Eldon stood in the shadows inside the garage next to one of his pump trucks. Joe waved good-bye to him, but Eldon didn’t wave back. Joe could see the compressor vibrating at Eldon’s feet. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be a pneumatic hose attached.
—
SOMEBODY LET THE DOGS out of their run and they followed Joe’s pickup all the way to the county road. When he finally turned onto the graded road, he called Marybeth on his cell phone.
“I saw Dallas Cates,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”
“You saw him? Where?”
“At his house. I was checking out this sage grouse thing and the Cates place was within sight, so I stopped by to see if they’d seen anything.”
“How convenient,” she said, deadpan.
He described Dallas’s condition.
She said, “There was still a small part of me that was suspicious. Now I guess we can move on.”
He agreed. “They’re an odd bunch, though. Brenda buttonholed me about the town doing more to recognize her son. She might have a point, but she’s a little scary when she gets going.”
“She does that to everyone,” Marybeth said.
“Oh, and I might have gotten a lead on who shot all those birds,” he said.
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back,” Joe said, knowing he was about to hit a long dead zone for cell phone coverage. Then: “I’ll have to tread real lightly on this one.”
His phone blinked out and he didn’t know if she’d heard that last part.
—
TEN MINUTES LATER, Liv heard the compressor shudder into silence. She knew what it meant and she fought back tears. Whoever had arrived was gone.
The footfalls came and she could tell there were two sets of them.
“Open that up,” a woman said from above. Liv recognized the voice as belonging to the person who’d claimed she was Kitty Wells.
Dirt sifted into the root cellar when the doors were thrown back. Liv covered her face and eyes with her hands until it settled.
“You can go,” the woman said to the man.
“Are you goin’ down there?” Bull asked his mother with alarm.
“No. I just need to have a private conversation with this young lady. Go over there and help your dad.”
Bull slunk away.
“I’m Brenda,” the woman said, standing over the opening with her hands on her ample hips.
Liv brushed grit from her face and opened her eyes.
“I heard you screamin’ down there. Luckily, nobody else did. Eldon can’t hear much these days and the game warden thought it was the compressor goin’ out.”
Liv didn’t know what to say. She’d screamed so hard she was still wet with sweat. She’d guessed her screams were drowned out by the motor. That was the reason, she was sure, they’d fired it up in the first place.
Brenda said, “If you ever do that again, I’ll send Eldon out here to fill up this hole.”
By the tone of her voice, Liv had no doubt she’d do it.
“I’m thinkin’ you might go without dinner tonight,” Brenda said.
Liv hugged herself but didn’t respond. Brenda stood there, looking down at her.
Finally, Liv asked, “Why are you doing this?”
“You know, I ain’t never had a daughter.”
“What?”
“I always wanted a little girl,” Brenda said wistfully, more to herself than to Liv. “I wanted a little girl so I could dress her up in dresses and brush her hair and sing songs with her, you know? Instead, I got boys. All they done was run wild, punch each other, and break things. Of course, my little girl would be a little paler than you.”
Liv stayed quiet.
Brenda said, “But at least them boys didn’t scream. I’ve gone my whole life without a screamin’ female in it. I don’t plan to start now.”
With that, Brenda turned and vanished from the opening. Liv heard her say, “Bull, go close that back up now.”
—
TWO HOURS LATER, more footfalls. Bull. Liv was wondering if the game warden had been Nate’s friend Joe Pickett, and she planned to try to get the name out of Bull. She dutifully threw off her blanket and relocated her chair to accommodate the ladder.
When the doors were open, Bull said, “We got meat loaf and apple pie tonight.”
“Really?” Liv asked.
“I guess she changed her mind.”
Bull leaned over and tied a knot in the handle of the feed bucket and lowered it down to Liv.
“Is Joe Pickett coming back?” she asked in a conversational tone.
“He better not,” Bull said. “If he does, I’ll put him down and let the dogs clean up the remains.”
Liv nodded. “Aren’t you coming down?”
“Naw,” Bull said sullenly. “I ain’t supposed to anymore. Cora Lee, she . . .” He let his point trail off. But it had been made.
Liv reached up and grasped the bottom of the bucket with both hands. The plastic was warm to the touch.
“Besides,” Bull said, “what do you care if I come down there or not?”
Liv pretended she was thinking long and hard about what she was about to say. Then she said it.
“Because it gets kind of lonely down here.”
Bull was silent. She looked up. He seemed to be frozen there. She couldn’t see his face well because the sun was behind him, but she thought he might be blushing.
He closed the doors, locked them, turned, and went back toward the house.
Liv ate, but not because she was hungry. She ate because she needed fuel to survive.
As she did, those words came back.
I ain’t never had a daughter before. It chilled Liv to the bone.
But the trap was set.
16
After his encounter with the Cates family, Joe drove on the highway toward his home. He knew Marybeth was planning a big dinner with all the items Lucy liked best—pasta, garlic bread, green salad—as a way to atone for the time she’d been in Billings and for Joe’s food, and he wanted to be home for it. As he drove, a window opened in the storm clouds and he found himself suddenly bathed in warm yellow afternoon sun. The beam was small and concentrated, and the pool of light was no bigger than a half mile in every direction. It was as though he were the subject of some kind of cosmic spotlight. It felt good—Summer was on the way—although he was disappointed no revelation came along with it. It was just sun.
When his cell phone went off, he expected to see Marybeth’s name on the screen. That wasn’t the case.
“Governor,” Joe said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you on a Saturday evening.”
“Damn, I’m so jet-lagged I don’t even know what day it is,” Rulon said. Joe imagined the governor pacing back and forth in his home office as he’d seen him do—one hand holding his phone to his face and the other gesticulating and wildly punching the air as he talked.
“I just got back from a two-week trip to Asia,” Rulon said. “I was over there selling Wyoming coal—or trying to. We produce more coal than any other state, and the feds are shutting us down so they can stop global warming. The Asians want to grow so someday they can have First World problems like us. They want our coal, and as much of it as they can get. So we’ll shut down our coal-fired utilities over here and pay higher utility bills while they build them up over there and provide power and air-conditioning to their people so they can make things and get wealthy. You know, like Americans used to do.”