Текст книги "Out of Range"

Автор книги: C. J. Box

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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 youthink?"

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 saidit 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.

FOURTEEN

Marybeth Pickett had just finished feeding the horses when she heard the telephone ringing from inside the house. It was already cool and dark, and she was running two hours late for dinner because of their trip to the hospital. She ran from the corral toward the house and entered through the back door.

"I hope it's Dad," Sheridan said from where she was doing homework at the kitchen table. Lucy had told them he called and would call back. The kitchen smelled of onion, tomato, and garlic. A frozen pizza was warming in the oven, something Marybeth regretted. They were eating too much of that kind of stuff with Joe gone, she thought.

The sight of Sheridan's bandaged eye jarred Marybeth, even though she had seen the square of gauze applied by the doctor just hours before. It was likely not serious, the doctor had said. It wouldn't have been anything at all except that an opposing player's fingernail had scratched her cornea. The injury had occurred during a skirmish for a ball, Sheridan had told them. Nobody called it, players went for it, Sheridan got to it, and somebody reached around her from behind and raked her across the eyes. Officially, it was considered an accident.

"I hope it's him too," Marybeth said to Sheridan, snatching the receiver from the wall.

Silence.

"Joe?"

She could hear labored breathing and something else– muffled conversation? – in the background.

"Joe, are you on your cell? Can you hear me?"

"I want to talk with him," Sheridan said from the table.

Marybeth covered the telephone with her hand and shook her head at Sheridan, indicating, It's not him.

Then she remembered the Caller ID unit that had just been installed, that she had forgotten to look at before answering. The number had a 720 area code, which was unfamiliar.

"Who is this?"

An intake of breath, as if the caller was gathering his thoughts to speak. But he didn't.

"I'm hanging up," Marybeth said, and she did. "Damnit."

The caller's telephone number vanished from the screen. She retrieved it from the backup and wrote the number down on the first thing she could find, the margin of the front page of the Saddlestring Roundup.

"Who was that?" Sheridan asked.

"Wrong number."

"Then why did you write it down?"

Caught, Marybeth looked up. "In case he calls again."

"I heard you and Dad talking about someone calling us and not saying anything. Was that him?"

"I have no idea," Marybeth said, her voice more shrill than she would have chosen.

Sheridan glared at her mother. It didn't matter if one eye was obscured, the glare was the same. "You don't have to treat me like I'm an idiot, Mom. I'm thirteen. Do you realize how old that is?"

Marybeth braced for another argument. They were occurring with more frequency these days. "Sheridan," Marybeth said, already regretting her words, "do yourealize how young that is?"

Sheridan slammed her pen down on her paper. "You treat me like I'm Lucy's age," she said. "I'm not. You forget how much I've gone through in my life."

"Oh, stop it."

"No," Sheridan said, her cheeks blooming red, "I won't stop it. If someone is calling our house and we might be in danger, I want to know about it. Don't keep me in the dark like a baby."

Marybeth took a breath, counted to three. "I don't know that to be a fact," she said. "We have no idea who is calling, or why. We don't know if it means anything at all."

Sheridan continued to glare. Lucy walked into the room, turning her head from her mother to her sister, as if watching a tennis volley.

"Was it so hard to tell me that?" Sheridan asked.

"Tell her what?" Lucy asked. "Was that Dad?"

Sheridan told Lucy, "Never mind."

"No," Marybeth said, "it wasn't your dad."

"When is he going to call?"

"I don't know," Marybeth said, an edge of frustration in her voice.

"He'll call," Sheridan said, picking up her pen and going back to her homework.

Don't be so smug,Marybeth thought, looking at her older daughter, for a moment resenting her and her absolute certainty, and just as quickly forgiving her.

Marybeth picked up the newspaper with the telephone number on it and headed for Joe's office. As she passed by the table, Marybeth mussed Sheridan's hair affectionately. Sheridan turned her head away sharply, as if her mother's touch offended her.

"Sheridan …"

"I'm trying to do my homework here, okay?" Sheridan snapped.

Let it go,Marybeth told herself. Let it go.

She put the newspaper on the stack of unopened mail for Joe. She intended to read him the return addresses on the envelopes when he called, to see if any of the letters were important and should be forwarded to him in Jackson. And she wanted to ask him if the phone number was familiar. That is, if and when he called.

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 ZINGthat 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 thatcome 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.