“It’s a disease,” Wentworth said. “I have a disease.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
As he cracked eggs into the skillet, Joe said, “In the state of Wyoming, only one party to a recorded conversation needs to be aware of it to serve as evidence in court.”
He let that sink in for a minute.
When Wentworth staggered to his feet and leaned against the kitchen doorframe, Joe patted the recorder in his front pocket.
“So I’m fucked,” Wentworth said.
“Yup.”
“I just wanted to spend every second I could with Annie,” he said.
“Judge Hewitt has a soft spot for crimes of passion.”
“He does?”
“No,” Joe said. “He doesn’t.”
—
THEY SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE. Joe watched Wentworth pick at his food at first, then cover it with ketchup and shovel it in like a wolf.
Joe said, “Do you feel bad about killing all those sage grouse? I mean, you’re considered an expert on them. I would have thought you were serious about their survival.”
Wentworth didn’t respond, but just kept eating.
“Maybe if you explained it to me, I could understand,” Joe said.
“Nothing to explain,” Wentworth said. “Those birds are just a means to an end for me. Not all that much is known about them, so it wasn’t all that hard to become an expert. Their population has boomed and crashed over the years. It’s crashing now. If we can hold up a few oil rigs and slow the crash—well, good for us.”
“What if they’re crashing on their own? Without our help?” Joe asked. “I see it all the time. Some years, there are rabbits everywhere you look, and the next year there are coyotes and foxes in huge numbers eating rabbits. Then the rabbit population crashes and I don’t see many coyotes or foxes for a few years. Could that be the case with sage grouse?”
“I don’t know,” Wentworth said. “It’s above my pay grade to answer that question. It’s just a job, okay? I don’t have a personal investment in them.”
“But the people out here have a personal investment in what you decide about those birds,” Joe said. “It might mean either they have jobs or they don’t.”
“They can always change jobs,” Wentworth said. “Or move. That’s not my problem.”
Joe frowned. Wentworth spooned more eggs onto his plate.
“What’s happening outside?” Wentworth asked as he chewed.
“It’s snowing.”
“Crap. Can I make it back to the hotel?”
“You sure aren’t staying here,” Joe said.
—
WHILE DOING THE DISHES, Joe turned to Wentworth, who was still at the table sipping coffee.
“Didn’t you just tell me you’d gone up to Lek Sixty-four before?” Joe asked. “I don’t mean the night you shot up all the birds. I thought you said you’d gone up there looking for shotgun shells previously.”
“Are you recording this?”
“Sure am.”
“Can you shut it off?”
“No point now, Revis.”
Wentworth sighed. He said, “Yeah, I went up there last week after you’d been up there. That’s after I came up with the plan to send bad shells to Denver. I wanted to see if I could find any more of mine and get rid of them.”
“When did you go?”
Wentworth surveyed the ceiling for a few minutes, then said, “Last Tuesday.”
Joe thought back. Tuesday was when Nate was ambushed.
“Did you see anything unusual up there?” Joe asked.
“No. This whole state’s unusual.”
“Come on, Revis. Think.”
Wentworth drummed his fingers on the table, and Joe watched his expression change. He’d recalled something.
“I’d been drinking,” he said. “But I remember I was out there in the sagebrush and I heard a vehicle coming down that two-track. I thought it was you, so I got on the ground.”
“Where was your pickup?”
“I hid it half a mile away, where it couldn’t be seen from the road.”
Joe nodded. “So who was it?”
“I don’t know their names,” he said with distaste. “But it was just a couple of locals. Two vehicles went by and I laid there thinking: ‘Here I am, drunk and facedown in the mud. It has come to this.’”
Joe felt something tingle in his chest. He sat down at the table across from Wentworth.
“Two vehicles?”
“Yeah. One following the other.”
“What did they look like?”
Wentworth said, “The first one was an old beat-up SUV. There was an old man driving it. The second was one of those white panel vans, you know? Like plumbers drive? A younger man—a big bruiser type—was driving that.”
The tingle spread. Joe recalled Eldon and Brenda’s battered Suburban in front of the courthouse. He’d seen it again at their place. The first driver sounded like Eldon. The second: Bull.
“The white van,” Joe said, “was it new?”
“Newer than the beat-up piece of shit,” Wentworth said.
“Was there any writing on the side of it?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t see all that well down there, but it was something like ‘Yahoo Falconry Services.’ There was a picture of a bird on the side, like an eagle.”
Joe leaned forward and his glare must have been intense because Wentworth sat back in his chair.
“Could it have been Yarak Falconry Services?”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess it could have been,” Wentworth said. “That’s a word I’m not familiar with. Why does it matter, anyway?”
Joe ignored him. “The SUV and the van were going which direction?”
“Toward the mountains.”
“Did you see either one of them come back down later that night?”
“Naw—I was gone by then.”
Joe guessed only one of the vehicles had returned, and he thought he knew which one.
Why would the Cateses have Nate’s van? Where was Olivia Brannan?
The world tilted.
Joe asked, “Did you go up there again?”
Wentworth seemed surprised at the question. “How did you know?”
“Someone saw your truck up there Thursday night. I didn’t suspect you until I heard about it.”
“Who was it?”
“That isn’t important now,” Joe said. “So did you go back up there Thursday?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
Joe said to Wentworth: “It’s time for you to go.”
Wentworth looked hurt. He said, “What should I do?”
“Go back to your room and bunker in. There’s a storm coming. Just sit tight.”
“But what about me?”
“What about you?” Joe said.
“I’m supposed to just sit at the Holiday Inn and wait to be arrested?”
“That’s what I’d recommend,” Joe said. “Dry out and get some sleep. Stay sober. Do the right thing. Now, git.”
—
FROM THE FRONT WINDOW, Joe watched Wentworth’s taillights vanish in the light snow.
He surveyed the sky. The snow wasn’t falling as heavily as he’d thought it would. He might have a few hours before it really came down. It was still three hours until it got dark.
He turned and said, “Come on, Daisy. We’re going to go find Eldon’s secret elk camp.”
25
At the same time, Liv heard footfalls approaching and she quickly stopped digging around the rock. Most of the rock was exposed now, but it was still stuck fast. Liv’s fear that the stone was simply a spur of a much larger boulder had grown throughout the day but had recently been put to rest. The contours of the smooth ancient river rock were starting to round out at the back. It was, in fact, approximately the size and shape of a football. She’d cleaned enough of the packed clay from around it that she could now reach in and grab the top and bottom of the stone with both hands, although she couldn’t get enough leverage yet to work it free. It would take more time and effort.