by Box, C. J.
He said, “So we’re looking for a man of means with a motive to kill me who can afford a weapon like that—and his minion.”
Joe nodded, although he wasn’t ready to call the spotter a minion yet.
“That should narrow things down,” the judge said as he handed Joe’s phone back.
“Yup.”
“Give me a minute to think about it.” The judge sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. Joe had seen the gesture many times in court just prior to his making a ruling.
Hewitt dropped his hand to his lap and looked up. “I think I know who it might have been.”
Joe raised his eyebrows while he waited for a name. But he noticed that the judge’s attention had strayed to something behind him.
Joe turned to see that Dr. Arthur had paused just inside the door. He was standing there in his white coat, reading a display on an iPad.
Dr. Arthur was in his midthirties and he was trim and fit, with thinning rust-colored hair. He’d come to Saddlestring from a critical care hospital in eastern Montana, and was the pride of the hospital foundation’s recruiting committee, who had issued a press release about how, prior to coming to Wyoming, Arthur had done stints in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Joe didn’t know him well, but he’d met him a couple of times in the last year at community events Marybeth had wanted to attend. He seemed competent and Joe hadn’t heard disparaging things about him—the last emergency room doctor had been accused of unnecessary pelvic exams on young women who’d arrived at the ER with broken arms or legs.
Medical doctors in small isolated communities like Saddlestring were recently regarded as a kind of royalty, Joe knew. It was difficult to convince doctors to forgo the security and structure of narrowly defined specialties in large urban environments and move to rural locations where they were obligated to work more hours for less pay and become general practitioners. Dr. Arthur was an exception, and his reputation had apparently spread to the point that people made appointments with him from hundreds of miles away. Rumors were already circulating that he was such a fine doctor that he’d soon be lured elsewhere and Twelve Sleep County would once again have to begin the search for a new one.
“Am I interrupting something?” Dr. Arthur asked Joe and Judge Hewitt.
“You’re the doctor,” Hewitt said. “I think you’re allowed to enter a hospital room.
“Did you bring me good news?” Hewitt asked Arthur. His tone had returned to its usual intimidating cadence.
“I wish I could say yes,” Arthur said while keeping his eyes on his tablet. It was obvious to Joe that Dr. Arthur was cowed by Judge Hewitt and didn’t want to meet his withering glare.
“Then what is it?” Hewitt demanded.
“As you know, we removed all of the remaining bullet fragments and repaired what internal damage that we could, but her heartbeat is weak and irregular,” Arthur said. “We may need to increase her oxygen.”
“Then do it, for God’s sake,” Hewitt snapped. “What are you waiting for?”
“I’ll order it right away,” Arthur said.
Hewitt asked, “Did you FedEx the bullet fragments to the state lab like I asked?”
Dr. Arthur said he had.
Joe was puzzled. “Just fragments?” he asked them. “Not an intact slug?”
Arthur nodded.
“Why do you ask?” Hewitt demanded of Joe.
“I do a lot of necropsies on big-game animals,” Joe said. “I realize that’s different, but a bullet does the same damage to a deer or elk that it would to a human. It mushrooms on impact and burrows through flesh and organs. Sometimes it hits a bone and deflects its angle. But I’ve rarely seen a bullet disintegrate within a carcass. Sometimes I find it whole after digging around, but it’s usually caught just under the hide after passing through the body. The hide is tough and elastic and the round is out of energy by the time it gets there and gets trapped.”
Dr. Arthur shrugged. “I haven’t operated on a lot of gunshot wounds in my career, but I can tell you that this bullet fragmented.”
“Why would that happen?” Hewitt asked Joe and the doctor.
Arthur shrugged again. “Maybe it was a unique round. Maybe it was designed to fragment.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Hewitt said.
“Neither have I,” Joe agreed. Then he asked the doctor, “Was there enough of the bullet left to identify the caliber?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Arthur said. “Maybe it could be pieced back together by an expert, but that’s out of my field.”
“Damn,” Hewitt said. “Another impediment to the investigation.” Then to Dr. Arthur, “Thank you. Now get that oxygen going.”
Dr. Arthur spun on his heel quickly and exited the room. Joe guessed it was unusual for the doctor to be ordered around like that by a patient or the spouse of a patient.
“I’ve heard good things about him, but he may turn out to be an incompetent quack,” Hewitt said sotto voce to Joe. “I may have to airlift Sue to Billings for decent care before that man kills her.”
Judge Hewitt paused to reconsider his words. He said, “At the same time, I don’t want to be the one to run him off. He might actually know what he’s doing, unlike our sheriff.”
Then: “I seem to be surrounded by incompetent fools.”
Then: “Dennis Sun. He’s rich enough to have one of those ultra-long-distance rifles and I know he thinks he’s quite the marksman. Plus, he’s got a crew of assistants around him at all times and one of them could be his spotter. He’s had a bug up his ass for me after I took away his hunting privileges. So go talk to that son of a bitch, and if he doesn’t have a good alibi you need to string him up.”
Joe winced. It made at least some sense to talk to the movie producer, and he was on his list of suspects. But string him up?
“Don’t tell the sheriff what you’re doing,” Hewitt said. “He’d just figure out a way to throw a wrench in it. Let’s keep him out of this.”
*
COUNTY ATTORNEY Duane Patterson was in an observation room down the hall from the ICU and Joe poked his head in as he passed by. Dr. Arthur was in there as well. The two of them were in the midst of an animated but hushed conversation while Arthur probed through Patterson’s scalp with his fingers, no doubt checking the wounds from the glass. Patterson sat on top of a recliner bed in the clothes Joe had seen him in that morning.
Joe heard the doctor emphasize the words “oxygen” and “asshole” and Patterson glared at him while he spoke. Joe thought it was unprofessional for Arthur to discuss his other cases with a patient, if that was in fact what he was doing.
“Now I’m interrupting,” Joe said to them.
They stopped speaking abruptly and Arthur quickly said, “Just making my rounds.”
Joe had assumed that.
“I’m trying to convince him to release me,” Patterson said to Joe. “There’s no reason for me to be in here taking up a perfectly good bed.”
“How’s he doing?” Joe asked the doctor.
“Cranky,” Arthur said. “But not as cranky as the last one.”
“Welcome to my world,” Patterson said. Then, to Dr. Arthur, “So can I go?” He seemed unduly angry, Joe thought.
Arthur probed through Patterson’s hair thoroughly but gently. He said, “There are a couple more slivers we’ll need to take out. But after that I see no reason to keep you here.”
Patterson sighed impatiently. Something Dr. Arthur had said or done had obviously set him off. Joe was curious what it was.
“Do you need a ride to your house?” Joe asked Patterson. He intended to brief the prosecutor on both the sheriff’s theory and the discovery on the hill.
“My office, maybe,” Patterson said. “I’ve got a ton of work to do.”
“I’ll give him a lift,” Arthur said to Joe. “My shift’s just about over.”
Joe thought it was a kind and personal gesture.
“After we increase S
ue Hewitt’s oxygen, of course,” Arthur said with a wan smile.
Patterson said to Arthur, “I wish you’d spend more time with Sue than on me. I’m fine.”
“First things first, Mr. Patterson,” Arthur said. “I can handle more than one patient at a time. That’s what I do here.”
Joe clamped on his hat and told Patterson, “I’ll catch up with you later.”
He made a note to himself to remember to ask the prosecutor what his problem with the doctor had been.
ELEVEN
DENNIS SUN LIVED WITH HIS THIRD AND MUCH YOUNGER wife on a five-thousand-acre ranch outside of Winchester and it took Joe twenty minutes to get there. He took the exit off the interstate, cruised through the small town, and noted that no one on the street took a second look at him in his beat-up WYDOT pickup. He felt like he was operating undercover.
Sun had purchased the ranch ten years before after the worldwide success of an action-thriller starring Bruce Willis. The movie had been the high mark of Sun’s career and subsequent films had been panned by critics and avoided by American audiences, but, Joe had heard, they did well enough in Asia that Sun continued to work. Joe hadn’t seen any of the movies, although Sun had premiered the last two—a fantasy about a Genghis Khan–type conqueror and a space thriller set on the rings of Jupiter—in Saddlestring for area audiences.
The producer was short and compact with darting eyes. He used different accents at different times, depending on which country he’d visited last. He was an eccentric who wore scarves even in the warmest weather, but he was embraced by the local art community because he was the only Hollywood figure most of them had ever met and he lived part-time in Twelve Sleep County. Sun raised beefalo on his ranch—a hybrid of bison and Hereford cattle—and he had a small herd of large exotic draft horses that had been left over from the Genghis Khan movie. Joe knew about the unusual mix of livestock because the beefalos had flattened a barbed-wire fence and frightened a grazing elk herd, and someone had called the Game and Fish Department to shoo them back. Sun had been on location somewhere in Eastern Europe at the time.
Dennis Sun had done extensive construction at his ranch headquarters when he was flush with cash and converted one outbuilding into a private screening facility and another into an editing studio. A large hangar on the property had stored his airplane and helicopter until Judge Hewitt ordered them seized for his poaching crimes.
Until Joe had arrested the man for killing deer and elk on his ranch two years before, he hadn’t met him in person. Sun had been apoplectic when Joe handed him the citations. He couldn’t believe that it was possible to be arrested for harvesting big game on his own property, and although Sun was a well-known and outspoken progressive in his politics who gave large contributions to big-city socialist candidates, he’d accused Joe and the state of Wyoming of acting like “anti–private property totalitarians.”
Joe had explained that in Wyoming the wildlife belonged to the state, not the landowner. As he did so, he thought he sounded just like an anti–private property totalitarian.
Joe was sure that Sun wouldn’t be excited to see him again.
*
HE DROVE HIS PICKUP to a stop under an elk-antler archway and a locked gate that served as the entrance to Sun’s ranch. Joe pulled to the side, got out, and picked up a weathered telephone receiver mounted on the inside of a stout post.
After thirty seconds, someone picked up the other end.
“Sun Ranch headquarters,” said a bored young male voice.
“I’m Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett and I’d like to talk with Mr. Sun, if he’s around.”
“Who?”
Joe repeated it.
“Hold on. He’s out back.” The phone was dropped with a clunk.
Five minutes later, the man came back on. “He says you can go piss up a rope.”
“Look,” Joe said, “I’m not here to arrest him for another violation. I just want to talk to him.”
“Do you have a warrant to come on the property?”
“No, I don’t. But I do know a judge who would sign one in a heartbeat if I called him. Mr. Sun knows exactly who I’m talking about.”
“Hold on.”
Again, another long wait. Then: “Mr. Sun says to stay where you are until I can come pick you up and escort you on the property. He also said to tell you that he plans to videotape your conversation with him so you can’t lie about it later.”
“I don’t lie,” Joe said, offended.
“Stay where you are and leave your weapons in your vehicle,” the man said before he hung up the phone.
Joe sighed, shook his head, and unbuckled his holster. He thought that if Dennis Sun knew what a poor shot he was, he wouldn’t have even asked that he leave his .40 Glock behind.
*
TEN MINUTES LATER, as Joe leaned back against the grille of the pickup with his arms folded, a new-model full-size SUV appeared from a bank of aspen trees a half mile away. It approached at a faster speed than the dirt entrance road warranted, and when it skidded to a stop on the other side of the gate, a roll of dust washed over Joe so he had to close his eyes.
There were two profiles behind the tinted-glass windshield, and neither appeared to be Sun.
The passenger jumped out and punched numbers into a keypad that opened the gate. He was in his midtwenties, deeply tanned, thin and angular, with tight black jeans and a man bun. He did not look like a ranch hand.
After the gate was open, Joe introduced himself and extended his hand.
The man looked at it and said, “I’m Renaldo Bloom. I’m Mr. Sun’s personal assistant. You’re supposed to get in the car and we’ll drive you to him.”
“I’ve never met an actual personal assistant before,” Joe said.
Bloom shot a withering glance to Joe and gestured toward the SUV.
Joe got in, closed the door, and sat back. The vehicle was much nicer and cleaner than Joe’s borrowed pickup and it smelled of leather upholstery and Bloom’s body spray. The driver was around the same age as Bloom, but he hadn’t introduced himself or turned around.
“Are you the personal assistant’s personal assistant?” Joe asked the driver.
“He’s a team member,” Bloom answered for him.
“How big is the team?”
“Please,” Bloom implored. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Mr. Sun is waiting for you.”
Joe nodded.
They drove across the meadow into the aspen grove and out the other side. Joe noted a small herd of beefalos grazing near the tree line toward the mountains. The creatures were leaner than cows, dark brown in color, with dangerous-looking horns.
As they neared the ranch headquarters, he observed a long narrow chute-like clearing that stretched from a set of tables and bench rests into the distance. Metal tree-like devices were set up at intervals down the length of the chute until they were too distant to see.
“That looks like a long-distance shooting range,” Joe said, “with targets set up every hundred yards. How far does it go?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re the assistant.”
“I work for Mr. Sun in other ways,” Bloom sniffed.
“Did all of the members of the team attend the same hospitality training seminar you did?” Joe asked.
Bloom pretended he hadn’t heard Joe’s question.
“So Mr. Sun is a long-range shooter?” Joe asked.
“Mr. Sun has a lot of abilities,” Bloom said. “You’ll have to ask him what he does.”
“What does he shoot?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I don’t care for guns and I’ve never touched one.”
“You live in the wrong place,” Joe said.
Bloom sighed. He was obviously annoyed with Joe’s comments and questions.
The driver slowed after he entered the headquarters complex and pulled in next to an identical SUV in a parking lot on the side of the main house.
Sun’s home was a ramb
ling two-story Victorian structure with gables and a low sloping roof that extended to cover a large screened-in porch. The outside was original to the rancher who had owned the property and built it in the 1940s, but the antennae and satellite dishes mounted on the side revealed it to be surreptitiously high-tech. Joe admired Sun for keeping the exteriors of the home and outbuildings authentic while gutting and modernizing the interiors.
“Follow me,” Bloom said to Joe.
As he climbed out, Joe saw Dennis Sun standing on the porch behind the screen. He wore a flowing white puffy shirt, a long scarf, and a battered straw cowboy hat. Behind his left shoulder was an attractive woman with long straight dark hair. She rocked a very young baby in her arms.
Bloom opened the screen door to the porch for Joe and gestured that he should go inside.
“Hello, Mr. Sun. I’m Joe Pickett. I’m with the Game and Fish Department.”
“I remember you,” Sun said without a smile.
“I’m Becky Barber,” the woman said. “Or Becky Barber Sun, if you prefer.”
“My wife,” Sun said. “And my sweet little daughter, Emma.”
“I’m pleased to meet you both,” Joe said.
Becky Barber Sun looked oddly familiar to Joe, although he was sure he hadn’t met her before. She had a square jaw, lush mouth, and wide-spaced hazel eyes. Her skin was white and flawless.
“Let’s go inside,” Becky said to Sun. “It’s a little breezy out here for the baby.”
Sun looked squarely at Joe while he apparently contemplated inviting him inside his home. Then he said, “Please, come join us.”
Joe followed. When Sun gestured toward a hard-backed chair just inside the doorway, Joe removed his hat and placed it crown-down in his lap.
Sun walked behind a large glass coffee table, but didn’t sit down on the couch behind it. Instead, he turned on a small digital video recorder mounted on a tripod and aimed it squarely at Joe. A tiny red light on the face of the device indicated it was recording.
“This is for my protection,” Sun said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t trust authority. I hope you understand.”