Out of Range

TWELVE

"Do you notice the same thing I notice about the food here?" Pi Stevenson asked Joe at the reception, which was held in a small meeting room at a chain hotel near the funeral home.

He hadn't realized she was behind him in line. "What?" Joe said.

"No meat," she said, raising her eyebrows with a sense of triumph.

Joe looked at the table and then at his small paper plate. Crackers, cheese cubes, celery, carrots, dip.

"I hadn't noticed."

"These are the things I pick up on," she said. "There's cheese, though. So this isn't a vegan spread."

Joe hmmmm'd, and took a small paper cup filled with red punch. He sipped it, disliked it, and looked for a place to put it aside.

"I heard a rumor that before Will killed himself, he gorged on meat," Pi whispered to Joe. "That's probably why they don't have it here. Did you hear that rumor?"

"No."

"That's what I heard," she said again.

"I heard it too," Birdy said, eavesdropping.

Joe had no idea how to respond, or if he even wanted to. Pi and Birdy seemed to be drawing some kind of connection between what Will ate and what he later did.

At the far end of the room, Susan Jensen was surrounded by well-wishers. Joe waited for the crowd to part in order to have a word with her. Her boys were with their grandparents, trying to stand in one place and behave properly. But they were boys, and they were fidgeting.

Joe noted that Smoke hadn't come to the reception, and neither had Stella Ennis. Sheriff Tassell was there, however, with his deputies, who were loading up their plates for the third time.

When he looked back, Birdy was offering him a business card: WILDWATER PHOTOGRAPHY. His full name was Trenton "Birdy" Richards.

"I help him out at the shop," Pi said, pointing at the card.

"I appreciate how you treated us yesterday," Birdy said. "It was, like, civil. So if you're ever on the river, like, if your family is with you or something, and you want a nice shot of you in the whitewater, just let me know. I'll give you, like, a deal."

Joe pocketed the card. "You stand on the bank and take pictures of rafters?"

Birdy snorted. "I used to do that, like, when I first got started. Not anymore. I've got a full-auto setup now. Photocells on the rafts signal the camera, and I just download the digital images every afternoon. The pictures are ready when the rafters get off the water."

"Interesting," Joe said, making conversation.

"Pretty slick, is what it is," Birdy said, pleased with himself.

"Excuse me," Joe said, seeing the sheriff and taking leave of Pi and Birdy.

Sheriff Tassell looked up as Joe approached, but continued to eat a cracker with a cheese cube. His animus was palpable. Joe assumed that Tassell was being territorial, like every county sheriff Joe had ever met, but he forged ahead anyway.

"I'd like to be able to get into the Game and Fish house later today if I could," Joe said. He pointedly did not say Will Jensen's house. "I couldn't find any keys at the office. I assume you're done inside."

Tassell didn't look directly at Joe, but continued to chew. "I don't know what you might hope to find in there that we haven't already looked at."

"I'm not sure you understand," Joe said, his voice patient. "That's where I'm expected to stay while I'm here. The department doesn't have the budget to put me up in a hotel while their house sits empty."

Hotel rooms in Jackson were by far the most expensive in the state, Joe knew. He was keenly aware that he had already overspent his per diem and the overage would need to come out of the family budget, stretched as it was.

Tassell met Joe's eyes for a moment, then looked away again. "I figured you were checking up on us."

Well, Joe thought, that too.

"I'll visit with my team and make sure they're through," Tassell said with no enthusiasm. "I need to run it by the ME also. I think he got the place all cleaned up, but I'm not sure about that. A.44 Magnum going through soft tissue makes a hell of mess on the ceiling and walls."

Joe said quietly, "I'll bet it does."

"I think his personal effects have been pretty much cleaned out and given to the wife." Tassell looked toward Susan Jensen. "Just a bunch of boxes. Clothes and stuff like that."

Joe wondered if he should ask to see them at some point.

"Do you know if there were any spiral notebooks in there?" Joe asked.

Tassell shrugged. "I don't remember any, but I didn't personally pack up everything or really look it over myself."

Yes, Joe would need to look inside the boxes. "Do you have his truck keys at your office? His truck's locked up."

"I believe we do," Tassell said woodenly.

"Can I-"

Tassell cut Joe off with a hard glare. "Look, I'm busy this afternoon. I can't just drop everything and cater to you. I've got a diversity training workshop scheduled for my officers that I've got to be at, and we need to meet with the Secret Service to set up the security for the vice president, who's coming in two weeks. I'll get to this stuff when I get to it."

Joe stepped close to Tassell, looked right at him. "Sheriff, we seem to have started off on the wrong foot, and I'm not sure why. But I'd rather work with you than against you. All I'm asking for is keys to the statehouse and truck."

Tassell didn't step back. "Bud Barnum was a legend among sheriffs in this state. He was old school, and I can't really call him a friend, but sheriffs tend to stick together."

Now Joe understood. "What happened with Barnum was his own doing," Joe said. "He can blame everyone else, but Barnum did himself in."

"That's not his version."

"I'm not surprised," Joe said.

"In his version, he doesn't blame everyone else. He blames you."

Barnum had cut a wide swath across northern Wyoming, Joe thought.

"I can't help that," Joe said.

"He says you get into the middle of things you should leave alone. That you press too damned hard into areas where things are best left to the professionals."

"Do you think that's why I'm here?" Joe asked.

"Aren't you?" Tassell asked back.

"I'm here to fill in during hunting season, and then I'm sure I'll be sent back home. I'm curious about Will, I admit that. It doesn't make sense to me that things were so bad that he took his own life."

That seemed to mollify Tassell slightly. He said, "Will may not have been all you seem to think he was, Joe."

Joe cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"Will started losing it over the past six months or so. Even before the wife took the kids and moved out on him. He was becoming a public embarrassment, and we don't like embarrassments here in Jackson."

"What do you mean?" Joe felt a coldness growing inside.

"He was arrested twice for driving drunk. That was after a half dozen warnings. He spent a night in my jail when he was so blitzed he couldn't even get out of his own truck. He was arrested again just a couple of weeks ago for threatening one of our local business leaders."

"Will?" Joe asked, incredulous.

"Will. I arrested him myself out at the ski resort, where he was having the argument. Bet you didn't know that?"

"No," Joe said, "I didn't know that." He doubted that Trey did either, or he would have told Joe.

"Will just kept getting worse. I could see it coming." Tassell gestured toward the room. "And so could anybody who knew him. He was in a death spiral and it was only a matter of time.

"The ME concluded that Will's death was suicide," Tassell said. "There's no doubt about it at all, if that's what you were thinking. He got drunk, ate dinner, and shot himself at his table. Simple as that. There was a photo of his family on the table, which was probably the last thing he looked at. His fingerprints were the only prints on the gun."

"Is it true that all he ate was meat that night?"

Tassell looked at Joe quizzically. "Where did you hear that?"

"Just a rumor."

"Yeah, it's true. He cooked himself up quite a bunch of meat that night. All of the frying pans were dirty, and there was meat still on his plate when he died. It smelled pretty good in there, actually. But so what?"

"I'm not sure," Joe said.

"It's not that unusual, is it?" Tassell asked. "Hell, I do it myself. I ask the wife about once a month for what we call 'the Meat Bucket' dinner. Steak, pork, elk sausages. Maybe a piece of bread. She doesn't like it-she's a health-freak type-but she cooks it up."

"There wasn't an autopsy?"

Tassell shook his head. "No need. The cause of death was clear-cut. We don't do autopsies in Teton County when the cause of death is obvious. We have to watch our budget too."

Of course-so you can afford diversity training workshops, Joe thought but didn't say. He wondered how many murders there had been on Sheriff Tassell's watch. Joe couldn't recall hearing of any recently in Teton County.

As if reading Joe's mind, Tassell went on, "We lose a couple of people a year here, but not because of crime. A tourist or two may drown in the whitewater, or a skier might crash into a tree, or a ski bum will overdose on a slick new designer drug. But just because we don't have major crime doesn't mean we're not trained to handle it. This is a tight little community, and there are important people here with lots of money and influence. They don't like things happening that take place in bad country and western songs, you know? Those things should be left to the rest of the state. And they don't like bad news, either, because this is their special playground."

Joe watched Tassell carefully. What exactly was he getting at?

"This place is special," Tassell said. "We've got the highest per capita income than any county in the U.S., because of all the millionaires and billionaires. There are people here who don't think they need to play by the rules.

And you know what," the sheriff said, arching his eyebrows, "they don't. They don't like a sloppy suicide happening in their town. Neither do I"

"I'm confused," Joe said.

Tassell looked away. "What's done is done. I don't want it dredged up again."

"You think I'm going to do that?"

"Maybe. That's what Barnum said you'd do."

Joe paused before responding. Tassell was obviously warning him off, but was it because there was something to hide or simply because a further inquiry would look bad and attract unwanted attention? Joe guessed the latter.

"Don't worry," Joe said. "It doesn't seem like you've got anything to fear from me."

"Let's hope not," Tassell said with finality. "Let's hope not."

Then he excused himself, saying, "I want another hit of that cheese."

"About those keys," Joe said.

"Come by the office around five," Tassell said. "We should be done with our workshop by then."

Joe watched as Randy Pope gave Susan Jensen a long hug. Joe thought Pope held the clench three beats too long, moving it into the category of inappropriate behavior. Susan didn't appear to be hugging back.

Finally, Pope said something sincere to her and took his leave. As he passed Joe, Pope looked up.

"On behalf of the department, right?" Joe said.

"Don't you have work to do?" Pope snapped, his face flushing pink.

Susan Jensen worked her way through a group of well-wishers and walked purposefully up to Joe and said, "May I have a few minutes, please?"

"Of course," he said, following her through the room and into the hallway.

"I need a drink," she told him, as if apologizing.

Joe didn't need one, but didn't say so. The lounge was at the end of the hall, and Susan looked inside before going in.

"All clear," she said. She took a seat on a stool at the empty bar and ordered a glass of white wine. Joe liked her, and had from their first meeting. She was ebullient, smart, and a little caustic. Like Marybeth, Susan Jensen was a go-getter.

"Just tonic for me," Joe said to the bartender, who was young, fit, and sunburned-the Jackson look.

"You're not drinking, that's good," Susan said.

"Not today, anyway."

She waited for the explanation.

"I had a couple of extras last night," he said.

"Will used to be reasonable like that," she said. "He'd have a few drinks and then he'd go for weeks without one. It wouldn't even occur to him. But then he changed."

"Susan, I'm sorry," Joe said.

"Everybody is," she said, sipping, an edge creeping into her voice. "Everybody in that room is very sorry. We never had so many friends in Jackson who thought so well of us."

Joe didn't know how to respond.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have said that. It's catty. A few people have shown the boys and me real kindness. Some anonymous person even paid for the costs of cremation, which helped us out a lot. Will's life insurance policy won't pay because of what happened. I have a new job, but still, I've got to think about the boys, how I'm going to pay for them to go to college."

Joe hadn't thought of the fact that suicide was exempted in most life insurance policies. He felt a stab of anger, wondered how Will could have been so selfish.

"Joe, when you leave a man you want him to regret it. You want him to sit and stew and feel lousy for driving you away. Then maybe, you want him to get his act together and come crawling back on his knees. You don't want him to kill himself and leave you with that."

"I understand."

"I hope you do," she said. "If Marybeth ever leaves you, go crawling back to her like a whipped puppy. Don't internalize it, and brood about it, and think there's no way out."

He nodded. He wasn't sure why she was giving him this advice. She drained her glass, ordered another.

"I need fortification to go back into that room," she said.

He had so many questions for her. "Where will you go?"

"The kids and I live in Casper," she said. "We moved there four months ago. I've got a job at the newspaper, and we live with my parents. I started selling ads, and recently moved up to marketing director. It's a hard job, but I'm very good at it. We're making more income now than we ever did."

Joe thought of the parallels with his own family, Marybeth's new business, the obvious conclusion that it would likely prosper if either Joe took a different job or the family moved out of Saddlestring. He asked, "How are the boys handling the move, and now this?"

"Terribly," she said, matter-of-factly. "Will was a god to them. You can guess what it's like. You have girls, right?"

"Yes."

"Imagine if you had boys. If every day they watched you strap on your gun after breakfast and put on your hat and go out into the mountains to catch bad guys and protect the herds." She said "protect the herds" in a well-practiced way, and Joe guessed it had been some kind of joke between Susan and Will. "They worshipped him," she said. "They still do. They didn't see him like I did those last terrible months, when I'd come visit from Casper and we'd try to reconcile. Something definitely changed with him. A couple of times he would roar around the house, stumbling and cursing me. He never used to do that. His mood swings got absolutely crazy and unpredictable. He'd be manic one day and sullen the next. I didn't know him anymore, and he scared me. If the boys saw or heard him like that, I don't know what they'd think of him now."

Joe winced as she talked. He had thought about saying that it might not be all that different with his girls, but he refrained. He didn't want to have that kind of discussion.

"Susan, what happened to him?"

She shrugged. "That's the big question, isn't it?" Her eyebrows arched. "He said a few times that the pressure was building, that he was being squeezed alive. But that wasn't unusual. Things have always been like that here, you'll see. Will had a gift for dealing with it, though. At least he did at one time. He just went into his cave."

"His cave?"

She took a long drink. "That's what we used to call it. It was a mental cave he could sit in and depressurize after a bad day. He'd sit and stare at the television, or out the window. Sometimes he took the dog for a walk, or messed with his horses. It didn't matter what he did, because even though he was there, he really wasn't there, you know?"

"I do," he said. "When I feel like that, Marybeth and the girls say I've gone into Joe-Zone."

She smiled sympathetically. "He used to come back from backcountry patrols feeling pretty good, though," she said. "He said they cleared his mind and gave him his good perspective back."

Joe understood that.

"I took the job in Casper to give Will the option of getting out of this pressure cooker. I thought he'd follow me to be with the boys. I even found a couple of opportunities for him there, but he never took them. He stayed here and things got worse."

Joe shook his head, trying to think what he would do in the same situation, if Marybeth said she'd had it with his absences and threatened to move away. He'd follow her, wouldn't he? When he realized he was missing some of what she said, he apologized and asked her to repeat it.

Susan said, "I said he didn't give a lot of thought to the fact that while he was away for nights on end sleeping under the stars or whatever he did, he was completely out of contact with the outside world. He liked that, I guess. But he had a family here in town who never heard from him. I worried so much about him out there, Joe, that I would cry myself to sleep. Then I'd hate him. But I always got over it when he came back. When I saw you at the funeral, that was what I thought of."

"But things changed with Will?"

"Did they ever," she said, tapping the rim of her glass to signal the bartender for a refill. "Especially after we left. It was like his cave door closed shut and locked him out. He couldn't find any relief, so the pressure just kept building. Of course, he never said anything to me or asked for help. Not Will." Susan didn't even try to keep the anger out of her voice.

"What caused the biggest problems?"

"Are you asking me because you want to know about Will, or because you want to know what you're going to be dealing with here? Joe, I know you're here to replace him. I'm still in the loop."

He flushed, sorry he hadn't said it earlier. "Both, I guess."

She thought that over for a moment. "Will thought-and he was right-that it seemed like things were coming at him from all sides. The animal liberation people were after him. I was surprised to see that Pi woman here, considering that she literally put a contract out on him on her website. Then there was Smoke Van Horn and his bunch, the old-timers. They rode Will hard, tried to get him fired a few times. Smoke always showed up at the public hearings and ripped Will as well as the state and the Feds. Smoke was hard on Will, and I hate him for that. Oh," Susan said, smiling bitterly, "then there's the developers. They come from other places and they want to do here what they did wherever they made their millions. It drove them crazy that somebody like Will, who made less money than what their cars probably cost, could stall their projects by writing an opinion that would affect their plans."

Joe interrupted. "Are you talking about Don Ennis?" he asked, thinking about the business card in his pocket.

Susan's face tightened. "Don Ennis. Do you know him?"

"I sort of met him last night. He sent over a drink."

"Don and Stella Ennis," Susan said, more to herself than to Joe, as if recalling something unpleasant.

Joe recalled Tassell's comments about breaking up an argument at the ski resort. He would need to follow up with Tassell to see if the other party was Don Ennis.

Susan's eyes burned into Joe, and her voice dropped as if someone might overhear her. "Joe, all I can tell you is to watch out for that man. He gets what he wants, and he doesn't care who gets hurt."

Joe blinked at her sudden intensity.

"As for Stella," she said, "she's playing a game that only she understands. She might be the most dangerous of them all."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Susan sat back, drained her glass. "I'm not sure what I mean. I just got this vibration from her. A dark kind of feeling. I think she's a predator. And Will," she said, drinking again although her glass was empty, "Will thought I was wrong about her. He thought I was jealous. And you know what? I probably was."

Joe felt that he needed to defend Stella. Did Susan see her crying during the funeral? Were those tears of a predator? But he didn't want to go there with Susan, not now. He changed the subject.

He asked, "What was he working on most recently?"

"I'm sorry, I can't help you with that," she said. "The boys and I had been gone for months. Even when we were together, he didn't talk about the specifics of his projects much. He tried to leave all of that at his office, or in his truck, or wherever. The only way I knew about the big things-like ALN, Smoke, or Ennis's Beargrass Village- was because sometimes he'd mention them in passing or I'd hear about it from someone or read about it in the newspaper."

"Susan, where did he keep his files? His notebooks?" He realized he sounded like he was grilling her. "Sorry for my tone."

"It's okay," she said, patting his hand. "I'm not sure about the files. I think at the office. He brought his notebook into the house some nights-he was always scribbling in those notebooks-but he never left papers or files around the house."

"Do you mind if I look through the boxes of what he left?"

"Feel free, Joe. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them anyway. They probably belong to the state."

Suddenly, Susan turned her wrist and looked at her watch. If her glass hadn't been empty, Joe noticed, she would have spilled wine on her lap. "I need to get back to the boys and the, um, mourners."

"Thank you for your time, Susan. I really appreciate it."

Again, she patted his hand.

She slid down from the stool, a little shakily. Joe steadied her by holding her forearm until she was standing. She put the glass down and smoothed her skirt. She started to say good-bye and then stopped. "Joe, with all of your questions I nearly forgot why I needed to talk to you in the first place."

She said, "A year ago, just as Will was starting to lose his bearings and six months before I left him, he took me out to dinner. It was a fairly nice evening, even though we couldn't afford it. Everything here just costs so much. Anyway, out of the blue, he said that when he died he wanted his remains scattered in a specific place. When I look back on that now, I think he knew something was going to happen."

She had her legs back and was walking out of the lounge, Joe following.

"Two Ocean Pass, that's the place," she said. "It's somewhere up in the wilderness area, where he patrolled. He described it pretty thoroughly, for Will."

She stopped in the hallway and turned to face Joe. He could hear the fog of conversation coming from the reception room, where no doubt mourners were waiting for the widow.

"He said a creek comes down from the mountains. I think he called it Two Ocean Creek. Anyway, the stream flows south through a big meadow and splits at a lone spruce tree. It's exactly on the Continental Divide. One part of the stream flows to the Atlantic and the other to the Pacific. He said it was the most beautiful meadow he had ever seen. He wants his ashes scattered there, by the tree."

Joe now grasped what she was asking.

"I'll never get up there," she said. "I don't even want to try. But it's in your new district, and you can probably find it."

"I'll do it," Joe said. "I'm honored." He knew vaguely of the location from the map on the office wall. "Do you want me to do anything else?"

She shook her head. "That's more than enough, Joe. I'll give you my number in Casper, if you don't mind calling me when it's done."

The urn looked like an extra large beer stein. Joe carried it to his pickup, thinking how light it was, wondering guiltily what the ashes looked like (brown, gray, or white?). On the street, a jacked-up Grand Am filled with teenagers slowed, and a window rolled down and an unformed simian face jutted out, asking, "Dude, where's the party?"