Breaking Point

7

Vehicles were coming up Hazelton road with their headlights on toward the Roberson lot as Joe drove back down the mountain, against the stream. More sheriff’s department vehicles, local cops, another highway patrolman, and pickups and SUVs from the Forest Service and BLM. Several of the units looked like rentals from Saddlestring Municipal Airport, Joe thought, and he guessed they contained EPA, FBI, and other law enforcement who had arrived on the 6:40 flight from Denver. The drivers of the rentals didn’t wave back as he passed them because, he assumed, they were unfamiliar with local custom where everybody waved at everybody simply as an acknowledgment for sharing the road. He couldn’t recall seeing such a massive assemblage of state and federal employees before on one road, even the year before, when Nate Romanowski was on the loose and the county was being littered with bodies.

He’d clapped Reed and Coon on the shoulder after he’d read his messages and told them to call him if he could be of any use. The scene was crowded and getting worse, and Joe could see no reason for staying around. The tent had been put up, and portable lights flooded the small lot. No additional bodies had been discovered in the hole, although the excavators did uncover a briefcase and the wallet badges of the two murdered EPA agents. Either the killer had removed the identification and tossed it into the hole with the bodies, or the agents themselves had pulled their IDs and died with them in their hands. The wallets confirmed the identification of the bodies even further.

The first message on Joe’s phone was from Marybeth, asking him to pick up April at the western-wear store on his way home. The second and third were from Biff Burton and Bill Haley from other corners of the state.

Burton’s message read: Lisa Greene-Dempsey. Calls herself “LGD.” Don’t know a damned thing about her or where she came from.

Haley’s said: Lisa Greene-Dempsey. The Gov has really lost it this time. Twenty-two weeks to my retirement. Counting the hours.

So Bill Haley knew of her, Joe thought. He planned to give the other game warden a call later that evening.

The fourth was from Lisa Greene-Dempsey herself, although the number was listed as “unknown.” It read: LGD here, Joe. I’m on my way up w/ Gov. Rulon. I look forward to meeting one of our colorful wardens. Call me.

“Colorful?” Joe said aloud.

He hesitated, then punched CALL. He was relieved that he got her voicemail. Her phone was out of range because she was likely in the state plane with the governor, flying up from Cheyenne. He haltingly said he looked forward to meeting her as well, and closed the phone.

Joe pulled into an empty space on Main in front of Welton’s Western Wear, one of the oldest retail stores in operation in Saddlestring. Because it was dark outside but all the lights were on inside despite the WE’RE CLOSED, PARTNER sign, the big display windows allowed anyone passing by to look over the jeans, boots, hats, and long-sleeved shirt display and into the store itself with the clarity of an aquarium.

He saw April right away, perched behind the counter, beaming at a couple of local boys on the other side. The boys were dressed identically in the unofficial uniform of Wyoming: T-shirts, baseball caps, faded jeans, belts with big buckles, and athletic shoes or scuffed boots. One of the boys said something, and April threw her head and hair back and laughed in what Joe thought was a provocative way. The boy who didn’t tell the joke punched the other one hard in the chest, so it wasn’t tough to figure out who the jibe had been aimed at.

Daisy spied April and whined, and her tail whumped the back of the truck seat.

“Okay, April,” Joe said, “come on,” hoping April would look out and see him waiting. He didn’t want to have to go inside and roust her and possibly create a situation with the two boys.

Joe knew why two teenage boys would be in the store after hours, and it didn’t have anything to do with perusing the Cinch shirts or Ariat boots. April was a stunner. She wore a short skirt with a tooled belt, tall red cowboy boots, and a top too tight to be subtle. And when she tossed her hair back that way. . Joe didn’t like it.

The week before, another boy who looked the same as these two had driven his pickup to their house to take April out to a movie. Joe had taken the boy aside and whispered in his ear: “I have a rifle, a shovel, and ten acres of land, son.” The boy had her back by ten.

Joe tapped on his horn, and the three teenagers inside glanced out. Joe flashed the boys with his cab-mounted spotlight and watched them recoil. April rolled her eyes and shooed them away, then gestured to Joe to wait for a moment while she closed down the store.

As the two boys walked past Joe’s truck, they looked over at him sheepishly.

“Naw, I haven’t met her,” Bill Haley told Joe, who was waiting for April to lock up and come out of the store. The cell connection between the two game wardens was scratchy and poor. “I’ve just heard things.”

“What things?”

“That she’s a do-gooder with grand ideas about, and I quote, ‘dragging the agency into the twenty-first century.’”

Joe paused. “That might not be all bad, Bill.”

“Hell, Joe,” Haley said, “I’m still struggling with the twentieth century.”

Joe laughed.

“Seriously,” Haley said, “I hear she considers herself progressive. She thinks the agency is a good-old-boy network, and she wants to shake things up.”

Joe shrugged. “We could use a little shaking up from time to time.”

“Maybe, but I’m too old and set in my ways for that. I’ve been around a while and I remember a couple of other bomb-thrower directors in the past. You weren’t around when there was a move to rename us ‘conservation officers’ or, worse, ‘resource managers.’ Back then, I just figured I could outlast them, and I did. This time, I’m tired and I just want out. Those types are wearing me down, Joe. I’m an old goddamned game warden and a good one, and that’s all I ever wanted to be.”

“Gotcha,” Joe said. “Where did the governor even find her?”

“I heard it was his wife,” Haley said slyly. “The First Lady has lots of friends in the smart set, I hear. The Gov owes her a couple, from what I understand.”

“Hmph.”

Joe wasn’t as plugged in to the gossip in Cheyenne as Bill Haley was, but he did recall phoning the governor’s office once and having the telephone answered by Stella Ennis, who had once tempted Joe himself. Stella had been named chief of staff, and she claimed she was sitting on the governor’s lap at the time. Stella compounded the problem when a reporter from the Casper Star-Tribune asked her about her qualifications to be chief of staff and she answered, “Have you seen these lips?”

It was a joke, but according to rumor, the response didn’t go over well with the First Lady.

“All I know,” Haley said, “is it’s time for me to move on and leave it to you younger guys. Things are changing, and I’m not changing with them.”

“I’m not that young,” Joe said, and as he did, April sashayed across the sidewalk and swung into the passenger seat.

“No kidding,” April said, listening in. “You’re practically fossilized.”

Joe shushed her, and said good-bye to Bill Haley.

As they passed the impressive hulk of the Saddlestring Hotel on the corner on the way to Bighorn Road, Joe said, “There it is.”

April grunted something, preoccupied with text messages on her phone.

April’s transformation from a moody, sullen, almost scary teenager into a bouncy and fashionable cowgirl had come so suddenly Joe and Marybeth were still reeling from it. It was almost as if she were trying on a new persona, Joe thought, like taking a new April for a test drive to see if she liked her. He was cautiously optimistic it might stick. Better a cowgirl than a Goth or Emo, Marybeth told him, pointing out that it had been two months since their foster daughter had worn all black or painted her mouth and nails the same color.

It could be worse: much worse, she’d said.

Joe had agreed, and still did. But the trouble with cowgirls, he knew, was the cowboys who came with them.

It was full dark and sultry when Joe pulled into his driveway and turned off his engine.

“Who’s here?” April asked, gesturing toward the ten-year-old Ford Explorer parked in front of the house. It was parked next to Hannah’s dented sedan.

“That’s Pam Roberson’s rig,” Joe said.

“What’s she doing here so late?”

Joe said, “There’s a lot going on with her husband.”

Joe heard talking from the kitchen table as he entered the house and took off his hat and boots in the mudroom. Daisy scrambled between his legs to engage Tube in a welcome-back wrestle-off in the middle of the front room, and Joe unclipped his Glock and placed it near his crown-down Stetson on the top shelf.

He took a deep breath before going farther. The small house seemed even smaller with all three girls home for the summer, plus Hannah and her mother. Every flat surface, it seemed, was cluttered with books, backpacks, water bottles, DVDs, magazines, and electronics. The entire place smelled of hair products.

April went straight to her bedroom and closed the door behind her without a word to anyone, as was her custom. Sheridan and Lucy shared the bedroom across the hall, but both seemed okay with the arrangement. Neither wanted to room with April, although they didn’t say so directly. Marybeth had let the girls sort out the sleeping arrangements under a parental philosophy she described to Joe as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Joe found Marybeth, Sheridan, and Pam Roberson sitting at the kitchen table, drinking iced tea. All three looked up expectantly, and Joe’s eyes lingered on Pam for a moment, trying to read her. She looked wan and exhausted, and thinner than usual, although she’d always been trim. Pam had an angular weathered face, high cheekbones, and thick shoulder-length strawberry hair feathered into an early-eighties look. She wore a sleeveless top and jeans, and her shoulders were freckled. Joe thought she was almost attractive-probably had been when she was in her teens and twenties-but looked and dressed as if she had never left that period.

Like her husband, she was plainspoken and blunt; smart, honest, and hardworking-if not well educated. Joe recalled her saying once she’d attended college for a couple of years but then dropped out when she’d met Butch. She wanted her daughter to get a degree. She doted on Hannah, whom she urged to strive high and accomplish something. Pam was intensely involved in school activities and was always there when the school administration needed a chaperone for a field trip or a dance, or cookies for a bake sale. She was one of those behind-the-scenes mothers who made everything work.

Although she’d been to their home many times to drop off and pick up Hannah, Joe rarely saw her because it usually happened during his working day when he was out in the field. It seemed odd to see her sitting with such familiarity at his kitchen table, and he guessed she must have done it frequently over the past two years of their daughters’ friendship.

“I heard they found two bodies on our lot,” she said, finally.

“News travels fast,” Joe said.

“Dulcie,” Marybeth said, holding up her cell phone. “She’s kept me in the loop.”

Joe nodded, wondering if Marybeth realized that by being kept in the loop she was now sharing information with a suspect, or at least the wife of a suspect.

“I heard you saw Butch today,” Pam said to Joe.

“I did.”

“Did he. . seem okay to you?”

“You haven’t heard from him yourself?” Joe asked.

Pam shook her head no and lowered her eyes.

Before proceeding, Joe glanced at Sheridan, who was watching and listening intently. He didn’t want her to become involved, just like he never wanted his family to become too involved, although they did. Sheridan knew the look and rolled her eyes.

It was an awkward time for them all, Joe knew. Sheridan had lived away at college for a year by herself, and now she was home. She was an adult, yet she wasn’t, and it was tough for all of them to sort out what exactly she was. She liked to eat with the family when her mom cooked-usually-but often went into town to be with her friends. She often declared her independence, yet was dependent when she wanted to be. Joe wasn’t sure yet how to act around her, and he thought Sheridan wasn’t sure what her role was, either. They had been extremely close while Sheridan grew up, and Joe thought for a while she might follow in his footsteps. Now he wasn’t so sure, and he suspected she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, either.

In two weeks, she’d be heading off to Laramie for her second year at the university. Joe didn’t even want to think about it yet.

“There’s pizza in the fridge,” Marybeth said.

“I could make you a salad,” Sheridan offered. She was still wearing her T-shirt top that read BURG-O-PARDNER over the breast.

Joe raised his eyebrows.

“Part of my job,” she said. “After I take customers’ orders and turn them in, I have to make the salads and get soup and bread for them. So I’ve turned into quite the little salad jockey.”

“I don’t eat salad,” Joe said. “You know that.”

“You should start,” she said, grinning. “Man can’t live on meat alone.”

“I have.”

He sat down with a plate of pizza slices, glanced at Pam, and said, “So here we are.”

“Sheridan. .” Marybeth said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sheridan said, pushing her chair back. “Nice to see you, Pam,” she said.

Joe noted she called her Pam, not Mrs. Roberson.

Then to Joe and Marybeth: “I’ll be out back in the barn with my new bird.”

“New bird?” Joe asked, surprised.

“Just a little kestrel,” Sheridan said over her shoulder as she went to the back door. “You’ll need to come out and see it.”

Joe and Marybeth exchanged glances. While Sheridan had been Nate Romanowski’s apprentice in falconry, both had assumed she’d lost interest. Apparently not, Joe thought.

Marybeth said, “Joe, Pam wants to talk with you to see if you can offer some advice.”

Joe narrowed his eyes. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“I know that,” Pam said.

“She doesn’t need legal help yet,” Marybeth continued, “but since you’ve been involved in this. . thing all day, you might have some insight.”

“Or not,” Joe said.

“I trust you and Marybeth,” Pam said. “Right now, I’m not sure who else I can trust. Is it true some big shot from the EPA put a reward out on Butch’s head?”

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Can he do that?” Pam asked, wide-eyed.

“He seems to think he can.”

“Joe, what is going on?” Pam asked.

Joe chewed deliberately on a slice of pizza. He swallowed and said to Pam, “I was hoping you’d tell me what’s going on. Sheriff Reed said it was something he couldn’t even believe happened.”

She nodded, and took a deep breath.

Before she began, Joe said, “Pam, you need to have something clear in your mind before you start. I’m-we’re-your friend, but I’m also in law enforcement. I have an oath to keep. I’m not officially interrogating you, and you don’t have to tell me a thing if you don’t want. But if you do, keep in mind that it isn’t between friends, so to speak.”

Pam looked desperate, and turned to Marybeth.

Marybeth said, “Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” Pam said, “I want you to stay. But I already told the sheriff everything. I don’t have any secrets. I’m just surprised Joe is acting like this.”

“He has to,” Marybeth said, reaching out and patting the back of Pam’s hand. “Don’t take it personally.”

“I’ll try not to,” Pam said, gathering herself together and throwing her shoulders back. Then, to Joe, “I’ll start at the beginning.”

“Good place to start,” he said.