by C. J. Box
"I'm the husband," he said. "My name is Joe Pickett."
The woman said she would get the surgeon but only if Joe would stay exactly where he was.
"I'll stay here for about a minute," Joe said. "If he isn't out here by then, I'm coming in."
The nurse looked him over, sizing him up. "I'll get the doctor," she said.
Joe paced. Through the thick windows covered by blinds, he tried to see what was going on in the OR. He could see movement and light; a half-dozen people in green suits like the nurse wore were standing side-by-side with their backs to him. Marybeth must be on the table in front of them. What were they doing to her? The thought of his wife in that room with all of those unfamiliar people around her disturbed him. Was she bleeding? Broken? Crying?
Joe had never liked hospitals. They brought out something mean in him. He had made an effort all of his life to avoid going in them. Even when Marybeth had been in one to have Sheridan and Lucy, he struggled with-himself to be in the room with her when she delivered. It wasn't the blood or illness or weakness that turned his stomach. It was his memories of being in a hospital when he was very young, visiting his mother after she fell down the stairs. He must have been around six years old at the time. Looking out at him from her hospital bed, her face had been mottled and blue, her bottom lip was split and stitched back together, and her arms were in casts. He remembered how the nurses would smile at him like they were sorry for him instead of his mother, and how they would look at each other when he told them she had fallen down the stairs while he was sleeping. It was much later before he learned that she had never had the accident, that it was the result of a drunken fight with his father outside of the Elks Club. Nevertheless, he hated the forced quiet, the antiseptic smell, the artifice of the nurses who patted his head and looked at each other, and the doctors who thought of themselves as Olympian gods. He shivered when he heard the sounds of nurse's shoes squeaking down the hall as they walked.
A short, wiry doctor came out of the operating room and walked directly to him. The man's scrub suit was flecked with dark blood and his latex gloves were tinted pink from being immersed in it. The doctor slipped his mask down to his neck. Joe introduced himself.
"You may want to sit down," the doctor said by way of introduction.
"I'm okay," Joe said calmly. He tried to brace himself for the absolute worst.
"She's stable but still in danger," the doctor said bluntly. "The baby is lost.
It might have been possible to save him, but it wouldn't have been the wisest thing to do considering his condition. We had to make a choice between saving your wife and saving a very damaged fetus."
Joe stepped slowly backwards until he could rest against the wall. Otherwise, he was afraid he might slump over. The moment passed.
"Are you all right?" the doctor asked.
Joe couldn't think of anything to say, so he nodded that he understood.
"The bullet entered below her sternum, glanced off of her rib cage, and exited her lower back. It may have injured her spine. We don't know how extensive that injury will be."
Joe appreciated the fact that the doctor was being absolutely straight with him. But he struggled with the magnitude of what he was being told. His baby--his first son--was lost, and his wife might not be able to walk again.
"When can I see her?" Joe asked, his voice a whisper.
The doctor sighed. He started to say something soothing and procedural but the look in Joe's eyes made him reconsider. Then: "They're finishing up in there now. She's sleeping. They should be done and have her back in bed in intensive care within the hour. You can see her then, but don't expect her to be awake."
Joe nodded. His mouth was dry, and it hurt to swallow. The doctor approached him and put his hand on Joe's shoulder.
"There's no easy way to tell you these things," the doctor said. "Be strong, and love her back to health when she's out of here. That's the best advice I can give you."
Joe thanked him, but he really wanted to tell him to go away. He didn't want to be seen by anyone right now. He didn't want nurses clucking over him like they had when his mother was in the hospital. The doctor seemed to sense what Joe was thinking and went back into the operating room.
Joe turned and stumbled down the hallway until he found the men's bathroom. He went in it, turned out the lights, and wailed for the first time in his life.
***
Wacey knew just enough about the telephone lines in rural Twelve Sleep County to be dangerous. What little he knew he had learned from a couple of U.S. West telephone company engineers who had once needed his help. They were up from Denver to do some repairs and upgrading of the microwave station that served Saddlestring when they had run into a cow moose who wouldn't let them near the building. The microwave station was on the summit of Wolf Mountain. Between the microwave dish and the metal shack, they said, stood the moose. They showed Wacey the dent in the door of their pickup from her first charge. They had never experienced anything like it before.
Wacey had explained to them that moose couldn't see very well at all, and when panicked, they sometimes charged at whatever blur threatened them. He said it was likely that the moose had a calf somewhere up there in the bushes near the station and she was protecting her young.
He had driven to the summit with the engineers, but they never saw the cow moose. What they found instead was the stillborn body of her calf, still warm, the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around its neck. The engineers had probably appeared just after the calf had been born, when the cow was crazed with rage.
Wacey stood in the front yard of Joe Pickett's yard and looked up at the lone red light on the top of Wolf Mountain where the microwave station was. He had volunteered to stay at the crime scene until morning when Sheriff Barnum would send McLanahan or someone to relieve him. Under the front porch light, he looked at his wristwatch. Then he looked back at the mountain behind the house, where he was certain Sheridan was hiding.
While he was on the summit that spring, the engineers showed Wacey the circuitry inside of the shack and the thousands of telephone wires that fed into the main trunk line. He had noted where the trunk line emerged from the station to begin its descent into Saddlestring. He had thought at the time that a single high powered rifle bullet into the base of the trunk line would disable the telephone system for the entire valley. It might take days to repair, but Wacey was concerned only about tonight.
He had a .30-06 in his gun rack. He would chance it that Sheridan wouldn't even know he had left.
***
It was 11 o'clock but seemed much later when Joe put coins into the telephone in the hospital lobby to call Missy Vankeuran. He had silently rehearsed to himself what he was going to say, how he was going to tell Sheridan and Lucy what had happened and try not to scare them into hysterics. It was time to be calm. It was time to be fatherly.
It took a few moments of ringing before Joe realized he had absently dialed the telephone number to his house on Bighorn Road. He found the Eagle Mountain number in his notebook and dialed. While he did, he wondered how it was possible that Barnum had already cleared the scene and left no one to watch the house.
Maybe Barnum was incompetent after all. Maybe Wacey was right. Maybe Wacey would be a welcome addition as sheriff.
His mother-in-law picked up the telephone on the second ring. Her voice sounded angry and cold.
"Yes?"
"Missy, this is Joe."
First there was a pause. Then: "Oh, hello, Joe. You surprised me. I was expecting it to be Marybeth." Her reaction caught him off guard.
Joe was confused. Then he realized that no one had contacted her yet. But Wacey had said he would do it ... "I called your house over and over at dinner time," Missy said, speaking fast. "It was busy every time. Every time. Then all of the sudden there is no one there. Marybeth said she would be home in an hour. That was four hours ago, Joe. My dinner is ruined!"
"Missy ..."
"I haven't co
oked, actually cooked in ages. It took me all afternoon to make my famous lasagna. Marybeth used to love it. She said she was looking forward to it. I'm starting to think staying with her isn't such a good idea. For either of us, Joe ..."
To Joe it sounded like Missy had a good start on the wine she must have had planned for dinner. He was angry.
"Missy, goddammit, will you stop talking?"
Silence.
"Missy, I'm calling from the hospital in Billings."
Silence.
"Marybeth has been shot. Someone shot her when she went to the house. They don't know who did it. The doctors say she's going to make it, but the baby isn't ..."
There was more silence, and he realized that the line was dead. He wasn't sure she had heard any of it. It didn't seem possible she could have hung up on him.
He dialed again. There was no ringing. He dialed again, and a recording said that the number he was calling was not in service at this time. He tried Sheriff Barnum's office. The line was dead as
well.
***
Joe couldn't sit. He couldn't stand still. He tried several times to read a magazine from the stack in the waiting room, but found he couldn't concentrate on the words or even remember what the article was about. He approached the nurses' station to check if he could see Marybeth yet.
The nurse was polite but annoyed. She pointed at the clock on her desk and reminded him he had asked her the same question not ten minutes before. Joe could not recall time ever moving so slowly. It would still be at least a half an hour before Marybeth would be wheeled out of the operating room.
He tried three more times to reach Missy and Barnum. Then he tried Sheriff Barnum's office again. He couldn't believe his bad luck. The phone lines all over the county were apparently down.
So he wandered the hallways, looking at his wristwatch every few minutes. The halls were all the same: heavily painted light blue cinder-block walls, dimmed fluorescent lighting, occasional black marks from gurney wheels on the tile floors, nurses at every station looking him over from behind their desks. He located the room where Marybeth would be. Her name was written on a card outside the door and the ink was still wet. She would be alone inside, he noted. She wouldn't have a roommate. He walked down the hall to the maternity ward and heard babies crying. He found himself staring at a young mother still plump and flushed from delivery. She was cradling a tiny red baby in her arms, waiting for a nurse to wheel her to her room. The scene pole axed him. In a daze, he ascended a set of stairs to the next level.
Joe wandered aimlessly but conveyed a sense of purpose that he didn't really have, and no one stopped him. When he glanced into the rooms he was passing, he saw there were older people on this floor. People waiting to get better or die. A television set was on and Jay Leno was interviewing someone.
A Billings police officer stood casually at the nurses' station and leaned on the counter. He didn't give Joe a second glance as Joe walked past. The policeman was talking in low tones to an attractive nurse who seemed interested in what he was saying but was feigning boredom. Joe noticed the policeman's empty chair near a room at the end of the hall, and he walked past it. The card on the wall of the room read C. Lidgard.
Joe took a few steps before it hit him. He stopped and looked down the hall over his shoulder. The policeman had his back to Joe, and he could hear the nurse giggle. Joe hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked into the room. He eased the door shut behind him.
Clyde Lidgard lay in the dark room illuminated by a small bulb mounted in the headboard. Joe hardly recognized him. Lidgard looked like he was 80 years old and was little more than a skeleton. His skin was waxy and yellow and harshly wrinkled. Webs of tubes sprang from his arms looking like the white roots of a neglected potato. His head was turned on the pillow toward the door, and the light from the bulb infused his feathery silver hair with a glow.
Joe stared at Clyde Lidgard's face as if willing him to wake up out of his coma.
"Tell me what you know, Clyde," Joe said. "Just tell me what you know."
When Clyde Lidgard's eyes slowly opened, Joe stood riveted to the floor.
Lidgard's eyes were rheumy and caked with mucus. Joe wasn't sure Lidgard could even see out of them. It didn't seem possible that Lidgard was actually awake or had any idea that Joe was in the room. Maybe Lidgard normally did this while he slept.
"Can you hear me, Clyde?" Joe asked softly. He half-expected the nurse and police officer to burst in at any moment and throw him out.
Lidgard's lips pursed as if he were sucking on a candy. "You're dry. Do you want some water?" Joe said, pouring some from a plastic pitcher into a small paper cup. He held the cup to Lidgard's
lips, and Lidgard drank. His eyes followed Joe's movements.
"Do you know who I am?" Joe asked quietly.
"Warden." The response was so weak that Joe almost didn't hear it.
"Warden." Joe replaced the pitcher and bent over Lidgard's face. He smelled the odor of decay on Lidgard's breath. It was the same smell a deer or an elk had after it had been shot.
"That's right," Joe said.
"I'm Game Warden Joe Pickett from the Saddlestring District. You need to tell me what happened up there in that elk camp."
Lidgard's eyes closed momentarily then opened again. "I'm going to die now," Lidgard said.
"Not before you tell me about the elk camp," Joe persisted. "Not until you tell me about the Miller's weasels."
There was a tiny reaction on the corner's of Clyde Lidgard's mouth, as if he were trying to smile.
"I took some good pictures of them weasels," Lidgard replied. "But I never got to see if they turned out. Instead, I died."
Joe gave Clyde Lidgard some more water. It was still quiet in the hallway.
"You talked for a while and cleared your conscience. A huge weight lifted off of you," Joe said.
"And then you died, feeling much better about yourself."
"I did?" Lidgard asked.
"Starting now," Joe said.
When Joe Came out of the room, the policeman was still leaning over the nurses' counter, and Clyde Lidgard was dead.
***
The first thig Joe noticed as Marybeth was rolled out of the operating room was that, compared to Clyde Lidgard, she looked remarkably healthy. He found her hand under the sheet and squeezed it as he walked alongside the gurney. The emotion he felt when he looked at her flat bandaged belly brought tears to his eyes.
They made him let go of her hand for a moment while they situated her bed in the room, but when the nurses moved to set up the IV bottle, he went back to her. They told him they had just given her some powerful sedatives and that she would be asleep until morning. But the drugs hadn't kicked in completely yet, because for a moment, she awakened.
"You're going to be all right," Joe said, forcing a smile. "You're going to make it and be just fine."
She seemed to be looking to him for some kind of reassurance. He hoped he was providing it.
"Marybeth, do you know who did this?"
"I couldn't see. All I know is that it was a man."
"Is there anything you can tell me?"
"What about my baby?" Her voice was thick.
Joe shook his head.
She turned her away, her eyes closed tightly as she cried. He squeezed her hands. Suddenly, Marybeth was looking at him, frantically searching his face. Her eyes were wide.
"Where's Sheridan?" she asked. "I told her to run."
PART SIX
Like blind men building a mechanical elephant, each of the players picked up a hammer and wrench and, working separately and often secretly, fashioned gears, soldered wires, and pounded sheet metal. One built a leg, another the tail, a third the trunk. Then suddenly this creation, like a dreadful android, sprung to life, catching its builders in its gears as it lurched, uncontrolled, toward unknown destinations, without purpose, limit, or remorse.
--Alston Chase, In a Dark Wood, 1995, commentary on the
creation and unintended consequences of the Endangered Species Act
Sheridan had never been so cold, so hungry, or so alone.
Once the fire down in the woodpile had died out, utter darkness had descended over the mountain. She rolled herself into a tight ball against the base of the boulder and tried to tuck the horse blanket around her body, but it was too thick and too small to cover her completely. The boulder, the dirt, and the air were all cold. She wished she had brought the backpack with her because it was filled with scraps of food. This was the first time she had ever missed dinner.
She wished she could do something routine, like change into her pajamas or brush her teeth, so she could at least feel kind of normal. She didn't know what time it was, but she knew it was late. There was no moon and the cold, hard stars were relentless.
Night animals were out. Something it sounded like a dog by the way it walked had come down the Sandrock draw from above but had stopped when it either smelled or sensed her. With an abrupt thump-thump-thump, it had reversed course and crashed back through the brush up the mountain.
It had scared her at the time, because for a moment she thought it was Wacey. But she was pretty sure it had been a coyote. There were lots of them up here, according to her Dad. They had eaten her puppy and her kitten, after all.
She had slept for a while, but she didn't know how long. A sharp crack--a gunshot from somewhere up in the mountains-had jarred her awake a few minutes ago. She listened for more shots but heard none. She crawled on top of the boulder again and looked down. The woodpile, now coals and ashes, glowed deep red. The lights were still on in the house but she couldn't see the man moving around inside or out. She would feel better if she knew where he was. For a moment, she thought
about going back down.
She wished she had some way to defend herself if he found her. She assessed what she had--the horse blanket, a barrette, two pennies from her pockets. She didn't even have a stick. If she were in a movie, she would be able to fashion something clever out of those items to beat the bad guy. But this wasn't a movie, and she wasn't that clever. She was cold--and scared.