Endangered

12

April’s hospital room was dimly lit and quiet except for the muffled hum of the HVAC and an occasional soft click from one of the many electronic monitors hovering over her bed. Thin wires from embedded catheters coiled up from her head. She was being fed intravenously through a tube, and other tubes delivered hydration and medication. Additional tubes carried waste away into receptacles underneath the bed. Because she was so still, it seemed to Joe she was simply serving as a disinterested processing center for the transfer of incoming fluids.

Marybeth was with him when he entered the room and she stood behind him as he approached the bed.

“I haven’t seen her since she left,” he said, reaching out and brushing April’s cheek with the back of his hand. She was battered but sleeping, her expression untroubled. He could not tell from looking at her that she had brain trauma. Her hair was brushed neatly, although the part was wrong. How would the nurses know?

Joe listened as Marybeth explained the procedure the doctors had undertaken, and she pointed out what the readings on the monitors meant. She showed Joe the all-important readout that would indicate an increase—or decrease—in brain activity when she was brought out of the coma.

He found April’s limp hand under the blanket. It was warm but unresponsive.

“I’ve seen her eyelids flutter a couple of times,” Marybeth said softly. “That’s not supposed to happen unless there’s brain activity. But when I asked, I was told the monitors didn’t pick it up. But I swear I saw it happen.”

Joe looked over. He believed her, of course. But he didn’t want to read too much into it.

“She’s got great doctors and nurses,” Marybeth said. “They’ll look out for her. They know to call or text me the minute they determine they want to bring her back, or if her situation changes in any way. I want to make sure I’m here if either happens.”

Joe nodded. He had trouble speaking. His job was to take care of his family, to protect them. He hated it that there was nothing he could do to help April now. Her fate was up to doctors he didn’t know, to April herself, and to God. He could only hope that somewhere in her sleeping body she had the ability and the will to get better.

He leaned down close enough to April that he could smell her hair. It smelled medicinal, not like it used to smell. She belonged to the hospital now. He started to say something, but his throat was constricted.

He rose and took a deep breath. Then two.

After a few moments, he leaned back down to her and said, “I just wish you could wake up and tell me who did this to you. I’ll get the man who did it.”

He hoped against hope for a fluttering of her eyelids or a sign—any sign—of a reaction.

Nothing.

Marybeth reached under the covers and gently placed her hand on Joe’s. She whispered to him, “Don’t you dare lose hope.”

—

IN THE HALLWAY, Joe said to Marybeth, “Do you know where Nate is?”

“They haven’t let me see him.”

“Who told you that?”

She said, “There’s a special agent in charge. Kind of an unpleasant man, if you ask me. I know there are rules about only family members in ICU, but . . .”

“Is his name Stan Dudley?”

“He didn’t introduce himself.”

Joe said, “Let’s go find him.”

—

SHRI RECKLING had just come on the night shift and she agreed to help them. She used her key card to open the secure ICU door. When the nurse on duty looked up to see three people come into the hallway, Reckling said, “It’s okay. They’re with me.”

“We’re here to see Nate Romanowski,” Joe said.

Before the ICU nurse could respond, a portly man in an ill-fitting suit leaned out from the waiting lounge and said, “Forget it. He’s back in surgery again. Patching this guy up just so he can die in a couple of days is going to bust my budget.”

Joe said, “You must be Stan Dudley.”

Dudley looked Joe over carefully, from his lace-up outfitter boots to his Wranglers to his red uniform shirt and weathered Stetson. He said, “And you must be Joe Pickett.”

“I’m Marybeth,” she interjected, stepping forward.

“The two of you, then,” Dudley said. He seemed to be contemplating what he’d say next. Then: “Well, it doesn’t really matter that you’re here, because there’s no chance to see Romanowski. They took him back into surgery about half an hour ago. More internal bleeding, I guess. He hasn’t regained consciousness and he hasn’t said a damned word since we found him. It wouldn’t do anybody any good to try and see him now anyway. The doctors won’t let you into the room.”

Joe said, “I hope their bedside manner is better than yours.”

Dudley puffed out his chest. “I don’t sugarcoat things. I’m a straight shooter.”

“I think you’re an ass,” Joe said.

Marybeth shouldered past Joe and stood in front of him so he couldn’t advance on Dudley.

Her voice was calm. “How long will he be in surgery?”

Dudley shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. He’s been in there twice already. The doctors removed something like seventeen hunks of buckshot. There are a couple near his heart they may just leave there because it’s too dangerous to try and get them. Plus, he lost a lot of blood. One more hour of him lying in the dirt on that ranch and we wouldn’t even be talking here right now.

“So,” Dudley said, gesturing with his hand at Joe and Marybeth as if shooing them away, “you two should just scoot on out of here. You can’t see him, and he’s not likely to ever sit naked in a tree again, or whatever it is he supposedly does for fun.”

“Not so fast,” Joe said, lowering his voice.

“Come again?” Dudley said, glancing back inside the lounge, where, Joe guessed, there were a couple of backup agents.

“Who bushwhacked him?” Joe asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Dudley said. “But my guess includes the name Templeton.”

“How would he know Nate would be there?”

“The guy probably has his tentacles in everything,” Dudley said. “Somebody must have tipped him off. But I do know who could probably answer that question. Do you know Olivia Brannan?”

Joe heard Marybeth gasp in front of him and saw her raise her hand to her mouth.

“I know that’s your theory,” Joe said. “But it doesn’t wash.”

“So where is she?” Dudley asked with a forced grin. “She picks him up, takes him to that ranch, and vanishes off the face of the earth. It isn’t a stretch to guess she colluded with the shooters.”

Joe shook his head.

“Do you know where she is?” Dudley asked. “Does anybody? She wasn’t at the scene, and her and her van are AWOL.”

Marybeth said, “She’s head over heels for Nate, and he feels the same way about her.”

“She devoted years of her life to working for Wolfgang Templeton,” Dudley countered. “She’s known Romanowski for what—six months?”

“I’m not buying it,” Joe said. But his mind was spinning because it made sense.

“Maybe we can ask her,” Dudley said. “If she can ever be found.”

—

LATER, AS JOE’S PICKUP rose above the rimrocks that defined Billings and the dark prairie was stretched out in front of them, Marybeth said, “If both April and Nate are taken away from us . . .”

Joe said, “Don’t you dare lose hope.”

—

AS THEY CROSSED the border back into Wyoming, Joe’s cell phone lit up. Dulcie Schalk.

“Hello, Dulcie,” he said.

He could tell by her long pause that bad news was coming.

She said, “Tilden Cudmore hanged himself in his cell. They found his body an hour ago.”

Joe tapped his brakes so he could pull over to the shoulder of the highway. Marybeth studied his face. Joe repeated what he had just heard, and Marybeth closed her eyes.

“How did it happen?” Joe asked, holding the phone away from his face and punching the speaker button so Marybeth could hear the conversation as well.

“He used a bedsheet for a rope and he tied it to the light fixture,” Dulcie said.

“Where were the deputies?”

“We just interviewed them. They checked on him at eight-fifty p.m. and he appeared to be sleeping in his bunk. When they went back in at five past nine, he was dead. They did CPR on him when they cut him down, and the clinic tried to revive him, but he was DOA.”

Joe said, “He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would do himself in.”

“I agree,” Dulcie said. “Otherwise, we would have put him on a suicide watch. You just never know what’s going on in a man’s head. Especially that man’s head.”

“Is it possible someone got to him?” Joe asked.

She sighed. “No. It’s all on videotape. He waited until the deputy left the cell and he jumped up and went to work. No one was watching the monitor at the time he did it. So, no. He killed himself.”

“His guilt got to him,” Marybeth said. “Or he was a coward who couldn’t face jail.”

“I’m guessing the latter,” Dulcie said. Then: “Marybeth, I’m sorry I had to call you with this news.”

Marybeth said, “Don’t be. I would have gladly handed a rope to the man who assaulted April.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Dulcie said. “I’d rather have sent him to Rawlins, but in a sense, we’ve got justice—just not the kind I prefer.”

After a pause, she asked, “So how is April?”

Joe turned off the speaker and handed the phone to Marybeth.

While Dulcie and Marybeth talked, he eased the pickup back out onto the highway.

He could not have predicted this turn of events. It was not at all satisfying to him. He couldn’t get over the fact that he wasn’t sure justice had been served at all.

Cudmore was a creep and a paranoid conspiracy theorist. The evidence was stacked against him. The things he had said and done at the arraignment hearing had almost convinced Joe he was capable of beating and dumping April. Dulcie obviously believed Cudmore had done it. Marybeth seemed to think the same thing.

Joe wasn’t so sure. And he couldn’t reach out to Nate for help because Nate was dying.