Evelyn said she could.
"Aren't you going to check with me?" Vern asked her, thoroughly disgusted.
Joe stepped aside so she could run past. She didn't reply to Vern as she left the room. Vern and Joe stared at each other in silence, only the sounds of Evelyn Wolters getting dressed in a hurry--grunts punctuated with the snapping of elastic--breaking the quiet. Vern's face was flushed, and his eyes were narrowed into slits. Joe had never seen him so angry.
The door slammed in the front room, and Evelyn was gone.
"Joe, what the fuck is going on here? You don't really want to do this. Joe? Do you? This isn't like you at all."
Joe thumbed back the hammer on the Smith & Wesson. The cylinder turned from an empty chamber to one filled with a hollowpoint bullet. Little muscles in Vern's temples started to throb.
"Well, Vern, I don't know about that," Joe said, his voice betraying his rage.
"Maybe you just haven't seen me on a night when my wife gets shot, my baby son dies, and one of my daughters is missing."
Vern shook his head. His famous chuckle rolled out.
"Joe, you don't think I had anything at all to do with any of that, do you? I was closing down the Stockman with Evelyn when one of the local boys who'd been out at your place came in and told me about Marybeth being shot. He said Wacey told him to come find me and tell me what had happened out at the Pickett house. Soon after that, Evelyn and I packed it up and came here." Vern paused and shot Joe a look that was both petulant and accusatory.
"Frankly, Joe, I don't know how you could even imply that I might have been involved in all this stuff that you've been going on about."
"Shut up, Vern. You're so deep into this you'll never get out."
"Joe, I ..."
"SHUT UP!" Joe barked. His finger tightened on the trigger--Vern saw it and even though his mouth was still open, no sound came out.
"Here," Joe said, tossing the envelopes with Clyde's photos in them on the bedspread. Vern was confused until he shook one set of the photos out. He flipped through each of them, his stubby fingers snapping each photo down on the bed as if he were dealing cards.
"They're lousy pictures," Joe continued. "Just like all of Clyde Lidgard's work. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't even know that all of those brown, furry things sticking out of the ground were the last Miller's weasels on earth."
Vern returned the photos to the first envelope and took out the next set.
"Of course, the negatives are somewhere else so don't even consider that option," Joe said.
Vern seemed to get smaller in the bed as he looked through the photos. A look of utter defeat passed over his features.
"Now I know the majority of these photos are so bad you can't recognize anything in them. But Clyde did manage to take some pretty good ones of you and Wacey up there in the woods. In one you can even see a package of M-forty-four cartridges sticking out of your knapsack."
Vern neatly put the photos away, keeping his head down. When he raised it, he looked wounded.
"Where did you find all of this?" Vern asked. "How did you know where to look?"
"Barrett's Pharmacy," Joe said. "Clyde Lidgard told me all about it. He told me everything."
"Clyde Lidgard?"
"I'm not here to talk," Joe said. "You are the one who needs to talk. But right now, Vern, you have about twenty seconds to get dressed because we're going to walk out of here to go find my daughter."
***
Joe drove out of town on the Bighorn Road with his right hand on the steering wheel and his left hand on his lap holding the .357 Magnum, still cocked, aimed at Vern's big gut. The sky was beginning to lighten to the east, and the stars were not as brilliant as they had been. It was a cold, clear morning and there was no other traffic on the roads. Joe felt like he and Vern were alone in a world of their own making.
They were headed back toward Joe's house. Joe figured that if Marybeth had told Sheridan to run, there was a chance his daughter might still be somewhere not too far away from the house. It was a place to start anyway.
Vern wore a pair of baggy sweatpants, a T-shirt, slippers, and a bathrobe. Joe had not given him any more time to dress. When Vern had opened the closet to get his clothes, Joe had seen the butt of a handgun on the top shelf. Joe had ordered Vern to close the damned door and put on something from the dresser.
"I could use a drink right now," Vern said. "That would help."
"Shut up."
"I'm really sorry this turned out the way it did, Joe. I'm sorry you had to even get involved in it."
"Shut up."
"I'm an entrepreneur," Vern said, his voice rising. "I'm terribly misunderstood. I'm an endangered species just like you. I'm sorry about not being able to give you that good job when you finally wanted it. Especially now that it's available again. I bet you didn't know that, did you?"
Joe snorted. Vern just kept trying, Joe thought. He didn't quit.
"It's hard to believe how this all turned out," Vern moaned. "How screwed up everything got."
"Speaking of screwed, did Les Etbauer at headquarters owe you one?"
"He still owes me a couple," Vern sighed.
"I got him that cushy job and covered for him a couple of times when he was too drunk to function."
Joe grunted. He had thought it must have been something like that.
"A lot of people owe me," Vern said. "Some of those favors could be called in on your behalf, if you would just ease up on me a little bit. We don't have to be on opposite sides, here."
Vern looked over as if to gauge if Joe had softened some. "Joe, what I'm saying here is that we could either get you your old job back or you could work for Inter West Your choice. I can call Etbauer if you want me to. Even Wacey could hire you if I told him to. You've got lots of options, Joe. We really don't have to go through with all of this."
"Shut up, Vern," Joe gritted out, through clenched teeth.
"In fact, Joe, you owe me, too. How do you think you got the job after me? Do you realize how many guys wanted this? Wade, from Pinedale. Charley Gardener over in Rock Springs--"
"Shut the fuck up."
"Christ, Joe," Vern whined. "You could at least be civil."
The explosion of the pistol in the closed cab of the pickup was deafening, and the only thing louder than the ringing in Joe's ears was the high-pitched cursing of Vern as he searched himself frantically for the wound. There was a now a hole in the truck door the size of a quarter, just a few inches from Vern's belly.
They drove in silence for a few moments. The truck smelted sharply of cordite.
It also smelled of urine because Vern had wet himself.
"How did Wacey get involved in this?" Joe asked calmly.
"Jesus, this is really embarrassing," Vern said, looking down in his lap. He clutched his thighs with his hands to keep his legs from shaking.
"How did Wacey get involved in this?"
Vern rubbed his face and sighed.
"Getting Wacey in this deal was the single most stupid fucking thing I ever did. But he was the one who told me about that idiot Clyde Lidgard. He said Lidgard had talked to him about some little creatures he saw up in the canyon. Wacey knew about the pipeline, of course, and he had heard about Miller's weasels just like everybody else had. He told Clyde to keep it a secret, that it was some big government secret that just he and Clyde could know about. Clyde liked that shit. Then Wacey told me about it."
"So you and Wacey and Clyde went up there and wiped out the weasels," Joe said.
"But unfortunately you didn't wipe them all out, and Ote Keeley and his buddies found what was left."
Vern nodded. Joe thought Vern figured he had nothing more to lose by talking.
"Ote must have hoped that if he delivered a Miller's weasel to you that you would drop the charges on him," Vern said. "That was how you got involved in this whole stupid fucking mess."