Lucy was Joe and Marybeth’s sixteen-year-old daughter, a tenth grader at Saddlestring High School. She was blond like her mother and maturing into self-sufficiency. Lucy had been a careful observer of her two older sisters and had avoided their mistakes and errors in judgment. April had stayed in contact with Lucy more than anyone else, although Lucy had relayed what she’d been told to Marybeth.
Joe said to Marybeth, “You know who did this.”
“We can’t jump to that conclusion.”
“Already did,” Joe said.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Sheriff Mike Reed roll his chair toward them. If Reed hadn’t overheard Joe, he’d at least gotten the gist of what had been said, Joe thought.
“When you have a minute . . .” Reed said.
Joe turned to Reed and Boner, then shook Boner’s hand. “Thanks for bringing her here. We appreciate it. You made the right call not waiting for the ambulance to show up.”
Boner was new to the department and Joe didn’t know the man well.
“Just doing my job,” Boner said softly. “I’ve got a three-year-old girl at home. I can’t imagine . . .” He didn’t finish the thought, but looked away, his face flushed red.
Joe said to Reed, “It was Dallas Cates. That’s who she left with. We need to find him.”
“Whoa,” Reed said, showing Joe the palm of his hand. “I know you’ve got your suspicions, and I do, too, but right now we’ve got nothing to go on.”
“It was him.”
“Marybeth is right,” Reed said. “You’re emotional right now and you’re jumping to conclusions. I know it’s against your nature, but you need to let this thing work. I’ve got my guys working on the investigation and my evidence tech out there on Dunbar Road to see what we can find. It’s only been a couple of hours, Joe.”
Joe said, “If you don’t find him, I will.”
“Joe, damn you,” Reed said, shaking his head. “Slow down. Just slow down. You know as well as I do that we could screw the whole thing up if we put blinders on and make accusations that turn out to be false.”
Joe smoldered.
After a moment, he felt Marybeth’s hand on his shoulder and he looked back at her.
She was grave. She said, “Promise me you won’t do anything crazy while I’m gone. I need you here with Lucy, and this is too close to home. Promise me, Joe.”
“It’s obvious,” Joe said to both Marybeth and Reed. “A twenty-four-year-old local-hero cowboy takes a liking to my middle daughter and convinces her to take off with him on the rodeo circuit. She doesn’t know about his past, or what he’s capable of, so she goes. A few months later, she gets left in a ditch outside of town. Who else would we suspect?”
Marybeth didn’t respond, but Reed said, “Joe, we’re already on it. I sent two guys out to the Cates house fifteen minutes ago. Supposedly Dallas is at home recuperating from a rodeo injury right now.”
“He’s home?” Joe said. “When did he come home?”
“Don’t know,” Reed said. “We’ll find out.”
“April was probably dumped yesterday,” Joe said. “Do you feel the dots connecting, Mike?”
“We’re asking him to come in for questioning,” Reed said.
“I want to sit in.”
“Not a chance in hell, Joe. I was thinking about letting you watch the monitor down the hall, but if you keep up your attitude, I’ll ban you from the building.”
Joe looked to Marybeth for support, but she shook her head with sympathy instead.
Reed said, “All we need is for you to draw down on our suspect during the initial inquiry and for him to press charges against us and you. No, Joe, if we want to do this right, we do it by the book.”
“Promise me,” Marybeth said.
Joe looked down at his boots.
He said, “I promise.”
She squeezed his hand.
Then he looked hard at Mike Reed from under the brim of his hat. He said, “Mike, I know you’ll do your best and I’ll behave. But if something goes pear-shaped, things are going to get western around here.”
“I expected you to say that,” Reed said with a sigh.
—
B LUNT FORCE TRAUMA.
The very words were brutal in and of themselves, Joe thought as he and Marybeth trailed April’s gurney down the hallway. He could hear the helicopter approaching outside, hovering over the helipad on the roof of the hospital.
April was bundled up and he couldn’t see her face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Joe was grateful Marybeth had positively identified her earlier.
He was unnerved by the number of suspended plastic packets that dripped fluids into tubes that snaked beneath the sheets. An orderly rolled a monitor on wheels alongside the gurney. Her body looked small and frail beneath the covers, and she didn’t respond when the orderlies secured her to the gurney with straps.
Joe reached down and squeezed her hand through the blankets. It was supple, but there was no pressure back.
“Let me know how it goes,” Joe said to Marybeth, raising his voice so as to be heard over the wash of the rotors.
“Of course,” she said, pulling him close one last time before she left. Her eyes glistened with tears.
Joe watched as the gurney was hoisted into the helicopter. A crew member reached down from the hatch and helped Marybeth step up inside. Seconds later, the door was secured and the helicopter lifted.
Joe clamped his hat tight on his head with his right hand and silently asked God to save April, because she’d suffered enough in her short life, and to give Marybeth the strength to carry on.
—
“HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW the Cates family?” Reed asked Joe as he drove them to the Twelve Sleep County Building. Joe was in the passenger seat of the specially equipped van. Deputy Boner had volunteered to follow them in Joe’s pickup and to keep an eye on Daisy until Joe could retrieve his vehicle and his dog.
“I’ve tangled with them before,” Joe said. “Mainly with Bull, the oldest son. I’ve met the old man, Eldon, and I’ve been to his elk camp a few times.”
He knew the Cateses lived on twelve acres in the breaklands. The property contained a smattering of old structures in the scrub pine, including the shambled main house, a barn, and several falling-down outbuildings. Their place was about twenty minutes from town.
“What do you know about them?” Reed asked.
Joe told Reed that the Cates family ran a hunting-guide business called Dull Knife Outfitters. Dull Knife was one of the oldest big-game outfitters in the Bighorns, and one of the most notorious. There were rumors that Eldon was involved in taking elk out of season as well as in the wrong hunt areas, on behalf of clients, and that he made deals with hunters to obtain prime licenses on their behalf without going through the lottery, if they paid his special fee. Joe had even heard that Eldon had a secret elk camp deep in the mountains that he operated completely above the law, where he guaranteed certain wealthy hunters a kill that would make the record books.
But they were rumors only. Joe had never caught Eldon committing a crime, and no accuser had ever come forward. He’d interviewed several Dull Knife clients over the years and none of them would implicate Eldon. Despite spending years on horseback in the most remote areas of the mountains, he’d not yet found Eldon’s secret camp—if it existed at all.
Eldon had a unique reputation among the other, more respectable outfitters in the district. Although sniping among competing hunting guides was normal, the one thing Eldon’s competitors could agree on was that they didn’t like Eldon. They thought he used his reputation as the oldest outfitter in the mountains as a slam against them, and they didn’t like how he challenged the ethics of the profession—which reflected poorly on them. Guides said that Eldon sometimes claimed kills made by their clients by tagging them on behalf of his clients, and that he refused to respect the boundaries of the Wyoming Outfitters Board’s designated hunting areas. He would also bad-mouth other outfitters to his clients, calling them “amateurs,” “greenhorns,” and worse. For a number of years, Eldon drove his four-wheel-drive pickup around town with a magnetic sign on the door that read DULL KNIFE OUTFITTERS: SATISFYING OUR CUSTOMERS WHEN THE OTHER GUIDES WERE STILL IN DIAPERS.