Out of Range

THIRTEEN

At 4:45 P.M., Joe entered the office of the Teton County Sheriff's Department and told the receptionist he was there to meet with Sheriff Tassell. The receptionist said the sheriff was in a meeting and couldn't be disturbed. Behind her he could see a hallway with several closed doors, and he could hear the hum of voices from behind one of them.

Joe was annoyed. "When will he be free?"

"He didn't say."

"Did he leave me a message? Or a set of keys?"

"And you are …?" she asked archly.

He told her.

"No, there's nothing for you here."

Joe considered waiting, and looked around the small reception area. There were two chairs, and one of them was filled with a sinewy man wearing khakis, a polo shirt, a jacket, and light hiking boots. Not local, Joe thought, but buttoned-up and urban, attempting to appear casual and outdoorsy. The man looked straight back at Joe, as if daring him to take the seat next to him.

"Are you waiting for the sheriff too?" Joe asked.

"Could be," the man said. There was something coiled up about him, Joe thought. Then he noticed the earpiece, and the thin wire that curled from it into the man's collar.

"Are you Secret Service?" Joe asked, remembering Tassell's other meeting about the vice president's visit.

"Could be," the man said again. "I think the sheriff will be in there awhile."

Joe was being dismissed. He glanced at the receptionist, who was suddenly busy reading a magazine and wouldn't look back.

"When you see the sheriff," Joe told the receptionist, "please ask him to call me." He wrote down his cell phone number on a business card and handed it to her. "Tell him if he doesn't call me, I'll need to bother him at home later."

She took Joe's card without comment.

The Secret Service agent watched him coolly, but turned away as if to say, "You're dismissed."

He drove out of town to the north and parked in a pull-out overlooking the river. The urn with Will Jensen's ashes sat on the passenger seat where Maxine should have been, the seat belt securing it. The urn gave him a feeling of macabre unease.

The Tetons, backlit from the setting sun, were black sawteeth against the purpling sky. On the Snake River, through the gold aspen, Joe could see a blue rubber raft floating down the river filled with tourists bundled up in life vests. The guide who manned the oars pointed upriver for his guests, and Joe followed his gesture. A large bald eagle's nest, the size of a small car, it seemed, occupied an old-growth cottonwood treetop. With his binoculars, Joe could see two fledgling eagles in the nest. The mother duckwalked around the rim of the nest, looking down at her young ones. He could see their hooked beaks opening and closing, pink inside their mouths.

Which made Joe think of Nate's falcons. Which made him think of Saddlestring. Which made him think that he better call home. He plucked his phone from the cradle and hit the speed dial.

After five rings, Lucy answered.

"May I speak with your mom?" he asked, after Lucy had told him a long story about the substitute teacher she had that day, a man who said he really wanted to be friends with the kids in her class and asked them to call him "Mr. Kenny."

"She's not here," Lucy said.

"Well," Joe asked, after a beat, "where is she?"

"She had to take Sheridan to the hospital."

He suddenly sat up. "What?"

"Somebody poked her in the eye during volleyball practice."

So that's where she was when he called earlier-at Sheridan's practice. Jeez. "How badly is she hurt?"

"I don't know."

"Lucy," Joe said, trying to speak softly, "tell me what happened."

Joe could hear the television in the background. Lucy watched a string of cartoons every night before dinner, and he recognized the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.

"I'm not sure," Lucy said, distracted. "Sherry called Mom a while ago and said she needed to come pick her up from practice."

"So it was Sheridan who called, not a coach or a doctor?" Joe felt mild relief, assuming Sheridan couldn't have been too badly injured if she had used the telephone.

"I think it was Sheridan."

"Lucy."

"Mom just told me they'd be back for dinner. That's all I know."

Joe shook his head. There was no reason to be angry with Lucy, or to admonish her. It had probably been a frantic call, and Marybeth had likely rushed out of the house. He would try her cell phone.

"Okay, sweetie," Joe said. "Tell your mother I'll call back soon."

"Dad," Lucy said, "I miss you."

Lucy liked to twist the knife, Joe thought.

"I miss you too. I love you."

"Love you …"

Joe speed-dialed Marybeth's cell phone, but was switched to her voice mail. In her haste, he assumed, Marybeth hadn't turned it on, or was out of range. There were several dead spots between their house and Saddlestring along Bighorn Road. He left a message, sat back, replaced his phone, and stared with frustration at the river. When he looked back at the phone he noticed that the LED display on his cell read: YOU HAVE 1 MESSAGE. Joe checked it; it was from Sheriff Tassell.

"The meeting's running late," he said wearily, "and then I've got a dinner. Meet me at the statehouse at ten tonight. I'll bring the keys."

Joe sighed.

The tourist boat passed in and out of view, obscured by trees and brush. The occupants of the boat were on vacation, Joe thought. They got to see an eagle's nest, and they'd go to a nice dinner after their trip and retire to their hotel rooms. Real life was suspended for them.

He looked at the Tetons, at the raft, at the urn, and thought, They aren't the only ones.

As Joe drove toward town he rounded a blind corner and hit the brakes. The Boxster that had passed him the night before was stopped, blocking the right-hand lane, twin spoors of black rubber on the road where the car had braked and swerved. Instinctively, he reached out with his right hand to keep a dog or a child-neither of whom was there-from flying forward into the dash and windshield. His front bumper stopped inches from the back of the Boxster.

He swung out of the cab and walked around the Porsche with his flashlight, but he didn't need it. The headlights of the car illuminated the scene. It was ugly. A large doe mule deer lay in the road, blood pooling around her head. The Boxster's hood was buckled, the windshield a spider's web of cracks from the impact. A woman sat in the ditch, cradling a fawn in her arms. The fawn was small, spindly, its back covered with spots. Not more than six weeks old, Joe thought. It made him angry.

"Are you okay?" Joe asked, not really caring. He tried to keep his voice level.

The woman looked up. Her eyes reflected in the headlights. She had broad cheekbones and a drawn, skeletal quality to her face.

"I'm fine, but that poor deer and her fawn ran right out in front of me," the woman said. "I tried to stop but I couldn't."

Joe shone his flashlight on the crumpled hood of the car. "That's a lot of damage," Joe said. "How fast were you going?"

"I don't know," she said. "The speed limit, I think."

"No way," Joe said, looking at the damage, remembering how she tore around him the night before.

"Is the mother dead?" the woman asked.

Joe knelt down. There was shallow breathing from the doe, and her eyes stared into his. But he could tell from the unevenness of her fur over her rib cage that her ribs had been crushed. The blood that poured out of her mouth and nose was bright red and foamy, meaning her lungs were pierced by bone or cartilage.

"She's not dead yet," Joe said.

"Is she suffering?" the woman asked.

Joe looked up, squinted. "What do you think?"

The woman said nothing.

He heard an oncoming car slow in the other lane and pull over. A door opened and slammed. When he looked up, he could see the shapely silhouette of a woman in the headlights.

Joe stood and grasped the doe's front ankles below the joints and started to drag her off the road into the ditch. Her legs kicked involuntarily as he pulled, and she nearly kicked out of his hands. Stella Ennis, the other driver, appeared beside him and grasped the doe's rear feet. Joe looked over to see glistening tears in her eyes. But her face was determined. They got the deer off the pavement and into the grass in the ditch. Then he drew his Beretta.

"Don't kill her!" the Boxster woman pleaded. "Please don't…"

"Please turn away," Joe said softly. Stella turned, her hands to her face.

Joe shot the deer in the head. The shot cracked loud, and bounced back and forth against the wall of trees on either side of the road. The body gurgled, then sighed.

"My God," the woman with the fawn said. "That was horrible. What's wrong with you?"

Joe holstered his pistol and stepped back on the road. "Let me see the fawn."

"No!"

"Move your hands and let me see the fawn."

"Mr. Pickett…" It was Stella. Her tone was cautionary.

Slowly, the woman released the fawn, her face a mask of horror. The fawn reacted as if suddenly shot through with electricity, and it scrambled and kicked free of the woman. It stood on thin, stilt-like legs, obviously not knowing what to do. Then it collapsed in a heap.

"What did you do to it?" the woman cried. "Did you scare it to death?"

Joe wasn't sure what had happened to the fawn until he got down on his knees and looked at it. The other side of the fawn's head was crushed in from the impact of the car.

When he shone his flashlight on the woman he could see dark blood on her shirt where she had cradled it.

Joe dragged the fawn to its mother. It weighed practically nothing.

Then he turned on the woman. "There are deer all over this road. Every single night. You should know that."

"It wasn't my fault," the woman protested, starting to rise. "The deer jumped out in front of me."

"No," Joe said, a hard edge in his voice. "You were going too goddamned fast. In all my years, I've never hit a deer, much less two of them."

"I said it wasn't my fault." The woman was angry now. Joe flashed back to Pope's admonition about being respectful, putting on a good face for the department. Then he looked again at the dead deer.

"These animals aren't here just to make scenery pretty for you. They're real and you killed them," Joe said. "Lady, you're a guest here."

The woman buried her face in her hands.

"Oh, my," Stella Ennis said with admiration, and he saw the white of her teeth.

"Thank you for your help," Joe said to Stella, starting to reach out with his hand but catching himself because of the blood on it. Despite that, she reached for him and squeezed his fingers. There was blood on her hands also.

"Call me Stella," she said.

Something inside him went ZING.