She said, “That isn’t our concern right now. I’m sure you’re aware of the conflicts going on between the state and the federal government on a variety of fronts. There has even been talk that the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior may sue us because of decisions Governor Rulon has made. He doesn’t want another problem.”
“No one does.”
“Maybe,” she said, reaching across the table and touching his hand again in an odd gesture that belied what she said next: “Maybe you’re a little too close to the people involved.”
Joe looked back, stung by the truth in it, and said, “And maybe you’re too far away.”
Her smile wasn’t a smile at all, and he knew at that moment that one of the reasons she was offering him the new job fell partially under the category of Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Her iPhone started skittering across the table, and she caught it and looked at the display screen.
“I need to take this,” she said. “See what I mean about pressures?” And she slid out of the booth. He watched her as she walked swiftly through the atrium, talking on the cell and gesticulating wildly with her free hand.
She returned as he finished his breakfast. A new fruit plate had been delivered that, Joe thought, looked exactly like the first, except moister. He wondered if MayVonne and the cook had spit on it.
Lisa Greene-Dempsey glared at it and pushed it aside and said, “There has to be somewhere I can get fresh food in this town if I have to go to the supermarket myself. Unfortunately, I came here in the governor’s Suburban and I don’t know where he is right now. I assume your town doesn’t have any taxis?”
“Correct. But I’d be happy to take you,” Joe said.
“You would?” she asked, genuinely pleased.
“I’ve got an errand to run first,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
He grabbed the check. He didn’t feel right about her buying his breakfast when she didn’t eat.
Joe said, “Before you make all your plans to transform the agency, do you want to come along and see a little of what I do?”
“Then you’ll take me to the supermarket?” she asked, looking at her watch.
“Yup. Come with me, Director LGD.”
“I’ll get my jacket.”
At the cash register, MayVonne looked at him and shook her head.
“Piece of work you’ve got there,” she said.
“My new boss.”
“I could tell she wasn’t from around here. Is she staying long?”
Joe shrugged.
“Because if she does, her and me are going to go round and round like two wet socks,” MayVonne said, ringing him up.
Joe grinned. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he got the gist.
“One more thing,” MayVonne said, lowering her voice in a way that made Joe take notice. “If those assholes did to Butch Roberson like I heard they did, I hope he takes out the whole damned lot of them.”
Joe said, “You may not want to mention that to the governor if you see him.”
She said, “I already did.”
“What?”
“I saw him this morning,” she said with a wry grin. “He had biscuits and gravy, and he left me a nice tip.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Yeah,” she said, smirking. “He said he was going crazy.”
11
“His name is Bryce Pendergast,” Joe said to Lisa Greene-Dempsey, “and his partner in crime is a guy named Ryan McDermott.”
She sat in the passenger seat wearing a sweater over her shoulders with her briefcase on her lap and her phone in her hand as Joe drove through Saddlestring. She looked to Joe like she was trying to be a good sport by coming along with him. He was embarrassed by the unkempt appearance of the gear and paperwork stuffed into every nook and cranny inside the cab, and he was grateful he hadn’t brought Tube or Daisy along as well that morning.
“It’s kind of my office,” he said.
“I understand. So what is it we’re doing?”
“Checking on a couple of low-life poachers,” Joe said. “I’ve seen them around. They bounce from entry-level job to entry-level job and usually quit in a huff. Neither one of them graduated high school, although Bryce may have gotten his GED. I’ve seen Ryan McDermott’s name in the police blotter a few times for DWI, and I think Pendergast might have been picked up once for breaking into cars. I haven’t seen them out in the field, though, so I always considered them city troublemakers, not poachers.”
She shook her head as he talked, and said, “It’s troubling what happens to youth that are without opportunities.”
Joe shook his head and said, “Bryce’s parents are high school teachers, and Ryan McDermott’s dad is an Episcopalian bishop. They’ve had plenty of opportunities-they just didn’t want ’em.”
“Oh,” she said quickly, and looked away.
Joe said, “Sometimes people just turn out mean. You’ll go crazy trying to figure out ways to prevent it from happening altogether. The only thing we can do is arrest the bad guys and put them away if we can.”
She nodded and said, “This we can agree on.”
“Some common ground,” Joe said, smiling. He said, “People who violate our game and fish regulations often go on to do real harm to innocent citizens. It’s like a gateway drug to them to worse crimes down the road. You’ve heard of the ‘broken windows’ theory of law enforcement?”
She nodded. “If we rigorously prosecute even the smallest crimes, it will set a tone and prevent bigger crimes, right?”
“Right. Well, this is the frontier version. Someone who would kill an animal out of season for the thrill of it indicates a general lack of respect for rules and laws, and sets the stage for something worse to come. That’s why I throw the book at ’em if I catch ’em.”
She considered what he said, and seemed to agree, he thought.
He drove into an unincorporated area that hugged the west side of the town limit. The asphalt road gave way to rutted dirt, and the neat rows of suburban homes gave way to wildly incongruous houses, trailers, and lot-sized collections of junked cars and weeds.
He briefed her on the crime itself and the entries Sheridan had found on Facebook. LGD listened with interest and said, “Do you really think they’re stupid enough to put the pictures up on the Internet?”
“Oh, yeah,” Joe said.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yup. And nothing makes me madder than slaughtering an animal and leaving it to rot.”
“But to post things on Facebook. . How dumb can they be?”
“Dumb,” Joe said. “Most criminals aren’t very smart-that’s why they’re criminals. I’ve caught guys because they mounted the heads of illegal trophies in their living rooms. This is a new wrinkle, though, putting up a kind of cyber-trophy.”
“These people,” she said, looking out her window at the ramshackle homes and trailers with tires thrown on the roof to keep the tops from blowing off in the wind. Then, catching herself, she said, “You know what I mean.”
“They’re not all bad,” Joe said defensively. “The kind of crime we’re investigating is actually pretty rare. Most folks around here hate poachers as much as I do, and they turn them in. They look at wildlife as a resource. They don’t want it violated any more than we do.”
“There are degrees of violation,” Joe said, knowing he was pushing the line. “If I find somebody who killed a deer to feed his family, I usually don’t come down on him as hard as someone who killed a deer for the antlers only. And this type of thing-leaving the carcass-deserves no mercy at all.”
She didn’t look at him when she said, “So you’re telling me you make your own rules?”
“I’d consider it discretion,” he said.
Then: “Do all my game wardens make their own rules?”
“Can’t say,” Joe said, realizing he’d provided fuel to one of her burning fires.