She turned to him as he walked in and said, “Sorry that took so long.”
He was unsettled from being nearly shaken to death on the ride down from the sagebrush foothills. His hands shook from gripping the steering wheel. He saw the subtle but scared look in her eyes and went to her and pulled her close.
“I saw her when they brought her in,” Marybeth said into his ear. “It’s April. She looks terrible, Joe. The emergency doctor called it blunt force trauma. Someone hit her in the head, and her face was bloody.”
“I was hoping it wasn’t her,” Joe said, realizing how callous that sounded. It shouldn’t be anyone.
“She’s alive,” Marybeth said. “That’s all they can say. She isn’t conscious, and as far as I know she hasn’t opened her eyes or tried to speak. I keep seeing doctors and nurses rushing back there, but I don’t know what they’re doing other than trying to stabilize her for the Life Flight.”
“This is so terrible,” he said.
“I kept telling her . . .” Marybeth started to say, but let her voice trail off. After a beat, she gently pushed away from Joe and said, “I’m going with her in the helicopter to Billings. We just have to hope that, with all she’s been through, she can hold on another hour.
“I called the high school and left a message with the principal that you would pick Lucy up,” Marybeth continued. “Maybe you can take her out to dinner tonight, but you’ll need to feed the horses when you get home.”
Joe started to argue, started to tell her not to worry about his dinner or anything else, but he knew this was how she processed a crisis—by making sure her family was taken care of. Only after it passed would she allow herself to break down. So he nodded instead.
“I’ll call Sheridan as soon as I know something,” she said. “I’ve already made arrangements to be gone a few days from work. They were very good about it.”
Sheridan was a junior at the University of Wyoming and had chosen not to be a resident assistant in the dormitory another semester. She was living with three other girls in a rental house and making noises about staying in Laramie for the summer to work. Joe and Marybeth didn’t like the idea, but Sheridan was stubborn. She was also not close to April, and the two of them had often clashed when they’d lived in the same house together.
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.
—
BLUNT 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.