“I’ve taken my oldest daughter out with me,” Joe said.
“He could have gotten other jobs that paid more and weren’t as dangerous. In fact, I know he interviewed for a couple in Helena after he was wounded in the leg by an elk poacher. But in the end, I think he decided he couldn’t sit at a desk all day. Like me.”
“He’s a man after my own heart,” Joe said.
“He died last year,” she said.
Her eyes filled and she looked quickly away.
Joe said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He had a heart attack riding his old mule, Blue. That’s the mule he used to patrol with before he retired.”
Joe nodded.
“I think he died happy,” she added ruefully.
“I’ll bet he was happy for you, being the director of this whole operation,” Joe said.
“He was,” she said with a chuckle. “He said I was the only fed he ever liked.”
Joe smiled.
—
“HERE,” SHE SAID, jabbing at the screen. “A package was sent from Agent Revis Wentworth in Saddlestring, Wyoming. It arrived over the weekend, and I assume it’s in receiving.”
Joe arched his eyebrows.
She said, “I suppose we can go look at it. But I don’t want you touching anything or contaminating the evidence in any way, even if it’s inadvertent.”
“I understand,” Joe said.
He stood up and stepped aside so she could pass.
“Receiving is in the basement,” she said over her shoulder as they made their way down the nondescript hallway. As she walked, she pulled on her white lab coat.
—
THE SMALL CARDBOARD evidence box was among several others in a canvas bag on a rolling cart. Joe recognized it as Raymer raised it out of the bag and placed it on a stainless-steel counter. The only other person in the receiving room was a Hispanic staffer who shot surreptitious glances at them over the top of his computer monitor.
“That’s it,” Joe said. “But it’s been opened and retaped.”
Raymer paused and said, “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “That’s my clear plastic tape under the new strapping tape he used. He must have cut it open and resealed it.”
“Who would have done this?”
“The man who sent it to you.”
“Why would he do that?” she asked. She was genuinely curious.
“Because I believe he is trying to contaminate the evidence so he can steer us away from who really did the shooting.”
She stood back and put her hands on her hips. She kept her voice in an urgent whisper so the staffer couldn’t overhear. “Are you telling me one of our own agents is trying to derail a case?”
“I’m not telling you that,” Joe said. “I’m following up a theory.”
She shushed him to keep his voice down.
“Maybe you could open it up,” Joe whispered. “I’ll know when I see what’s inside.”
She feigned impatience with him as she pulled on a pair of white rubber gloves from a dispenser of them and reached for a box cutter.
“Stand back,” she cautioned.
Joe didn’t approach her, but he did raise his height by balancing on the balls of his feet so he could see inside the box when she opened it.
“Shotgun shells,” she said, plucking several out and placing them on the counter. “A beer can. A CD. A bag of dirt and some sage grouse feathers.”
Then she looked up at Joe and said, “That’s all.”
He nodded and studied the items. He said, “These shell casings look weathered. They look weeks old—like they’ve been out in the sun and rain. I’m sure you can confirm that with testing. The ones I found were only a day or two old. The beer can and the feathers look like what I put in the box. No need to change them out. But who knows what’s on the CD? I still have the original photos on my camera, so we can compare what I shot with what’s on the disc.”
She hesitated, then said to the curious staffer, “Juan, I need to use your computer for a minute. Isn’t it time for your break?”
As Juan gathered up his things, Joe said to her, “You might want to dust that disc for prints just to see if mine are on it.”
She looked at him with a withering glance that said, I know how to do this job.
Joe responded by putting his palms in the air in an apology.
But she dusted the disc. There were no prints.
“He wore gloves,” Joe said. “I’m not that clever.”
—
THE PHOTOS on the CD of the tire tracks didn’t match the ones from the memory stick on Joe’s camera. Unlike the shots he had taken in the killing field, the ones on the CD were of tire tracks squished through a grassy bog.
“Now look at this,” Joe said, urging her to advance through the photos on his memory stick. She clucked her tongue while she toggled back and forth between the tracks on the sagebrush flat and the tread pattern of the tire on Wentworth’s government pickup.
“These appear to match up,” she said. “Further analysis is needed to confirm it, though.”
“And the photos on the disc are obviously not taken in the same location,” Joe said.
He pointed out the differences to Kelsea Raymer and she remarked on the disparity of the vegetation.
“He probably took those right off the edge of the parking lot of the Holiday Inn,” Joe said. “And the shells probably came from the back of some oil-field worker’s truck parked at the same hotel in Saddlestring. Believe me, I could wander through that lot myself and gather spent brass casings, shotgun shells, and beer cans out of twenty different trucks.”
“Oh my,” she said.
—
“THE TIRES IN MY PHOTO belong to a government truck,” Joe said.
She winced as if he’d poked her with a pin, then said, “I still don’t have enough evidence here to make any conclusions.”
“I agree,” Joe said. “But I can. I know what I packed in that box and I know that what was sent to you was tampered with.”
She rolled her chair back. “It’s not my job to investigate agency personnel,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to investigate,” Joe said. “In fact, you need to handle this the way you’re supposed to handle it. All I ask is that you lock this box away along with the memory stick for my camera. If a guy named Revis Wentworth wants it back, I hope you’ll throw up some bureaucratic roadblocks. You know, play dumb or tell him you’re researching his request.”
“That’s his name? The agent who did this?”
Joe nodded.
“I’ve heard of him,” she said. “He’s supposed to be a sage grouse expert.”
“Oh, he is,” Joe said.
“But why would he do something like this?” she asked. “His job is to protect the species, not endanger it.”
Joe told her Lucy’s observation. While he did, Raymer shook her head in disbelief.
“If he did this, I hope he gets arrested,” she said. “I don’t like the thought of people like that in our agency.”
“Good for you,” Joe said. “Now I have another request.”
She looked at him skeptically.
“I have his shotgun in my pickup and two spent shells I picked up out in the field that I didn’t put into the original evidence box. I had completely forgotten about them until this morning, when I saw them rolling around in the back of my truck. You might be able to pull a couple of prints, or at least partials, off of the brass of the two shells. I think you’ll find that the shotgun and the primer stamp on the spent shells match up. That will prove that he did the shooting.”
She shook her head. “It might prove it to you, but it doesn’t prove anything to me. All of this—all of it—is based on your assumptions.”