary look. Sheridan stifled a smile.
“I hope Bud doesn’t have to come out and rescue you again if you get stuck,” Missy said, and turned away.
“I don’t mind,” Bud said. “I kind of like driving around in the rain. It makes me feel good.”
“I’ll try not to get stuck again,” Joe said as he headed to the mudroom for his still-damp boots and coat. Marybeth followed him there.
“Sheridan knows something is up.”
“I know,” Joe said, wincing as he pulled on a wet boot.
“Maybe when you get home we can talk to the girls.”
Joe sighed. “I guess.” He’d been putting it off all night.
“Joe, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
He looked up. “Yes, honey, it is.”
“My business is doing well.”
“Thank God for that,” Joe said, standing, jamming his foot into a boot to seat it. “Thank God for your business, or we’d be out on the street.”
“Joe…”
He looked up at her and his eyes flashed. “I brought it on myself, I know that. I could have played things differently. I could have compromised a little more.”
She shook her head slowly. “No you couldn’t, Joe.”
He clammed up. Anything he said now would make things worse, he knew. His insides ached. How could she possibly know how it felt for a man to lose his job, lose the means of taking care of his family? He kept pushing the crushing reality of it aside so that he was only contemplating the little things: that he would no longer wear the red shirt, that he would no longer carry a badge and a gun, that he would no longer perch on hillsides watching deer and antelope and elk. That he would no longer bring home a monthly paycheck.
“Be careful,” she said, taking his face in her hands and kissing him. “I worry about you when you’re like this.”
He tried to smile but he knew it looked like a pained snarl.
“I’ve got to get out for a while” was all he managed to say. God, he was grateful she was his wife.
Missy swept in behind Marybeth and stood there with her eyes sparkling above a pursed mouth. “This is interesting, isn’t it?”
“What are you referring to?”
She opened her arms toward the window of the mudroom, a gesture designed to take in the whole ranch. “Three years ago, I was camped out on your couch in that horrible little hovel you made my daughter and my grandchildren live in. And you wanted me out.”
Joe didn’t deny it.
“Now look where we are. You’re a guest in my home and your family is comfortable and safe for the first time in their lives.”
He felt his rage build, but was able to stanch it. He didn’t want this argument now, when he felt quite capable of wringing her neck.
“It’s interesting, is all,” she said, raising her eyebrows mockingly, “how situations can change and things that were thought and said can come back to haunt a person?”
SHERIFF MCLANAHAN WASN’T kidding. The rain had transformed everything. It wasn’t like other parts of the country, where rain could fall and soak into the soil and be smoothly channeled away. This was hardpan that received only eleven inches of rain a year, and today had already brought four. The water stood on top of the ground, forming lakes and ponds that hadn’t existed for years. Tiny draws and sloughs had turned into funnels for raging brown water.
Joe drove slowly on the highway, water spraying out from under his tires in rooster tails. The sky was mottled greenish black and the rain fell so hard he couldn’t hear the radio inside the cab of the ranch truck. He had no business going out, and especially going to Nate’s old place to feed the falcons, but he needed something to do. If he stayed at the ranch contemplating his complete failure while Missy prattled on about fat grams and social clubs, he didn’t know what he might do. Plus, he wanted to put off the talk with Sheridan and Lucy. Would Marybeth warn them? he wondered. Tell them to reassure their father, not to get angry or upset? He hoped she didn’t. The only thing he could think of that was worse than being a failure was to have his girls pity him for it.
THE ROAD TO Nate Romanowski’s old place was elevated enough that he was able to get there in four-wheel-drive high. On either side of the road, though, long lakes had formed. Ducks were actually sitting on ponds that hadn’t existed eight hours ago. And he could hear frogs. Frogs that had been hibernating deep below the surface for years were coming out, croaking.
It was amazing what renewal came with water in the mountain west. Joe just wished that somehow the rain could renew him.
JOE CRESTED THE last rise near Nate’s home to see that the river had not just jumped the bank, but had taken Nate’s falcon mews and was lapping at the side of his house. He had never seen the river so big, so violent. It was whitewater, and big rollers thundered through the canyon. Full-grown cottonwood trees, cattle, parts of washed-out bridges were being carried downstream. The rickety suspension footbridge across the river downstream from Nate’s home was either gone or underwater.
Joe parked above Nate’s house on a rise. There was less than an hour of light left, and he wanted to feed the birds and get out before nightfall. He climbed out and pulled on his yellow slicker. Fat raindrops popped against the rubberized canvas of his slicker as he unwrapped road-killed rabbits from a burlap bag in the bed of the truck. This was a foolish thing he was doing, he conceded. The birds could probably wait. But he had made a promise, and he would keep it.
The sound of the river was awesome in its power. He could feel the spray from it well before he got to its new edge.
He laid the rabbits out on a sandy rise so they could be seen clearly from the air. In the past, it took less than ten minutes for either the peregrine or the red-tailed hawk to see the meat. Joe never had any idea where the falcons were, or how they always knew he was there. But they did, and they came to eat.
Joe could never get used to the relationship-or more accurately, the lack of a relationship-he had with Nate’s falcons. It was something Nate had once told him about, how different and unique it was with birds of prey compared to other creatures. The cold partnership between falconer and falcon was primal and unsentimental. Quite simply, the birds never warmed up to the falconer and certainly not to Joe. To anyone. Raptors weren’t like dogs, or horses, or even cats. They didn’t pretend to like humans, or show even a flicker of affection. They simply coexisted with people, using them to obtain food and shelter but never actually giving back anything but their own ability to hunt and kill. The falcon could fly away at any time and never come back. There was nothing a falconer could do to retrieve a bird. It was a relationship based on mutual self-interest and a kind of unfeeling trust.
After twenty minutes, Joe saw a dark speck dislodge from the gunmetal clouds. He stood and wiped the rain from his face and watched as the speck got larger. It was the peregrine, the ultimate killer. The red-tail appeared shortly thereafter.
The peregrine buzzed Joe twice before flaring and landing on the edge of the rise. The red-tail made two false landings, close enough to see the meat, then climbed back up into the sky and disappeared.
He looked at the peregrine closely. The bird wasn’t the least bit interested in the rabbits. And there was something else: the bird’s gullet was swelled to bursting and there were blood flecks and bits of white down on its breast. It had already eaten.
Joe squatted and looked into the falcon’s eyes, which were as impenetrable as shiny black stones.
“Who fed you?” Joe asked. “Or did you kill something yourself?” Then he thought about the red-tail. “Did you both make a kill?”
Something made him turn and look at the stone house that had stood empty for half a year.
Fresh lengths of pine boarded up two of the windows. The front door had been replaced. And half a row of new shingles were laid out on the roof.
Despite the drumming of the rain, Joe felt his heart whump in his chest.
He called out, “Nate, where are you?”
Then he saw him. Downstream, where he’d been hiding and watching in a thick stand of reeds. The reeds were dancing around him with falling rain. Nate rose from them, naked, holding his huge.454 Casull in his right fist. Joe didn’t even want to ask.
“Have you come to kill me?” Nate called out.
“No.”
“I deserve it.”
“I know you do.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Nate said.
They stared at each other for a minute. Nate was slick with rain and his white skin was mud streaked from hiding in the bog. His long blond hair stuck to the tops of his shoulders. His eyes bored into Joe.
Nate had once vowed to protect Joe’s family. Joe had promised to keep Nate’s birds fed. Despite everything that had happened, both had lived up to their obligations, something greater than mere friendship.
Joe said, “Why don’t you put on some clothes?”
J. W. KEELEY DIDN’T LIKE THE WAY HANK SCARLETT was talking to him. He didn’t like it at all.
The rest of Hank’s men had been dismissed from the dinner table-only he and Hank remained. The men had gone back to their bunkhouse a mile from Hank’s lodge. They had grumbled through a huge steak dinner about the rain, how it had knocked out their telephone service in the bunkhouse and how the lights kept going on and off. Especially annoying was the fact that the cable was out for television and they would miss the third game of the NBA playoffs. And the worst thing of all was the news that the river had jumped its banks and was flooding the roads to the highway. The men would be trapped on the ranch until the water receded, so they couldn’t even go to town to see the game. They had complained without quarter until Hank finally pushed away from the table, threw his napkin onto his plate as if spiking a football, and said in his loudest and most nasally voice, “Why don’t you boys just get the hell out of my house and go bitch somewhere else?”
That had shut them up, all right.
“Not you, Bill,” Hank had said. So Monroe sat back down at the table.
Because the electricity was out again, the dining room was lit by three hissing Coleman gas lanterns. The light played on Hank’s face, making the shadowed hollows under his cheekbones look skull-like and cavernous. The glass eyes on the head mounts of the game animals on the walls glowed with reflection.
That’s when Hank began to annoy him, chipping away with that damned high voice, each word dropping like a stone in a pond, plunk-plunk-plunk.
“You need to stay away from that game warden,” Hank said.
Keeley had told Hank and the boys the story over their thick steaks: how he’d dropped the buck right in front of the game warden, then watched the warden’s truck break down in an aborted hot pursuit. The boys had laughed. A couple of them had laughed so hard that Keeley considered spilling the beans on the other things he’d done to get under the warden’s skin. Luckily, he held his tongue, because that would have led to too many questions. Hank had appeared to be smiling, but now Keeley understood that it hadn’t been a smile at all. It was too damned tough to tell if Hank was smiling or not. That was just one of the things wrong with the man.
Keeley glared at Hank. “That’s my business,” he said in response. “It ain’t no concern of yours.”
“The hell it ain’t!” Hank snapped back. “I didn’t make you my foreman so you could draw the cops in here because of your fucking antics with the local game warden. Joe Pickett knows for sure you’re out here now, and I would guess he’s told the sheriff.”
Keeley gestured toward the ceiling at the sound of the rain thrumming the roof. “That sheriff couldn’t get out here right now even if he wanted to. Didn’t you just tell the boys the river’s over the road?”
Hank nodded. “Except for one little two-track on high ground down by Arlen’s place, my guess is there is no way in or out.”
“Where’s that?”
“About a mile downriver,” Hank said. “I’d guess that road is still dry. But if the river gets any higher, that one’ll be underwater too.”
Keeley filed away the information.
“What’s your problem with him, anyway?” Hank asked.
“Personal.”
“That’s what you always say,” Hank said. “But since what you do could bring the wrath of God down on my ass, you need to tell me just what it is between you two.”
“The wrath of God?” Keeley said, thinking, from what he had observed, that it was an odd way to describe Joe Pickett.
“Him and his buddy Nate Romanowski,” Hank said. “Didn’t I tell you about them?”
Keeley nodded.
“Why don’t you grab that bottle of bourbon from the kitchen?” Hank said. “I’d like a little after-dinner snort. You can join me.”
Keeley hesitated for a beat as he always did when Hank asked him to do something that was beneath him. He wasn’t the fucking kitchen help, after all. He was the new ranch foreman. But Keeley sighed, stood up, and felt around through the liquor cabinet until his hand closed around the thick neck of the half-gallon bottle of Maker’s Mark. A $65 bottle. Nice.
Hank poured two water glasses half full. He didn’t offer ice or water. Keeley sipped and closed his eyes, letting the good bourbon burn his tongue.
“This thing you’ve got with the game warden,” Hank said again, “it’s time you dropped it.”
“I ain’t dropping it,” Keeley said, maybe a little too quickly. Hank froze with his glass halfway to his lips and stared at him.
“What do you mean, you ‘ain’t dropping it’?”
“I told you.” Keeley shrugged. “It’s personal.”
Hank didn’t change his expression, but Keeley could see the blood drain out of Hank’s cheeks. That meant he was getting angry. Which usually meant someone would start hopping around, asking what Hank needed. Fuck that, Keeley thought. Enough with Hank and his moods.
“Since you got here, you’ve been asking me questions about him,” Hank said. “You’ve been kind of subtle and clever about it, you know, not asking too much at once and not tipping yourself off to the other boys. But I observed it right out of the chute. You got me to talking about those Miller’s weasels, and what happened up there with the Sovereigns in that camp. You asked me where the game warden lived, how many kids he’s got, what his wife is like and where she works. Don’t think I haven’t noticed, Bill. You’re obsessed with the guy.”
Keeley said nothing. Hank was smarter than he thought.
“There was that Miller’s weasel stuck to Pickett’s front door,” Hank said. “Then what? The elk heads? I didn’t like that one very much. It reminded me of what those fuckin’ towelheads do over there in the Middle East, cutting off heads. Plus, I like elk. Now I hear somebody put a bullet through their picture window,” he said, his eyes on Keeley like two flat black lumps of charcoal. “I’d say that’s going too far. That’s too damned mean, considering there are children in the house. Made that family move, is what I hear.
“So my question is,” Hank said, leaning forward, “just what in the hell is wrong with you? Why do you hate Joe Pickett so much? I know if I hadn’t found you and stopped you that night outside the Stockman you would’ve beat him to death.”
“There ain’t nothing wrong with me,” Keeley said, resenting the implication. Feeling the rage start to surge in his chest and belly.
Joe Pickett was all he had left, Keeley thought. After five years in prison they raided his hunting camp and tried to find the bodies of that Atlanta couple, after Keeley was forced to run away. The only thing he still had of value was his hatred, and that was still white hot.
Damn, he hated to be judged by any man.
Then he realized what Hank was leading up to. He was going to fire him. That wouldn’t do. Not yet.
“People think I’m a hater,” Hank said, refilling his glass. “But I’m not. I’m just not. Not like you. I don’t even hate Arlen. He hates me, and my defense just looks to some like hate. No one has ever been as mean, as low, as my brother Arlen. There’s a hole where his feelings should be. I’ve always known that, because I saw it up close and personal when we were little boys. He puts up a damned good front, damned good. Hell, I admire him for it, the way he can prance around and shake hands and act like he gives a shit about people. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t care for anyone but Arlen. Arlen is his favorite subject, and his only subject. He hates me because I know him for what he truly is. Did I ever tell you about the time he cut the hamstring tendons on my dog? When I was six years old and he was ten? He denied it, but it was him. Damn, I loved that dog, and I had to shoot it.”
Keeley was speechless. He had never heard Hank talk so much before. Why was the man opening up this way? Didn’t Hank realize who he was talking to? That Keeley was much more like Arlen than Hank? That instead of invoking sympathy or a bond or a mutual understanding, Keeley listened simply so he could look for an opening where he could strike?
Hank wasn’t so smart after all, Keeley thought.
“Mother knew, but she wouldn’t admit it,” Hank said. “She didn’t want to think her oldest boy was a fucking sociopath-although that’s exactly what he is. She didn’t want the town to know, or anybody to know. That’s why she stayed down there at the ranch house, so she could keep an eye on him. And that’s why I think he got rid of her.”
Keeley poured himself more bourbon. This was getting rich.
“That’s why Mother had that will drawn up with Meade Davis giving me the ranch if something happened to her,” Hank said. “She told me about it but kept it a secret from Arlen. But then he broke into the law office and found out what the will really said.”
Hank looked up, and his eyes flashed with betrayal. “I shoulda’ fucking known that a lawyer like Meade Davis would change his story if he was offered enough money. That’s what Arlen did, that son-of-a-bitch. He got to Davis and either threatened him or sweetened the pot. Or both. Now Davis claims the ranch was supposed to go to Arlen after all.
“I can’t keep up with the guy. All I can do is fortify my bunker,” Hank said morosely, gesturing around his own house.
“He even convinced my daughter I was a bad man,” he said, his eyes getting suddenly misty. “That may be the worst thing he’s ever done.”
“At least you have a daughter,” Keeley said flatly.
Hank didn’t follow.
“I had a daughter once,” Keeley said. “Her name was April. My brother thought she was his, but she wasn’t. She was mine. April was the result of a little fling I had with my sister-in-law, Jeannie Keeley. My brother, Ote, never knew a damned thing about it.”
Hank’s face went slack. “Keeley…” he said. “The Picketts had a foster daughter named Keeley.”
“That’s right.”
“Ote Keeley was your brother? Jeannie was your sister-in-law? Jeannie, who died in that fire with April?”
“That’s right,” Keeley said, his teeth clenched.
“Jesus,” Hank said.
“Joe Pickett was responsible for the death of my brother, my sister-in-law, and my daughter,” Keeley hissed. “And he don’t even know why I’m here. I’m an avenging angel, here to take out the man who destroyed my family.”
Hank sat back. “Joe didn’t kill anyone,” he said. “You’re full of shit, Bill.”
Keeley felt his face get hot. “He was in the middle of everything. He was responsible.”
Hank shook his head. “I’ve been here a long time, Bill. I know this country, and I know what happened. Joe Pickett tried to save your daughter, if that’s who she was. He didn’t…”
“My name ain’t Bill.”
That stopped Hank.
“My real name is John Wayne Keeley.”
Hank stopped and swallowed. Keeley liked the look of confusion on Hank’s face.
“You know,” Keeley said, standing up and pacing, “when I first heard about what happened to April I was in prison. I went along for a year or so, not really thinking about it. Things that happen on the outside don’t seem real. Then one day I looked up and I realized I had no family. Nobody. No one was still alive to connect me to anyone else. My folks were dead, my brother, my sister-in-law, now my little daughter. I tried to forget all that when I started a guide service. But this fucking arrogant asshole client from Atlanta was there with his wife. They treated me like dirt, especially him. So I fucked her just to piss him off, and he walked in on us, and…”
Hank’s eyes were wide.
“You remember Wacey Hedeman?” Keeley asked, still pacing, although he now circled the table.
Hank nodded, following Keeley’s movement with his eyes.
“That was me.”
Keeley left out the cowboy. He would never tell anyone about it. That was his secret, like a sexual fantasy, the way that cowboy had tumbled off his horse after the shot.
He was behind Hank now, and the rancher would have had to turn completely around in his chair to keep his eyes on him. But before he could do that, Keeley snatched a dirty steak knife from the table with his right hand while he clamped Hank’s head against his chest with his left hand and he cut the rancher’s throat open from ear to ear.
Hank tried to spin away, but all he could manage was to stand and turn around, facing Keeley while his blood flowed down his shirt. Keeley used the opening to bury the knife into Hank Scarlett’s heart. It took three tries.
Hank looked perplexed for a moment before his legs turned to rubber and he fell to the floor. Keeley stood above Hank’s gurgling, jerking body, watching blood stream across the floor like the Twelve Sleep River jumping its banks outside.
THE LIGHTS FLICKERED on. Keeley had no idea how long it would last, but he used the opportunity to walk across the dining room and pick up the phone. He left bloody footprints on the Navaho rug.
There was a dial tone, so Keeley punched in the numbers out of memory.
Arlen picked up.
Keeley said, “You owe me big-time now, Bubba…”
“Who is this?”
“You know who it is.”
“Bill? What are you talking about?”
“You know who it is. The problem is solved.”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Knock it off, Arlen. You know what we discussed. You said you’d make it worth my while in a big way if I helped you out with your problem. That night in your kitchen, remember? That’s what you said.”
“Who did you say is calling?”
Keeley held the phone away from his ear, trying to figure out what kind of man Arlen really was to suddenly play this dangerous game with him.
“Arlen, goddammit,” Keeley said, his voice cracking, “you know who this is and you damn well sure know what I’m talking about when I say your problem is solved…”
“Bill,” Arlen said, his voice flat, “you must be having a bad dream. We’ve never discussed anything of consequence I can think of…”
And then the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness except for the lanterns.
“I’VE BEEN BETRAYED,” Keeley told Hank’s lifeless body as he poured another half glass of bourbon. “You were right about him. He has no conscience, that brother of yours.”
Keeley sipped. The bourbon had long since stopped burning. Now it was just like drinking liquid warmth. The aroma of the alcohol drowned out the copperlike smell of fresh blood. That was a good thing.
Cut the body up, Keeley was thinking. Scatter the pieces all over the ranch. What the predators don’t eat, the river will wash away.
But he’d need more fortification before he could start that job, he thought. Keeley had butchered hundreds of animals over the years. He knew how to do it. But this would be his first man.
He’d retrieved the skinning knives and bone saws he used on the Town Elk from the shed. Now all he needed was nerve.
After draining the glass, Keeley managed to lift Hank’s body up on the kitchen counter, so it straddled the two big stainless-steel sinks. He was surprised how light Hank actually was. All that gravitas he’d credited to Hank was a result of attitude, not bulk, he guessed.
Keeley slipped the boning knife out of the block and sharpened it on the steel, expertly whipping the edge into shape. The German steel sang on the sharpening stick, so Keeley almost didn’t hear the sound of the front door opening.
It had to be the wind, Keeley thought. Or one of those fucking ranch hands, wandering back up the road to complain about something. Whoever or whatever it was, he had to make sure no one entered the dining room…
As he flew through the doorway of the dining room, into the living room, he could see the front door hanging open and the rain splashing puddles outside. Keeley reached out to close the door when an arm gripped his throat in a hammerlock.
“You were about to ruin his face” was the last thing Keeley heard.
KEELEY ROLLED OVER on the floor and opened his eyes at four-thirty in the morning. Predawn light, muted by the storm, fused through the door and the front windows.
He was freezing. His cheek where his head had been turned was wet with both rainwater from the open front door and blood from the dining room.
He managed to sit back on his haunches. Everything hurt, including his brains. He stood, and the events of the night before came rushing back.
Hank’s body was gone.
Arlen had screwed him over.
The Scarlett family was even sicker than he’d originally thought.
But there was no going back now. No way to undo what he’d done, and what happened afterward.
Keeley formed a plan. It came easily, and the simplicity of it stunned him. There was a way to get back at Arlen and Joe Pickett in one fell swoop.
It was still raining.
JOE GOT UP EARLY ENOUGH TO CONSCIOUSLY AVOID running into Missy in her kitchen, made coffee, showered, and was pulling on his uniform shirt when Marybeth said, “Joe… should you be wearing that?”
He stopped, puzzled at what she meant for a moment, then remembered he had been fired. He had no right to wear the uniform anymore. But he didn’t feel that he was fired. He felt normal, or as normal as normal could get while they remained at the Longbrake Ranch and after his encounter with Nate Romanowski the night before.
“This is going to take awhile to get used to,” Joe said, stripping the shirt off and replacing it with a baggy University of Wyoming hooded sweatshirt.
He said, “What in the hell am I going to do today? Why in the hell didn’t I just sleep in or something?”
Marybeth didn’t have an answer to that.
AFTER RETURNING FROM Nate’s house the previous night in the rain, Joe and Marybeth had sat down with Sheridan and Lucy and told them he’d been fired.
Their questions were practical, if somewhat uncomprehending:
Lucy asked if it meant that she would no longer have to go to school.
Sorry, dear, Joe said. No such luck.
Sheridan asked if it meant they could get a new vehicle to replace the lousy old Game and Fish truck.
Maybe someday, Joe said. In the meantime, they’d have to settle for the van and maybe borrowing one of Bud Longbrake’s vehicles.
Lucy asked the toughest question of all: “Does this mean we’ll be safer? That we can move back to our old house now?”
Joe and Marybeth exchanged glances. Marybeth said, “We’re going to be staying here for a while, Lucy. Our old house doesn’t really belong to us. It never did. And as for being safer, I suppose so. Right, Joe?”
Joe said, “Yup.” But he had no idea. Whoever had been targeting them might stop now, but then again…
“I like our old house,” Lucy said, starting to cry and tear Joe’s heart out. “I’ll miss our old house…”
Sheridan studied Joe’s face for a long time, saying nothing. Joe wished she would stop. She understood better than he’d expected how devastating it was to him, how doing the thing he loved had been taken away. He doubted she thought much further than that yet. But he was somewhat reassured by the fact that her demeanor reflected concern for his feelings, not what it would mean for the family. Yet.
IN BED, JOE had told Marybeth about finding Nate. He watched her reaction carefully, and she knew he was doing exactly that.
“And how was he?” she asked.
“Naked as a jaybird,” Joe said.
“You know what I mean. Was he doing all right? Is he just passing through, or what?”
“We didn’t really discuss it. I suggested he put on some clothes and he did. I don’t know why he goes around naked all the time. He thanked me for keeping his birds fed. I told him there were a lot of people looking for him, starting with the FBI. Then I left.”
Marybeth wanted to ask a million questions, it was obvious, and Joe really didn’t want to answer any of them. He was tired, and beaten down. Nate was a subject he didn’t have any energy for. Plus, he was unemployed.
“I don’t understand men sometimes,” she said. “How could you see a friend you haven’t seen in half a year-a man you’ve been through hell with on more than one occasion-and just say hello and go home?”
Joe shrugged. “It was pretty easy.”
“Where has he been all of this time?”
“He didn’t say.”
Marybeth shook her head in disbelief.
“If you’re wondering if he asked about you, he didn’t,” Joe said, turning away from her in bed.
“That was cruel, Joe,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry I said that.”
Someday they would need to talk about what had happened while he was away in Jackson. But for reasons he couldn’t really grasp, he didn’t want to know. Marybeth seemed to want to explain. Nate had even acted as if he was looking for an opening. But Joe just wanted the entire thing to go away, and thought it had. But that was before Nate came back.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE it,” Lucy said at breakfast, lowering the telephone into the cradle. “They haven’t canceled school.”
Sheridan moaned. Both girls had convinced themselves over breakfast that the rain and flooding would mean that school would be canceled. But Lucy had called her friend Jenny, the daughter of the principal, and received the news.
Joe found himself hoping school would be closed as well. He wanted the girls around the ranch house. He couldn’t imagine spending the day not working, rambling around the place, ducking Missy.
“I’ll drive the girls out to the bus,” Joe said, pushing away from the table.
AS THEY DROVE to the state highway in one of Bud’s ranch pickups where the bus would pick them up, Sheridan asked Joe, “Are we going to be okay?”
“Yes, we are. Your mother has a great business going, and I’ll find something soon,” he said, not having a clue what it would be.
“It’s weird thinking we won’t be going back to our house. Can we at least go get our stuff?”
“Of course,” Joe said, feeling instantly terrible for putting her through this. “Of course we can.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Julie will be on the bus,” Sheridan said.
“Isn’t that okay?”
“Yeah. I just don’t feel the same way about her anymore,” she said. “I feel really guilty about that. I used to think she was so cool and now, well, I know she’s weird but it isn’t her fault.”
“Things change,” Joe said.
“I wish I could be more girly-girl,” Sheridan said. “I wish I could see Julie and squeal and pretend nothing was wrong, but I just can’t. Other girls can do that, but I can’t.”
Joe reached over and patted her on the leg. “You’re okay, Sherry,” he said, meaning it.
“Look at the ducks,” Lucy said, pointing out the window at a body of water that had once been a pasture.
THE BUS ARRIVED at the same time Joe did. Because they were now living so far out of town, there was only one student on board-the first to be picked up. Julie Scarlett pressed her face to the window and waved at Sheridan as the girls climbed out into the mud and skipped through puddles toward the bus.
Joe waved at the driver and the driver waved back.
“I NEARLY DIDN’T MAKE IT THIS MORNING,” JULIE Scarlett told Sheridan and Lucy. “Uncle Arlen had to drive through a place where the river flooded the road and we nearly didn’t make it. Water came inside the truck… it was scary.”
The school bus had another five miles to go before picking anyone else up on their way to Saddlestring. The three girls were trying to have a conversation but it was hard to hear because huge wiper blades squeaked across the windows and standing water sluiced noisily under the carriage of the bus.
“I still don’t know why they’re having school,” Lucy said. “It’s stupid.”
“For once I agree with you,” the bus driver called back over his shoulder. “They should have given us all a day off.”
“Why don’t you call them and tell them we’re flooded out?” Lucy suggested coyly, and the driver laughed.
“What is this?” the driver said, and the bus began to slow down.
Sheridan walked up the aisle and stood behind the driver so she could see.
A yellow pickup truck blocked both lanes of the road, and the bus driver braked to a stop.
“What an idiot,” the driver said. “Maybe his motor quit or something. But I’m not sure I can get around him because of all of the water in the ditches.”
Sheridan watched as a man opened the door and came out of the truck. The man wore a floppy wet cowboy hat and was carrying a rifle.
Her heart leaped into her mouth.
“I know him,” she said, then called to Julie over her shoulder, “Julie, it’s Bill Monroe.”
Julie screwed up her face in puzzlement. “I wonder what he wants,” she said, getting out of her seat and walking up the aisle next to Sheridan.
Monroe was outside the accordion doors of the bus now, and he tapped on the glass with the muzzle of the rifle.
“You girls know him, then?” the driver asked cautiously, his hand resting on the handle to open the doors.
“He works for my dad,” Julie said. “But I’m not sure what he’s doing out here.”
“Well, if you know him…” the driver said, and pushed the door handle.
The smell of mud and rain came into the bus as Bill Monroe stepped inside. Sheridan gasped as he raised the rifle and pointed it at the face of the driver.
“This is where you get off,” Monroe said.
Beside her, Sheridan heard Julie scream.
A HALF-HOUR LATER, the phone rang at the Longbrake Ranch. Missy was having coffee with Marybeth and reading the Saddlestring Roundup. Marybeth was ready to go to work. Joe was in their bedroom, doing who knows what.
Missy answered, said, “Hi, honey,” then handed the phone to Marybeth. “It’s Sheridan.”
Marybeth frowned and took the phone. Sheridan had never called this early because she shouldn’t be at school yet. Maybe they had canceled school after all, Marybeth thought. Maybe Sheridan needed someone to meet them on the highway so they could come home.
“Hi, Mom,” she said.
Marybeth sensed something was wrong. Sheridan’s voice was tight and hard.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the bus. I need to ask you a question. Is it okay if Lucy and I go out to Julie’s house after school tonight?”
Marybeth paused. The scenario didn’t work for her. She asked Sheridan to repeat what she had said, and Sheridan did. But there was something wrong in the tone, Marybeth thought. There was something wrong, period. What were Julie and Sheridan cooking up? And why would they want to include Lucy in it?
“You know I don’t like it when you spring things like this on me,” Marybeth said. “What are you girls scheming?”
“Nothing,” Sheridan said. “We just want to hang out. There probably won’t be practice.”
“You want to hang out with your little sister?”
“Sure, she’s cool.”
“That’s a first,” Marybeth said. “Let me talk with her.”
“Just a minute.”
Marybeth could tell that Sheridan had covered the mouthpiece of the phone so she could discuss something that her mother couldn’t overhear. Marybeth sat forward in her chair, straining to hear. She could sense Missy looking at her now, picking up on her alarm.
“She can’t talk,” Sheridan said, coming back. “She has food in her mouth.”
“What?”
“She’s eating some of her lunch early,” Sheridan said. “You know how she always does that? Then she doesn’t have enough to eat at lunch and she has to mooch from either me or the other kids?”
“Sheridan,” Marybeth said, dropping her voice to a near-whisper, “Lucy has never done that. She brings most of her lunch home with her, and you know it. If only I could get Lucy to eat. Now what is going on? Where are you calling from?”
“The bus,” Sheridan said, too breezily. “On my cell phone.”
“On your cell phone,” Marybeth repeated back. “Your cell phone.”
“That’s why you got it for me,” Sheridan said, “for emergencies like this…”
Suddenly, the call was disconnected.
Marybeth felt as if she’d been hit with a hammer. Sheridan had been trying to tell her something, all right.
“Oh my God,” Marybeth said, standing, dropping the phone on the table and running out of the room while Missy called after her to ask her what was wrong.
“JOE!”
JOE WAS NOT in the bedroom, but in Bud’s cramped and cluttered home office. He had recalled his conversation the day before with Tony Portenson’s office, how he’d requested a fax be sent to him. But since he wasn’t at his house to see what had arrived, he had called again that morning and asked Portenson’s secretary to fax the information to Bud’s home office instead.
He stood near the fax machine, watching the paper roll out.
SHERIDAN SAT WITH Lucy on the bus. Julie was in the seat behind them. Bill Monroe had taken the phone and dropped it in his pocket and had returned to the driver’s seat, saying, “I hope you didn’t just do something there that will fuck us up.” His eyes were pulled back into thin slits and his jaw was set. He needed a shave and he needed to clean what looked like blood off his hands and shirt.
The bus shuddered as Monroe worked the gears and did a three-point turn and the bus almost foundered in the ditch. But he got the bus turned around, and it picked up speed, and Monroe clumsily raced through the gears with a grinding sound.
They were headed for the Thunderhead Ranch.
Sheridan held Lucy, who had buried her head into her chest, crying.
MARYBETH FOUND HIM in the office, holding up a sheet of paper.
“Joe,” Marybeth said frantically, “I think something has happened to the girls. Sheridan just called me and said she was on the bus, but I don’t know where she really is. Or Lucy, either. She said she was calling from her cell phone. Something is horribly wrong.”
The look he gave her froze her to her spot. He held up the sheet of paper and turned it to her. It was the mug shot faxed by Portenson’s office.
“This is J. W. Keeley,” Joe said. “He’s an ex-con who supposedly murdered a man in Wyoming and a couple of others down in Mississippi. The FBI is looking for him. But he has another name, Marybeth: Bill Monroe.”
Marybeth couldn’t get past the name Keeley.
The name of her foster daughter who had died tragically. This man had the same name? And was from the same place?
It all became horribly clear.
JOE JAMMED THE MUG SHOT OF J. W. KEELEY INTO HIS back pocket and violently rubbed his face with his hands, trying to think of what to do next. Marybeth stood in the doorway of the office with her arms wrapped around herself, swaying a little, her eyes wide.
“Okay,” Joe said, forcing himself to be calm while his mind swirled with anger and fear of the worst kind. “I need to find the bus. A school bus can’t be hard to find.”
“Should I call the sheriff?” Marybeth asked.
“Yes, call him. Call the school too. Call the FBI in Cheyenne-the number’s right here on this sheet,” he said, handing her the remaining pages of the fax that outlined the allegations against J. W. Keeley. “My God…” he moaned.
“Joe, are you going to be all right? Does this man have our daughters?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he might. I’m going to go find him.”
“I can’t think of anything worse,” she said, tears bursting from her eyes, streaming down her face.
“Stay calm,” he said. “We’ve got to stay calm and think.” He paced the room. “If he took the bus into town, it’ll be easy to find. The sheriff can find it. Ask for Deputy Reed, he’s competent. But if the bus turned around, it would be headed back here or to the Thunderhead Ranch. Or to the mountains. I’d guess he’s going that way.”
Joe plunged into the closet and grabbed his belt and holster and buckled them on. Then he pulled out his shotgun.
“I’ve got my cell phone,” Joe said, clamping on his hat. “Call me and tell me what’s going on since I don’t have a radio. If you hear something-anything-call me right away.”
Marybeth breathed deeply, hugged herself tighter.
“The sheriff, the FBI, the school. Anybody else?” she asked.
Joe looked up. “Nate. Tell him I’ll be on Bighorn Road headed toward the mountains. If he can get there to meet me, I can use the help. If he isn’t there in fifteen minutes, I’ll leave him. I can’t wait for him to do his hair.”
Marybeth nodded furiously.
“Tell him to bring his gun,” Joe said.
Missy came into the room, said, “What is going on?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Marybeth said, shouldering past her. “I need to use the phone.”
JOE ROARED OUT of the ranch yard with his shotgun on the bench seat, muzzle pointed toward the floor. The sky buckled with a thunder boom that rolled through the meadows, sucking the sound from the world for a moment. He drove fast, nearly overshooting the turn from the ranch onto the highway access road and he fishtailed in the mud, nearly losing control of the truck. He cursed himself, slowed down, and felt the tires bite into the slop. If he got stuck now, he thought, he would never forgive himself.
The ditches had filled even more than when he took the girls to the bus that morning, and the water was spilling over the road. He drove through it, spraying fantails of brown-yellow water.
The highway was in sight, and he made it and didn’t slow down as he turned onto the wet blacktop.
JOE TRIED TO put things together as he drove. He couldn’t. He hoped like hell Marybeth had overreacted to the phone call, but he doubted it. Her intuition was always right on, especially when it came to their girls. The thing about the cell phone, that Sheridan was calling from her cell phone, tipped it.
If that bastard J. W. Keeley had his girls he would kill him, Joe vowed. Simple as that.
God, how sometimes he hated the distances. Everything out here was just so far from the next. Thirty miles to Saddlestring. Twenty-two miles from his old house. Fifteen miles to Nate’s. And thirty miles in the other direction to the first entrance to Thunderhead Ranch. Joe knew enough about Thunderhead and its proximity to the flooding river to realize that there would be only one road still passable, the road to the lower ranch, Arlen’s. The other roads would be flooded. Would Keeley take the girls to Arlen’s place? And if so, why Arlen?
No, Joe thought. He wouldn’t even try to figure out Keeley’s motivation and loyalties. That would come later. Now, he just needed to find the bus.
Even if Marybeth was able to get the sheriff on the first call and the department scrambled, it would be a half hour before they could traverse the length of Bighorn Road in search of the bus. The helicopter was grounded because of the weather.
It was up to him.
NATE STOOD ON the shoulder of the highway wearing a long yellow slicker. His shoulder holster was buckled on over the top, and he stepped out into the road as Joe slowed and stopped.
Nate jumped in and slammed the door. Joe floored it to get back up to speed.
“So we’re looking for a bus,” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“Marybeth said the guy was named Keeley.”
“Yup.”
“Jesus. One of those Keeleys?”
“Yup.”
After a beat, Joe said, “Thanks for coming, Nate.”
“Anytime, partner,” Nate said, sliding his big revolver out of his holster and checking the rounds.
JOE AND NATE passed under the antlered arch with the THUNDERHEAD RANCH sign and plunged down a hill on the slick dirt road.
“There it is,” Nate said, pointing.
The school bus was stalled at the bottom of the hill in the middle of the road. Or what had been the road. Now, though, the river had jumped the dike and water foamed around the bus and into the open bus door.
“It looks empty,” Nate said, straining to see through the wet windshield. The wipers couldn’t work fast enough to keep it clear.
Joe slowed as he approached the bus and stopped short of the water. He jumped out, holding his shotgun. The rear of the bus was twenty feet away, the level of the river halfway up the rear door. The sound of the flooding river was so loud he couldn’t hear himself when he shouted, “There’s nobody on it. They must have gotten out on the other side before the dike blew open!”
Joe visualized a scene in which J. W. Keeley herded the girls through the rising water to the other side, marching them toward the ranch buildings two miles away through the cottonwoods. The vision was so vivid it deadened him for a moment.
He wouldn’t even consider the possibility that they’d all been swept away by the water.
He looked around at the situation. They were helpless.
They couldn’t go around the bus or they’d risk stalling themselves or getting swept away themselves. Joe looked upriver and Nate looked down. There was no place to cross.
“Is there another road in?” Nate asked, shouting at Joe from just a few feet away.
Joe shook his head. All the roads would be flooded, and even worse than this.
He thought about getting to the ranch from the other direction; driving back the way they had come, going through Saddlestring, taking the state highway into the next county and coming back the opposite way. But that highway paralleled the river as well at one point. It would likely be flooded, and it would take hours to get around that way even if it wasn’t.
Joe waded into the water, testing the strength of the current to see if there was any way they could cross. Maybe by shinnying along the side of the bus, using the force of the current to hold him upright against the side of the vehicle, he could get to the other side. He was in it to his knees when something struck him under the surface, a submerged branch or length of wood, and knocked his legs out from under him. He plunged into the icy water on his back, his shotgun flying. The current pulled him quickly under, and gritty water filled his nose and mouth. He could feel swift movement as he was carried downstream. When he opened his eyes he could see only foamy brown, and he didn’t know if he was facing up or down.
Something solid thumped his arm and he reached out for it and grasped it and it stopped him. He pulled hard, and it held-a root-with his other hand. The surface was slick but knotty, and he crawled up it hand over hand, water still in his mouth, trying not to swallow, until his head broke the surface where he spit it out and coughed.
He turned his head to see Nate upstream, fifty feet away, running along the bank in his direction.
Joe righted himself until he could get his feet underneath him. He shinnied up the root until he was out of the water. He hugged the trunk of the old cottonwood like a lover, and stood there gasping for breath.
“That wasn’t a very good idea,” Nate said when he got there.
JOE WAS SHIVERING as they backed the ranch truck out and ground back up the hill.
“There is only one way to get to the ranch,” Joe said, his teeth chattering.
“The river?” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“We’ll die.”
“We might. You want me to drop you off at your house?”
Nate looked over with a face contorted by pure contempt.
“I’ll row,” Joe said. “You bail.”
JOE BACKED THE ranch truck on the side of the garage of his old house and Nate leaped out. It took less than five minutes to hook up the trailer for the fifteen-foot drift boat with the leaky bottom. The boat was filled with standing rainwater, and the motor of the truck strained to tow it onto the highway. Despite losing minutes, Joe stopped so Nate could run and pull the plug on the rear of the boat. They got back on the highway and drove with a stream of rainwater shooting out of the stern of the vessel. Joe wished he had finished patching up the leaks.
“Have you ever taken a boat like this on a river like that?” Nate asked as they backed the trailer up toward the river at the launch site.
“No.”
“This is technical whitewater,” Nate said, looking out at the foamy white rooster-tails that burst angrily on the surface. Downstream was a series of massive rollers.
“Where are your life vests?”
Joe said, “Back in the garage.”
IT WAS A ROCKET RIDE.
Nate was in the bow of the boat, holding the sides with both hands to steady himself. His job was to warn Joe, who was manning the oars, of oncoming rocks and debris-full-grown trees, cattle, a horse, an old wooden privy-by shouting and pointing. Joe missed most of them, rowing furiously backwards and turning while pointing the bow at the hazard and pulling away from it. They hit a drowned cow so hard that the impact knocked Nate to the side and Joe lost his grip on the oars.
Without Joe steering, the boat spun tightly to the right. Joe scrambled on his hands and knees on the floor of the boat through twelve inches of icy, sloshing water, trying to get back on the oars, when they hit the privy.
The shock sent both Nate and Joe falling to the side, which tipped the boat and allowed gallons of water to flow in.
They were sinking.
Luckily, the river calmed and Joe was able to man the oars again. Straining against both the current and hundreds of pounds of water inside the boat, he kept the oar blades stiff and fully in the water and managed to take the boat to shore. They hit a sandy bank and stopped suddenly.
Joe moaned and sat back on his seat. “This isn’t going well.”
Nate crawled back on his bench and wrung the water out of his ponytail. Joe watched as Nate patted his slicker down, making sure he still had his weapon.
“We need a big rubber raft for this,” Nate said.
“We don’t have one.”
They got out and pushed the side of the boat with as much strength as they had, finally tipping it enough so most of the water flowed back out to the river. With the loss of the weight, the boat bobbed and started to race downstream again. Joe held on to the side, splashing through the water, the boat propelling him downstream, then finally launching himself back in. Nate pulled himself in and fell clumsily to the floor.
Joe pointed the bow downriver, and their speed increased. He could hear a roar ahead, a roar much bigger than what they had just gone through.
“Get ready!” Joe shouted.
Nate reached out for the rope that ran the length of the gunwales and wrapped his wrists through it with two twists.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Joe asked. “If the boat flips, you may not be able to get out of that rope.”
“Then don’t flip the boat,” Nate called over his shoulder.
Joe could feel their speed pick up. The air filled with spray from the rollers and rapids ahead. They were going so fast now that he doubted he could take the boat to the bank for safety if he wanted to. Which he did.
THE RIVER NARROWED into a foaming chute. What had two days ago been gentle riffles on the surface of the lazy river were now five- and six-foot rollers. On the sides of the river, trees reached out with branches that would skewer them if they got too close.
They had to go straight down the middle.
Joe knew the trick would be to keep the bow pointed straight downriver. If he let the bow get thrown right or left, the current would spin them and they’d hit a wall of water sideways, either swamping the boat or flipping it.
“Here we go!” Nate shouted, then threw back his head and howled like a wolf.
The bow started to drift to the left, and Joe pulled back hard on the right oar. It would be tough to keep the oars in the water as they hit the rollers, but he would have to. If he rowed back and whiffed-the oar blade skimming the surface or catching air-he would lose control.
“Keep it straight!” Nate hollered.
Suddenly, they were pointing up and Joe could see clouds. A second later they crested, the front half of the boat momentarily out of the water, and the boat tipped and plunged straight down. He locked the oar grips with his fists, keeping them parallel to his chin, keeping the blades in the water.
They made it. Only a little splash came into the boat.
But before he could breathe again, they were climbing another roller, dropping again so swiftly he thought he’d left his stomach upriver, then climbing again, aiming straight at the clouds.
Joe kept the boat straight through seven massive rollers.
When the river finally spit them out onto a flat that moved swiftly but was much more calm, Joe closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.
“Damn,” Nate said with admiration. “That was perfect.”
Joe relaxed his hands and arms and gave in to the terrible pain that now pulsed from exertion in his shoulders, back, and thighs.
“JOE,” NATE SAID, turning around on his bench and facing Joe at the oars, “about Marybeth last year.”
“Not now,” Joe said sharply.
“Nothing happened,” Nate said. “I never should have behaved that way. I let us both down.”
“It’s okay,” Joe said. “I mean it.”
“I wish I could find a woman like that,” Nate said. He started to say more, then looked at Joe’s face, which was set in a mask.
“We’ve got to get square on everything,” Nate said. “It’s vital.”
“Okay, we’re square,” Joe said, feeling the shroud that he’d been loath to admit had still been there lift from him. “Now please turn around and look for rocks. Finding my girls is the only thing I care about right now.”
THE RIVER ROARED around to the right and Nate pointed at something on the bank. Joe followed Nate’s arm and saw the roof of a building through the brush. A moment later, corrals came into view. The corrals were underwater, the railing sticking out of the water. Two panicked horses stood in the corner of the corral, water up to their bellies.
“It’s Hank’s place,” Joe said, pulling hard on the oars to work the boat over to the corrals.
They glided across the surface of the water until the railing was within reach and Nate grabbed it and the boat shuddered to a stop. Joe jumped out with the bow rope and pulled the boat to shore. They tugged until the boat was completely out of the water, so that in case the river continued to rise the boat wouldn’t float downriver without them.
AFTER FREEING THE horses, they slogged through the mud toward the lodge. Nate had his.454 Casull drawn and in front of him in a shooter’s grip. Joe wished he still had his shotgun because he was such a poor shot with his handgun.
As he followed Nate through the dripping trees toward Hank’s lodge, Joe drew his.40 Glock. The gun was wet and gritty. He checked the muzzle to make sure there was no dirt packed into it. He tried to dry it on his clothing as he walked, but his shirt and pants were soaked. He wiped it down the best he could, then racked the slide to seat a round.
Hank’s lodge was handsome, a huge log home with a green metal roof. It looked like a structure that would suit an Austrian prince who entertained his hunting friends in the Alps.
Nate began to jog toward it, and Joe followed. The front door was open. Joe could see no signs of life, and no lights on inside. He wondered if the storm had knocked out the electricity.
Nate bounded through the front door and moved swiftly to his left, looking around the room over the sights on his revolver. He had such a practiced way about his movements, Joe noted, that there was no doubt he had entered buildings filled with hostiles before in his other life.
Joe mimicked Nate’s movements, except he flared off to the right.
It was dark and quiet in the house. It felt empty.
The floor was wet and covered with leaves from the open door. Dozens of mounted game animals looked down on them from the walls. Elk, moose, caribou, antelope, mule and whitetail deer. A full-mount wolverine, an endangered species, looked poised to charge them. A golden eagle, wings spread as if to land, hovered above them.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” Nate said, referring to Hank but looking at the eagle. Nate liked eagles.
Arlen was right, Joe thought. The lodge was filled with illegally taken and poached species. The mounts were expertly done. He knew the work of all the local taxidermists, and whoever had done the mounts was unfamiliar to him. But that was part of his old job, Joe thought. It no longer concerned him.
Nate moved through the living room into a massive dining hall. Joe followed.
Dirty plates covered the table, and a raven that must have flown in from the open front door walked among the plates. The bird stopped and looked at them, head cocked to the side, a piece of meat in its beak. The raven waddled the length of the table until it got to the head of it. Then it turned and cawed, the sound sharp and unpleasant. Nate shot it and the bird exploded in a burst of black feathers.
“I hate ravens,” Nate said.
Joe’s ears rang from the shot in the closed room, and he glowered at Nate.
“Uh-oh,” Nate said. “Look.”
The chair at the head of the table was knocked over. Nate approached it and picked up a red-stained steak knife from the floor next to it.
Joe began to walk around the table when he felt the soles of his boots stick to the floor. He looked down and recognized blood. There was a lot of it, and it hadn’t dried yet.
“I wonder who it was?” Nate asked.
Now Joe could smell it. The whole room smelled of blood.
But there was no body.
They quickly searched all the rooms of the house. It was empty.
As they slogged back to the boat, Joe felt a mounting sense of dread that made it hard to swallow. The river would take them to Arlen’s place next.
“Let’s go get my girls,” Joe said.
THE NEXT SET OF RAPIDS WAS NOT AS SEVERE AS THE big rollers they had been through, and although his arms were aching, Joe kept the boat straight and true and they shot through them without incident. The rain receded to a steady drizzle, although there was no break in the clouds. Because the sky was so dark, Joe couldn’t tell the time. He glanced quickly at his wristwatch as he rowed but it was filled with water and stuck at 8:34 A.M., the exact time the river had sucked him in.
Joe and Nate didn’t talk, each surrounded by his own thoughts. Joe contemplated what they would find at the lower ranch. If he let his mind wander off the oars to the fate of his girls he found it difficult to remain calm. Inside, his heart was racing and something black and cold lodged in his chest. As hard as he tried, though, the faces of Sheridan and Lucy at breakfast kept coming back to him.
He thought: No matter what, there will be hell to pay. THE RIVER NARROWED through two tall bluffs. Although there were no rapids, it was as if the current doubled in speed. Joe could feel wind in his face as they shot forward. The tiniest dip of an oar would swing the boat about in water this fast, so he steered as if tinkling the keys of a piano, lowering an oar blade an inch into the water to correct course.
As the river swept them along and the bluffs receded behind them, Joe started to recognize the country. To the left, a mile away, was a hill that looked like an elephant’s head. Joe had noted it when he brought Sheridan out to Julie’s. They were getting close.
The river widened. The tops of willows broke the surface of the water a third of the way to the edge where the river normally flowed. The thick river cottonwoods began to open up a little, allowing more muted light to fall on the surface of the water.
Because his feet and legs were numb, Joe didn’t notice at first that the boat was sinking. But when he looked down, he saw the water at his ankles. Somewhere, they had knocked more cracks or holes in the hull and the water was seeping in. He hoped they could get to the ranch before the boat filled again. He didn’t want to waste another minute dumping the boat.
Nate started to bail with a gallon bucket. It helped a little, but he was losing the battle.
They rounded a bend and the river calmed for the first time since they’d gotten in the boat. The roar of the water hushed to a whisper. Calves bleated just ahead. The ranch was near.
That’s when Joe saw her. She stood on a brushy hillside on the left side of the bank, hands on hips, thrusting her face out at them with an unfamiliar smile on her face. His mouth dropped open and he let the oars loose in an involuntary reaction.
“Joe, who is that?” Nate asked, pausing with the bucket in midbail.
“Opal,” Joe said, his voice cracking. “Opal Scarlett.”
This was the exact spot described by Tommy Wayman, Joe thought. She was there after all, had been there all along, just as he surmised.
Nate said, “Why in the hell is she standing out in the rain like that?”
“She’s watching the end play out,” Joe said.
“Jesus,” Nate said, screwing up his mouth in distaste.
“Opal!” Joe called out, raising his hand. “Opal!”
She didn’t react. As they passed her, she didn’t turn her head and follow them, but stared stonily at the river.
“She couldn’t hear you,” Nate said.
“How could she not?”
“She’s old and probably deaf. And definitely crazy,” Nate said in awe.
“She’s been here all along,” Joe said, his mind numb.
THEY BEACHED THE boat on the bank with the water level inside just a foot below the sides of the boat. Another ten minutes in the water and the boat would have gone under.
Joe and Nate leaped out, leaving the boat to settle into the mud.
“Should we go talk to Opal? Find out what she knows?” Nate asked, looking from Joe to the ranch compound ahead and back. He was deferring to Joe, a new thing.
“Later,” Joe said. “I don’t want to waste time chasing her down. We can find her after we’ve checked out the buildings. Sheridan and Lucy have to be here.”
Nate gave him a look. How could he be so sure?
Joe didn’t acknowledge it. He just felt they were near.
The side of a fresh embankment had collapsed into the river from the rain. Something stuck out of the dirt of the wall, something long, horizontal, and metal. Nate approached it and rubbed mud away. It was the bumper of a car. Someone had used a front-end loader to bury it.
“Cadillac,” Nate said, rubbing the mud away from the logo.
“Opal’s car,” Joe said. “She buried it so everyone would think she drove away.”
“Why would she do that?”
Joe thought for a moment. “So she could see who won.”
AS THEY APPROACHED Arlen’s house, Joe’s insides were churning and he tried to swallow but couldn’t. He glanced down at the gun in his hand and saw it shaking.
“I’ll take the front,” Nate said. “You come in the back.”
“If you see Keeley,” Joe said, “shoot first.”
“Not a problem,” Nate said.
As they parted, Nate reached out and grabbed Joe’s arm.
“Are you okay to do this?”
Joe said, “Sure.”
“Stay cool.”
JOE KEPT A row of blooming lilac bushes between him and the side of the house as he jogged around toward the back. As at Hank’s house, he could see no lights on inside or any sign of life. A calf bawled in the distance from a holding pen. Drizzle flowed softly through the leaves of the trees and running water sang through the downspouts of the house.
He stepped over a low fence and into the backyard. There was a porch and a screen door. The door was unlocked and he opened it as quietly as he could and stepped inside a dank mudroom. Heavy coats lined the walls and a dozen pairs of boots were lined up neatly on the floor.
The mudroom led to the huge kitchen where Sheridan had described seeing Arlen and Bill Monroe together. Joe skirted the island counter and stood on the side of the opening that went into the family room.
There was an acrid mix of smells in the home-chemicals Joe couldn’t identify, years of cooking residue on the walls, and a sharp metallic smell that took him back to Hank’s dining room: blood.
Holding his weapon out in front of him, he wheeled around the opening into the dining room and saw the Legacy Wall facing him. All the pictures were smashed and some had falled to the floor.
Furniture was overturned. A china cabinet was on its side, spilling coffee cups and plates across the floor. A wild spray of blood climbed the Legacy Wall and onto the ceiling. A pool of blood stained the carpet on the floor. It was a scene of horrendous violence.
“Jesus,” Nate said as he entered the living room from the front and looked around.
Joe called, “Sheridan! Lucy!”
His shout echoed through the house.
Nate wrinkled his nose. “I recognize that smell.”
“What is it?”
“Alum,” Nate said, turning to Joe. “It’s used for tanning hides.”
THEY HEARD A sound below them, under the floor. A moan.
“Is there a basement?” Nate asked.
Joe shrugged, looking around.
They heard the moan again. It was deep and throaty.
Nate turned, strode back through the dining room toward the front door. “I remember seeing a cellar door on the side of the house,” he said.
Joe followed.
OUTSIDE, NATE TURNED and hopped off the front porch toward the side of the house Joe had not seen. They rounded the corner of the front of the house and Joe could see a raised concrete abutment on the side of the house with two doors mounted on top. The mud near the cellar was pocked with footprints leading to it. Someone was down there.
Nate ran to the doors and threw them open, stepping aside in case someone was waiting with a weapon pointing up. But nothing happened.
“Sheridan!” Joe called. “Lucy!”
The moan rolled out, louder because the door was open.
“Come out!” Nate boomed into the opening. “Come out or I’ll come in!”
The moan morphed into a high wail. Joe recognized the sound of Wyatt Scarlett when he had cried months before, after his brothers got in the fight.
Joe pushed past Nate and went down the damp concrete stairs. Nate followed. The passageway was dark but there was a yellow glow on the dry dirt floor on the bottom. The chemical smells were overpowering as Joe went down.
He had to duck under a thick wooden beam to enter the cellar. Nate didn’t see it and hit his head with a thump and a curse.
What Joe saw next nearly made his heart stop.
It was a taxidermy studio. A bare lightbulb hung from a cord. Half-finished mounts stared out with hollow eye sockets from workbenches. Foam-rubber animal heads filled floor-to-ceiling shelves, as did jars and boxes of chemicals and tools.
Wyatt sat on the floor, his legs sprawled, cradling Arlen Scarlett’s head in his lap. Arlen’s eyes were open but he was clearly dead. There was a bullet hole in Arlen’s cheek and another in his chest.
Hank was laid out on a workbench, his cowboy boots pointed toward the ceiling, his face serene but white, his hands palms up.
And there was a man’s entire arm on the floor near Wyatt’s feet, the hand still gripping a pistol. The arm appeared to have been wrenched away from the body it had belonged to. Joe didn’t think that was possible, but here it was right in front of him.
Joe didn’t even feel Nate run into him accidentally and nearly send him sprawling.
Wyatt looked up at Joe, his eyes red with tears, his mouth agape with a silent sob.
“Wyatt,” Joe asked. “What happened here?”
The youngest Scarlett boy closed his eyes, sluicing the tears from them, which ran down his cherubic face.
“Wyatt…”
“My brothers are dead,” Wyatt said, his voice breaking. “My brothers-”
“Who did it?”
Wyatt’s body was wracked with a cry. “Bill Monroe.”
Joe thought, J. W. Keeley.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. He ran away.”
“Is that his arm?”
There was a flash in Wyatt’s eyes. “I tore it out when I saw him shoot Arlen. Took a few hard twists to get it off, but it wasn’t no different than pulling a drumstick off a roast chicken. I thought I killed him last night, after what he did to Hank. But he came back.”
Joe thought: the blood on the wall and ceiling upstairs.
“Wyatt,” Joe said, trying to keep his voice calm but failing in his effort, so as not to upset the big man and cause him to clam up, “Did Monroe have my girls with him?”
Wyatt nodded sincerely. “And Julie too. But not anymore.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re safe,” Wyatt said. “They’re in my shack. Bill told Arlen he was going to hurt them if he didn’t give him money. Julie’s mom is there too.”
Joe felt a surge of blistering relief, although he wondered where Keeley was.
Nate asked, “Why are your brothers down here, Wyatt?”
Wyatt clenched his eyes, shaking his head from side to side. He looked like he was about to explode.
“Nate,” Joe cautioned.
Nate pressed, “Why did you bring them down here?”
Wyatt whispered, “To preserve them. So I could preserve my family. We’re very important here. And I loved them so much, even though they didn’t love each other.”
“Like you preserved your mother,” Nate said.
Wyatt nodded, then looked up eagerly. “Did you see how I made her smile? Not many people knew how she could smile. They know now.”
Joe turned and shouldered past Nate toward the stairs.
“Please stay with him,” Joe said. “I’m going to get my girls.”
HE RAN ACROSS the ranch yard and down the road on legs that felt as if they could go out on him at any time. The scene in the cellar had scorched his soul, and Wyatt had broken his heart.
J. W. Keeley was still out there, as far as Joe knew. As he ran, he held his gun in front of him with two hands and searched for movement of any kind in the dark trees near the ranch buildings. How far could a man go with a wound like that? he wondered. He’d seen deer and elk travel for miles with legs blown off by careless hunters. But a man?
Then a horrible thought struck him as he ran: Maybe Keeley had found the girls.
SHERIDAN’S EARS WERE numb from the drumming of the heavy rain on top of the tin roof of the shack. So numb, that when she heard a cry outside she doubted herself. Just like earlier, when she thought she had heard gunshots outside and even the unholy scream of a man. In both instances, she couldn’t be sure that her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. This time, though, she heard the cry again.
“Is someone coming?” Lucy asked from where she was huddled in the corner of Wyatt’s shack.
“Yes,” Sheridan said, summoning all her courage to approach the window and brush aside the curtains. The glass outside was still streaked with running rain, and the view undulated with the water. A form appeared in the murk outside, a man running toward the shack, crouching, looking around as if he expected someone to jump out at him. She recognized the form.
She stepped back from the window and turned to Lucy, beaming. Everything was suddenly right with the world.
“Dad’s here,” she said.
LIGHTS WERE ON in Wyatt’s shack. Joe called out again for his girls.
He heard, “Dad!” in response. Sheridan. A squeal from Lucy.
The door was locked. He jerked on it and pushed it but it was solid.
“Just a minute,” Doris Scarlett said from inside.
He heard a bolt tumble and the door opened inward. Sheridan, Lucy, and Julie Scarlett were inside, behind Doris. Lucy ran across the floor and bear-hugged Joe around the waist.
Sheridan said, “Boy, are we glad to see you.”
Joe closed the door behind him and pulled both of his daughters to him.
Lucy said, “You’re really wet, Dad.”
Joe sat them down on a couch with Julie. He said, “Tell me what happened.”
Sheridan told the story about Bill Monroe taking over the bus, turning it around, and getting it stuck as they tried to cross the river. Monroe made them get out and wade to the shore, and they all walked through the mud to the ranch. When they got to the ranch yard, Wyatt came out of the cellar and yelled at Bill Monroe to go away. When he wouldn’t, Wyatt charged him and hit him in the head. Monroe ran, cursing, toward the house where Arlen now stood on the front porch. Monroe went inside and Arlen closed the door. Wyatt told Doris and the girls to go to his shack and lock the door and not let anyone in unless it was he.
That’s all they knew, and Joe was relieved. They hadn’t seen what happened inside.
“Have you seen Keeley since?” Joe asked, “I mean Bill Monroe,” he said, to avoid confusion.
“Keeley?” Sheridan asked. “Like April? The same name?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Sheridan and Lucy exchanged glances. “I told you his face was familiar. He has April’s eyes,” Sheridan said to Lucy, referring to her stepsister.
Joe shook his head, then looked at Julie who sat silent and alone at the end of the couch. She had no idea she’d lost her uncle and her father. Thank God her mother was there.
He stood.
“Keep the door locked, just like Uncle Wyatt told you. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Doris said, “Please be careful. Don’t let Bill Monroe find us.”
Her voice trembled as she said it, and Joe could see how terrified she was. “Can’t you stay with us?”
Joe considered it, but shook his head. He couldn’t assume Keeley had bled to death. And even if he had, Joe needed to see the body. “I need to be sure he can’t threaten anyone again,” he said.
“Then can we go home?” Lucy asked.
Joe didn’t ask which home she meant. “Yes,” he said.
ALL HIS THOUGHTS and feelings channeled into one: revenge.
Joe returned to the front porch of the house and studied the concrete. Although rain had washed most of it away, he could still see traces of blood. Nate must have missed it in his haste on the way in. He backed off the porch and looked around on the wet loam. A spot here, a splash there. Headed in the direction of the barn.
It was like following a wounded game animal, Joe thought. He looked not only for blood flecks but for churned up earth, footprints, places where Keeley had fallen as he staggered away.
There was a depression in the grass where Keeley must have collapsed, his shoulder punching a dent into the turf that was now filling with water and a swirl of blood.
Keeley hadn’t made it all the way inside the barn. He sat slumped against the outside door, next to a boat that was propped up against the wall. Joe guessed Keeley was going for the boat when he collapsed. Keeley’s legs were straight out in front of him. He held the stump of his left arm with his right hand, covering the socket tight with bone-white fingers. Still, blood pumped out between his joints with every weakening heartbeat. Joe couldn’t see a weapon on Keeley or near him as he approached. But Keeley watched Joe the whole time, his eyes sharp, his mouth twisted with hate.
“That Wyatt, he is the one I never thought about,” Keeley said. “He is one strong son-of-a-bitch.”
“Yup,” Joe said, remembering when Wyatt snapped the Flex-Cuffs.
Keeley looked up. His eyes were black and dead. “You destroyed my family. My brother, my sister-in-law, my baby girl.”
“What do you mean, your baby girl?”
“She was my daughter,” Keeley said, and his eyes flashed.
“You mean, you and Jeannie…”
“Damned right, me and Jeannie. Ote was gone a lot.”
“So that’s why you did all of this? To get back at me?”
Keeley nodded.
“I did all I could to save April,” Joe said, angry. “We loved her like our own.”
“Horseshit. Not like a father loves a daughter.”
Joe clenched his fists so hard his nails broke the skin on his palms. He wanted to hurl himself at Keeley and start swinging. Instead, he felt his right hand relax enough to undo the safety strap on his service weapon.
“What the hell would you know about being a father?” Joe said. “You were just the sperm donor.”
“Fuck you,” Keeley spat.
Joe stood over him, looking down, his fingers curling around the pistol grip. “Is there any point in talking to you? Telling you I had nothing to do with the death of your daughter or your brother?”
“I know what I know,” Keeley said. “You and Wacey Hedeman were involved in my brother getting killed. You were there when April was assassinated.”
Joe shook his head, speaking calmly. “You were the one who poisoned Wacey then too?”
“Yup.”
“And the cowboy? The one who got shot on Shirley Rim?”
“That one was the best of all.”
Keeley made a cold smile with his mouth but his eyes remained steady on Joe. “I wish I’da taken care of your daughters. I should have. They were right there. I got greedy, though. I got stupid. I wanted to make Arlen live up to his word to pay up.”
Joe squatted so he could look at Keeley’s face at eye level. What he saw disgusted him, terrified him. He thought of what Keeley had done to his family. What he had done to Wyatt. What he could do to him and others if he recovered, as unlikely as that seemed. J. W. Keeley would always be a threat to him and to everyone around him.
“I need a doc,” Keeley said. “Call me a doc. I ain’t got long like this.”
Joe said, “Six years ago Wacey Hedeman was in a situation just like yours. He was down on the ground bleeding. I let him go. It was the wrong decision.”
Keeley studied Joe and sneered, “You got a badge. You can’t just do that.”
Joe said, “Not anymore,” and raised the Glock, pressed it against Keeley’s forehead.
Behind him, Nate called out, “Joe! Don’t!”
Joe pulled the trigger. Keeley’s head kicked back against the barn door and he slumped over to the side, dead. Even Joe couldn’t miss from an inch away.
WHEN JOE STOOD and turned, he saw Nate stumbling across the grass toward him. Nate was hurt.
“The son-of-a-bitch Wyatt coldcocked me when I looked away,” Nate said unsteadily. There was blood on the side of his head.
“Wyatt did that?” Joe asked, his voice disembodied due to what he had just done. He didn’t feel triumphant, or guilty. He didn’t know how he felt yet.
Behind Nate, a curl of smoke came out of an upstairs window of the ranch house. Then another. And the windows lit up with flame inside.
Joe approached Nate, his gun hanging limply at his side. He was numb everywhere. Although he knew what he was watching, it seemed as if it were on a movie screen; it didn’t seem real. He could still feel the sharp recoil of the gun in his hand, feel the shock waves shoot up his arm from the shot. Thought about the way Keeley had simply collapsed on himself and pitched to the side, like a side of beef, the evil spark gone that had once lit him up.
Thinking: Killing is easier than it should be. John Wayne Keeley probably had the same thought.
Then: What has happened to me? How could he have dared to threaten my daughters?
FLAMES WERE LICKING through the windows and front door, the roof was burning. Joe could smell the smoke, hear 120-year-old wooden beams popping inside the structure.
“Where’s Wyatt?” Joe asked, his voice seeming hollow, lifeless.
“I think he got out,” Nate said, now recovered enough to stand next to Joe.
“Nope,” Joe said, pointing. “There he is.”
Wyatt appeared on the side of the house through the smoke. He was hard to see clearly because of the pulsing waves of heat. But it was big-shouldered Wyatt, walking straight toward the house with something over his shoulder.
Opal. Stiff as a board.
Wyatt carried the mount of his mother through the front door, straight into the teeth of the fire.
“My God,” Nate said. “He’s making a funeral pyre.”
“I was sure wrong about Opal,” Joe said, his voice tinny and distant.
Nate said, “Before he thumped me, Wyatt told me his mother died of a heart attack that morning after some guide named Wayman threw her in the river. She died peacefully, and Arlen found her. Arlen buried her in secret because he knew about the will giving Hank the ranch, but Wyatt saw him and dug her up. Wyatt made her into what she always wanted to be-immortal. And what he always wanted her to be.”
“Pleasant,” Joe said.
“Hell of a legacy,” Nate said.
AS DUSK APPROACHED, Joe sat with his girls in Wyatt’s shack. Doris comforted Julie, whispering to her that things would be all right. Julie appeared catatonic. Sheridan reached out to her, held her hand.
The house continued to burn until it collapsed in on itself. The rain stopped and the sky cleared.
Joe was surprised to find out that telephone service was restored to Wyatt’s phone, and he called Marybeth.
“I’m with the girls,” he said. “They’re safe.”
He listened with tears in his eyes as Marybeth cried with joy, and handed the phone to Sheridan and Lucy so they could talk with her.
When they finally handed the phone back, Joe gave her an abbreviated version of what had happened. Since the girls were listening, Joe didn’t tell her about any of the details, only that J. W. Keeley had brought the girls to the ranch, that they’d been saved by Wyatt, and that Keeley and the Scarlett brothers had had a fight which resulted in the house burning down.
The story shocked her into silence.
“There’s a lot more to it, isn’t there, Joe?”
It was as if she knew he’d killed J. W. Keeley in cold blood.
“Yes, there is. But it’s for later,” he said.
She said the sheriff’s office had just called and they were sending the helicopter out. It should be there any minute.
“Is Nate still there?” she asked.
“Yes, but I haven’t seen him recently.”
“You might want to tell him the sheriff is coming,” she said.
Joe agreed and hung up.
JOE COULD HEAR the distant approaching thump of the helicopter as he walked the ranch yard. The smoke from the fire stung his nose and made his eyes tear up.
Nate was gone. So was a drift boat Joe had seen earlier leaning against the barn. And so was J.W. Keeley’s body. Joe guessed it was in the fire, where it would be discovered with the others. Neat and clean.
Joe drew his weapon and threw it as far as he could into the river. His holster followed.
It was crashing in on him now: what had happened, what he’d done, how J.W. had forever welded the fates of the Keeley, Scarlett, and Pickett families together by death.
As he saw Sheridan and Lucy walking toward him from Wyatt’s shack, he thought: But we are the ones who are left standing. Unlike Keeley or the Scarletts, Sheridan and Lucy are still here.
And that was all that mattered.
Sheridan stood close to him and asked, “Are you okay, Dad?”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
“What happens now?”
He could have said, “Everything will be different.” But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled his daughters close to him and waited for the helicopter.