Brenda nodded. She said, “If you need to talk to us, just make sure to call first. Out at our place, we’re always on the watch for poachers and trespassers. Eldon and Bull are known to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Eldon gestured toward Joe and said, “If you bring him with you, there’ll be trouble.”
“I won’t. And I’ll call first,” Dulcie said, looking down at her notebook. Joe could tell she was angry.
—
AFTER THE CATESES HAD LEFT, Sheriff Reed said to Joe, “That was real smooth.”
Joe shrugged and waited for more. Instead, Reed wheeled over to his window and parted the blinds. His office overlooked the parking lot.
Eldon and Brenda were in the cab of their huge SUV, Eldon behind the wheel. The vehicle was old enough that it still had the name SUBURBAN on it, and not the revamped YUKON XL that Chevrolet had taken when they rechristened the exact same vehicle with a less controversial brand. The man stared blankly ahead while Brenda reamed him out, jabbing him in the arm with the same finger she’d pointed at Joe.
“I’d give my right arm to hear what they’re saying,” Dulcie said.
After five minutes, the truck backed out of the lot and pulled away.
“They’re gone,” Reed said.
“There are so many holes in their story, I don’t know where to start,” Dulcie said. “Is it possible for a man with cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder to drive fifteen hundred miles across the country?”
“It was obvious Brenda wanted Eldon to tell the story,” Reed said. “She coached him and set him loose. But he’s too damned dumb to keep his days or his story straight. I don’t know whether to believe that rattlesnake story or not.”
“They’re lying,” Joe said.
Reed said to Joe, “I know how it looks. But we’ve got to build a box around Dallas. It shouldn’t take too long to establish if and when he was injured and when he got back. There’s obviously a video of his ride, and we should be able to find credit card receipts for fifteen hundred miles’ worth of gas. We’ll see if he’ll consent to a doctor going out there. Plus, we don’t have any of April’s lab results yet or the tech report on the samples taken from where we found her. We might even find Dallas’s DNA on her, which destroys their story.”
Dulcie snapped her notebook closed. She said, “What is it with their attitude toward us? The county is filled with rural people. We don’t look down on anyone.”
“That’s the way they are,” Reed said. “Brenda, especially. She’s got a chip on her shoulder and always has. Something about a land deal her father got screwed out of. I don’t know the details.”
“I don’t care about the details,” Joe said. “Dallas Cates is guilty as hell.”
“But you are not to get any further involved in the investigation,” Dulcie said, pointing her finger at him. “You already made them mad. If this looks like an angry father going after an innocent kid, it blows up the prosecution.”
Joe looked over at Reed. He didn’t need to say it again.
“We’ll nail the bastard,” Reed said. “And maybe we’ll charge Eldon and Brenda with obstruction and being accessories to the crime. And if April dies . . .”
Joe cringed.
Reed said, “Sorry. You know where I was going with that. This is why you need to step aside.”
—
AS JOE AND DULCIE left Reed’s office, she put her hand on his shoulder.
“How is Marybeth holding up?”
“Better than can be expected,” Joe said. “I’m waiting for her to call from Billings.”
“Give her my best.”
“I will.”
“We’ll get him, Joe.”
He looked at her and said, “You better.”
“I wasn’t kidding about you staying out of this,” she said. “If I need to go all the way to the governor, I will.”
He nodded, but he didn’t commit.
“And you shouldn’t get Nate Romanowski involved, either. In fact, I’d suggest you not tell him until we’ve got Dallas behind bars. The last thing we need around here is Nate’s brand of justice.”
“Haven’t you heard?” Joe said. “He’s gone straight.”
“Riiiight,” she said, drawing out the word.
—
WHILE JOE WAS CLAMPING on his hat to go outside to his pickup and Daisy, Dulcie put her hands on her hips.
“Do you think there’s anything to Brenda’s denials?” she asked.
“No.”
“She’s right about one thing, though. We need to look beyond Dallas. We need to consider this other mystery cowboy or even the hitchhiking theory. And we need to be open to any other kind of idea, whether we heard it from Brenda Cates or not.”
Joe didn’t respond.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” she said. “We need to verify Brenda’s story and track down where April has been for the past month—who she was with, what rodeos she attended, all of that. We need to verify when Dallas was injured—if he was—in Houston. And I need to talk with Dallas himself, without his mother in the room.”
Joe nodded.
“Of course, if April recovers, she can tell us who did it, even though Brenda tried pretty hard to discount that even before it happens,” she said.
“Which is why her son is guilty as hell,” Joe said.
4
Joe sat sullenly in his pickup with his phone in his hand on the outer circle of Saddlestring High School, waiting for Lucy to come out. He was midway in a long line of parents in pickups and SUVs who were waiting for their teenagers to emerge. Even though, officially, he was prohibited from using his state pickup to transport family members, it seemed like the least of his worries at the moment.
He re-litigated the scene from Sheriff Reed’s office the hour before, trying to open himself up to the possibility that Dallas had nothing to do with April’s injuries. He mulled over Brenda’s theories. A mystery cowboy? A stranger picking up hitchhikers? He couldn’t square the circle.
He recalled how relentlessly Brenda and Eldon had defended their son. It bothered him on a couple of levels. Although it could be expected that parents would protect their own, it seemed not to have even occurred to them that Dallas could be responsible for the crime. They simply refused to believe it, which made them less than credible. To have such an unshakable belief that Dallas was innocent reminded Joe of other parents he’d encountered over the years: couples who attacked teachers because of their child’s failing grades, or coaches because their child was a poor athlete, or him because he’d given a citation to their boy for fishing without a valid license.
For some parents, their offspring were perfect beings. It was a cancer on society, he thought, and it was getting out of control. The Cateses were the worst example of it he’d encountered.
He grinned cruelly to himself when he imagined their reaction when Dallas was convicted and sent to the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins. Oh, he thought, the rending of garments, the gnashing of teeth . . .
—
MARYBETH HAD SENT a series of cryptic texts while Joe waited.
Landing at the trauma center now.
Doctors evaluating her in the ICU.
Still hasn’t regained consciousness.
Good doctors, thank God.
Did you remember to pick up L?
He’d responded: Yup.
—
STUDENTS BEGAN TO POUR out of the front doors of the school moments after the bell rang. Groups of upperclassmen came out and turned for the parking lot and their cars. Tenth graders and those who didn’t have vehicles searched the line of cars for their rides.