While he was on the summit that spring, the engineers showed Wacey the circuitry inside of the shack and the thousands of telephone wires that fed into the main trunk line. He had noted where the trunk line emerged from the station to begin its descent into Saddlestring. He had thought at the time that a single high powered rifle bullet into the base of the trunk line would disable the telephone system for the entire valley. It might take days to repair, but Wacey was concerned only about tonight.
He had a .30-06 in his gun rack. He would chance it that Sheridan wouldn't even know he had left.
***
It was 11 o'clock but seemed much later when Joe put coins into the telephone in the hospital lobby to call Missy Vankeuran. He had silently rehearsed to himself what he was going to say, how he was going to tell Sheridan and Lucy what had happened and try not to scare them into hysterics. It was time to be calm. It was time to be fatherly.
It took a few moments of ringing before Joe realized he had absently dialed the telephone number to his house on Bighorn Road. He found the Eagle Mountain number in his notebook and dialed. While he did, he wondered how it was possible that Barnum had already cleared the scene and left no one to watch the house.
Maybe Barnum was incompetent after all. Maybe Wacey was right. Maybe Wacey would be a welcome addition as sheriff.
His mother-in-law picked up the telephone on the second ring. Her voice sounded angry and cold.
"Yes?"
"Missy, this is Joe."
First there was a pause. Then: "Oh, hello, Joe. You surprised me. I was expecting it to be Marybeth." Her reaction caught him off guard.
Joe was confused. Then he realized that no one had contacted her yet. But Wacey had said he would do it ... "I called your house over and over at dinner time," Missy said, speaking fast. "It was busy every time. Every time. Then all of the sudden there is no one there. Marybeth said she would be home in an hour. That was four hours ago, Joe. My dinner is ruined!"
"Missy ..."
"I haven't cooked, actually cooked in ages. It took me all afternoon to make my famous lasagna. Marybeth used to love it. She said she was looking forward to it. I'm starting to think staying with her isn't such a good idea. For either of us, Joe ..."
To Joe it sounded like Missy had a good start on the wine she must have had planned for dinner. He was angry.
"Missy, goddammit, will you stop talking?"
Silence.
"Missy, I'm calling from the hospital in Billings."
Silence.
"Marybeth has been shot. Someone shot her when she went to the house. They don't know who did it. The doctors say she's going to make it, but the baby isn't ..."
There was more silence, and he realized that the line was dead. He wasn't sure she had heard any of it. It didn't seem possible she could have hung up on him.
He dialed again. There was no ringing. He dialed again, and a recording said that the number he was calling was not in service at this time. He tried Sheriff Barnum's office. The line was dead as
well.
***
Joe couldn't sit. He couldn't stand still. He tried several times to read a magazine from the stack in the waiting room, but found he couldn't concentrate on the words or even remember what the article was about. He approached the nurses' station to check if he could see Marybeth yet.
The nurse was polite but annoyed. She pointed at the clock on her desk and reminded him he had asked her the same question not ten minutes before. Joe could not recall time ever moving so slowly. It would still be at least a half an hour before Marybeth would be wheeled out of the operating room.
He tried three more times to reach Missy and Barnum. Then he tried Sheriff Barnum's office again. He couldn't believe his bad luck. The phone lines all over the county were apparently down.
So he wandered the hallways, looking at his wristwatch every few minutes. The halls were all the same: heavily painted light blue cinder-block walls, dimmed fluorescent lighting, occasional black marks from gurney wheels on the tile floors, nurses at every station looking him over from behind their desks. He located the room where Marybeth would be. Her name was written on a card outside the door and the ink was still wet. She would be alone inside, he noted. She wouldn't have a roommate. He walked down the hall to the maternity ward and heard babies crying. He found himself staring at a young mother still plump and flushed from delivery. She was cradling a tiny red baby in her arms, waiting for a nurse to wheel her to her room. The scene pole axed him. In a daze, he ascended a set of stairs to the next level.
Joe wandered aimlessly but conveyed a sense of purpose that he didn't really have, and no one stopped him. When he glanced into the rooms he was passing, he saw there were older people on this floor. People waiting to get better or die. A television set was on and Jay Leno was interviewing someone.
A Billings police officer stood casually at the nurses' station and leaned on the counter. He didn't give Joe a second glance as Joe walked past. The policeman was talking in low tones to an attractive nurse who seemed interested in what he was saying but was feigning boredom. Joe noticed the policeman's empty chair near a room at the end of the hall, and he walked past it. The card on the wall of the room read C. Lidgard.
Joe took a few steps before it hit him. He stopped and looked down the hall over his shoulder. The policeman had his back to Joe, and he could hear the nurse giggle. Joe hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked into the room. He eased the door shut behind him.
Clyde Lidgard lay in the dark room illuminated by a small bulb mounted in the headboard. Joe hardly recognized him. Lidgard looked like he was 80 years old and was little more than a skeleton. His skin was waxy and yellow and harshly wrinkled. Webs of tubes sprang from his arms looking like the white roots of a neglected potato. His head was turned on the pillow toward the door, and the light from the bulb infused his feathery silver hair with a glow.
Joe stared at Clyde Lidgard's face as if willing him to wake up out of his coma.
"Tell me what you know, Clyde," Joe said. "Just tell me what you know."
When Clyde Lidgard's eyes slowly opened, Joe stood riveted to the floor.
Lidgard's eyes were rheumy and caked with mucus. Joe wasn't sure Lidgard could even see out of them. It didn't seem possible that Lidgard was actually awake or had any idea that Joe was in the room. Maybe Lidgard normally did this while he slept.
"Can you hear me, Clyde?" Joe asked softly. He half-expected the nurse and police officer to burst in at any moment and throw him out.
Lidgard's lips pursed as if he were sucking on a candy. "You're dry. Do you want some water?" Joe said, pouring some from a plastic pitcher into a small paper cup. He held the cup to Lidgard's
lips, and Lidgard drank. His eyes followed Joe's movements.
"Do you know who I am?" Joe asked quietly.
"Warden." The response was so weak that Joe almost didn't hear it.
"Warden." Joe replaced the pitcher and bent over Lidgard's face. He smelled the odor of decay on Lidgard's breath. It was the same smell a deer or an elk had after it had been shot.
"That's right," Joe said.
"I'm Game Warden Joe Pickett from the Saddlestring District. You need to tell me what happened up there in that elk camp."
Lidgard's eyes closed momentarily then opened again. "I'm going to die now," Lidgard said.
"Not before you tell me about the elk camp," Joe persisted. "Not until you tell me about the Miller's weasels."
There was a tiny reaction on the corner's of Clyde Lidgard's mouth, as if he were trying to smile.
"I took some good pictures of them weasels," Lidgard replied. "But I never got to see if they turned out. Instead, I died."