by C. J. Box
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.
Which led to more escalated measures on Opal’s part, and for a few years she got the attention of passing boats by firing a shotgun blast into the air and making it clear they were next if they didn’t pay up. That worked, Wayman said, for a while.
In order to avoid the embarrassment of paying fees in front of their customers, the outfitters and guides had learned to pay Opal up front and therefore pass through her ranch without trouble. Wayman told Joe he had done that for years, but Opal was getting forgetful and half the time couldn’t recall that he’d prepaid, so she would stand on the bank, shooting her shotgun in the air, demanding her tribute.
Joe noted at the time that Wayman had not brought the situation to his attention until it was literally out of control, only when Wayman was forced to double-pay Opal.
That was when Wayman first told Joe that Opal had threatened to string razor-sharp piano wire across the river, neck-high.
“If she does that she’s likely to kill somebody,” Wayman said. “She thinks everybody on the river is trying to shaft her by not paying the fee, even though most of us already coughed up. If she strings that wire, somebody’s going to get seriously hurt.”
After his meeting with Wayman, Joe drove out to the Thunderhead Ranch, feeling that his case against Opal Scarlett was remarkably cut and dried. It was his initial experience with the Scarlett mystique, his first real look into how deep the family roots were in the county and how something as straightforward and simple as river access turned out not to be that at all.
He found Opal working alone in her magnificent vegetable garden on the southern side of the massive stone ranch house where she lived. As he parked his pickup in the ranch yard and walked toward her, she leaned on her hoe and sized him up with a kind of interested, professional detachment that resided somewhere between a friendly greeting and a trespass warning. The set of her face seemed to say, “I’ve been dealing with your kind for sixty-odd years and have yet to be surprised.”
She had opened with, “So you’re the game warden who arrested the governor for fishing without a license?”
Joe nodded, already on the defensive.
She was small, trim, and wiry, dressed in a kind of casual western outdoor elegance that seemed reserved for people like her—faded jeans, Ariat boots, silver ranger set buckle, an open canvas barn jacket over a plaid shirt, silk scarf. Opal was a remarkably self-assured woman who had no qualms about charging a fee to boaters who passed through her ranch, and who seemed to make it clear without saying that she had thus far tolerated him being there in the county but there was a limit to her time and patience. She explained to Joe how her father-in-law and grandfather had established the ranch. Over the years, they had graciously maintained the flow of the river even though it was their right to divert as much of it as they pleased to irrigate their land, since they had the very first water right. By maintaining the flow over the years, she told Joe, the family had not only assured a supply of drinking water to the town of Saddlestring, but had preserved the natural ecology of the valley and also allowed for an extensive guided trout-fishing economy that would have otherwise not existed.
“In a way,” she said through a tight smile, “if it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t be here, and neither would Mr. Tommy Wayman.”
Without a hint of remorse, she led Joe down to the bank of the river and described the “tollgate” she wished to build in the future. She started by pointing across the river at an immense cottonwood.
“I want to tie a wire off over there on the trunk of that tree, and stretch it all the way over to my side. I’ll attach my end of the wire to a big lever I can work by myself, so I can raise and lower the wire as necessary,” she said, demonstrating how she would pull on the imaginary handle.
“What if you kill somebody?” Joe asked, incredulously.
She dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll tie orange flagging to the wire so all the floaters can see it plain as day. My objective is to collect my fee, not to decapitate my customers.”
“But you can’t do that, Mrs. Scarlett. It’s a public waterway.”
She turned from her imaginary tollgate, her eyes freezing him to his spot. “It’s a public waterway, Mr. Pickett,” she said, “because my family has allowed it to be so. The water in that river could just as easily be diverted, by me, to irrigate my ranch and turn this place into a Louisiana bayou and my home into Venice with all the beautiful canals. But I have chosen not to do that, but to instead collect a small fee in exchange for providing free drinking water and recreation to you and several thousand other residents of our sleepy little valley.
“This arrangement,” she continued, her unblinking eyes still on him, “has worked very well for three generations. Water in exchange for proper respect. I understand from others that you have a tendency to want to go your own way to some degree. I admire that in a man, generally. But I’d suggest this isn’t the best battle to choose to fight when there are other more worthy ones out th
ere.”
Joe felt he’d been flayed by a rawhide whip. All he could think of to say in response was, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Scarlett.”
So when Joe saw the wound on Tommy Wayman’s neck that evening, he was pretty sure he knew what had happened out on the river.
TOMMY WAYMAN CONFESSED that he had, in fact, tossed Opal in the river that morning. He said it happened like this:
He was scouting the Twelve Sleep River in his flat-bottomed Hyde drift boat, his first trip on the water since winter. After winter, there were always new hazards, new bends, new currents on the wild river to scout out. And it was a great time to fish for himself, before the spring runoff began and raised and muddied the river, before clients started to book, before he had to mess with the hassle of hiring guides and office help.
It was an unseasonably warm day and there was a mayfly hatch on. Tommy said he was alone on the river, and never saw another boat. The trout were hitting his flies so hard they were mutilating them, and he was hauling the fish in and releasing them in a steadied fury. It was an angler’s wet dream, he said, the kind of day that reminded him of why he loved to fish, why he loved the river.
He was putting on a dry fly and a dropper, concentrating on tying the tippet knots, as he floated through the Thunderhead Ranch. He never saw the silvery band of wire stretched across the river until it sliced through his leader and caught him under his chin, lifting him briefly off his boat seat. He felt the wire bite into his flesh and saw blood fleck down the front of his shirt, but was able to reach up and grab the wire with his hands before the momentum of the boat carried him forward even farther and cut his throat wide open. After plucking the wire out and ducking under it, Tommy grabbed the oars and took the boat to shore. Just as Opal Scarlett came out of her house, drying her hands on a towel.
“Damn you, Opal!” he shouted, hurtling out of the boat once he reached the shore. “You just about cut my head off with your damned wire!”
Opal just stood there regarding him with what he called the look of ownership. “Like she was disappointed in the behavior of a hired hand—or a slave.” Finally, she told Tommy if he had paid his river fee up front this year, as he knew he should have, he could have avoided the problem.
“There is no such thing as a river fee!” Tommy yelled.
“There is on my ranch,” Opal said, arching her eyebrows.
And with that, he rushed her, grabbed her by the collar with one hand and by the belt with the other, and swung her through the air and into the river.
“Damn, she was light,” Tommy said. “Like there wasn’t really anything to her, just clothes and a scowl. It was like tossing my nieces and nephews around the pool or something. She didn’t even struggle. I think that was the last thing she expected, to be thrown into the river like that.”
Tommy said he watched her floating away in the river. She was treading water, and howling at him saying, “Next time, Tommy Wayman, you’ll have to pay me a hundred dollars a trip!”
“Nuts to you, Opal,” he called after her. He said he watched her bob in the river, heard her curse at him, until she was carried around a bend two hundred yards from where he stood. He never once thought she didn’t simply swim to shore, he said later. He never even considered that she had drowned. That part of the river was too shallow and slow. And she was too mean to die, he said, which was something Joe had also heard from Reed.
No, Tommy said, he never saw her climb out on shore after he got back in his boat and floated downriver.
No, he never saw her body wedged in debris or trapped under the surface by an undertow. Besides, he said, in April the river was barely moving. The dangerous currents would come later, when the snow started to melt and the speed and volume of the river would increase two to three times.
No, he didn’t feel any need to turn himself in at the time because, well, Opal deserved to be thrown in the river.
“I’m surprised that river didn’t spit her right out,” Tommy said to Joe and Robey.
Proud of his feat, he’d immediately bragged about it to his wife, Nancy, not knowing that she had spent the entire day at home fuming over photos she had found: Tommy with his arms around attractive female clients and one shot in particular—a group of flight attendants in the boat who bared their breasts to the camera with Tommy at the oars—grinning like an idiot. She was angry enough that after he fell asleep in his lounge chair with a beer, she called the sheriff’s office and reported what Tommy had said. Nancy felt horrible about it now, though, since at the time she had no idea that Opal was missing.
So what had happened to Opal Scarlett’s body? Or had Opal simply climbed out, had an epiphany of some kind, gotten in her Caddy, and driven away?
JOE PARKED IN front of the garage, stirred Maxine awake, and entered the house through the mudroom.
The Picketts lived in a small state-owned two-story house eight miles out of Saddlestring. Joe was thankful for darkness, so he wouldn’t have to see how tired the place was looking, how it appeared to sag at the roofline, how the window frames and doors were out of plumb. It sat back from the road behind a white fence that once again needed painting. There was a detached garage filled with Joe’s snowmobile, gear, and supposedly the van, but the vehicle space was now occupied by his upturned drift boat needing repair. Behind the house was a loafing shed and corral for their two horses, Toby and Doc.
The house was quiet and everyone was in bed. He left his battered briefcase on the desk in his home office off the mudroom. He left his blinking message light and unopened mail for later.
Joe thought of how things had changed for them in the past year. Marybeth’s business, MBP Management, had taken off. She now managed eight Saddlestring companies, doing their accounting, inventory management, employee scheduling, federal and state compliance. The owners had gratefully ceded control to her, and told their colleagues at morning coffee at the Burg-O-Pardner how much easier their lives had become since hiring her. She had filled a void none of them knew existed when she showed up with her laptop, spreadsheets, and no-nonsense practicality. She even had affiliate offices in Sheridan and Cody, manned by women much like herself who were mothers who knew what time management and prioritization really meant and could walk into a small business, dissect it, and make it run like, well, a business. Her income to the family now exceeded what Joe brought in as a state employee for the Game and Fish Department. The money helped.
College funds for Sheridan and Lucy had been opened. All four burners worked on the stove. They had a new mini-van, and a television that revealed, for the first time, that most actors’ faces were not actually shades of green.
They had discussed the fact that MBP Management had quickly reached the point in business where Marybeth would need to make the choice to maintain what she had or expand. Maintenance, Marybeth explained, was the first step to stagnation, something she saw all the time with the businesses she managed. But expansion—hiring employees, finding bigger office space, changing her role from hands-on consultant to full-time executive of the business itself—was not what she thought she wanted to do. She enjoyed working with her clients, and expanding would mean more time away from the family and additional strain on the marriage. It was a difficult decision that faced them, she said, and one they needed to make together. Joe just wanted her to be happy, and said he’d support her in whatever she chose to do.
Before going upstairs to bed with his wife, Joe tiptoed into Lucy’s room and kissed her good night (she rolled over and said “um”), then rapped lightly on Sheridan’s door because he saw a band of light underneath it.
“Come in,” she said.
Joe stuck his head inside. Sheridan was reading in bed, wearing her glasses instead of her contacts. She smiled at her father, but then arched her eyebrows in a “do you need something?” way.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Fine. I feel sorry for Julie, though.”
Joe said, “Me too. I feel terrible about taking
her out there. I hope she’ll be okay.”
Sheridan nodded.
“Has she ever told you about the situation out there?” Joe asked. “What the deal is with her father and her uncles?”
Sheridan shook her head. “I don’t think she really knows what is going on. I thought she’d call tonight, but she didn’t.”
Joe told Sheridan how the fight continued in the sheriff’s office, and that Tommy Wayman confessed to throwing Opal in the river.
“That’s just crazy,” she said.
“I’m curious about the Scarlett brothers,” Joe said. “How well do you know them? Does Julie talk about them much?”
Sheridan looked suspicious. “Some,” she said. “And I’ve met them all. Her dad, Hank. Uncle Arlen and Uncle Wyatt.”
“What do you think of them?”
“Dad, I don’t feel comfortable being your spy. Julie is my best friend.”
Joe held up his hand. “Okay, not now. I understand. But I’ll probably want to talk with you about them later, okay?”
Sheridan said, “Good night, Dad.”
MARYBETH WAS ASLEEP in bed with her table lamp on and a book opened on her chest. She was breathing deeply, so Joe tried not to wake her as he padded across the room. He changed out of his red uniform shirt and Wranglers and pulled on old University of Wyoming Cowboys sweats. Before he went back downstairs, he marked the page and closed Marybeth’s book, putting it aside. He hesitated as he reached to shut off her lamp, and took a moment to look at her. In sleep, her face was soft and relaxed, and there was the hint of a smile on her mouth. She was a beautiful woman, better than he deserved. She’d been so busy lately that she was dead tired at night. It had been over two weeks since they’d made love, and Joe scratched tonight off his list as well.
He missed the time they used to have together, before her company took off and before the girls required nonstop shuttling among school, home, and activities. And with his schedule and the problems at work, he knew he wasn’t helping the situation much.
