In Plain Sight

16

“I’LL GET THE PAPER IF YOU’LL MAKE COFFEE,” JOE said to Marybeth as he yawned, snapped on the porch light, and looked outside through the window on the front door.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Marybeth said from the kitchen. Then: “You’re up early.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, sitting on a bench to pull on his boots.

“What were you worried about?” she asked.

He smiled. She knew him so well. If he couldn’t sleep it was because he was concerned about something. Nothing else ever kept him awake.

“I hope it wasn’t Sheridan’s sleepover,” Marybeth said.

Joe had to proceed cautiously here. In fact, it had been about Sheridan’s sleepover. He kept thinking his daughter was in over her head with the Scarletts, but that she would never admit it. Something was brewing besides coffee, he thought.

“Just a lot of things,” Joe said.

He clamped on his cowboy hat and cinched the belt on his bathrobe against the morning chill and was three strides down the cracked concrete pathway in his front yard when he realized he was being watched. He froze, and felt the hair on his neck stand on end.

He looked quickly at the road. There were no vehicles on it, and no one was parked. Wolf Mountain, still in shadow, loomed to the north, dominating the view. Then he felt more than saw something in his peripheral vision. Something big and black, hanging above the ground. Joe snapped his head to the side.

Then to the other side.

For a moment, he thought he was surrounded and he wished he’d brought his weapon.

He realized what it was, and his stomach surged and he felt sick.

Four elk heads—the Town Elk—had been mounted on the posts of his picket fence, facing inward toward his lawn. Toward him. The tongue of the big bull elk stuck out the side of its mouth, pink and dry. All eight cold black eyes were open.

Joe tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

Whoever had done this had hit him where he lived in more ways than one. Not only had he killed and beheaded four popular animals in Saddlestring that he was responsible for, but he’d brought the heads out to his own home and stuck them on posts to taunt him. To humiliate him. To frighten him and his family. He was telling Joe nothing was off-limits, and that he didn’t fear or respect him. He was bringing it right to him, and shoving it in his face in front of his family.

He was disgusted as well as angry. Who in the hell was he up against who would do something like this?

“Joe?” Marybeth was at the door.

His first impulse was to run back and physically turn her around before she could see the heads.

“Oh My God,” she whispered. “Joe . . .”

He was too late.

In the distance, above the thumping of his own heart and Marybeth’s gasps, he could hear an engine start up. They were being watched by someone, all right.

Unfortunately, Wolf Mountain was covered by a spider’s web of old logging roads. Unless he knew specifically where the vehicle had been parked, he would never be able to track the driver or drivers down.

“Who is doing this to us?” Marybeth asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Joe, what can we do about it?”

“I don’t know that either,” he said.

“I hope you get rid of those things before Lucy gets up and sees them.”

Joe nodded.

“This is awful,” she said. “It’s getting worse.”

“Yup.”

“What if he doesn’t stop?”

Joe went to Marybeth and took her in his arms.

“Joe, what if he doesn’t?” she said into his shoulder.

“He’ll stop,” Joe said, with no confidence in his words.

A FEW MINUTES later, Marybeth came out the front door again to find her husband walking across the lawn in his robe, cowboy hat, and boots, holding a severed elk head aloft by the antlers.

“Come in and get dressed, Joe,” she said, distressed. “Look at yourself. What if someone drives by and sees you?”

Instead of answering, Joe held the head up. “This really pisses me off, Marybeth.”

“Come in, Joe . . .”

JOE WAITED FOR the dispatcher to patch him through to the sheriff, who was having morning coffee with the rest of the “morning men” at the Saddlestring Burg-O-Pardner.

He drawled, “Sheriff McLanahan. What can I do you for, Joe?”

“Somebody cut the heads off of four elk and stuck them on my fence,” Joe said. “They were the Town Elk. All four of them.”

“Jeez,” McLanahan said. “I was beginning to really like those critters.”

“They’re all dead now. You want to come look at them?”

“Naw,” McLanahan said. “That ain’t necessary. I seen plenty of elk heads before. Shoot, they’re on just about every wall in town!”

“Now they’re in my yard.”

“That’s not very neighborly.”

“No, it’s not very neighborly,” Joe said, loud enough for Marybeth to hear. She looked up and grimaced. “Sheriff, it wasn’t neighbors. It was the same guy who pinned that Miller’s weasel on my door. He’s upping the ante.”

“Are you sure it was the same guy? How do you know that?”

“It has to be.”

“So you’re speculating,” McLanahan said, pronouncing it “speck-u-late-un.”

“Who else could it be?”

“I don’t rightly know.”

“You ‘don’t rightly know,’” Joe repeated, feeling his neck flush hot.

Marybeth stood in the doorway, listening to Joe, shaking her head as if to say, This valley is getting too small for us.

KNOWING HE WOULD need a front-end loader to dig a hole deep and wide enough to dispose of the massive elk heads, Joe angrily carried three of them into the back of his truck and drove them deep into the timber of Wolf Mountain, where he disposed of them. Although insects and predators would make short work of the hide, flesh, and soft parts, leaving only the skulls and antlers, the act of dumping the heads like bags of garbage went against everything he stood for. The last head he’d dragged behind his garage and covered with a tarp to ship to state forensics. It was possible, although not probable, that they could find a human hair or fiber that could lead them to the killer.

He was not in the mood for a cell phone call from Randy Pope. When Joe saw who was calling on the display, he considered not answering. But it was early Saturday morning. The headquarters office in Cheyenne was closed. It could be something important.

“Yes?”

“I’m at home, Joe,” Pope said, not trying to disguise his indignation, “when I get a call from a sobbing reporter from the Saddlestring Roundup. She asks me if I have any comment on the slaughter of four elk in the middle of town. She says the bodies are in the park for all to see, but the heads are gone. She says little kids are bawling.”

Joe closed his eyes. On the underside of his lids, he saw red spangles.

“She also tells me the sheriff said the local game warden says the heads turned up at his place.”

“That’s true,” Joe said.

Pope hesitated a moment before shouting: “What in the hell are you doing up there? Can’t you even protect wildlife in the middle of your goddam town?”

Joe couldn’t think of how to answer that. He opened his eyes to the sky, hoping for a sign of some kind.

“This will hit the wires, Pickett. It’s the kind of juicy story the press loves. Four poor innocent animals. And it will all come down to the fact that the local game warden can’t seem to do his job. But they won’t call you, Joe, they’ll call me!”

“Somebody is trying to destroy me,” Joe said, not liking the paranoid way the words sounded as they came out.

“I’d say that somebody is you!” Pope shouted. “Have you been out to Hank Scarlett’s place yet?”

“No.”

“Just what in the hell are you doing?”

Joe sighed. “Cleaning up the mess.”

Pope was so angry he sputtered, not making sense. Joe didn’t ask him to repeat himself. Instead, he closed the phone and threw it as far as he could into the trees.

Before he left the timber, though, he reluctantly walked back and retrieved it. He felt like leaving his own head in the brush. Pope, and most of the people in town, would probably endorse that concept.

FROM WOLF MOUNTAIN, Joe drove to the Thunderhead Ranch to pick up Sheridan. He was used to how Sheridan looked after sleepovers—wan and exhausted—but he quickly perceived there was something more to her demeanor. That’s when she told him about meeting Arlen and Bill Monroe in the kitchen, and about the bad dreams she had when she went back to bed.

“Who?” Joe asked suddenly, startling her.

“Bill Monroe.”

“He’s the man who beat me up,” Joe said.

“Oh, Dad . . .”

It tore him up inside, the way she said it. He wished he hadn’t said anything. At that moment, he hated his job, hated what had happened in that parking lot, hated that Sheridan even had to know about it. And he hated Bill Monroe.

He thought: What was Bill Monroe doing in Arlen’s house? Wasn’t Bill Hank’s man? Then he remembered what Arlen had said about having an informer in Hank’s camp. He also knew Arlen had misled him about Monroe’s role.

When she showed him the knife she had taken from the Scarlett kitchen and hidden in her overnight bag, Joe pulled to the side of the road to examine it.

“It looks like the one that was stuck in our door, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Pretty close,” Joe said, turning it over. The length and design were the same. The dark wood handle seemed more worn, though.

He looked up at her. “Sheridan, what are you thinking about this?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll feel really bad if the knives are from the same set, but I’ll feel bad if they aren’t and I took the knife. I already feel bad about being suspicious of my best friend’s family. Do you know what I mean?”

Joe nodded. “I know what you mean, darling.” At that moment, he was proud of her for what she’d thought about and done, and profoundly sad for her what she’d discovered.

Joe asked about the dreams, hoping to change the subject. “So you dreamed you saw Opal Scarlett alive, huh?”

“Um-hmmm.”

“What did she look like?”

“Are you going to make fun of me?” Sheridan asked, raising an eyebrow at her father.

“Nope,” he said. “Remember when I promised to pay more attention to your dreams no matter how goofy they seem at the time?”

“Yes.”

“I’m doing that. Just don’t give me any woo-woo stuff,” he said.

“She looked kind of pleasant, actually,” Sheridan said. “Like a nice old lady. Nicer than I remember her. But I didn’t really see her, you know.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I just spent too much time last night staring at a portrait of Julie’s grandmother on the wall. It’s a pretty interesting picture. I let her eyes get to me, I guess, so when I finally got to sleep that’s what I dreamed about.”

“Bill Monroe is the name of a famous bluegrass singer and bandleader,” Joe said. “Some people called him the Father of Bluegrass. Ever hear of the ‘high lonesome sound’?”

Sheridan looked at him as if he’d swallowed a bird.

“Really,” Joe said. “Dig in the glove box. I think I’ve got The Very Best of Bill Monroe in there.”

She opened it and rooted around and brought out a CD case with a black-and-white photo of a man playing a mandolin in a suit and tie with a cocked cowboy hat on his head. “This looks awful,” she said. “And it isn’t the Bill Monroe at the ranch either.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

“I wonder if they’re related in some way?” Sheridan asked, turning the case over and reading the back. The look of distaste remained on her face. Joe was pleased they had digressed somewhat from their earlier discussion. He didn’t like seeing Sheridan troubled.

“Listen to it before you decide,” he said.

“Have you been listening to the CD I made you?” she asked.

“A little, not much,” Joe confessed.

“You need to get with it,” she said. “You need to know what’s good.”

“So do you. Put that on.”

“Hmmpf.”

Joe thought it was odd Hank had hired a man with a southern accent named Bill Monroe.

“Footprints in the Snow” filled the cab.

Sheridan said, “Ew!”

WHEN THEY GOT home, Joe wrapped both the steak knife he had found stuck in his door and the knife Sheridan had brought home and sent them to the state forensic lab. He attached a note asking the staff to confirm that they were the same brand and lot number.