"Chief," he said to Ashby, "you've got to take this."
"Take what?" Ashby said, grimacing.
"Stevens from Bechler."
"Wait here," Ashby told Demming and Joe, and followed the dispatcher.
Five minutes later, he came back. He was seething, his face bright red: "That son of a bitch Clay McCann did it again!"
20
Joe finished writing his report-including the news of Clay McCann killing two more people in "self-defense" within the Zone of Death-and had it faxed from the front desk. While he watched Simon feed the pages through, something nagged at him. He needed to talk to Demming.
Lower-level federal housing was down the mountain from the Mammoth Hotel, a half-mile walk nearly straight downhill. The moon was full and lit the sagebrush-covered hillside. A small herd of elk grazed in the moonlight. Joe could smell their familiar musky smell in the air. He noticed blue parentheses on either side of the moon. Snow was coming.
The cluster of Park Service housing was built on a plateau on the sagebrush hillside. The houses were packed tightly togetherwith fenceless common yards. The density of the houses was claustrophobic, Joe thought, compared to the vast, empty hillsides in all directions. It reminded him of a government-builtanthill in the middle of a prairie. He found Demming's house by the brown wooden sign outside that said LARS AND JUDY DEMMING and crossed the postage-stamp lawn. A BMX bike leaned against the house. The house was small and looked exactly like every other house on the street. The Park Service had even painted them all the same light green color. Demming's cruiser was parked next to a jacked-up Ford 4x4 pickup that looked formidable as well as well taken care of.
A man answered the door. Joe expected someone named Lars to be tall, strapping, blond. Instead, he was short, pudgy, with long sideburns and an acne-scarred face. Smile lines at the corners of his mouth suggested he was always of good cheer. He wore a baggy T-shirt with a silk screen of a wolf on it.
Joe introduced himself. "Hope I didn't get you at dinner," Joe said.
"Not at all," Lars said, looking over Joe's shoulder for his vehicle. Lars was the kind of man who judged other men by what they drove, Joe guessed. "Come on in. You walked?"
"Yup."
"Oh, that's right," Lars said, chuckling. "I heard about your Yukon. Quite a story."
The television was on in the living room and the house smelled of the fried hamburgers they had had for dinner. It was modest, almost spare, except for the elk heads and antlers on the wall. Joe didn't know what he'd been expecting. Maybe more books, he thought.
Lars introduced Joe to Jake, who was watching television. Jake, ten, was a younger, fitter version of Lars, and he self-consciouslygot up and shook Joe's hand and returned quickly to the couch. A teenage girl looked out from her room, said hello, and ducked back in.
"Erin," Lars said. "Fifteen and surly."
Joe nodded with empathy.
"So, Judy tells me you're a game warden."
"Yes."
"What do you think of those heads on the wall?"
"Nice."
"I got seven more of 'em in the garage. I was thinking you might want to take a look at them."
People always wanted to show Joe their game heads or hunting pictures. He was used to it. To be polite, Joe said, "Sure, you bet."
Judy intervened, coming from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. She was out of uniform, and she looked like, well, a mom.
"I think Joe's seen plenty of elk heads before, honey," she said.
"That's okay," Joe said.
"Really," Demming said to Lars.
Lars did a barely noticeable man-to-man eye roll, asked, "You want a beer?"
"You bet."
"Turn the television off, please, Jake," Demming said. "Time for homework."
"I don't have any," Jake said.
Demming gave him a look.
"Maybe I do," Jake said, peeling himself off the couch. As he went down the hall, Jake stopped at Erin's room just long enough to dart in to do something that made her squeal, "Mom! He flicked my ear with his finger again!"
"Jake, leave her alone," Demming said, halfheartedly.
Joe smiled. Just like home.
Lars returned with three opened bottles of beer.
"I didn't really want one," Demming said.
"I'll drink it," Lars said. "We don't want to see beer go to waste, eh, Joe?"
"Right."
Joe sat on the couch. Demming and Lars settled in well-wornoverstuffed chairs.
"Too bad about Mark Cutler," Lars said. "He was a real nice guy. I met him a few times at Old Faithful."
It seemed oddly uncomfortable, Joe thought. No doubt both Lars and Demming felt the same. Demming did, he was sure, by the way she lowered her eyes while Lars told story after story about every time he had met Mark Cutler. Most of the tales had to do with Lars's road crew fixing the potholes around Old Faithful. Demming didn't interrupt when the stories got too long, deferring to her husband.
When Lars went to get Joe another beer, Demming said, "Ashby called. I've got a meeting with him and James Langston tomorrow. I won't be with you anymore either, providing they even let you stay. I've been reassigned to traffic if they don't decideto suspend me."
"I'm sorry."
She shrugged. "It gives me an excuse to quit. I wish I could. Maybe I can really try to get into interpretation now."
Lars came back and resumed telling stories about each of the elk on the wall, the circumstances in which he'd killed them.
Joe wanted to ask her how she was doing, but it seemed like the wrong time and place. Instead, he finished the beer because he thought Lars would want him to.
"I better get back," Joe said, standing. "I need to call my wife."
"Yeah," Lars said, grinning. "Don't forget that or there'll be hell to pay."
Joe said, "Marybeth's not like that."
Lars gave him a man-to-man wink, as if to say, They're all like that.
"Do you need a ride?" Demming asked.
"I don't mind walking."
"I'll drive you back."
"Jeez," Lars said, "haven't you two spent enough time together?"
He was joking, Joe thought, but he wasn't. In the car, Demming said, "You wanted to ask me something."
"I wanted to see how you were doing."
"Besides that. What was it? I could tell."
She was Demming again, the ranger.
"Last night, after I left you the message about the meeting with Cutler, who did you call?"
"Ashby. Why?"
"I'm trying to figure out who knew about the meeting ahead of time."
"Do you realize what you're asking? What you're saying?"
"Yes."
She drove in silence the rest of the way.
When he got out, he said, "Be careful."
"You too," she said. "Maybe you ought to go home."
"What?"
She looked over, concern in her eyes. "You seem to have a nice family, Joe, and obviously you care very much about them. This isn't your fight."
"It's my job," he said. "Same thing." Joe missed his family, missed them more than he thought possible, more than he should have given that it had been only four days since he left. When he really thought about them, reallydug deep, he wondered if, in his heart, he felt out of his depth and therefore wanted them near him for comfort. Two more days, he thought. Two more days. But should he welcome them to a place where just that morning he'd seen a man boiled alive, had his state car destroyed, and come to a nagging realizationthat it was very likely that someone on the inside murdered Mark Cutler and could just as easily come after him?
Maybe that's what it was, Joe thought. The thought that Cutler had no one to mourn him. No wife, no kids, and a sort-of fiancee he'd made a fleeting mention of. If whoever got Cutler came afterJoe… he tried to imagine how Marybeth, Sheridan, and Lucy would mourn him. Would it demolish them, change them forever? He hoped so as much as he hoped not. Or would they figure out a way to go on? They were tough, he knew. He wished he were that tough. And now, he thought, sitting in his room at the Mammoth Hotel at midnight on a vacant floor with the half-emptyJim Beam traveler on his tiny desk, he was crossing over a line into a kind of morbid depression he hadn't felt since, well, since his brother died and his father left them.