Joe said, “That’s right.”
Raymer’s phone chimed from a pocket in her lab coat and she instinctively drew it out and looked at the screen.
“How interesting,” she said. “I just got an email from Revis Wentworth.”
Joe smiled.
“He’s asking me to confirm that we received a box of evidence in an important case,” she said. “And he cautions me that, because of the magnitude of the crime, I may be contacted by local law enforcement attempting to influence our findings. I assume that would be you,” she said, looking up.
“Yup.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Nope. He’s trying to run interference. He’s desperate.”
She dropped the phone back in her pocket and looked at Joe squarely.
“So you’re going to turn over every piece of evidence you have to me? The shells and the shotgun and the memory stick? How can you build your case if all of the evidence for it is here locked away in Denver?”
He said, “Because I trust you to keep it until we need it.”
She cocked her head. “Why?”
“Because you’re from Montana and your dad was a game warden,” Joe said.
—
JOE HATED DENVER TRAFFIC and he kept both of his hands on the wheel and his pickup in the far right lane as cars zipped around him. It was as if every driver on the five-lane freeway had just downed three shots of vodka and had been handed the keys to Daddy’s sports car. When his cell phone rang, he ignored it until he was nearly ten miles north of the city and the traffic finally eased up.
Marybeth.
She said, “The hospital called and the swelling on April’s brain has gone down.”
Joe blew out a breath of relief.
“They want to try and bring her out of it tonight or tomorrow. I need to be there, Joe.”
“Of course you do,” he said.
“I’m taking Sheridan and Lucy with me,” she said. “They want to see their sister. They want to be there when she comes out of it.”
Joe paused for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to frame his words, when Marybeth did it for him: “We talked it all out this morning. They know she may never be April again. They know that this may turn out to be one of the most difficult experiences of their lives, and so do I. But we have to be there, Joe.”
He said, “I’m on my way, but you should all go now. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“I’ll keep you posted after I talk to the doctors,” she said.
Near Fort Collins, he called the governor’s office. He used the private number Rulon had given him and the call went straight to voicemail.
Joe said, “We’ve got the goods on Wentworth. He slaughtered Lek Sixty-four and tried to cover it up.
“On another matter, I might be out of touch for a few days. There’s news on my daughter’s condition. The news could be good or bad.”
23
Timber Cates refused to look back over his shoulder at the brick-and-glass front entrance of the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins. He vowed he would never look back at it, because he intended to never see it again for the rest of his life, and there was nothing good to remember about it anyway.
Not even when the corrections officer called out after him, “We’ll keep the light on for you, Timber, my boy!”
What an asshole.
—
WHILE HE WAS BEING processed out, the CO had kept up a one-sided monologue that seemed intended to agitate Timber, as if baiting him one last time so he’d explode and get himself turned around and sent back inside.
“This seems like a whole lot of trouble when you’ll probably be back here in a few months anyway,” the CO said. He was short and stout, a fireplug, with a piglike face and a wispy goatee that looked unfinished. He had half-Asian features. Timber didn’t like it when an Asian talked to him that way. Or when Asians tried to grow beards like real men. They weren’t designed for it. He wished they would just give up and shave, for Christ’s sake.
“It would probably save the taxpayers money if you just turned around right now and stayed inside. That way, we won’t have to mess with trials and lawyers and all of that when you come back. And you will come back. Believe me, I’ve seen hundreds of convicts come through here. I know the look of one who never reflected on what he did to get in here in the first place. You’re the type who thinks the only thing you did wrong was to get caught. You’ve been in here three years and you didn’t get smarter, or learn a trade, or find the Lord while you were in here. It was your choice to remain ignorant and not to take any of the opportunities offered here to better yourself. You look harder and meaner than when you came in. Which means you’ll be back, and some poor innocent people out there will pay the price. I can tell by your face. You’ve got that look, Cates, and you sure as hell have the wrong attitude.”
When Timber didn’t react, the CO said, “There’s white trash and then there’s stupid white trash. I think we both know which category you fit into.”
Recalling what his mother had said, Timber closed his eyes and breathed in and out, in and out.
“Looks like you’re picking a perfect time to get on the outside,” the CO said. “They’re predicting a major winter event in the next couple of days. That’s what they call it now: an event. Like if they said ‘blizzard,’ we’d all throw up our hands and run around screaming like kids.
“Ten to twelve inches in town, eighteen to twenty-four in the mountains. That’s what they’re saying, Cates. You’re getting out just in time to get your skinny ass buried in snow. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
Timber had heard nothing of a big storm coming. And he didn’t care.
—
HE WEAVED through the cars in the parking lot with his possessions wadded up and stuffed into a blue-black plastic garbage bag that he clutched to his chest. It was amazing even to him how everything he owned could fit into a garbage bag. Plus, most of it was truly ratty and shitty: a couple of pairs of boat shoes; his kit containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb and a brush; another change of clothing; and a box of letters he’d mostly never read from his mom about his brother Dallas. If he lost the bag there wasn’t much he would really miss. But since it was all he owned, all that was really his, he held it tight.
He tried not to think about how much he’d thrived in prison. He hated it with every fiber of his being, but he loved it at the same time. It was an easy life. Meals were rote. Clothing was provided. His job in the infirmary was easy. No one breathed down his neck. In all, it wasn’t so bad.
And he’d never tell a single soul that he thought that way. That the asshole CO was right. He just didn’t know how much he was right.
—
TIMBER WORE the same clothes—a black, extra-large Scorpions concert T-shirt, a torn denim jacket, jeans with grease spots—that he’d been arrested in three years earlier. The clothes didn’t fit anymore. He had lost weight.
He picked up his pace as he weaved through the cars in the lot. He felt like he was getting away with something, that if he didn’t leave the place soon they’d realize they had made a mistake and come after him. He banged his knee on the bumper of a Dodge pickup and cursed, but didn’t pause to look at the bruise.
—
THE BLUE 1984 CHEVY CAVALIER his parents had left for him was parked in the farthest row from the front of the prison. It had a rusted roof, mismatched tires, and a cracked windshield. It was a crappy boxy car from a crappy era.