TWO HOURS LATER, after Joe had finished giving his deposition to Robey concerning his recent encounter with Opal Scarlett, Deputy Reed stuck his head into the office.
“I thought you guys would want to know we’ve sent a couple of cars out to pick up a fishing guide named Tommy Wayman,” Reed said, glancing at his notepad. “His wife, Nancy, called it in. They had a fight and Nancy said Tommy told her he would do the same thing to her that he did to Opal Scarlett if she didn’t shut up.”
After a beat, Joe said, “Which was . . . ?”
“‘Throw her in the river like fish guts,’” Reed said, looking at his pad to emphasize that he was quoting.
SO IT WAS Tommy Wayman, Joe thought. Tommy was a longtime local, a throwback, given to white snap-button shirts and stretch Wranglers. He ran three boats and two rafts on the Twelve Sleep River, his business doing well despite the fact that Tommy would much rather fish himself than tend to detail. The guided operation was flourishing now, though, due to MBP Management, Marybeth’s company.
Wayman had the oldest fishing service in the valley, and was the first to change from live bait to flies, flat-bottomed jon boats to beautiful McKenzie-syle drift boats, the first to preach catch-and-release instead of killing and taking caught fish. It had been a nod to progress and a realization that the resource was unique but limited. Joe encouraged Tommy and urged other guides to change their methods while he managed the river for quantity and quality of trout instead of meat in the water.
Tommy had contended with Opal Scarlett for years. Maybe he had finally snapped.
4
IT WAS AFTER TEN WHEN JOE DROVE TOWARD HIS home on Bighorn Road. Maxine was asleep on the passenger seat, tucked in on herself, her deep breathing punctuated by occasional yips as she dreamed of what? Chasing rabbits? Watching men beat each other with irrigation shovels?
The night was remarkably dark, the moon a thin white razor slash in the sky, the stars hard and cold. There were no pole lamps this far out of town, and it was one of those nights that seemed to suck the illumination out of the stars, rather than transmit the light, leaving pinpricks.
He had called Marybeth to tell her he’d be late.
“Sheridan told me what happened,” Marybeth said. “Julie, that poor girl. I wish she hadn’t seen her father and uncle fighting like that.”
Joe said, “My fault.”
Marybeth was silent, which meant she agreed with him that he’d screwed up. But at least she didn’t say it. For the past six months, since Joe returned from his assignment in Jackson, Marybeth had been unerringly patient with him, as if she were overcompensating for something that had happened while he was gone. While he wasn’t sure what that was, he knew it involved Nate Romanowski. He didn’t ask because he trusted her judgment more than his own and, frankly, he liked how things were going between them. Plus, he had a secret of his own—his surprising attraction to a married woman in Jackson. Nothing had happened, but it could have, which was nearly as bad. So things had been rocky for a while, like all marriages, he supposed, but the storm had passed over them without fatal damage. Now they were on smooth water again, which he preferred. He saw no good reason to dredge up past feelings with probing questions. She didn’t either. Life was good in general, as it should be, he thought. Except for his job, his boss, and now Opal Scarlett’s disappearance.
IN SPRING THE animals came out, so he was cautious as he drove. The deer, rabbits, badgers, elk, and occasional mountain lions were on the move, reestablishing their hierarchy and territory, having babies, kicking up their heels after a long winter. Joe imagined them puzzling over new human and natural developments on the land, processing the changes, and moving forward with slight instinctive variations. He slowed when two bright blue lights winked just beyond the arc of his headlights, and he stopped the truck while a badger, her belly fat quivering while she scuttled, crossed the two-lane blacktop. Her young one, which was sleek and shiny, froze in the roadway for a moment and displayed its attitude with a teeth-rattling display of juvenile aggression as it rocked from side to side, then followed her. Both vanished into the darkness of the barrow pit beside the road.
He was always grateful for the drive home, because it allowed him to wind down, to sort out the events of the day, to try to put them in a mental drawer for later.
Joe was still buzzing from what had happened at the sheriff’s office with the Scarlett brothers. Although the rift between them—especially Arlen and Hank—was the stuff of local fable, he had not seen it for himself in its fury.
TOMMY WAYMAN HAD been brought to the county building as Joe left. Before starting his truck, Joe watched as Wayman was pulled out of the car and steered toward the door by two sheriff’s deputies. Curiosity got the best of him, and Joe went back inside to hear what Tommy had to say.
Someone had tipped off the Saddlestring Roundup, and a reporter (who, to Joe, looked all of seventeen years old) had arrived with a digital camera. The flash popped and lit Tommy’s face in stark relief, freezing an image of tiny eyes set in a face of deep tan from spending so many hours on the river, and a bulbous red nose from drinking so many beers while spending so many hours on the river.
Tommy looked scared, Joe thought, as if he were ready to flinch from blows that could come from anywhere. Joe could see a bandage on Tommy’s neck. The adhesive strip holding on the gauze had pulled loose to reveal a wound that looked, at first, as if someone had tried to slit Tommy’s throat from ear to ear.
“What happened to your neck?” Joe asked.
“Opal Scarlett,” Tommy said. “Joe, she should have been stopped a long time ago.” His voice slurred with alcohol. Since his hands were cuffed behind him and he couldn’t point, Tommy raised his chin to indicate the wound across his throat. “This time, she just about cut my head off.”
Before he could say more, the deputies took him into the building to be processed.
Joe had watched Tommy’s thin back until the guide was taken into the building. Joe followed, pieces falling into place.
JOE HAD FIRST met Opal Scarlett three years before as a result of a complaint by the very same Tommy Wayman. Wayman had come to Joe’s office at his house and claimed Opal was blocking access to the river and charging fees for his boats to float through her ranch.
“She’s been doing it for years,” Wayman said, sitting down in the single chair across from Joe’s desk.
Joe said, “You’re kidding me, right?”
Wyoming law was long established and well known: it was perfectly legal for anyone to float in a boat through private land as long as the boaters didn’t stop and get out or pull the boat up to shore and trespass. The land belonged to the landowner but the water belonged to the public. While it was perfectly fine for a landowner to charge a fee for access to the river over private ground, it was illegal to charge for simply floating through private land.
“The rumor is that she collects enough money from float fees—as she calls ’em—to buy a new Cadillac at the end of every summer,” Tommy Wayman had said while cracking the top off a bottle of beer he had pulled from his fishing vest. “She’s been collecting money for years, but nobody turns her in because, well, she’s Opal Scarlett.”
Wayman told Joe that Opal collected her fee by standing on the bank near her house and calling to passing boats. Since Opal was white haired and tiny, most boatmen assumed there was something wrong when they heard her cries and beelined to help the old woman. When the boats pulled to shore, she pointed out to the passengers of the boat that they were now technically on her land and subject to fines or arrest. She would let it go, however, if the passengers paid a fee of $5 per person. Later, the fee was raised to $10, then $15, then $20. Word got around among fishermen to ignore Opal Scarlett when she hollered, no matter what she said.