Endangered

32

Joe winced as the emergency room doctor looped another stitch through his scalp to close the bullet wound. He kept his eyes averted and on Marybeth, who had marched him directly to the ER when he arrived at two in the morning. The doctor was a young South Asian man with a starter mustache and hipster glasses.

“Tell the financial people to put this on our tab,” Marybeth said to the doctor, who smiled but indicated with a shrug he had nothing to do with billing.

“Don’t worry,” she said, sounding exasperated. “I’ll tell them.”

It was clear to Joe by the way she said it that the insurance coverage was still a mess. He tried not to worry about it now.

—

AFTER THE DOCTOR CONFIRMED that Joe hadn’t had a concussion, he peeled off his gloves and said, “You look like you’ll make it, but you’ll probably have a pretty good scar.”

Joe nodded.

“We’re required to report bullet wounds.”

“Go ahead,” Joe said, “but I think they’ve got that part covered back in Wyoming.”

“You people shoot each other a lot, don’t you?” the doctor said with disdain.

“Not really.”

“Don’t you all have guns?”

“Yup. So do you folks in Montana.”

“I’m from Islamabad, Pakistan,” the doctor said.

“Ah, that peaceful place.”

“I’ll leave you two now,” the doctor said haughtily. “There will be somebody in here in a few minutes to dress that injury.”

“Thank you,” Joe said. “You probably did a better job than I did in a truck mirror.”

“Obviously, yes,” the doctor said, rolling his eyes, as he turned and walked out the door.

“Pleasant fellow,” Joe said to Marybeth.

“I have to say I like the doctors upstairs much better,” she stated.

—

“I’M SO GLAD you made it here,” Marybeth said, sitting on the raised vinyl half-bed with him. “April could regain consciousness any minute. She’s coming out of the coma quicker than they thought she would. I called the girls and they’re getting a ride here on the hotel shuttle.”

She said, “It’s been a crazy night here. Some hospital janitor jumped off the balcony on our floor—the same balcony Sheridan and Lucy were standing on earlier. It happened while the three of us were at dinner. They found him dead on the pavement five stories below. The local cops and hospital security were all over the place for a couple of hours.”

“Did you know him?” Joe asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten to know quite a few of the employees here, but his description doesn’t fit anyone I’ve met. They’ve been really hush-hush about the whole thing: no names or anything. Apparently, the security camera in the hall wasn’t working for some reason, so they can’t tell how it happened. But I did hear one of the night nurses say that he might have been a fraud—that he might have gotten into the hospital using a false credential. That’s a scary thing to think about.”

Joe had no idea what to make of it.

“Nothing like your night, though,” she said, putting her head on his arm.

He’d told her what had happened when they talked on the phone as he drove to Billings. Her immediate concern was for him and the bullet wound and for Olivia Brannan’s mental health. She was also worried that Joe might get investigated for running over Dallas.

He’d said, “I’d do it again.”

She’d sighed and said, “I’m sure you would, too.”

—

MARYBETH SLID OFF the bed when the door handle turned, but instead of the nurse they were expecting for Joe’s stitches, it was one of the neurosurgeons she knew from the fifth floor.

“There you are,” he said to Marybeth. He nodded a greeting to Joe and said, “We think she’s coming out of it. She’s not conscious yet, but there’s a marked increase in eye movement.”

Marybeth clutched Joe’s arm. “That’s a good sign,” she told him. “Come up as soon as you get that bandage put on.”

“To hell with that,” Joe said, sliding off the bed.

“Okay, I’ll dress it,” the neurosurgeon said. He taped a bandage on and they followed the surgeon down the hall and into the elevator. Joe felt Marybeth find his hand and squeeze it.

The doctor wouldn’t look at either of them in the elevator. Joe figured he was trying not to give anything away, not to signal whether he was optimistic or pessimistic.

Joe squeezed back.

—

SHERIDAN AND LUCY had just arrived when Joe and Marybeth entered April’s room. Both looked groggy from being awakened. Joe gave Sheridan a quick hug and kissed Lucy on the top of her head.

When he realized she was staring at him with a grimace, he said, “I had an accident.”

“He got shot,” Sheridan said. She’d obviously talked with her mother since Joe’s call.

“Are you all right?” Lucy asked him.

“Dandy.”

“Girls,” Marybeth said. There was both dread and excitement in the way she said the word, and they all turned toward April in her bed. The neurosurgeon stayed in the room with his arms crossed over his chest.

Joe didn’t know what to say or what to think. He wasn’t as versed as his wife in the Glasgow Coma Scale, only that Marybeth seemed pleased there was rapid eye movement.

He thought it seemed voyeuristic in a way to watch April’s eyes move underneath her closed lids. He couldn’t help but think of Daisy and Tube when they “chased rabbits” while sleeping. What was she seeing? What was she dreaming?

“April,” Sheridan said softly. “Wake up now. We’re all here.”

April’s expression froze. Joe felt his heart start to break.

Then she opened her eyes. They were glassy and unfocused, and they reminded Joe of the first look that newborn Sheridan had given him in the delivery room twenty-one years ago. She had looked in his direction, but he hadn’t been sure she was really seeing him.

“Mom, Dad,” April said. “How long have I been here?”

Her voice was weak, unpracticed. But lucid.

Lucy said, “Yes,” and grasped her sister’s hand.

“Eleven days,” Marybeth said through tears. “You’ve been here eleven days.”

“Jesus,” April said in a croak. “Where is ‘here’?”

“Billings,” Marybeth said through a crooked smile as she fought back tears. “You’re at the hospital in Billings. You’ve been in a coma so your brain could heal.”

“A coma?”

“Yes.”

“Like the movies,” April said.

Joe heard the doctor chuckle behind him.

“We’re so glad you’re okay, that you’re right here with us,” Marybeth said. “You’ve got some injuries, but you’re healing up. It was always the head injury we were worried about.”

“You’ve been here the whole time?” April said, as if she couldn’t comprehend it.

“Most of it. For moral support, if nothing else. Everyone was praying for you.”

“Well,” April said, “I guess it worked.”

“Do you remember what happened to you?” Marybeth asked.

The doctor stepped forward and placed a hand on Marybeth’s arm. He said, “You might want to give her a chance to get her bearings first.”

“No, I’m okay,” April said. “I remember.”

The doctor stepped back.

April paused for a minute and searched the ceiling. Then her face darkened and she said, “Dallas was driving. We were coming back from the Houston Rodeo and we fought the whole way because I found out the son of a bitch cheated on me. I wanted to come straight home and Dallas wanted to go to his house first. I told him to let me out of the truck then, and he backhanded me.”

Joe jerked back as if he’d been backhanded.

“I got mad and slapped him across the face and told him to stop the truck right there. I was so mad at him I couldn’t see straight. He’d hit me before and he swore it would never happen again, and I’d told him, ‘You’re goddamned right it won’t.’”

April’s filter for cursing hadn’t come out of the coma yet, Joe thought.

Before Marybeth could prompt her to go on, she did: “I got out and started walking. Dallas tried to coax me back into the truck, but I wasn’t having any of that—or him.”

She tried to swallow, and said, “Can I have a drink of water, please?”

Sheridan practically knocked Lucy over to find a water bottle, and she held it to her sister’s mouth while she drank.

“Thanks, Sherry,” April said. “It’s good to see you . . . and even Lucy.”

Lucy smiled through tears at that.

“April, what happened next?” Marybeth asked.

“I walked for a while, but it was getting cold,” she said. “I would have called you guys, but my phone was dead. Then this old crazy asshole pulled up and said he’d give me a ride.”

Joe and Marybeth exchanged looks.

“I wasn’t going to go with him,” April said. “He drove this big Humvee thing that had stickers all over it. I thought he was a creep, but he said he knew you guys really well and he could get me home in ten minutes. I know, Mom, I shouldn’t have gotten in.”

Marybeth could barely speak. She said, “No, you shouldn’t have.”

“I know. But I just wanted to get home, you know?”

“What did he do to you?”

“All I can remember is that when I shut the door, he started asking me what I thought about Obama and Bush and 9/11. I told him to shut up, and out of the blue he slugged me on the side of my head. I remember my head hitting the passenger-side window. And I guess he slugged me again after that. I don’t really remember what happened next. He hit me a lot harder than Dallas ever had.”

April indicated to Sheridan she needed another drink of water, and Sheridan gave it to her. When some spilled down the side of her mouth, Sheridan used the edge of the bedsheet to wipe it off.

April turned to Marybeth and said, “I can’t remember anything else. Did he rape me?”

“No. He beat you and dumped you on a county road. You weren’t found until the next day. You could have died of exposure out there.”

April looked to Joe. “Why did he do it?”

“We’ll never know,” he said. “He was crazy. His name was Tilden Cudmore and he hanged himself in his cell.”

Her eyes got wide, then narrowed. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she said.

Lucy looked up as if to say, She’s back, all right.

Joe said, “You’re sure about all of this? That it wasn’t Dallas who beat you and dumped you?”

“He punched me for sure,” she said. “And I slapped him a good one and told him to stop the truck. But he went home, I guess, so he could be with his wonderful mama.”

Everyone stood in stunned silence.

Finally, April reached out for Marybeth and they grasped hands.

April said, “I’m never running off with another dumb-ass cowboy for the rest of my life.”

To Lucy, she said, “And don’t you do it, either, girlie.”

Lucy seemed insulted and said, “I’d never do that.”

—

“I HATE TO BREAK THIS UP, I really do,” the doctor said, approaching the bed. “But we’ve got to run a whole bunch of tests right now to make sure everything really is as good as it seems to be.”

As the family filed out of the room, he said to Marybeth, “I’m very optimistic.”

“You hid it well,” she said. “But I am, too.”

In the hallway, Marybeth hugged Sheridan and Lucy and they cried together. Joe backed off and leaned against the radiator with his hands on his hips.

Tilden Cudmore. He’d never believed it.

And neither, he suddenly realized, had Brenda Cates.

“I need to talk to your dad,” Marybeth said to Sheridan and Lucy.

—

THEY STOOD at the railing on the balcony where the janitor had fallen. Joe was surprised the Billings PD had not blocked it off with crime scene tape, and that told him they didn’t consider that a crime had taken place. It was dark on the pavement below and he couldn’t see where the janitor had hit.

A band of pink haloed the eastern rimrocks with the first hint of morning sun. The streets below were virtually absent of cars.

Marybeth said, “Are you going to call Mike Reed?”

“Soon,” Joe said. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what April told us.”

“Why would Dallas let Brenda make it look like he was hurt worse than he was? Why would he go along with that if he didn’t do it?”

Joe shook his head. He said, “I’m speculating, but I think she always thought he did do it, even when he said he didn’t. She knew what he was capable of and she probably figured since he’d backhanded April and kicked her out of his truck—he probably admitted that—she knew he’d be suspected of a much worse crime. And he would have been. She might have thought he didn’t know his own strength and that he could have hurt her worse than he realized—or that he was spinning what really happened into the best possible light. Either way, she convinced Dallas to come up with a whole different scenario—that he’d come home a few days early, that they’d broken up, the whole thing. She was trying to protect him, she thought. And Dallas let himself be protected that way.”

“What about Nate?” she asked.

“Brenda was so convinced that Dallas did it, she did a preemptive strike on Nate so he couldn’t help me nail him. Liv told me that.”

“My God,” Marybeth said. “Think about the results: Eldon is dead. Bull is dead. Brenda herself is likely a quadriplegic, if she even makes it.”

Joe nodded.

She asked, “What is Dallas going to do when he recovers?”

“If he recovers,” Joe said. “I broke his leg and smashed in his ribs. I don’t know about internal injuries. But it’ll be a long time before he hits the rodeo circuit again.”

“If ever,” Marybeth said.

“Yup.”

She said, “Don’t blame yourself for any of it. This is all Brenda Cates’s doing. She could have been honest and come clean and not tried to manipulate everything like some kind of evil spider. If she would have done that, none of this would have happened.”

Joe tried to take solace in that.

But Marybeth said what Joe was thinking. “Dallas is a hothead and we know he can be violent. He’ll want revenge.”

Joe said, “We can put Dallas away for a few years. I’m sure Dulcie will agree to file charges for the assault on April and maybe even for conspiracy for aiding and abetting Brenda’s crimes. I’ve got him for wanton destruction of those elk and pulling a gun on me. I don’t know. Maybe he’ll grow up a little in prison and realize it was his mother that put him on this path.”

“Maybe,” Marybeth said.

But she didn’t sound convinced.

—

SHERIDAN AND LUCY burst through the balcony door with wide eyes.

Joe’s first fear was that something had happened to April, but Sheridan said, “Nate’s gone!”

“What?”

“We talked to a couple of the security people,” Sheridan said. “They’re looking everywhere for him.”

Marybeth gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

“I knew he winked at me,” Sheridan said. “I knew he did.”

“Wait here,” Joe said.

He strode down the hallway in the direction of the restricted area and was surprised to see Special Agent Dudley coming toward him.

The man was disheveled and he had the distraught look on his face of a friend who had been asked to watch a neighbor’s cat but had let it get away.

“Do you know anything about this?” Dudley asked when he recognized Joe.

“I just heard. I’m here because of my daughter. How long has he been gone?”

“Ten hours,” Dudley said. “Man, I’m going to hear about this . . .”

“Never mind that. What happened?”

Dudley glared at him. His voice was monotone, as if he were tired of telling the story. “I came back from dinner last night and started to sit down in my chair when he got out of his bed and put me in a sleeper hold. I tried to fight back, but I could tell he’s done this kind of thing before. The next thing I knew, I woke up, gagged with medical tape and tied up with electrical cords, and the bastard was gone.”

Dudley shook his head and stared at something fixed on the wall behind Joe.

“I don’t know how long he was contemplating it before he made his move. But on his way out of the hospital, he stopped by the security room and erased the video feeds from this floor.”

“Sounds like Nate,” Joe said.

“We’ll find him,” Dudley said. “We’ve got his description out to the locals, the state people, and the feds.”

Joe nodded.

“He probably stole a car or carjacked somebody,” Dudley said. “He could be halfway across Montana by now, or in another state. Tell me: Where would he go?”

Joe shrugged.

“He hasn’t been in contact with you, has he?”

“Nope.”

“You’ll let me know if he does, right?”

“Probably not,” Joe said. “You set him up by those conditions you put on him. I don’t think he owes you much.”

“Is that your brilliant legal opinion, game warden?” Dudley asked, his face flushing.

“It is.”

—

JOE HAD A SPRING in his step as he rejoined his family on the balcony. He told them what he’d learned from Dudley. He noted how both Marybeth and Sheridan suppressed smiles. Lucy looked from her sister to her mother with a wary expression.

“I was just about to tell Mom another thing when you showed up,” Sheridan said. “That janitor they found was an ex-con from Wyoming. He had a knife on him and the ID he wore around his neck was from the Wyoming State Penitentiary. His name was—”

“Timber Cates,” Joe said.

Sheridan asked, “How did you know?”

“It all makes sense now. Brenda Cates sent Timber up here to keep April quiet.”

“Nate,” Lucy said, her eyes wide.

They stood in silence for a moment as it all sank in.

—

“LOOK,” LUCY WHISPERED, pointing between Joe and Marybeth, toward the parking lot.

They turned as one.

A big man wearing hospital scrubs had his back to them as he slowly made his way through a row of cars to a waiting sedan under the dim glow of an overhead light. He had a blond ponytail and a pronounced limp.

When the passenger door of the sedan opened, the interior light came on. An attractive, dark woman was at the wheel. Liv, Joe thought.

Rather than flee immediately, Joe thought, Nate had obviously thought it all through. He’d erased the surveillance video and found a place to hide inside the hospital. Probably a room where he could change into scrubs and look like he belonged, just as Sheridan and Lucy had done. He’d contacted Liv to rent a car and come get him. Meanwhile, law enforcement was looking for him everywhere but here.

Nate turned and looked up.

Although Joe couldn’t believe he could see them all up there, Nate gave them a thumbs-up before he climbed in and the car drove away.

“Girls,” Marybeth said before Joe could say it, “he saved your sister’s life. What we just saw needs to stay on this balcony.”

Then: “Let’s go talk to the doctors and see how soon we can take April home.”

Stepping aside to let his family pass, Joe looked over his shoulder and down as the taillights of the sedan became pinpricks in the cold Montana dawn.