Then she turned toward the pier itself. It was crowded with tourists, but one tall man with dark hair was among them. He paused at the railing, and she saw two objects drop and splash into the lake. The guns.
She looked at her watch. An hour before she needed to pick up the girls. Enough time for a drink, or maybe two. She needed them like she’d never needed a drink before.
Nate leaned against the railing on the pier away from the crowds. He didn’t throw the weapons into the water, but let the weapons drop out of his hands so his movements wouldn’t be obvious to anyone.
The name she’d given him had shocked him at first, but the more he thought about it the more sense it made. The dots connected.
He checked his watch. He had time to return the rental and catch a red-eye back to Jackson Hole, to his Jeep, to his .500.
He wasn’t through, after all.
33
Driving north on I-25 approaching Chugwater, Joe scrolled down through the call records on his cell phone, looking for a number from several weeks before when Dulcie Schalk had called him from her cell to ask questions about a poaching case. He highlighted the number and pushed SEND. She picked up on the third ring.
“Joe?” she asked, her surprise obvious.
“Since it’s after hours I didn’t know whether to call the office, and I couldn’t wait until tomorrow,” he said.
“We’re neck deep in work, Joe,” she said. “Getting ready for opening arguments next week. I really don’t have much time right now, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sure,” he said, “but there’s some new information you need to know. I’d never call otherwise.”
“So this is about the Alden case.” It was a statement, not a question, and she sounded disappointed in him.
“Yup.”
There was a heavy sigh. “Joe, you know the situation. You’re personally involved in this whole thing, and it’s inappropriate to contact me after hours to lobby for your side.”
Joe eased his pickup over to the shoulder of the highway and parked. The few lights of Chugwater were in his rearview mirror. To the west, three heavy-bodied clouds sat suspended over the bluffs of the horizon, their rose-colored bellies lit by the setting sun. When he turned the key off in the ignition, the sweet smell of desert sage filled the cab. “I’m not calling to lobby,” he said evenly, “and I don’t have a side.”
The tone of his voice seemed to jar her. She said, “But I thought . . .”
“I need you to listen to me for five minutes. If you think I’m lobbying you after that, I’ll hang up and wait for you to lose the trial. Is that the way you want to go here?”
“No,” she said, with a slight hesitation. “Okay, I’ve got five minutes.”
He filled her in on his conversation with Bob Lee and what Marybeth had found online about Rope the Wind, which had led him to Orin Smith.
“He’s in federal custody,” Joe said. “I interviewed him at the Federal Building in Cheyenne.”
“Under whose authority?” she bristled.
“Under mine,” he said. “But for the record, both the governor and the federal agent in charge knew I was there and what I was doing. In fact, the FBI listened in to the interview.”
He could tell by her silence that she had no foreknowledge of Orin Smith or his connection to Rope the Wind, and therefore Smith’s previous efforts to get a wind energy company started in Twelve Sleep County among the landowners. He wasn’t surprised, since the sheriff’s investigation had taken them no further than Missy. He hoped she wouldn’t get defensive and territorial and shut him down before he heard him out. Joe knew Schalk didn’t like surprises, and he’d seen how she bristled when others offered speculation with nothing to back them up. And like every county attorney Joe had ever worked with, she hated it when investigators struck out on their own.
She said, “This man, Orin Smith, he’s in federal custody? And I assume this testimony might help him out at sentencing? Why should I think he’s a credible witness?”
“Good point,” Joe said. “You have no reason to believe anything he says right now. He’s up for eleven counts of fraud, after all. I’m not sure I believe everything he told me. But please jot down what I relate to you and check him out on your own and make your own decision. And keep in mind Sheriff McLanahan wants a big simple win over a rich woman nobody likes. He’s never wanted to look any further than her, and he’s never focused on anybody else. Dulcie, neither have you.”
“Continue,” she said. Her tone was ice cold.
Joe said, “The other night, I heard Earl Alden described as a skimmer. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant at the time or why it would matter. But now I have a better idea.
“Alden was connected politically and professionally,” Joe said. “And that seems to be the way it works these days. Success has nothing to do with ideas or inventions or hard work. It’s about who you know and which politician may pick you to succeed. The Earl was a skimmer with no personal ideology. He gave big money to folks in both parties and made sure they knew it. That way he was always covered no matter who won. For The Earl it was like investing in research and development: He was never sure who would pay off. If there was an opportunity, he was right there with his hand out. And when it came to this big push for wind energy development, The Earl was right there ready to rock with the new administration in Washington and all their green initiatives.”
She said, “Are you getting to the point soon?”
Joe said, “Believe me, I don’t like to talk this much, either. But you need to know Alden’s background before you can understand what he did and who was affected by it.”
“Okay,” she said, unconvinced.
“Anyway,” Joe said, “with this wind energy deal, he saw a way he could cash in. The money was phenomenal, and he figured out a way to keep it coming from all sides.
“First,” Joe said, “he heard about Orin Smith and Rope the Wind. I don’t know who told him, or if Earl figured it out on his own. You know how fast word spreads in the county, and no doubt some of the ranchers Smith approached talked to each other over coffee or at the feed store. He might have even heard something from Missy or Bud Sr., for all we know. However he found out, The Earl met with Smith after every other rancher in the county had turned Smith down. Earl saw the value in a three-year-old wind energy company even if the three years was nothing more than incorporation records sitting in a file at the secretary of state’s office. So Earl offered not to buy Rope the Wind for cash, but to make Smith a partner in the effort. In effect, Earl told Smith he’d get forty percent of the profits once the wind farm was built and producing electricity. Since Smith had struck out everywhere else and he knew Earl Alden was this legendary cashgenerating machine, he agreed to the deal.”
“I don’t get it,” Schalk said. “Why would Earl want to cut Smith in on the profits? Couldn’t he have just bought the name on the cheap and done it all himself? Or just started his own company without this Smith guy?”
“He could have,” Joe said, “but he was ten steps ahead of Smith and everybody else. See, Smith also had contact with a firm down in Texas he’d help incorporate several years before. The Texas company wasn’t all that big, but they specialized in buying old or malfunctioning wind turbines and remanufacturing them into working units. There’s been a market for legitimate wind turbines for years, I guess. These guys down there were sort of scrap dealers who fixed the turbines and put them back on the market. But because of the big money suddenly available for new wind farms, the new companies that went into the business didn’t care about buying old turbines at a discount. You’ve got to forget about things like supply and demand, and free markets, when it comes to wind energy. All the incentives were designed for new companies building new turbines and putting people to work so the politicians could crow about what they’d done for the economy and the planet. So this Texas company was floundering and sitting on over a hundred pieces of junk they couldn’t unload.”