Near the top of the canyon, when he could see the rim and the light blue sky with fat-bellied rain clouds scudding across it, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. It would do no good to be exhausted when he found them. He’d need all his speed and strength to rip their throats out.
They were gone.
He walked unsteadily on the trail, stepping in their footprints to and from the canyon. He saw a spatter of dark blood from one of them beading on the dust and he ground it into the dirt with his heel. Heat shimmered over the sagebrush flat, and he could see the back bumper of their pickup retreating at least a mile away. Dust from the tires still hung in the air.
Nate stood up tall and straddled the trail. He lifted his right arm and placed his left hand beneath the right fist that still clutched Alisha’s hair. He pointed his right index finger and cocked his thumb like a hammer and sighted down his forearm. The thumb fell.
He said, “You’re dead.”
Halfway back down the canyon, Nate sat and put his head in his hands. One of the lone thunderclouds settled over the canyon and plunged it into shadow, and errant raindrops smacked onto the dry ground and freckled the rocks in the trail. He lifted his face to the rain, knowing nothing would ever wash this day away. To Alisha’s spirit, he said, “I’m so sorry.”
12
Joe Pickett was finishing his statement across the desk from Deputy Sollis in the County Building when Marcus Hand arrived. Dusk painted the windows and, despite the furious activity that had gone on throughout the day, the squad room was oddly silent. Most of the sheriff’s department was at dinner, except for Deputy Reed, who was still at the crime scene assisting the DCI forensics crew as well as the crane operators who, as far as Joe knew, were still trying to figure out how to lower The Earl’s body from the windmill without dropping it.
Joe’s cell phone was backed up with three messages from Marybeth, no doubt wondering what was going on, and he held the phone in his hand as if to alleviate his guilt at not responding sooner. Sollis was a two-fingered typist, and his fingers were as thick as his neck, and they’d spent most of the previous hour going over the circumstances related to the discovery, the climb up the tower, and the condition of The Earl’s body that Joe could recall. Every other word Sollis typed, it seemed, was misspelled or wrong, and he was constantly leaping backwards in the text and correcting his errors. When Joe offered to key it in for him, Sollis shot him a murderous glare.
“You say his boots looked big,” Sollis said. “What do you mean by that?”
“Centrifugal force,” Joe said. “He’d been up there spinning so long and so fast that the fluids in the body were driven toward his extremities . . .”
“So you’re a forensic scientist as well,” Sollis sneered, rolling his eyes. “I thought you were just the game warden. Turns out you’re an expert on centrifical force, too.”
“Centrifugal,” Joe corrected. “I’d suggest you look it up, but it would take an hour for you to Google it using your sausage fingers.”
“Look, buddy,” Sollis said, turning in his chair away from his monitor and thrusting his meaty face halfway across the desk, “that’s about enough of that crap from the likes of you . . .”
Joe leaned forward as well, fed up, nearly but not quite wanting Sollis to start something, when he noticed the deputy’s attention was elsewhere, his tiny eyes squinting over Joe’s shoulder.
“This is the sheriff’s department,” Sollis said over Joe’s shoulder. “Can I help you with something?”
The voice that responded was deep and smooth, like thick syrup: “Sir, I’m well aware of my location. I’m also well aware that you currently have a sweet, beautiful, and innocent woman—my client—sitting like a common criminal in your jail. I wish to speak with her immediately. My name is Marcus Hand.”
Joe craned around to the criminal defense attorney filling not only the doorframe but somehow the entire room. Marcus Hand was a big man in every respect. He stood six feet four and a half inches, according to the height scale mounted to the left of the door itself, and he had wide shoulders made wider by the shoulder pads of his thighlength fringed buckskin jacket. Hand had long silver hair that curled up neatly at his collar, and piercing blue wide-set eyes. His face was broad and smooth, his lips rubbery and downturned, his nose large and bulbous on the tip. He wore coal-black jeans, roach-killer ostrich skin cowboy boots, a large silver buckle, a black mock turtleneck under the leather jacket, and a tall black flat-brimmed cowboy hat adorned with a band of small silver and jade conchos. He carried a worn leather coffee-colored pouch that looked more like a saddlebag than a briefcase.
Joe had heard—but couldn’t confirm—that on the wall behind Hand’s desk in his law office in Jackson there was a rough barn-wood sign burned with:
RATES (PER HOUR)
INNOCENT WYOMINGITES: $1,500
OUT-OF-STATERS: $2,000
“And you are?” Hand said, taking a few steps into the room.
“Deputy Jake Sollis.” The answer was quick and weak and, to Joe’s ear, surprisingly submissive.
“Deputy Sollis,” Hand said, “I wish to speak to my client immediately. As in right now.”
Sollis swallowed, intimidated and flushed, and said, “I need to ask Sheriff McLanahan . . .”
“Ask anyone you wish,” Hand said, “as long as you do it in the next ten seconds. Because if you keep me from consulting with my client any longer than that, it’s the first of many grounds for immediate dismissal of all charges.
“My God,” Hand said, raising his arms and modulating his voice even deeper so it sounded more stentorian and God-like to Joe. “You ridiculous people have actually taken into custody—into custody!—the grieving widow of a brutally murdered man—the love of her life—and put her on display in the press as if she possibly had something to do with the crime. I’m personally and morally outraged. OUTRAGED. This will not stand, Mr. Sollis.” The last words were shouted.
The deputy snatched his phone from its stand and fumbled with the buttons. Joe looked from Sollis to Hand.
“And who are you?” Hand asked, still accusatory but slightly less so.
“Name’s Joe Pickett. I’m a Wyoming game warden. I found the body.”
Hand quieted for a moment, his eyes taking Joe in the way a wolf assesses a calf elk. “I’ve heard your name before,” Hand said in almost a whisper. Then he snapped his fingers with recollection. “You’re the one who arrested Governor Budd for fishing without a license! I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard as when I read the story in the newspaper. I determined then you were either naïve or a zealot.”
“Neither,” Joe said. “Just doing my job.”
“Ah,” Hand said, “one of those. But if I recall, you now work for Governor Spencer Rulon. You’re his secret agent, of sorts. An unofficial range rider dispatched to do the governor’s bidding.”
“Not anymore,” Joe said.
He had not spoken with Rulon in a year. The governor had taken a liking to Joe several years before and used the machinations of state government to work outside the lines and assign him to locations and give him directives that would have normally been far beyond his scope of work. He’d been the enigmatic governor’s point man, a range rider of sorts. Rulon had been in his corner although he’d always maintained an arm’s-length distance from Joe, so if Joe screwed up, Rulon could claim ignorance.