Out of Range

THIRTY-FIVE

A harsh shaft of sun from a skylight burned red through his eyelids, and Joe awoke covered in sweat with a screaming headache on a metal-framed cot in the Teton County jail. He turned his head to the side, away from the light, and the movement created a wash of nausea that rose in him. He staggered to the metal toilet in the corner of the cell, threw up, and leaned against the cold cinderblock wall, breathing deeply. His mouth tasted like he'd been sucking on pennies.

"Morning, sunshine," a Secret Service agent said, standing outside his cell. Joe recognized him as the one he had first seen in the sheriff's office.

Joe looked at his wrist, but saw a pale oval of skin where his watch should have been.

"What time is it?" he croaked, noticing they had also taken his belt, boots, and everything in his pockets.

"Noon."

"Man," Joe said, "my head is killing me."

"You took a few lumps," the agent said. "By the way, you popped your stitches last night so the doctor sewed you up again."

Joe raised his arm and saw the dried bloodstains on his clothes, then raised his shirt and looked at the new bandages. There was no mirror in the cell, but when he rubbed his unshaven face he felt several cuts and bruises, and his bottom lip was swollen and sore. Boy, he thought, if Marybeth could see me now, she'd be so proud.

"I'm Agent Cameron" the man said, "and you, my friend, are in a shitload of trouble."

Joe looked over at Cameron, the the words setting him back.

"What do you have against the vice president?" Cameron asked bluntly.

"Jeez …" Joe moaned, "I've got nothing against him."

"Then why'd you go after him that way?"

"I didn't go after him," Joe said. "I went after Don Ennis."

Cameron shifted, peering at Joe through the bars.

"Yeah," Cameron said, "that's what we thought. But Mr. Ennis tried to make the case that you were attacking the VP and he stepped in front of him to protect him from you."

Joe said, "You were there, weren't you? You know it didn't happen that way."

"We wouldn't have let it happen that way," Cameron said. "But maybe you were swinging for the VP and hit the wrong guy?"

"I hit who I was trying to hit," Joe said.

Cameron showed a slight smile. "Yeah, it was obvious you were after him and not the VP. I was just testing you. But Mr. Ennis seems to call a lot of the shots around here, and I think he would like you to stay in this jail cell a lot longer."

Joe reached up with both hands and smoothed his hair back. There were lumps on his scalp too, and he winced. "Have I been charged with something? Can I talk with the sheriff?" Joe asked.

"I don't think the sheriff is back yet," Cameron said. "He had to leave early this morning because there was some kind of accident on the river. Apparently, someone drowned in the whitewater."

Joe almost didn't make the connection, but when he did he said, "Oh, God."

"They're looking for her body downriver, I guess," Cameron said.

Joe closed his eyes tight and slid to the floor.

"Was she worth punching her husband and landing in jail?" Cameron asked.

Yes, Joe thought, yes she was.

Joe sat at a conference table in the sheriff's office with Randy Pope, Trey Crump, and Tassell. His hands were handcuffed and on the table in front of him. The skin on his knuckles, where he had hit Don Ennis, was peeled back and scabbed over.

Trey was seated next to Joe. "I came over as soon as I heard. Mr. Pope called me last night."

"Does Marybeth know?" Joe asked. "I haven't been allowed to make a call."

Trey raised his eyebrows sympathetically. "I called her this morning."

Joe looked down. He could not imagine what Marybeth must be thinking. "How did she take it?"

"Not well," Trey said, "but I told her we'd figure a way out of this."

He leaned into Joe. "I heard about what happened with Smoke Van Horn. I know you're not pleased about what you had to do, but I'm damned proud of you, Joe. After that bear, you had me worried."

"Me too," Joe confessed.

Tassell cleared his throat. He looked wrung out and angry. "I'd like to remind everyone here that Mr. Pickett is under arrest for assault, so I'd appreciate you not having side conversations. Letting him out of the cell to talk with you is a courtesy."

"Thank you," Joe told Tassell. He looked at Trey, said, "Thanks for telling Marybeth that, but I did hit the guy. My only regret is that I didn't shoot him-"

"Joe," Trey cautioned, interrupting, "watch what you say here."

Joe was struck by the wisdom of that and went silent.

"We might have a way to get you out of this," Pope said.

Joe turned to him. Pope sat on the other side of the table with Tassell.

"I talked with Don Ennis an hour ago at the hospital," Pope said. "He was very distraught, as you can guess. The poor guy lost his wife this morning. But he did say he'd consider dropping the charges if we would transfer you out of here."

"Was he in the boat when it happened?" Joe asked.

Pope looked back, confused. "What difference does that make? Didn't you hear me? He said he'd consider dropping the charges."

"Who was in the boat?"

Pope angrily slapped the table and addressed Joe's supervisor. "Trey, we have a terrible situation here, as you know. We could have one of our game wardens charged with aggravated assault-the second employee in this same district to get arrested. If that happens, it will look like the governor has completely lost control of this agency. I risk my reputation to get this guy out of it, and he doesn't seem to care!"

Trey sighed heavily and leaned toward Joe. "Joe, what's going on? We could both lose our jobs over this."

"His wife drowns but he has the presence of mind to negotiate my transfer?" Joe asked. "Does that sound like a grieving widower to you?"

"Shock affects people in different ways," Pope said weakly, again talking to Trey as if he couldn't deal with Joe. "Don Ennis has a direct line to the governor, Trey. He's not somebody we can fuck around with anymore. We let you give Will Jensen a long leash, and then Joe here. Things couldn't have gone worse under your watch. Now we've got to think of our survival, and I'm talking about the whole agency."

"What did you offer him?" Joe asked Pope. "Did you tell him we'd approve Beargrass Village?"

Pope flushed red but didn't answer.

"You did," Joe said.

"I'm trying to keep you out of jail!" Pope shouted. "Why can't you get that?"

Joe stood up, and he noticed that both Trey and Tassell pushed back from the table in case they needed to restrain him.

"Don Ennis caused Will Jensen to break," Joe said. "He started to do the same to me. He probably killed his wife this morning. And you"-he pointed awkwardly across the table with his handcuffs at Pope-"just gave him what he wanted all along."

The room was silent, until Pope asked, "Can you prove a single thing you're saying?"

Joe hesitated. "Some of it," he said. "But you'll need to give me the rest of the day to nail it all down."

Trey looked from Pope to Tassell. "Let's give Joe a chance here. Is that all right with you, Sheriff?"

"I don't think I like where this is headed," Sheriff Tassell said, shaking his head. "I don't think I like it at all."

On the way to the statehouse in Tassell's Cherokee, the sheriff kept shaking his head. "We lose a couple of people every year on the river," he said. "Unlike homicides, it isn't that unusual." He had told Joe, Pope, and Trey that while going through the rapids, Stella apparently lost her grip on the rope and was thrown from the boat. Don Ennis said she must have been tugged underneath his raft because they didn't see her again. Teams were searching for the body, but they hadn't found it yet.

"We've had situations where the body isn't found for weeks," Tassell said, "sometimes even longer. If it gets pinned under the water against rocks, we just have to wait. One guy wasn't found for over a year. His body washed all the way down to Palisades Reservoir and an ice fisherman found him when he was drilling a hole in the ice."

"Who else was in the boat?" Joe asked again.

"Don, of course," Tassell said, "Pete Illoway, and some guy named Shane Suhn, who works for Ennis. They all corroborated the story."

"How do we know she was in the boat?"

"Some other rafters saw her when they launched," Tassell said.

"Where did it happen?" Joe asked. "Where on the river?"

"At the start of the worst stretch of whitewater," Tassell said. "That's where most of the drownings take place. People get used to nice easy rapids, and then they hit the hard stuff and they aren't prepared for it."

Tassell leaned across the table to look at Joe. "You've seen all those Snake River rafting pictures around town? That's where they're taken, because the rollers are so big."

Joe thought about the photos he had seen in the window of Wildwater Photography.

"She wasn't inexperienced," Joe said. "She'd been on that stretch of the river many times."

"But why would Don kill his wife?" Tassell asked.

"She discovered something about him," Joe said. "And he was planning to dump her."

Trey turned in his seat, hanging an arm over the back of it, narrowing his eyes at Joe. "How well did you know her, anyway?"

"Well enough," Joe said.

"I thought you were going to say 'not well enough.'" Pope grinned.

Joe glared at him, and Pope looked away.

At the statehouse, Joe showed them how the piece of siding on the back of the house could be removed. They watched as he took it off and peeled back a layer of pink insulation, revealing a line of copper tubing and a metal screw-top fitting that had been soldered onto the tube.

"This line connects directly from the well in the basement to the drinking water outlet on the refrigerator inside," Joe said. "It was the surest way they could drug Will. They couldn't put it in his food, because he ate out a lot and rarely cooked, except for that last night. But if they could connect it to his drinking water"-Joe fingered the valve where a bottle of liquefied narcotic could be connected by a fitting with a dispensing valve on it-"they knew it would get him." He showed them how the valve could be adjusted to dispense a quantity of the drug into the line. It was still set at one-quarter open, enough to affect Joe but not disable him.

"Christ," Tassell said, looking over the mechanism.

"The first night I was in the house I heard somebody out here," Joe said. "I heard a clunking sound, probably after they hooked up the bottle and fumbled with putting the siding back up. But I didn't figure this out until yesterday. Once I knew it was drugs, things started to make sense."

"So they didn't actually murder him," Trey said. "They created a scenario where he would either get fired, get arrested, or do himself in."

"Right," Joe said. "He was under a lot of strain after his wife left, and that's when they installed it. And they also knew that after she left he'd be in worse shape, and more vulnerable. Ennis knew Will was going to veto Beargrass Village, and the only way the project could go forward was if Will was gone and discredited. Will couldn't figure out what was happening to him-you can read it in his journals. The drugs just made things worse to the point that he couldn't see another way out of it." Joe had made the decision not to tell them what he knew about Stella's part in it. He didn't see the point, now that she was gone and Will's death had been ruled a suicide.

"But we don't know who rigged this up," Pope said. "You're speculating here."

"I am," Joe said. "But who besides Don Ennis had the means to do something like this? Who gained from Will going off the deep end?"

"You've got a point," Trey said.

"Another thing," Joe said. "Susan Jensen told me that Will's cremation was paid for by some anonymous person. She thought it was someone who liked Will, or the family. I'll bet if we check the crematorium we'll find out the check came from Ennis, or Beargrass Village, or one of his other companies."

"Why would he do that?" Pope asked.

"In case someone wanted to dig up the body and do an autopsy later," Joe said. "To prevent the discovery of drugs in Will's system."

Tassell rubbed his face with his hands and moaned.

"Let me show you something else," Joe said, leading them around the house to the driveway.

Joe explained that he had located the transmitter in Will's pickup the previous afternoon, before he went to the party at the Ennises'. After searching the wheel wells, bumpers, and motor, he found it mounted under the dashboard within a spider's web of wiring. Will's line about They know where I'm going and they track my movements made him think of the truck.

"They knew where he went, what he said, what he told people over his radio," Joe said. "Since game wardens spend more time in their vehicles than they do anywhere else, it was like tapping his office."

Trey nodded, leaning into the cab to look under the dashboard. "If we check the frequency on that transmitter and match it to a receiver, we've found who was listening in."

"I'd guess the receiver is in a room at Beargrass," Joe said. "That's how they knew what decision he was going to make on Beargrass Village. They listened to him talk to biologists and others about the migration problems a fence would cause."

"So that's why they torched your truck," Tassell said, still with a pained expression on his face. It was as if Joe's discoveries were causing him escalating physical pain. "It was easier to do that than run the risk of getting caught putting another transmitter in your vehicle. They knew you'd just take Will's truck instead, and you did."

Joe stood back and let the men hash out theories and make connections. Trey bought what Joe had shown them; Pope was intrigued but wary because if Joe was right he would look foolish for his agreement with Ennis, and Tas-sell was pained by the prospect of confronting one of the most powerful and willful men in Teton County. While Joe listened, he saw the neighbor in the tam come out of his house with his dog. He had kept Stella out of it so far, figuring it was the least he could do. Even though he knew she was dead, the fact hadn't really sunk in yet.

"Let's go back to the station," Joe said, interrupting. "I've got an idea how we might be able to get Ennis to admit he murdered his wife."

Pope and Tassell looked at Joe with incredulity.

They were in the Cherokee before the neighbor made it down the block, for which Joe was grateful. That man, he had learned the day before, was a talker.