by C. J. Box
"I still haven't filed my recommendation," Joe said evenly, "but I'm going to recommend that the concept not go forward unless you install some gates or bridges so the wildlife can migrate. We can't have a situation where the game is forced to cross the highway to get to lower ground. That would be dangerous to drivers and to the herds."
Something dark and cold passed over Ennis's face, as if Joe had double-crossed him. It was the same expression Joe had briefly seen when Stella entered the meeting room the week before.
"You're fucking kidding me," Ennis said in a tight whisper. "You're kidding me, right?"
"Nope," Joe said. "It's the same recommendation Will Jensen was going to make, as you know. I found his last notebook where he came to that conclusion."
Illoway reached for Ennis's arm, but Ennis pulled away, his eyes narrowing into slits.
"Don ..." Illoway cautioned Ennis. "Now is not the time." Turning to Joe, Illoway said, "You know, if native species are allowed into the village they could infect our pure meat stock through interaction. I'm sure you're aware of that."
Joe shrugged. "Sure, it's possible. But I don't think you can have a perfectly controlled environment in the middle of wild country. A wise man once told me that real nature is complicated and messy." He enjoyed saying that, but tried not to smile.
"Who was that?" Illoway asked; he looked offended by the thought.
"Smoke Van Horn," Joe said, "the night before I shot him."
"I thought you were smarter than Jensen," Ennis spat. "He was nothing but a philandering drug addict. He was an insect compared to the size and scope of this project."
Joe looked at Ennis and took a sip of his drink. "How do you know he took drugs?"
Ennis looked like he was about to explode. Joe wanted to see it happen, see what the man said and did when he was enraged. Only the entrance of the vice president and his wife averted the concussion. Ennis turned away to greet the man, but before he did he looked over his shoulder and said, "We're not through here."
"No, we're not," Joe said evenly. "You and I have a lot to discuss."
Illoway looked at Joe and shook his head sadly. "What are you trying to do here? And what did you mean when you said we knew what Will Jensen's decision was going to be?"
"Oh," Joe said, his voice calmer and more measured than he felt. "I think you know the answer to that."
HE FOUND STELLA in the living room, with her back to the bar, sipping from a tall glass. She was well dressed in a crisp white billowy shirt, a short black skirt, and knee-high black boots. For some reason, he assumed her toenails were painted red. She seemed amused by the sight of him, amused by the evening in general. He noticed that she giggled out loud when one of the trophy wives, who was straining for a look at the vice president in the other room, accidentally dropped a cracker covered with some kind of soft white cheese on the leg of her cream-colored pantsuit.
"I'm glad you came," she said when he joined her.
"Your husband isn't," Joe said.
"What was going on in there? It looked like you were trying to bait him."
"I was," Joe said.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
Joe smiled. "I never do. I just bump around sometimes until I hit something."
She finished her drink and handed the glass to the bartender. "Another gin and tonic, please. And what would you like?"
"I have a drink."
"Then have another." She turned around. "Ed, will you please get my friend a bourbon and water?"
Ed looked up. He was taller than Joe, his broad face impassive, his eyes challenging. Joe had obviously broken up a story Ed was telling Stella before the pantsuit incident, and he resented it.
"Ed once skied down the face of the Grand," she told Joe, her eyes widening. "Only twelve people have ever done it."
"Eleven," Ed corrected.
"Ed makes a dozen," she said, and Joe realized she was poking fun at the bartender, but Ed didn't get it. Instead, he puffed out his chest while he poured, straining the buttons on his shirt.
"That's pretty impressive," Joe said, but his mind was still on Don and Pete Illoway, how close he'd come to getting Ennis to blurt something.
She added, "He's got pictures he'll show you. He showed them to me within five minutes of meeting him."
Now you're pushing it, Joe thought. But Ed was easily flattered. He made the drink and handed it to her. "Here you go, Mrs. Ennis."
"And don't forget the bourbon and water for Joe here," she said.
"Yeah," Ed grunted.
Joe and Stella exchanged glances. She was repressing a smile. Gesturing toward the sliding glass doors, she asked, "Have you ever seen the sun set on the Tetons?"
"Oh," Joe mused, "about a dozen times so far."
"Hmpf."
"But I need some air. Thanks for the drink, Ed," Joe said, leading Stella toward the sliding glass doors.
"Make sure he didn't spit in it," she laughed. "Ed's sweet on me."
"Aren't we all?"
"It's my gift to boys," she said, smiling, flirting, but shooting a look at Joe that had just a little bit of fear in it.
THE DECK WAS clear of guests because they were all in the great room meeting the vice president. Joe and Stella walked to the corner of the deck, out of the light. Joe followed the trail of her scent through the thin outdoor sweet smell of sage and pine.
"It's a little cold," she said, putting her drink on the railing and hugging herself with her arms. "Don't you want to meet the vice president?"
"Maybe later," Joe said.
"We're going whitewater rafting tomorrow," Stella said. "It will probably be the last time we're able to do it this year before the snow starts flying. The original plan was to take the VP as our guest so Don could sell him on the idea of buying a place in Beargrass, but the Secret Service saw the stretch of river this afternoon and all of the places somebody could shoot at him—not to mention the class four rapids—and put a kibosh on the whole idea. Would you like to come with us instead?"
"That's a nice offer," Joe said, "but I'll pass."
"You should come along anyway. It's the last trip of the year. And maybe the last time for me for a long time," she said ominously.
"What do you mean?"
He could see her eyes glisten in the light of the stars. "Don's about to replace me for a newer model," she said. "I can just tell. The other day he looked at me across the table and said, 'Did you know you have some gray hairs?' He said it in the same tone he uses when he looks at the odometer and says, 'Ninety thousand miles.' That means we'll have a new car within the week.
"He doesn't have her in the wings yet," she said, "but it won't take him long. Don always wants the best, and, well,
I'm getting up there in years. His trophy isn't so shiny anymore. I always knew it would happen. That's why he had the prenup, after all. I knew it would be a short ride. But I was determined that it would be a short, fun ride. With lots of white-water rafting."
Joe looked away, into the darkness of the trees beyond the deck. He could see very little, but he felt something inside him, a kind of warm surge. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Who else can I tell?" she asked. "Ed? Pete Illoway? One of the trophy wives in there? My mother would just say, 'I warned you about him.'"
"But you never left him," Joe said. "Instead, you had a fling with Will Jensen. I think maybe you like all of this"— he gestured to the house—"a little more than you want to admit."
"That's cruel, Joe," she said in a flat voice.
"Yeah," he said, "it is. But I'm not in a very charitable mood right now. I'm missing my wife and my family more than I can tell you. I can't wait to get back to them. Marybeth is my best friend. When I'm with you, I feel like I'm cheating on her. And I hate feeling that way. I'm no substitute for Will, Stella. That's just one of the things I've figured out tonight."
Joe stood in silence, not wanting to look at her. He knew she was crying, and it bothered him.
But he couldn't embrace her, not yet.
"Stella?"
She roughly wiped away the tears on her cheeks and looked up at him.
"Why did you murder Will Jensen?"
"Oh, God," she said, as if he'd slapped her. Her eyes were wide now. She looked scared.
"I know it was you," he said. "I knew it was someone, by the way the gun was fired. Then tonight, before I came out here, I figured out that Will had been drugged, and how it was done. I didn't know it was you who killed him until I talked to some old guy walking his dog. He said he saw you enter Will's house that night after he talked to Will. The neighbor didn't hear the shot, but when he looked out on the street after midnight, your car was gone."
She hugged herself tighter and rocked a little. The surge he had felt inside earlier got hotter. His arms and chest were tingling, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate. Something was happening to him.
"Don't hate me, Joe," she said finally. "I loved that man. I loved the fact that he was real, that he was ordinary. He was a good man, like you."
Joe's legs were getting weak. He leaned against the railing so he wouldn't sway.
"I didn't know they were drugging him. I didn't know until this morning, when you told me at breakfast that the doctor found traces of drugs in you. Then I did some checking with my doctor. He said that drugs like Valium and Xanax can make someone who is already depressed turn suicidal, especially if the victim doesn't know he's being drugged. The doctor told me someone else had been asking about the effects of these drugs earlier in the year— my husband. Don wanted to know what they would do to a person. Don told the doctor he suspected an employee, but obviously he had another purpose in mind. All I knew was that Will was getting worse, and acting out. He was humiliating himself. People were starting to make fun of him. He lost his family and he was about to lose his job, and it broke my heart. He was such a good man.
"When we were up at the state cabin," she said, "he was normal again for a day. He felt guilty being there with me, but he was normal. I thought I had broken through to him. Then he started to shake and get sick. I now know he was suffering withdrawal from the drugs, but he didn't know that and neither did I."
Joe felt hot fingers reach up through his neck, pictured his brain being gripped like a softball. He tried to focus on Stella's words, but they kept slipping out of his grasp.
"When I found him that night he was in terrible shape," she said, sniffing back tears. "His gun was on the table and he couldn't even move. He had thrown up on himself. I guess he thought if he ate all that meat he would flush something out of his system, but it didn't work. My heart was aching for him. He told me I was the only person he loved, but he couldn't take it anymore. I begged him to let me take him to the hospital, but he wouldn't go. He was pathetic, this fine, decent man. This man so unlike the men I had always known."
Joe grabbed the railing with both hands to steady himself, looking out into the darkness. His eyes burned, Stella's words suddenly loud, pounding against his head.
"Twice, he tried to put the gun in his mouth, but he was too far gone. I was crying hysterically, but I got the gun from him and I told him I loved him and I did it for him," she said, the words coming out in a rush. "If I'd known the reason he was in that condition was because my husband ... that Don was shoving Will out of his way and getting back at me at the same time ..."
She looked away from Joe and gasped. Groggily, Joe turned to see what she saw. He now knew that he had been drugged, that Ed, or the bartender before Ed, or Pete Illoway, had slipped something into his drinks. There was a roaring in his ears, and he couldn't focus on what Stella was saying or on the figures who now stood at the sliding glass door. He heard Don Ennis say, "Stella!" very sharply and saw the vice president, who was next to Ennis, look from Don to Stella to Joe, his reticence causing the Secret Service agents surrounding him to shoulder their way through the door onto the deck.
Joe launched himself forward, nearly falling, and hit Don Ennis square in the nose with a looping roundhouse right, snapping the developer's head back against the sliding door, which shattered, cascading glass onto the carpet inside and the deck outside. Just as quickly, Joe was tackled and overwhelmed. The last thing he saw was the redwood of the deck, winking with shards of glass, rushing up to meet him.
TWO HUNDRED AND fifty miles away, under the same stars and slice of moon, an SUV with Virginia plates was aimed at the lip of a remote canyon called Savage Run. The driver, who had coaxed it up there over some of the roughest country he had ever seen, eased the gearshift into drive and stepped out as the vehicle rolled forward, picked up speed, and vanished over the edge. It took four full seconds for the sound of the crash to reach the top.
THIRTY-FIVE
A harsh shaft of sun from a skylight burned red through his eyelids, and Joe awoke covered in sweat with a screaming headache on a metal-framed cot in the Teton County jail. He turned his head to the side, away from the light, and the movement created a wash of nausea that rose in him. He staggered to the metal toilet in the corner of the cell, threw up, and leaned against the cold cinderblock wall, breathing deeply. His mouth tasted like he'd been sucking on pennies.
"Morning, sunshine," a Secret Service agent said, standing outside his cell. Joe recognized him as the one he had first seen in the sheriff's office.
Joe looked at his wrist, but saw a pale oval of skin where his watch should have been.
"What time is it?" he croaked, noticing they had also taken his belt, boots, and everything in his pockets.
"Noon."
"Man," Joe said, "my head is killing me."
"You took a few lumps," the agent said. "By the way, you popped your stitches last night so the doctor sewed you up again."
Joe raised his arm and saw the dried bloodstains on his clothes, then raised his shirt and looked at the new bandages. There was no mirror in the cell, but when he rubbed his unshaven face he felt several cuts and bruises, and his bottom lip was swollen and sore. Boy, he thought, if Marybeth could see me now, she'd be so proud.
"I'm Agent Cameron" the man said, "and you, my friend, are in a shitload of trouble."
Joe looked over at Cameron, the the words setting him back.
"What do you have against the vice president?" Cameron asked bluntly.
"Jeez ..." Joe moaned, "I've got nothing against him."
"Then why'd you go after him that way?"
"I didn't go after him," Joe said. "I went after Don Ennis."
Cameron shifted, peering at Joe through the bars.
"Yeah," Cameron said, "that's what we thought. But Mr. Ennis tried to make the case that you were attacking the VP and he stepped in front of him to protect him from you."
Joe said, "You were there, weren't you? You know it didn't happen that way."
"We wouldn't have let it happen that way," Cameron said. "But maybe you were swinging for the VP and hit the wrong guy?"
"I hit who I was trying to hit," Joe said.
Cameron showed a slight smile. "Yeah, it was obvious you were after him and not the VP. I was just testing you. But Mr. Ennis seems to call a lot of the shots around here, and I think he would like you to stay in this jail cell a lot longer."
Joe reached up with both hands and smoothed his hair back. There were lumps on his scalp too, and he winced. "Have I been charged with something? Can I talk with the sheriff?" Joe asked.
"I don't think the sheriff is back yet," Cameron said. "He had to leave early this morning because there was some kind of accident on the river. Apparently, someone drowned in the whitewater."
Joe almost didn't make the connection, but when he did he said, "Oh, God."
"They're looking for her body downriver, I guess," Cameron said.
Joe closed his eyes tight and slid to the floor.
"Was she worth punching her husband and landing in jail?" Cameron asked.
Yes, Joe thought, yes she was.
JOE SAT AT a conference table in the sheriff's off
ice with Randy Pope, Trey Crump, and Tassell. His hands were handcuffed and on the table in front of him. The skin on his knuckles, where he had hit Don Ennis, was peeled back and scabbed over.
Trey was seated next to Joe. "I came over as soon as I heard. Mr. Pope called me last night."
"Does Marybeth know?" Joe asked. "I haven't been allowed to make a call."
Trey raised his eyebrows sympathetically. "I called her this morning."
Joe looked down. He could not imagine what Marybeth must be thinking. "How did she take it?"
"Not well," Trey said, "but I told her we'd figure a way out of this."
He leaned into Joe. "I heard about what happened with Smoke Van Horn. I know you're not pleased about what you had to do, but I'm damned proud of you, Joe. After that bear, you had me worried."
"Me too," Joe confessed.
Tassell cleared his throat. He looked wrung out and angry. "I'd like to remind everyone here that Mr. Pickett is under arrest for assault, so I'd appreciate you not having side conversations. Letting him out of the cell to talk with you is a courtesy."
"Thank you," Joe told Tassell. He looked at Trey, said, "Thanks for telling Marybeth that, but I did hit the guy. My only regret is that I didn't shoot him—"
"Joe," Trey cautioned, interrupting, "watch what you say here."
Joe was struck by the wisdom of that and went silent.
"We might have a way to get you out of this," Pope said.
Joe turned to him. Pope sat on the other side of the table with Tassell.
"I talked with Don Ennis an hour ago at the hospital," Pope said. "He was very distraught, as you can guess. The poor guy lost his wife this morning. But he did say he'd consider dropping the charges if we would transfer you out of here."
"Was he in the boat when it happened?" Joe asked.
Pope looked back, confused. "What difference does that make? Didn't you hear me? He said he'd consider dropping the charges."
"Who was in the boat?"
Pope angrily slapped the table and addressed Joe's supervisor. "Trey, we have a terrible situation here, as you know. We could have one of our game wardens charged with aggravated assault—the second employee in this same district to get arrested. If that happens, it will look like the governor has completely lost control of this agency. I risk my reputation to get this guy out of it, and he doesn't seem to care!"