Ennis contemplated the body. He knew Dean Jackman only slightly, just as he knew Alana Winnett and most everybody else in Worland: enough to greet them by name with a nod or a smile, enough to share casual observations about the weather. This was a change from Philadelphia, where he’d worked as a beat cop for a few years before moving West. There most of the victims had been anonymous. Which was a good thing, he now knew. It was somewhat harder to deal with a shattered life when you had a recent picture of that same life whole.
Dean Jackman had a wife, Mary Ann, who sat on the school board, and a teenage daughter who had graduated high school last year at the top of her class. Alana Winnett had a husband, Roy, who was currently unemployed, and a couple of kids still in schooclass="underline" a little blond girl of eight or nine, and a boy who must be fifteen now — small for his age, but he’d already come to the attention of the authorities, as Ennis liked to put it.
“You see Alana around here tonight? Roy? Mary Ann?”
All four shook their heads, but again it was Wick who spoke. “Nah. Last couple weeks, they been in here. Karaoke night. Jackman and Alana, coming in at different times, trying to make like they’re just running into each other, but you know how that goes. He’d actually get up and try to sing Springsteen, ‘Dancing in the Dark.’ Didn’t see ’em tonight.”
Ennis closed his notebook. Outside, the keys were still in Jackman’s Escalade, and it was not unthinkable that at ten-thirty on a karaoke night somebody out there might now be drunk enough to take it for a spin. He shepherded Wick and friends out the door and keyed the mike as he stood in the doorway. “Where’s Twenty-nine?”
Twenty-nine was Kevin Heibein, the fresh-faced Worland city cop who looked as if he should be starting his sophomore year at Kootenai High. He was supposed to have been here by now.
“Twenty-nine has a hit-and-run,” Debbie answered. “Half-mile west on Gypsy Lake Road. One injured. I sent the ambulance there instead. Can you manage by yourself?”
Ennis guessed he’d have to. It would take the county help at least another half-hour to get here and there were no other officers in the greater Worland area.
A chill wind had come up, but the bar crowd was still milling around in the parking lot, chatting and laughing as though they were out there for a fire drill instead of a homicide. Despite Ennis’s earlier admonition, some of them were also edging closer to the Escalade: He recognized Ray Esposito and a few of his skateboard buddies, who had reached legal drinking age this year and were making the most of it. They backed away at the sound of his police radio, trying to appear casual about it. Ennis gave them a hard look.
“Nobody picked up any brass, right? Anybody see what happened?” Getting shrugs, he walked around the SUV, studying the gravel. If there had ever been evidence here, it was ruined now. He examined the bullet hole on the driver’s side. It had punched through below the window, which had been rolled down. He could picture Jackman sitting in his SUV, his elbow up on the sill. Talking to someone. Which would explain why the slug hadn’t hit his left arm. There was another bullet hole on the far side of the cab, just above the window on the passenger side. This shot had come through the open driver’s window, he guessed, maybe meant for Jackman’s head. The rising angle meant the shooter was probably a bit lower than his victim. Maybe somebody sitting in a car?
No shell casings, so the weapon was probably a revolver. Big bullet holes, so it was a large caliber — in short, the sort of weapon occupying nightstand drawers in about half the households in Worland. There wasn’t a lot of violent crime in the town, but people around here liked to be ready for anything.
“Looks like he got hit out here, you know, then went inside.” This deduction came from Esposito, who had again approached and was now standing behind Ennis. Like everybody else, he was still holding his drink. Icehouse, Ennis noted: Twice the alcohol so you could get drunk in half the time. In Ray’s circle, this was considered a significant bargain. It was maybe 35 degrees out and the kid was wearing enormous cargo shorts riding just above his crotch. Like his friends, he wore his cap backward.
“Very shrewd, Ray. You notice this before you walked through the trail of blood, or after?”
The kid’s face fell.
“I told ’em not to walk in it,” he said. “Just trying to help.”
“Yeah, thanks. You see who did it?”
He shook his head. “No, man... but I did kind of hear it.”
“Heard what?”
Ray lifted his bottle, tilted it toward the far corner of Westy’s, beyond the illumination of the bar signs.
“I was over there, taking a piss.”
“And?”
He seemed embarrassed. “Would have used the can, but it gets rank in there. There was a line, and I had to go, you know?”
“Right, Ray. What did you hear?”
“Heard the shots, man. Two of ’em, real loud.”
“You didn’t have a look?”
He shrugged. “I’m taking a leak, man. Anyway, I thought it was firecrackers.”
Everybody always thought gunshots were firecrackers, Ennis thought. And vice versa. Funny how that worked.
“Anything else?”
“Just people talking. Somebody laughed. Then, pop, pop.”
“Jackman was talking to someone? Man or woman?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Coulda been a woman. Didn’t sound like anybody was mad or scared or anything. Like I said, he laughed. That’s why I thought it was firecrackers.”
“What were they saying?”
Ray thought about it, shook his head. “I dunno. Just voices.”
“What about after? See a car leave?”
Ray studied the ground, perhaps now regretting coming forward.
“No, no car. I woulda seen that.”
The undersheriff from Libby was a guy Ennis knew only from anecdotes: Brian Hallstrom, who would also be acting as coroner tonight. He’d only been with the department a couple of months. Word was, he had been a hotshot homicide detective in San Diego. Then, like so many of Montana’s newer residents, he had sold his overpriced bungalow in California and used the proceeds to buy a twenty-acre ranchette here in Big Sky country, five-bedroom log home, outbuildings, and everything. Now he was living the dream, hunting and fly-fishing, and occasionally showing up for work at the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department. His pay would be a quarter of what he’d made in San Diego, Ennis guessed, but then the same thing could be said of the job stress.
Hallstrom strode in, followed by two deputies whose eyes widened when they beheld the dead man on the floor. Both in their twenties; they could well be encountering their first homicide. Hallstrom was arrayed in fringed buckskin jacket, big tan Stetson tilted back on his head, long blond hair flowing back past the collar of a sky-blue snap-button shirt. Ennis stared: The look was one part Ralph Lauren, two parts George Armstrong Custer — it was probably just an oversight that Hallstrom did not have a pearl-handled revolver strapped to each hip. He also sported a little gold neck chain and deep, even tan. Ennis knew of only one way to stay that brown this late in October, and it wasn’t through honest toil on a riverside ranchette.
“Nice job securing the crime scene here, deputy,” Hallstrom said. He was chewing gum, surveying the room without appearing to move his head. “What, you sell tickets or something? Half the town out there, every one of ’em probably got blood on their goddamned shoes. Jesus.”
“Karaoke night,” Ennis said. “Everybody was here when it happened, and I’m only one guy.”
Hallstrom shook his head.
“Bunch of hayseeds.”
Ennis opened his mouth, closed it, suppressed an urge to shoot the guy. Instead he reached out to touch the fringe of Hallstrom’s jacket. “Is that real leather?”