“Did they ever,” she said, tapping the rim of her glass to signal the bartender for a refill. “Especially after we left. It was like his cave door closed shut and locked him out. He couldn’t find any relief, so the pressure just kept building.
Of course, he never said anything to me or asked for help.
Not Will.” Susan didn’t even try to keep the anger out of her voice.
“What caused the biggest problems?”
“Are you asking me because you want to know about Will, or because you want to know what you’re going to be dealing with here? Joe, I know you’re here to replace him.
I’m still in the loop.”
He flushed, sorry he hadn’t said it earlier. “Both, I guess.”
She thought that over for a moment. “Will thought—and he was right—that it seemed like things were coming at him from all sides. The animal liberation people were after him. I was surprised to see that Pi woman here, considering that she literally put a contract out on him on her website.
Then there was Smoke Van Horn and his bunch, the oldtimers. They rode Will hard, tried to get him fired a few times. Smoke always showed up at the public hearings and ripped Will as well as the state and the Feds. Smoke was hard on Will, and I hate him for that. Oh,” Susan said, smiling bitterly, “then there’s the developers. They come from other places and they want to do here what they did wherever they made their millions. It drove them crazy that somebody like Will, who made less money than what their cars probably cost, could stall their projects by writing an opinion that would affect their plans.”
Joe interrupted. “Are you talking about Don Ennis?” he asked, thinking about the business card in his pocket.
Susan’s face tightened. “Don Ennis. Do you know him?”
“I sort of met him last night. He sent over a drink.”
“Don and Stella Ennis,” Susan said, more to herself than to Joe, as if recalling something unpleasant.
Joe recalled Tassell’s comments about breaking up an argument at the ski resort. He would need to follow up with Tassell to see if the other party was Don Ennis.
Susan’s eyes burned into Joe, and her voice dropped as if someone might overhear her. “Joe, all I can tell you is to watch out for that man. He gets what he wants, and he doesn’t care who gets hurt.”
Joe blinked at her sudden intensity.
“As for Stella,” she said, “she’s playing a game that only she understands. She might be the most dangerous of them all.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Susan sat back, drained her glass. “I’m not sure what I mean. I just got this vibration from her. A dark kind of feeling. I think she’s a predator. And Will,” she said, drinking again although her glass was empty, “Will thought I was wrong about her. He thought I was jealous. And you know what? I probably was.”
Joe felt that he needed to defend Stella. Did Susan see her crying during the funeral? Were those tears of a predator? But he didn’t want to go there with Susan, not now. He changed the subject.
He asked, “What was he working on most recently?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that,” she said. “The boys and I had been gone for months. Even when we were together, he didn’t talk about the specifics of his projects much. He tried to leave all of that at his office, or in his truck, or wherever. The only way I knew about the big things—like ALN, Smoke, or Ennis’s Beargrass Village— was because sometimes he’d mention them in passing or I’d hear about it from someone or read about it in the newspaper.”
“Susan, where did he keep his files? His notebooks?”
He realized he sounded like he was grilling her. “Sorry for my tone.”
“It’s okay,” she said, patting his hand. “I’m not sure about the files. I think at the office. He brought his notebook into the house some nights—he was always scribbling in those notebooks—but he never left papers or files around the house.”
“Do you mind if I look through the boxes of what he left?”
“Feel free, Joe. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them anyway. They probably belong to the state.”
Suddenly, Susan turned her wrist and looked at her watch. If her glass hadn’t been empty, Joe noticed, she would have spilled wine on her lap. “I need to get back to the boys and the, um, mourners.”
“Thank you for your time, Susan. I really appreciate it.”
Again, she patted his hand.
She slid down from the stool, a little shakily. Joe steadied her by holding her forearm until she was standing. She put the glass down and smoothed her skirt. She started to say goodbye and then stopped. “Joe, with all of your questions I nearly forgot why I needed to talk to you in the first place.”
She said, “A year ago, just as Will was starting to lose his bearings and six months before I left him, he took me out to dinner. It was a fairly nice evening, even though we couldn’t afford it. Everything here just costs so much. Anyway, out of the blue, he said that when he died he wanted his remains scattered in a specific place. When I look back on that now, I think he knew something was going to happen.”
She had her legs back and was walking out of the lounge, Joe following.
“Two Ocean Pass, that’s the place,” she said. “It’s somewhere up in the wilderness area, where he patrolled. He described it pretty thoroughly, for Will.”
She stopped in the hallway and turned to face Joe. He could hear the fog of conversation coming from the reception room, where no doubt mourners were waiting for the widow.
“He said a creek comes down from the mountains. I think he called it Two Ocean Creek. Anyway, the stream flows south through a big meadow and splits at a lone spruce tree. It’s exactly on the Continental Divide. One part of the stream flows to the Atlantic and the other to the Pacific. He said it was the most beautiful meadow he had ever seen. He wants his ashes scattered there, by the tree.”
Joe now grasped what she was asking.
“I’ll never get up there,” she said. “I don’t even want to try. But it’s in your new district, and you can probably find it.”
“I’ll do it,” Joe said. “I’m honored.” He knew vaguely of the location from the map on the office wall. “Do you want me to do anything else?”
She shook her head. “That’s more than enough, Joe. I’ll give you my number in Casper, if you don’t mind calling me when it’s done.”
The urn looked like an extra large beer stein. Joe carried it to his pickup, thinking how light it was, wondering guiltily what the ashes looked like (brown, gray, or white?). On the street, a jackedup Grand Am filled with teenagers slowed, and a window rolled down and an unformed simian face jutted out, asking, “Dude, where’s the party?”
Thirteen
At 4:45 p.m., Joe entered the office of the Teton County Sheriff ’s Department and told the receptionist he was there to meet with Sheriff Tassell. The receptionist said the sheriff was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. Behind her he could see a hallway with several closed doors, and he could hear the hum of voices from behind one of them.
Joe was annoyed. “When will he be free?” “He didn’t say.”
“Did he leave me a message? Or a set of keys?” “And you are . . . ?” she asked archly.
He told her.
“No, there’s nothing for you here.”
Joe considered waiting, and looked around the small reception area. There were two chairs, and one of them was filled with a sinewy man wearing khakis, a polo shirt, a jacket, and light hiking boots. Not local, Joe thought, but buttonedup and urban, attempting to appear casual and outdoorsy. The man looked straight back at Joe, as if daring him to take the seat next to him.
“Are you waiting for the sheriff too?” Joe asked.
“Could be,” the man said. There was something coiled up about him, Joe thought. Then he noticed the earpiece, and the thin wire that curled from it into the man’s collar.
“Are you Secret Service?” Joe asked, remembering Tassell’s other meeting about the vice president’s visit.