Stella.
Joe imagined Marybeth’s reaction when he told her about the party. It would be hard to convince her he wasn’t having the time of his life without her.
Later, he checked his wristwatch, trying to anticipate when Marybeth might wake up at home. He hadn’t called the night before because when he returned from Dr. Graves’s it was after midnight. Dead tired, his dinner was a can of spaghetti and a bourbon and water. He wanted to tell her what he had learned about the crime scene and find out her impressions. She often thought of angles he hadn’t considered.
Then he wanted to talk to Mary, maybe get her to tell him something about Will Jensen before taking the horses north to the trailhead to begin a fouror fiveday pack trip into the wilderness to check the outfitter camps. He had not forgotten about Smoke Van Horn, who seemed to have a professional interest in when Joe would hit the backcountry.
Joe had not announced his intentions to anyone, and would tell only Mary and Marybeth, and go.
If there was anything that might clear his head, it was several days alone in the mountains. He intended to use the days not only to do his duty at the camps, but to think through what he had learned about Will Jensen’s death since arriving in Jackson.
Because I sure can’t focus on anything here, he thought.
He considered seeing a doctor, but didn’t know one in Jackson and wasn’t sure how much his insurance would cover.
If he continued to have nights like the one he had just had, he vowed, he would get a checkup when he got back.
As Joe reached for the phone to call his wife, it rang. Sheriff Tassell sounded angry and told Joe that he was calling from his car and hadn’t even made it into the office yet. Joe was annoyed as well, having another call to Marybeth aborted before it had begun.
“Graves said you think somebody might have killed Will Jensen,” Tassell said.
“I was speculating—”
“Damnit, this is exactly what I was warned about you,”
Tassell said. “You agreed to keep me informed.”
“I didn’t get in last night until after midnight,” Joe said.
“Did you want me to call you then?”
“Why not?” Tassell asked. “Graves sure as hell did.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He said we ought to consider hiring a bigname forensics expert to look at the photos.”
“So he thinks there’s something there?” Joe asked, a little surprised. He had assumed, incorrectly, that Graves was as anxious to put the death behind him as Tassell seemed to be.
“He’s not sure,” Tassell said. “But he made that suggestion. Dumped it in my lap, actually. Of course, the cost for that kind of expert wouldn’t come out of his budget.”
Joe grinned sourly. “So that’s what this is about, huh? Maybe the state DCI would—”
“I don’t want the state involved, coming in here after the fact,” Tassell said impatiently. “Not based on a couple of photos and the fact that you thought the gun was uncomfortable to hold in a certain position. Jesus, why would a guy so strung out that he wanted to commit suicide even care if he was uncomfortable at the last second of his life?”
“It just doesn’t fit,” Joe said.
“Is that a reason to raise the issue? Unless we’ve got more than that, I can’t spend our money for a highpriced outside expert.”
“Don’t you want to be sure?” Joe asked.
Tassell said, “Don’t put that on me, Joe. You’re as bad as Graves.”
“You’re the sheriff,” Joe said. “It’s your decision.”
Tassell moaned and cursed. “Okay, I’ll give it some thought. Those photos aren’t going anywhere. Maybe once we get the VP out of town and I know where our budget is—”
“Why wait?” Joe asked.
“Because,” Tassell shouted before hanging up, “that’s what I do.”
He had just rolled the maps into tubes for his trip and cleared his inbox when Mary Seels appeared at his office door and said, “Joe, your truck is on fire.”
The only things he was able to save were the panniers he had packed in the back of his truck the night before. The cab and engine were engulfed in flames, loud, crackling, angry flames so loud he almost didn’t hear the two biologists screaming at him from secondstory windows in the building, “GET AWAY FROM THAT BEFORE IT EXPLODES!”
Which he did and it did, with a groundshaking WHUMP, as he stood near the corrals with the scorched panniers at his feet. A huge black roll of smoke mushroomed from his pickup and hung in the air at roof level. The morning smelled of burning gasoline, oil, plastic, and melting rubber. His truck was a hot black shell by the time the fire department arrived. When the firemen turned their hoses on it the metal steamed and sizzled and the wet clouds of condensation rolled across the parking lot and made him gag as he attempted to duck beneath them.
As Joe circled the truck, marveling that the only thing that looked intact was the gear shift knob, Assistant Director Randy Pope showed up.
“How did this happen?” Pope asked, touching the metal of the window frame and snapping his hand back from the heat.
“I have no idea,” Joe said. “I drove it to work this morning, parked it, and it caught on fire.”
“Were you in it at the time?”
Joe shook his head. “I was at my desk.”
No one had seen the truck catch fire. The few employees who were in the office had been in the lounge area, celebrating the birthday of one of the biologists. No one had been in the parking lot, and the lot couldn’t be seen from the street in front.
“Did you smell anything burning when you drove it last?” Pope asked. “Did the gauges tell you anything? Were you overheating? Brandnew twentyninethousanddollar vehicles just don’t catch on fire.”
“No,” Joe said, “nothing.” But he thought how disoriented he had felt that morning, how dizzy he had been.
Maybe some wiring was bad and he hadn’t noticed it?
Pope stopped and shook his head. “Let’s see,” he asked rhetorically, “isn’t this your third department vehicle that’s a total loss?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Joe said, aware of how weak that sounded. “It just caught on fire somehow and burned up.”
“When was the last time it was in for maintenance?”
Joe tried to remember. “When I got the bodywork done on it after I damaged the frame.” He added, “I think. The maintenance log got burned up too.”
Pope looked at Joe with condescension. “Three vehicles in five years is some kind of record, I believe.”
Joe tried to remain calm. “Maybe someone torched it.”
“Think so?” Pope asked. “Who have you made angry enough to do that? You haven’t even been here a week.”
Joe thought, Pi Stevenson, Smoke Van Horn, the society woman who killed the deer, Don Ennis . . . maybe even Sheriff Tassell. But he said, “I don’t know.”
From his office window, Joe watched the tow truck hook up his burned vehicle and take it away. He felt profoundly unhappy, verging on pathetic, he thought. He didn’t have his family, his house, his horses, his dog. Now he’d lost his truck, along with his cell phone, weapons, and records. Plus, he still felt strange.
“How are you doing, Joe?”
He turned. Mary Seels stood at his door.
“Come in,” he said. “I’m just waiting for them to bust in and take my clothes and my manhood.”
She didn’t laugh, but held up a key ring. “These are spare keys to Will Jensen’s vehicle,” she said. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t use his old truck. It’s perfectly fine, as far as I know.”
Joe grimaced. The irony was inescapable. “I have a dead man’s job, a dead man’s house, the dead man’s problems, and I’ve been mistaken for a dead man,” he told her. “And now I have a dead man’s pickup truck.” He left out that he also had the dead man’s ashes in an urn in the panniers he had saved.