“I worry that getting too close to the locals might make some of my people go. . native,” she said, looking closely at him for his reaction. “You know, it might not be as easy to arrest somebody whom you saw at PTA board the night before, for example. Or you might be a little more sympathetic than necessary to a local rancher making a damage claim if that same rancher is on your softball team.”
Joe shrugged. “Seems to me we do a better job if we know the people we’re working for-if we’re among them.”
“Unless you forget who you’re working for,” she said, and shifted in her seat in a way that said the conversation was over.
He turned on Fourth Street and slowed down under an overgrown canopy of ancient cottonwood trees. The duplex he was looking for, Bryce Pendergast’s last known address, was one half of the house. There was a marked difference between the condition of the duplex on the left side and the one on the right. The right side was freshly painted, and there were flowers planted on the side of the porch and floral curtains in the window. The right side of the lawn was green and well maintained. An ancient Buick was parked under a carport.
On the left side of the duplex was a jacked-up Ford F-150 parked in front on the curb so it blocked the sidewalk, and the small yard between the unpainted picket fence and the front door was dried out and marked by burned yellow ovals on both sides of the broken walk between the gate and the door.
“Guess which one Bryce lives in,” Joe said, pulling over and killing the engine.
He called in his position to dispatch and said he planned to question a potential suspect in a wildlife violation and gave the name and address.
“GF-forty-eight clear,” he said, and racked the mic. Then he remembered and said to Greene-Dempsey: “I should have said GF-twenty-one, I guess.”
She nodded nervously, her eyes dancing between Joe and the dark duplex.
Joe dug a digital audio micro-recorder out of the satchel on the floor and checked the power, then turned it on and dropped it in his front breast pocket.
She said, “Is that legal? To record somebody like that?”
“Yes. As long as one party knows the conversation is recorded, it’s legal,” he said patiently.
“So you’re just going to walk up there and knock on the door?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to call for help? For backup?”
“Don’t have any,” Joe said, trying to maintain his calm. “Plus, I think the sheriff’s department has enough on its plate right now, don’t you think?”
“Still. .”
“Relax,” he said. “This isn’t unusual. I’ll go up there and see if Bryce is in, and if he is, I’ll check him out.”
“How? You don’t have a warrant. .”
Joe said, “Here’s what I do, and I’ve done this many times. It’s my standard operating procedure. If Bryce or Ryan McDermott come to the door, I’ll be friendly and professional and say, ‘Hi, guys. I guess you know why I’m here.’ And then I’ll see what happens, whether they act like they don’t know, or they start lying and overtalking, or what. I’ve had people confess right on the spot quite a few times. Sometimes, they blurt out confessions to crimes I didn’t even know about, and sometimes they implicate their buddies.”
Greene-Dempsey looked at him with obvious doubt.
She said, “Maybe you should wait a few days for this. You know-after the sheriff’s department can provide some help.”
He thought about it, then shook his head. He said, “It’s been a week since that antelope was shot. They probably think they got away with it. But something about killing wildlife bugs many of them worse than if they’d shot a person. It’s like that little tiny bit of conscience they’ve got tells them it’s really wrong. So when you just ask them, sometimes they’ll start spilling.”
He touched the digital recorder with the tips of his fingers. “So if they confess, I’ve got it here.”
Joe said, “Even if they keep lying and don’t admit a thing or invite me in, they’ll know they’re under suspicion. That alone sometimes leads to them turning themselves in later or ratting on their buddy. Just showing up gets things moving in the right direction.”
She shook her head and looked at him as if he were crazy.
“Tell me this isn’t what you do all day.”
“It isn’t.” He reached for the door handle.
“You can stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes, I suspect.”
“No,” she said. “I want to see this. I want to see what my game wardens do. I can’t be a proper director if I don’t know how things work in the field.”
“Deal,” Joe said, swinging out and clamping his hat on his head. “You can be my backup.”
She grinned nervously at that.
The morning was heating up into another warm August day. Tufts of translucent cotton from the ancient cottonwood trees were poised on the tips of the grass, awaiting a breath of wind to transport them somewhere. As he approached the broken gate, he instinctively reached down and brushed his fingertips across the top of his Glock, his cuffs, and the canister of bear spray on his belt, just to assure himself his equipment was there. The hinges on the gate moaned as he pushed it open. Lisa Greene-Dempsey maintained a ten-foot distance behind him, and followed him cautiously into the yard.
He was wondering about the burned splotches in the grass on the left side of the shared yard when a woman pushed the screen door open on the right side and stood behind it.
“Are you here about the cat urine?” she asked. “It’s about time.”
She looked to be in her seventies, and wore a thick robe and pink slippers. She had a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Pardon?” Joe said.
“It reeks like cat urine,” she said, gesturing next door with a tilt of her head. “When it’s calm like this, the smell just about makes me sick. I’ve told them to clean it up, but they just laugh at me and tell me they don’t own no cats.”
Then Joe smelled it, the whiff of ammonia.
“I’m surprised they sent the game warden,” she said, “but I’m not complaining. I expected the sheriff, but I guess you’re in charge of animals around here.”
“Sort of,” Joe said. “But I’m here on another matter.”
“Figures,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody seems to care that much about my problems. Even the guy who owns the place just shrugs and tells me he won’t do anything because they pay the rent on time. I showed him where in the lease it said you can’t have pets, but he just doesn’t care.”
“I’m sorry,” Joe said. “I’m not here for that.”
“Just make sure to ask them about the cats.”
“Okay,” Joe said.
She stepped back and closed the door in front of her. A moment later, Joe saw the floral curtains part an inch so she could watch what happened next.
He turned to Greene-Dempsey and shrugged. She looked nervously at the front door of the left side of the duplex.
“You can still wait in the truck,” he said.
She shook her head no.
“Then make sure you stay back and to the side, please,” he said.
The odor got stronger on the porch when he knocked on the door. Because of the Ford pickup in front, he assumed somebody was home. When he leaned his head close to the door, he could hear and feel the thumping of bass notes from a radio or music player of some kind.
He knocked again, and heard the scuffling of feet. To his right, there was a glimpse of a face in the dirty window, and he waved at it as if to say gotcha.
Then, after some low murmuring on the other side of the door that indicated there was more than one person inside, a series of bolts were thrown. Joe thought, Bolts?
And Bryce Pendergast was standing in front of him with the door halfway open, his face contorted into a pulled-back grimace. Pendergast was naked from the waist up, severely thin, with a sleeve tattoo on the arm. He had long, stringy hair that glistened with hair product-or grease. The tendons in his neck looked to be as taut as guitar strings, and his breathing was quick and shallow. The right side of Pendergast’s body was hidden behind the door. A strong whoosh of the odor enveloped Joe on the porch.