Out of Range

FIFTEEN

Sheriff Tassell was late arriving at the statehouse. Joe had spent the time having an unsatisfying conversation with Marybeth, his cell signal fading and coming back, hearing snippets of sentences and asking her to repeat them.

"So Sheridan's okay?"

"Seems to be," Marybeth said. "It's her attitude that needs an adjustment…."

There was more, but Joe didn't get it.

"So Sheridan's eye is fine?"

"Joe, I just told you …" Lost it again.

He got out of his truck and walked down the sidewalk, pirouetting occasionally, trying to find a steady, strong signal.

"… another call where the caller didn't say anything …"

"What?"

"It was from area code seven-two-oh. Do you …"

"Seven-two-oh?"

". she asked me about it, wondering if it was anything we needed to be concerned about…"

"Marybeth, stop," Joe said, frustrated. "Wait until I get into the house. I can use the phone inside. I'll call you from there and we can talk, okay?"

"… they miss you, Joe …"

"Did you hear me?"

Suddenly the connection was good. "Hear what? Why are you snapping at me?"

"I'm not snapping," Joe said, looking up at the streetlight. "My signal's going in and out. I'm only hearing parts of what you say."

"… maybe you should call back tomorrow so you can talk with the girls …"

"I will. Now, Marybeth …"

The signal vanished.

Joe sighed, punched off the call as Tassell's Teton County Sheriff's Jeep Cherokee cruised down the street and pulled in behind Joe's truck.

"Sorry I'm late," Tassell said, swinging out of the Cherokee. Before the interior lights shut off when the door closed, Joe saw a woman he assumed was Tassell's wife in the passenger seat, and at least two children in the back seat.

"You wouldn't believe how many social obligations there are here," Tassell said over his shoulder to Joe as he walked up the path to the front door, spinning a set of keys around his index finger. "Seems like we're obligated most nights."

Joe grunted.

Tassell said, "Tonight was the annual fund-raiser at the wildlife art museum. As sheriff, I have to go to these things. It's noticed when I'm not there."

"You could have left me the keys at your office."

Tassell stopped at the front door, fumbling in the dark with the keys and the lock. "I wanted to check this place out first."

"Why?"

Tassell turned, but Joe couldn't see his face in the dark.

"I want to make sure they cleaned up."

Joe hoped so too, but didn't say anything. He heard the zip of the key going in, and Tassell pushed open the door, the tape seals breaking open with a kissing sound. Tassell searched for a light switch, then both the porch light and the interior lights went on. Joe blinked and followed him in.

"It's clean enough, I think," Tassell said, surveying the room.

Joe stepped around Tassell. The home was no bigger than his own in Saddlestring. They stood in the dining room, with the kitchen appliances lining the wall near the door. The only nice thing, Joe noticed, was a fairly modern refrigerator with a water tap and icemaker on one of the doors. The table where Will shot himself was in the center of the room, with two chairs on either end of it. The cheap paneled walls were bare of adornments with the exception of a stopped clock. The ceiling was a dingy off-white and in need of paint. The overhead frosted light threw out mottled light due to at least one burned-out bulb and the shadowed remains of dead miller moths gathered in the frosted glass fixture. The room smelled of strong disinfectant.

Tassell walked to the head of the table, turned, and gestured to the ceiling. "That's where the bullet went," he said, pointing at a nickel-sized hole a few inches from where the paneling started. "I would have thought they'd plug that up, but I guess not."

Joe looked at the ceiling. He could see dried arcing wipe marks reflecting in the light, where the blood had been washed off. The paneling on the east wall also looked freshly scrubbed.

"This room was a mess," Tassell said. "A.44 Magnum does a lot of damage to flesh and bone. The damned gun kicked so hard it drove the front sight of the muzzle up into his palate." He demonstrated by jabbing his finger up into his mouth, pointing behind his front teeth.

He handed Joe the key ring. "His pickup keys are on that too."

"Thanks."

"What can I say? It's a shitty house but I guess it's your new home," Tassell said. "Well, I've got my kids in the car. I need to get them home."

"I'll probably be calling you with a few questions in regard to Will's suicide."

Tassell hesitated at the door. "That's not necessary."

For the next hour, Joe moved in. He stripped the bed and threw his sleeping bag on top of the mattress and hung his clothes in the closet, which was empty except for a pair of battered Sorel pac boots. Stacking Will's boxes along a bare wall in the living room, Joe thought the house had the same feel that Will's office did, as if he had no compulsion to make it his own. He guessed that when Susan left she took everything, and that Will was fine with that.

Where to put the urn? No place seemed appropriate. Joe walked through the house, holding it in front of him with both hands. If there was protocol for this sort of dilemma, he didn't know it, so he left it on the table for the time being.

Joe was pleased to find that the telephone had a dial tone and the television worked. He found an all-sports channel and left it on, mainly to provide background noise in the empty house. Between the girls, Marybeth, and Maxine, there was always noise in his house, and the complete silence was uncomfortable to him.

It was after midnight when Joe went out to Will's truck and unlocked it to look for the notebook. The cab was a rat's nest of equipment, maps, clothing, and paperwork. It looked like Joe's own truck. Unlike the house or his office, this was where Will had really lived and worked. It felt as though he had just stepped out and locked up for the night; there was a sense of unfinished business inside, just like Will's desk at the building. Will hadn't even sealed up a bag of sunflower seeds that sat open on the console. Joe searched the cab thoroughly, even shoving his hand between the seats, where he found a half-empty pint of vodka. But no notebook.

As he searched the truck, his mind kept returning to his earlier encounter with Stella Ennis. He could still feel the ZING that had shot through him when he'd grasped her hand, although it had now receded into a warm, lingering buzz. That particular thing, that electric shock, had happened to him only twice before in his life. The first time was in the eighth grade, when Jo Ellen Meese whispered to him what time she changed into her nightgown and that her bedroom window was unlocked. The second time was when he saw Marybeth, in the middle of a group of girls, hurrying to class on a snowy day at the University of Wyoming. Marybeth had looked back, their eyes locked, and he knew she was the one.

Both experiences had resulted in something profound; his first time and, he thought, his true love.

Now it had happened with a married woman with blood on her hands on the side of a two-lane highway.

Back inside the house, Joe walked through all the rooms. In addition to the master bedroom, there was a small bedroom with a set of box springs and no mattress. Despite the work of the cleaners, he could see crayon marks on the floor. This was the boys' room, he guessed. Across the hallway was a bathroom with a shower/tub, a stained toilet, and an empty medicine cabinet. They hadn't even left a towel. The utility room was empty and looked like it had been empty for months. Susan must have taken the washer and dryer, Joe assumed, and Will never got them replaced. The floor of the utility room was covered with dust and mouse droppings.

The refrigerator was empty except for an open box of baking soda in the back and a single can of beer. Joe popped the top of the beer and took a long drink. It was sour, and he gagged and spit it into the sink. He filled a lone plastic drinking glass from the cupboard with water from the refrigerator tap and tried to wash the taste out of his mouth.

The only real proof that Will Jensen had lived and died in the house, other than the old pair of boots and the hole in the ceiling, was in the freezer. The cleaners must have forgotten about it, Joe thought.

The freezer was still filled with packages of meat.

At 3:30 A.M., Joe suddenly awoke and wasn't sure where he was. His head spinning, he reached out for a lamp on his bedside table at home but, catching air, lost his balance, tumbled out of bed, taking his sleeping bag with him, and landed hard on the floor, crying, "Jesus!" The thump his knees made was loud, like a muffled shot, and it reverberated through the empty house, causing what he at first thought was the sound of a bird spooking and flushing somewhere in the dark.

He wasn't sure how long he remained motionless on the floor on his hands and knees, his head hanging, trying to focus his mind. Had he hit his head in the fall? he wondered. He didn't remember doing so. But he practically swooned as he sat back on the floor, dizziness returning. Slumping to the side, he slid out of the bag and lay on the floor, his bare skin on cold wood, his eyes open, until he finally started to get his bearings.

Joe stood up shakily, padded to the doorjamb and hit the light switch beside it. The bedroom flooded with harsh light. He stood there, naked, rubbing his eyes but not able to clear the cobwebs from his vision.

Still not entirely lucid, he looked around the room and remembered where he was. His sleeping bag was a tangle on the floor, his pillow on the mattress but puckered with sweat. Had he dreamed about flushing a bird? Where had that come from?

As he pulled on his Wranglers and a T-shirt, he recalled the sound. It had a rapid, thumping cadence, like a pheasant breaking wildly from the brush. Or, he thought, feeling the hair prick up on his arms, like the sound of someone running away.

Joe looked around, trying to recall where he had put his weapon before going to bed. He slipped his.40 Beretta out of its holster and tiptoed down the hallway. Methodically, he checked out each room, opening closet doors, peering around corners, but the house was empty, the doors bolted, the windows locked. His head was still feeling thick and fuzzy, as if a terrific bout of the flu was coming on.

Assured that he was alone, Joe sat in a chair at the table and put his Beretta on the tabletop. He rubbed his eyes and face, debating whether he should try to wake up fully or go back to sleep. He felt somewhere in the middle of both.

Maybe it was simple exhaustion, he thought. He hadn't slept well for almost a week. He was out of his home territory, out of his routine. He missed Marybeth and his daughters. He let his head flop back and found himself staring at the bullet hole in the ceiling.

"This is where Will sat," Joe said aloud, "right here in this chair."

He glanced involuntarily at the Beretta on the table, then at the urn, instantly recognizing the action for all of the cinematic melodrama it held. He stood and shook his head, trying to shake the fog away. Maybe it was that sour beer, or the heavy odor of disinfectant in the house that was making him feel so strange.

Joe unlocked the front door and stood barefoot on the porch. A light frost the color of the moon sparkled on the grass. He filled his lungs with needles of icy air and felt better. His head began to clear. He stood on the porch and breathed until he started to shiver from the cold, then went back inside. He was beginning to remove his clothing and crawl back into the sleeping bag when he thought of something. Pulling on his boots and grabbing his flashlight from his day-pack and the Beretta from the table, Joe went through the utility room and unbolted the back door and stepped out into the tiny backyard. The umbrella-like canopy of cottonwoods closed off the sky. He snapped on his flashlight and panned it across the grass until the beam stopped at the cluster of footprints in the frost beneath his bedroom window and the indents made by boots, widely spaced, where the man he had startled by falling out of bed had run away.