“Man,” Joe said, shaking his head. It was strange to be so close to people who were apparently under suspicion.
“I feel so bad for Hannah,” Marybeth said, as if reading his mind. “I don’t think she really knows what’s going on.”
“Maybe I’ll know more in a while,” Joe said, telling her his intention to go back up into the mountains to Aspen Highlands. “I guess I didn’t realize they’d bought a lot up there.”
“Pam mentioned it to me,” Marybeth said. “She said they’d scraped together enough to buy some land to build their retirement home. I don’t think they’ve started building anything yet, though. I don’t think they can afford to. The construction business hasn’t exactly been booming around here, as you know.”
“Could be worse,” Joe said. “They could be trying to restore a historic hotel.”
Marybeth’s glare caught him off guard, and he realized he’d hit a nerve.
“I was just joking,” he said, feeling his ears flush hot.
“I’m not amused,” she said.
“I’ll call when I know something,” he said, giving her a good-bye kiss that she returned without much enthusiasm.
“Hannah’s staying for dinner and maybe for the night,” Marybeth said. “When my shift is over, I’ll come back and feed everyone.”
“Sheridan and April are home?”
“They will be soon. Sheridan gets off at six, and April’s off at six-thirty. Sheridan’s supposed to pick April up.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” he said. “And go ahead and start dinner without me.”
“Ah,” she said. “I hoped you’d be home.”
“That’s the way it goes,” he said, climbing into the cab of his pickup. Daisy was already there.
Joe took Hazelton road up into the Bighorns to Dull Knife Reservoir. Dust hung in the air on the gravel road-there had been plenty of traffic before he got there-and the waning sun fused through it to give the scene a burnished orange cast. Trees closed in and opened into mountain meadows and closed back in again, and he regretted his ill-timed joke with Marybeth about the hotel. It wasn’t necessary, and he didn’t harbor any resentment toward her or the prospect of the project. In fact, he trusted her business acumen and admired her tenacity, and sometimes wished he didn’t love his job and these mountains so much, so he could focus his ambition on enterprises that would better benefit his family.
“Remind me to apologize,” he asked Daisy. Daisy looked back as if she understood.
He turned off the gravel road to a graded two-track at a sign in the trees announcing the Aspen Highlands development. The road plunged down into a wooded swale, then leveled out at the bottom as it got closer to the reservoir. Dull Knife had been created years before by damming the Middle Fork of the Powder River and flooding the creek basin. A smattering of cabins had been built on the east and west sides, but Aspen Highlands was obviously more preplanned. The roads through it were wide and straight and graded, and there were already a dozen or so homes built on two-acre lots in the trees.
The Roberson property was easy to find because of the collection of law enforcement vehicles he could see parked in the grass just off one of the spur roads. There were three sheriff’s department SUVs, a pale green U.S. Forest Service pickup, and a highway patrol cruiser. Joe swung in off to the side of the vehicles, told Daisy to stay, and cracked the windows for her.
It was a beautiful afternoon: warm, still, almost sultry. The air was fused with pine, pollen, and wildflowers. Joe could also get a whiff of the tawny surface of the reservoir itself.
He approached the scene as if he were the first to arrive, keeping his eyes and ears open.
The lot itself was rectangular, and the borders were obvious. There were homes on both the east and west sides of the lot; an Austrian-looking chalet style on one side and an A-frame on the other. Behind the Roberson lot was a two-story log cabin built within the last couple of years, judging by the sheen on the logs and shine of the green metal roof. The cabin had a clear view of the scenic reservoir below.
Joe paused for a moment to study the other homes. By their drawn shades and the lack of any vehicles around them, he guessed no one was staying in them at the time. There were no observing neighbors standing around the perimeter of the location, or anyone talking with the deputies and other law enforcement inside.
Although he’d driven past the sign before, he’d never ventured into the development. He’d expected to find something more rural and remote, and was surprised how close the homes were to one another.
The north side of the Roberson lot appeared to be the edge of the Aspen Highlands development, and it flowed seamlessly into the National Forest. Someone-Butch? — had set up a half-sheet of plywood in front of a bermed backstop of dirt. The plywood was peppered with small holes, and had obviously been used for target practice. The paper targets had been removed. Next to the plywood was a stack of hay bales, likely used for archery practice. He looked around in the grass for the wink of spent brass and didn’t see a single ejected cartridge. Whoever had been shooting had been meticulous about cleanup. The setup looked safe and well thought out to Joe, and certainly not an unusual sight in Twelve Sleep County.
Joe ducked under yellow crime scene tape that had been tacked to tree trunks and entered the lot. There was nothing on the lot except grass, an orange Kubota tractor with a loader on the front and a backhoe bucket on the back, and a mound of freshly dug soil. A knot of officers stood together off to the side of the mound, and their faces swung toward him. One of the uniformed deputy sheriffs-Joe knew him-nodded his way and detached from the others.
Deputy Justin Woods was young, tall, and angular. He was a fairly new hire since Sheriff Reed had cleaned house of McLanahan’s team of thugs. He’d recently returned from training at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas, and his uniform was crisp and new. As he greeted Joe, he tipped his hat back on his head.
“Joe.”
“Justin.”
He gestured toward the mound of dirt. “Sheriff Reed is on the way up here with our evidence tech. We’re waiting for the go-ahead to start digging.”
Joe stepped to the side so he could see the mound better. It was about seven feet long and five feet wide, and the soil was so fresh some of the larger rocks poking out from it hadn’t dried completely. Severed cables of tree roots were mixed with the soil.
“Sure looks like a grave, don’t it?” Woods said.
“Yup.” Joe nodded.
The surface around the mound was scored with V-shaped tractor tire tracks.
Woods said, “We’ve got to check the backhoe for prints once the tech gets here. But it sure looks like somebody used it to dig this hole last night.”
Joe agreed, and winced.
“I found the car,” Woods said, gesturing over his shoulder in a vague southern direction. Joe frequently used the gravel ridge road Woods indicated. It was cut into the side of a steep mountain with a sloping grade on one side and a chasm on the other. There were turnouts for faint-of-heart drivers to return to civilization. Woods said, “It looked like somebody took it up the road and deliberately drove it off the ridge road into the canyon. They probably thought it would roll to the bottom and we wouldn’t find it for months, but there were enough trees to stop it from crashing all the way to the creek.”
“But no one inside?” Joe asked.
“No. But I could see those U.S. Government plates easy enough from the road.”
“And you’re thinking this happened last night?” Joe asked.
Woods shrugged. “No way to know for sure yet, but that would be my guess.”
Joe looked over at the mound again.
“Yeah,” Woods said. “If somebody was buried alive. .” He let his voice trail off.
Woods nodded toward his colleagues, who leaned on their shovels in a pool of late-afternoon sunlight. “I’d kind of like to get these guys started before it gets dark.”