by C. J. Box
“Sheriff McLanahan is not competent to investigate this,” Joe said.
Pope chuckled drily. “Now, I doubt that, Joe. I’m sure he can handle it. The good people of Twelve Sleep County would never have elected him if he was the buffoon you make him out to be. And this is part of the problem, too. It doesn’t help with our community-relations outreach when our people refer to the locals as incompetents. We need all the support we can get, Joe. You need to learn to work with . . .”
Joe punched off and slammed the receiver down with so much force that the earpiece broke off. He couldn’t listen to another word.
Marybeth obviously heard the end of the conversation and the crash and looked in the door as he tried to fit the pieces of the phone back together. Wires were still attached to the pieces.
“It’s busted,” he said, angry with himself.
“I see that,” Marybeth said. “We can get a new phone. But it’s not the phone I’m worried about.”
As Joe pressed the pieces together, the handle shattered and covered his desktop with shards of plastic.
Joe said darkly, “Maybe I need a new job.”
Marybeth said, “Phone repairman is definitely out.”
SHERIFF KYLE MCLANAHAN arrived at Joe’s house at ten-thirty that morning, driving the oldest pickup in the county fleet, his one-eyed Blue Heeler dog occupying the passenger seat.
Joe went outside to meet him.
The sheriff climbed slowly out of his pickup, as if he’d aged twenty years since he left town. The dog scrambled out behind him, and ran through the gate to Maxine so both dogs could sniff each other for a while.
That seemed to be McLanahan’s intent with Joe as well, to sniff at him.
“That’s it, eh?” McLanahan asked, pointing over Joe’s shoulder at the Miller’s weasel on his door.
“That’s it,” Joe said, watching McLanahan pull on his jacket.
“Happened last night, huh?”
“Yup.”
“But you waited until this morning to call.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Woulda helped if you’d called last night,” McLanahan said, entering the yard and shuffling past Joe. “Before the blood dried and all the evidence was fouled up. I suppose you’ve touched the knife handle, and opened the fence, all of that.”
“I’m afraid so,” Joe said, embarrassed.
McLanahan turned to him stiffly. He moved as if he’d just dismounted after a long horseback trek. “D’you know who did it?”
Joe shrugged. “Someone who wants to send a message. You remember the history on that Miller’s weasel.”
McLanahan nodded. “Well,” he said, reaching up and smoothing both sides of his mustache with a meaty index finger in a surprisingly effete gesture, “I ain’t got much to go on, since you already fouled up the crime scene and you can’t tell me anything.”
“Nope, I guess you don’t,” Joe said, frustrated.
McLanahan ambled back toward his pickup. “You let me know if something else happens, all right? Or if you hear anything about who mighta’ done this? You’ll call, right?”
Joe sighed. “I’ll call.”
The sheriff opened the door of his truck to let his dog bound in, then stopped suddenly and looked up at the sky. Joe followed McLanahan’s gaze, puzzled. A V of geese was outlined against a massive cumulous cloud.
“I like to watch the geese,” McLanahan said, as if it were something profound. Then he looked back at Joe and squinted his eyes. “Next time, call me right away. Don’t wait twelve hours, pardner.”
12
“A MILLER’S WEASEL?” ROBEY ASKED, SITTING BACK in the booth at the Stockman bar. “No shit. Where would someone even find one?”
Joe sipped his beer, his third of the night thus far. It was Saturday night. The Stockman bar in downtown Saddlestring was a long, narrow chute of a place that stretched back the entire length of the city block. It was a classic, old-fashioned western bar with dusty big-game mounts on the walls, a dark knotty-pine interior, a mirrored backbar, and an entire wall of ancient black-and-white rodeo photos. Between the bar and the pool tables in the back was a pod of private booths with red-vinyl-covered seats and scarred tabletops emblazoned with local cattle brands, graffiti, and the initials of patrons dating back to the 1940s.
Joe said, “There’s a small population of them in the Bighorns. I transplanted them there myself. Not many people know where they are, or how to find them.”
Robey stared at Joe. “That’s more information than I needed to know,” he said, since what Joe had done was a federal crime. It was illegal to interfere with an endangered species.
The Miller’s weasels were originally discovered in the proposed path of a natural-gas pipeline, shortly after Joe had been named game warden of the district. Their discovery resulted in the deaths of four outfitters and a local care-taker of mountain cabins, and a firestorm that destroyed friendships and relationships and ended about as badly as it could have with Marybeth being shot by Wacey Hedeman. Once the species had been verified, there followed a brief flurry of national and international publicity to Twelve Sleep County that had long been forgotten on a large scale but continued to burble under the surface in the county and the state.
“Odd news about Wacey Hedeman, huh?” Robey said, glancing at Joe and then away from him, as if he didn’t want to press Joe for a reaction.
Joe nodded.
“Is Marybeth okay with that?”
“I think so,” Joe said. “It brought everything back again, of course. The past never just goes away, does it?”
Robey shook his head.
“You couldn’t see the vehicle, read a plate?” Robey asked.
“Just the taillights.”
Robey whistled. “There were a lot of folks who weren’t real happy with you back then. People on both sides of the issue. But it’s hard to believe someone has held a grudge this long, someone you wouldn’t know about.”
“That’s why it bothers me so much,” Joe said. “Right in front of my girls too,” he added, his voice rising. “It really shook up Sheridan. She recognized the animal right off. In fact, she even said she wondered if someone wasn’t threatening her. And that pisses me off, to involve my family like that.”
Robey sat back, his eyes searching Joe’s face. “Let’s hope this was an isolated incident. It’s odd that whoever did this waited six years to get back at you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the timing doesn’t make sense,” Joe said. “But what better way to get me right where I live? I mean, I’m the game warden. What worse kind of thing can someone do than stick a dead animal on my door? And especially that particular animal?”
“Stay alert,” Robey said. “That’s all I can say. I’ll do the same. Maybe one of us will hear something.”
Joe nodded.
“But, Joe, if you figure out who did it, please run it by me or call the sheriff before you do anything. Don’t go trying to take care of it on your own, okay?”
Joe signaled for two more beers from the bartender, not answering yes or no.
“Joe,” Robey said, “it’s no secret the situation you’re in with your new director. The word is out that he’s watching every move you make. He’s even made a couple of discreet calls to my office, and the sheriff’s office, to try to dig something up on you. He doesn’t know we’re friends.”
“I’m not surprised,” Joe said. He’d suspected Pope might be investigating him on the sly. That was the way he operated. Again, Joe felt the politics of his job crushing down on him. It was not what he had signed on for. He was battling within a system he didn’t like or respect anymore.
Robey said, “There are some things you’ve been involved in that probably won’t help you if this Pope guy digs too deeply. Like about Nate Romanowski? Or a certain Forest Service district supervisor whose death was remarkably ruled a suicide a few years back?”
Joe knew it was true. Robey knew more than he probably wanted to. As county prosecuto
r, Robey was aware of things that he likely wished he wasn’t. But as a good man, one who valued actual justice as opposed to process, Robey had chosen simply not to ask certain questions of Joe when he had a right, and a duty, to ask them. Because of that, Joe was fiercely loyal to his friend.
THE TOPIC TURNED to the purpose of the meeting in the first place.
“It’s the curse of the third generation,” Robey said, shaking his head and absently rolling the beer bottle between the palms of his hands. “I don’t know if there is a worse thing in the West than that.”
Robey paused and glanced up at Joe. His face looked haunted. “Did I ever tell you the main reason I left private practice and ran for county attorney?”
“Let me guess,” Joe said facetiously. “Would it be . . . the curse of the third generation?”
“That would be it,” Robey said. “It’s a pattern you can pretty much predict. When I first got my license, I was involved in way too many of these cases, and it just about killed me. It works this way: A matriarch or patriarch establishes the original ranch, and passes it along to the firstborn. The heir inherits land and power, and it feels different to him because he didn’t have to fight for it or earn it. It’s his by birthright, but he’s close enough to the founders that the initial struggle still resonates. But from then on, everything starts to get comfortable. This works the same way with family-owned companies. But if we’re talking about ranches, and we are, it gets more personal than if it was a shoe factory, because on a ranch everyone lives together and eats together. Sometimes, the second generation is smart and appreciates what they’ve got and how they got it, and plans ahead. You know—they form corporations or partnerships or something.” Robey paused to take a long pull of his beer before resuming, and Joe marveled at how engaged his friend was with the subject, how much he had obviously thought about it, how it concerned him.
“So,” Robey contined, “the third generation inherits a going concern but they really don’t give a shit about how they got it. The third generation splinters. A couple of the sons and daughters want to keep the place, and the others want to do something else. So when it comes time to figure out who owns what, the lawyers are called in to battle it out. It’s like couples who divorce without considering the best interests of the children because they’re so bitter. But instead of children, we’re talking about the ranch itself. There is only so much land in the world, it’s finite. Especially good, scenic, or productive land that can’t speak for itself. The litigation gets so messy that sometimes it’s unbelievable. Other people want that land, that asset. So we’ve got brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. You can really see the worst in human nature in a situation like that, and you just want to grab those idiots and knock their heads together and say ‘Wake up! Look what you’re doing to a place your ancestors put all of their sweat and blood into!’”
Robey rose and pretended he was grasping litigants by their necks and smashing their heads together. Joe looked around to see if anyone at the bar was watching. Fortunately, they weren’t.
Joe said, “And when it comes to our situation here with the Scarletts and the Thunderhead Ranch, we’ve got the curse in spades, right?”
“It’s like the curse has gone nuclear,” Robey said. “In this case, the original ranch was established in the eighteen-eighties, which was when most of the big ranches got going in our part of the country. Before statehood, and before homesteaders started spreading their wings. For the Thunderhead Ranch, a man named Homer Scarlett left West Virginia and used a small inheritance to buy what was then a small five-thousand-acre ranch on the river.”
“That would be the original Thunderhead Ranch?” Joe asked.
Robey shook his head. “Nope, the Thunderhead was the ranch next door at the time. Homer Scarlett, the great-grandfather, acquired it through somewhat dubious means—I think he won a big chunk of it in a poker game or something—and added it to his own holdings. He picked up five or six other small ranches along the way, and kept adding on. He was ruthless, from what I’ve heard. But he was also a hell of a businessman, because he thrived when others around him were going broke. As he added property, he put them all under the umbrella of the Thunderhead Ranch, I guess because he liked the name. Pretty soon, Scarlett owned sixty thousand acres outright and another hundred thousand acres on long-term lease from the government. He used his influence to make Saddlestring the county seat, and for a while there they almost renamed this town Scarlettville. Did you know that?”
Joe shook his head. “No. How do you know all of this?”
Robey laughed wearily. “Because I’m on the museum board and a few weeks ago we took a tour through the new Scarlett wing that’s scheduled to be dedicated next month. In fact, your mother-in-law was on the tour. It’s a damned nice addition to the building, and there is a special room to honor the family. Opal insisted on the display, and provided the photos and documents.
“Anyway,” Robey continued, “Homer had a son named Henry and two daughters named June and Laura. In those days, it was a lot simpler than it is now, and Henry assumed control of the ranch because he was the only male heir. There wasn’t any squabbling about control, even though the daughters legally had the same claim to it. Henry Scarlett took it over in the mid-nineteen-thirties, and the two daughters got nice little cottages on the ranch. June and Laura never married, so they produced no heirs. Henry had a couple of sons, though, named Wilbur and Dub. Dub died in combat at Normandy, so Wilbur had a clear line.”
“And Wilbur married Opal,” Joe said. “Who eventually had three sons.”
“Right.”
“So when did Wilbur die?”
“Early 1970s,” Robey said. “He was driving a truck across an old bridge over the river on the ranch when the bridge collapsed. I read about it. He was pinned inside the vehicle, and drowned in six inches of water.”
“And Opal got everything?”
Robey signaled for two more beers. “The whole thing lock, stock, and barrel. If Wilbur specified which one of his sons got the place, or if he had plans to divide up the ranch—no one knows. There wasn’t a will.”
“So where are we now?” Joe asked.
“We are in limbo, ownership hell,” Robey said. “Arlen claims Opal assured him the ranch would be his because he’s the oldest. Hank says Opal told him the same thing, and that she never trusted Arlen. Opal has two lawyers here in town, and both thought the other took care of the estate planning, but it turns out neither did. The ranch is a corporation with Opal Scarlett as its sole owner, with no management agreement, no will, no nothing.”
“What’s it worth?” Joe asked, thinking of the vast acreage, the meadows, the buildings, the twenty miles of riverfront.
“Tens of millions,” Robey said. “An appraisal will need to be done, but we know we’re in the mid-teens. If it were put up for sale, there would be buyers from all over the country and the world. These days, all the rich corporate guys want to own a ranch.”
Joe whistled.
“Until Opal’s proven dead and there’s a court order—or a will is found—nothing can be done to establish ownership or a succession plan,” Robey said. “Those brothers just continue to live out there in conflict. They could decide to sell the place and pocket the money, or one could buy it outright from the other. But in order to do that, they’d need to sit down and talk like human beings. Instead, they’ve both hired lawyers, accountants, and soldiers of their own, and they’re preparing for battle. My fear is that the war won’t make it as far as a courtroom, that it’ll start breaking out all over this valley.”
In the meantime, Robey said, the case against Tommy Wayman was also in limbo. He told Joe that although Tommy had confessed to tossing Opal in the river, the lack of a body prevented him from filing charges. In a legal holding action, Robey had persuaded Judge Pennock to order Tommy to stay in the area and check in weekly until the situation could be resolved.
Joe said, “This is about a lot mo
re than the money, isn’t it?”
Robey looked quickly around the room to see who had entered since they started talking and that no one appeared to be eavesdropping. He leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said, “Joe, Opal was a damned monster. That’s what I’m finding out, the more I dig into it. She played those two brothers against each other all of their lives, telling one he was the favorite and that he’d get everything, denigrating the other, and vice versa. No wonder Wyatt is nuts, if he grew up with all of that going on around him. Arlen and Hank each really, honestly believe it is his personal destiny to control the ranch, and to continue the Scarlett legacy. That’s what they both call it, with a straight face, the ‘Scarlett legacy.’ Even Wyatt uses that term, easy as pie. According to Hank, Opal distrusted Arlen so much that she hired a third lawyer in secret to draw up a will giving Hank the whole place, but the lawyer was instructed not to come forward until Opal was declared dead. Hank says he’d rather ‘Mother’ show up than have her declared dead, of course, but if she doesn’t, he’s absolutely confident the ranch will be his. That’s how crazy these brothers are.”
“A third lawyer?”
Robey laughed, clearly not believing there was one. “Hank claims it’s Meade Davis. You ever hear of him?”
Davis was one of Saddlestring’s oldest and most prominent lawyers. So prominent, in fact, that Joe couldn’t recall his ever taking a case. Davis was involved in real estate, convenience stores, and he owned the cable television company.
“Davis winters in Arizona,” Robey said. “He isn’t back yet. We’ve tried to track him down but his phone’s disconnected and the registered letters we sent were returned. We’ve got a request in with the sheriff down there to find him, but so far no luck.”
Joe sat back, sipped his beer, thought of the implications. Robey was clearly agitated.
“So Wyatt is out of it for sure?” Joe asked. “It’s completely between Arlen and Hank? And Wyatt is okay with that?” He thought of Wyatt’s tears on the floor of the sheriff’s office; the heartbreak of a giant.