by C. J. Box
Joe looked over his shoulder at his pickup truck, to see if Julie had heard. Luckily, the windows were up and she was still being held by Sheridan.
“Mind if I stand up now?” Arlen asked the sheriff.
McLanahan thought it over, nodded his assent, and told Deputy Reed to help Arlen up but to keep him away from Hank.
Joe squatted down a few feet from Wyatt.
“Are you okay?” Joe asked. “Are you hurt?”
Wyatt just continued to sob, his head between his knees, his back heaving, tears spattering the ground between his boots. Joe asked again. Wyatt reached up with his cuffed hands and smeared his tears across his dirty face.
“Where’s my mom?” Wyatt asked, his words mushy. Joe noticed Wyatt had missing teeth. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “She can’t be far.”
“But Hank says she’s gone.”
Joe said, “I’m sure we’ll find her.”
Wyatt’s eyes flared, and for a second Joe thought the man would strike out at him.
“Where’s my mom?” Wyatt howled.
“Pickett!” McLanahan yelled, “What are you doing over there?”
Joe stood uneasily, searching Wyatt’s upturned, tragic face for a clue to his behavior. “Making sure Wyatt’s okay,” Joe said.
“He’s not,” McLanahan said, and one of the deputies laughed. “Trust me on that one.”
Joe looked at Arlen, and Hank. Both brothers were turned toward Wyatt, but neither said anything. They simply stared at their younger brother as if they were observing an embarrassing stranger.
Joe walked over to Deputy Reed, who was holding a bandanna to his split lip.
“What do you think the deal is with Opal?” Joe asked, out of earshot of the Scarlett brothers.
“Don’t know,” Reed said. “But I do know that old woman’s just too goddamned mean to die.”
WHILE SHERIFF MCLANAHAN interviewed each of the brothers quietly and individually, Joe concluded that he was no longer needed and, by inadvertently bringing Julie, he had done more harm than good.
“I’ve got Julie Scarlett, Arlen’s daughter, in my truck,” Joe told Reed. “I don’t want her to see any more. I think I need to get her home to her mother.” Joe gestured toward Arlen.
“You mean Hank?” Reed asked.
“No,” Joe said. “I mean her dad, Arlen.”
Reed squinted. “Arlen isn’t her dad.”
Joe wasn’t sure what to say. He had dropped Julie off before at the big ranch house where she lived with Arlen, her mother, and Opal. As far as Joe knew, Hank lived alone in a hunting lodge on the other side of the ranch.
“What do you mean?” Joe asked.
Reed shrugged. “When it comes to the Scarletts, nothing is as it seems. Julie and her mother moved out of Hank’s place years ago, but from what I understand, Hank is her dad.”
Joe wondered if Sheridan knew this, if Julie had told her. Or if Reed was mistaken.
“Either way,” Joe said, “I think I should get her home.”
Reed nodded. “If you see Opal, give us a call.”
“I will. Do you really think she’s missing?”
Reed scoffed. “Do you really think those men would be out here beating each other with shovels if she was back home baking cookies? The whole damned county has been scared of the day when Opal passed on and those three would start fighting for the ranch. Now it looks like that day has come.”
As Joe turned toward his truck, he heard McLanahan shout at him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the ranch,” Joe said over his shoulder. “It looks like you’ve got things handled here.”
“It’s okay,” Reed told his boss. “He’s got Hank’s little girl with him.”
“I’ll need your statement,” McLanahan said. “It sounds like you were one of the last people to see Opal alive.”
Joe turned, surprised. He had talked to Opal the day before about charging fishermen access fees. One of the brothers must have told McLanahan that.
“When do you need the statement?”
“Tonight.”
Joe thought of Marybeth’s last words to him that morning. She asked him to be home on time because she was cooking dinner and wanted to have the whole family there for a change. With her business thriving, that was a rarity. He had promised he would be home.
“Can it be tomorrow morning?” Joe asked.
The sheriff’s face darkened. “No, it can’t. We’ve got to jump all over this one, and what you’ve got to tell us may help.”
Joe looked up. He saw that Julie’s head was up, her eyes on her uncles and father. He wanted to get her away from there, and quickly.
“Tonight,” McLanahan called after him.
“Tonight,” Joe said, walking away.
He opened the door to his truck and said, “I’m so sorry you saw this, Julie.”
She cried, “Please, just take me home.”
2
ON THE MORNING OPAL SCARLETT VANISHED, A MUD-STREAKED green late-model SUV with Georgia plates pulled off I-80 at exit 214 and into the parking lot of Rip Griffin’s Truck Stop outside Rawlins, Wyoming. The driver left the car running while he climbed out, stretched, and dug through his army duffel in the back seat for a clean shirt. He had been driving all night and all morning, stopping only to fill the tank and buy pork rinds, bottled water, and cashews. The floor of the car was littered with the wrappers.
As he walked across the parking lot toward the store, he breathed in deeply and looked around him. It was high and desolate, this country, as if the prairie had been pushed from below the earth way up in the air. He thought of seeing the sign just an hour ago that read CONTINENTAL DIVIDE, thinking, That’s it? Not a single damned tree. The smell in the air was of diesel fumes from the trucks lined up on the far side of the lot and something sweet that he guessed was sagebrush. Even with the interstate highway humming behind him, there was an immense blanket of quiet off the road. The air was light and thin, and the terrain wide open as far as he could see. He felt exposed, like everybody who could see him would know why he was there, what he was up to. He thought of the herds of pronghorn antelope he had seen in the distance as the sun came up. Hundreds of them out there, red-brown and white, glowing when the sun hit them and lit them up. Unlike the animals he was used to at home who survived by hiding in the dark timber and the swamp, and moved only at night, these antelope stood out there in the wide-open plains, bold as you please, using the openness and long-range visibility as a defense measure. If you could see them, he thought, they could see you. Hide in plain sight, that was the way out here. He would learn something from that.
In the bathroom, he stripped off his greasy sweatshirt, balled it up, and tossed it in a garbage can. He filled the sink with water, splashed his face and rubbed it under his arms, across his chest, and dried off with paper towels. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, liking what he saw. Liking it a lot.
His blue eyes burned back from shadowed sockets. There were hollows under his sharp cheekbones, and his three-day growth of beard added an edge to his gaunt features that had once been described by the wife of his last hunting client as “haunted.” He didn’t know if that was good or bad, but he didn’t forget the word. He tilted his chin up and surveyed his pectorals, and liked the clean definition of them, and the blue, green, and red tattoo of a striking water moccasin that stretched from one nipple to the other. The way the head of the snake turned out with an open mouth and dead black eyes always gave him a little thrill. It scared some women, another thing that was all right with him.
He pulled the rubber band out of his long brown hair, combed it back with his fingers, and then snapped it back on. With his hair pulled back so tight, it looked as though he wore a skull cap, and his eyes appeared even more piercing. He liked that too.
Teeth bared into a half grin, he made his eyes go dead. This was his most fearsome look. He had showed it to the lady who said he seemed haunted, and
it had the desired effect. She was terrified, her eyes so wide they looked about to pop out, her mouth forming a perfect little hole. That felt good, to have that kind of power over a rich, stupid lady who shouldn’t have been in his hunting camp in the first place.
The bathroom door wheezed open and a trucker came in. He was big through the shoulders but had a fleshy face and a big belly. When the trucker saw him standing there at the sink he started to say something smart-ass, something like “Doing a little primping, eh?” or “Did you forget your hair spray?” but when their eyes met in the mirror it was as if the fat man suddenly choked on a piece of meat. All the man did was nod, turn away, and pass behind him for the shelter of a stall.
He winked at himself in the mirror, pleased with the effect he had on a man outweighing him by at least ninety pounds, then pulled his new shirt on and walked out of the bathroom.
As he passed the counter, which was stacked with displays for all-natural amphetamines and cigarette lighters in the shape of cell phones and hand grenades, he asked the bored, washed-out clerk, “Is this the right road to get to the Wyoming State Pen?”
“The pay-un?” the clerk said, mocking his accent. He was so surprised by her insolence that he didn’t know what to say. His first instinct was to reach over the box of beef jerky and pull her tongue out by the roots.
“Yeah,” she continued, either too empty-headed or jaded to care about how he felt, “this is the exit. Just get back on the road and go over the hill and you’ll see it.” She gestured vaguely over her head, to the south. “You visiting or checking in?”
Again, she insulted him! He could feel the rush of blood to his face, feel his fists involuntarily clench. If only she knew what he was capable of, he thought. If only that clerk knew about what had happened to that hunter and his wife back in Mississippi, she wouldn’t be doing this. That couple should never have left Atlanta to go hunting in their green SUV.
THE SIGHT OF the prison complex, a bunch of low-slung gray buildings sprawled across a sagebrush-choked valley, cooled him down a little. As he passed the sign that read NO TRESPASSING: ALL VEHICLES AND INDIVIDUALS ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH BEYOND THIS POINT, his mind focused again, his anger venting out like the kack-kack-kack of a pressure cooker releasing steam, the reason for his arrival coming back into prominence.
Not that he didn’t think about that woman behind the counter, how he could come back later and wait for her in the employee parking lot so that he could break her face—and that mouth!—open with an iron bar. But he had work to do, information to get, and it had been long in planning. He couldn’t let her insolence set him back, add an unnecessary complication. That clerk would never know how close she had come to . . . what? He wasn’t sure. He would have just let his rage take over, seen where it took him. One thing he was sure of: she was the luckiest woman in Rawlins, Wyoming. Too bad she didn’t know it.
The prison was close to the interstate, but a high rocky ridge separated the two. Every day, thousands of travelers took that interstate going either east or west, and few if any of them knew how close they were to a maximum-security prison just over the hill, a place filled with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and other scum of the earth. He had known plenty of ex-cons. Some he’d grown up with, some he’d hired, some he’d gone drink for drink with at a bar. In fact, technically, he was an ex-con, although he didn’t feel like one. Five years in his state pen down South for aggravated assault. He’d spent most of his time observing the makeup of the general population. To a man, they were stupid. Even the ones with some intelligence had a stupid blind spot that later tripped them up. They deserved to go to prison. They didn’t think, they just did. They were nature’s mistakes, human bowel movements. Prison was too good for most of them. And he’d told a couple of them that right to their faces, because he didn’t care what they thought of him.
He cruised through the parking lot, looking at the cars. Half of the plates were from Wyoming, the rest from all over. He saw a flash of brake lights from a yellow ten-year-old Ford pickup with a camper shell and Wyoming plates. The truck had just pulled in. He parked the SUV two rows behind it. While he waited, he emptied all the metal from his pockets into a dirty sock and put it in the glove compartment. The occupants of the truck, an older man wearing red suspenders and a pear-shaped woman with tight gray curls, finally got out to go inside. They were no doubt the parents or grandparents of some stupid convict, and in a way it was kind of a sweet, sad thing to see. Were they wondering what they could have done differently? Did they ask themselves where they had gone wrong, to turn out a son like this, a human bowel movement? But, he said to himself, at least they have family.
He took a quick look in the mirror, smiled at his reflection, and followed. The old couple walked so slowly he overtook them at the entrance to the building. The man flinched a bit when he darted in front of them and grabbed the handle to the door.
The old man snorted, said, “What in the . . . ?”
But instead of rushing inside, the man who had driven all night opened the door for them, stepped aside, and said, “Let me get this here heavy door for you.”
The woman looked from her husband to the man, and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
“My pleasure.”
WHILE HE WAITED for the old couple to check in at a desk inside the waiting room, he read the notices on the bulletin board. The room was clean and light, built of cinder block painted pale lime green. The check-in desk was on one side of the room and a row of lockers was on the other.
The couple gave their names while the woman in uniform behind the desk found their names in her notebook.
The guard handed them a key and told them to remove all metal objects and to put everything in one of the lockers before going through the metal detector.
In order to visit, a sign posted on the bulletin board said, visitors shall be MODESTLY DRESSED to be permitted inside. The following will not be allowed: bare midriffs, see-through blouses or shirts, sleeveless shirts, shorts, tube tops, halter tops, extremely tight or revealing clothing, dresses or skirts above the knee, sexually revealing attire . . .
He glanced over at the old couple while they emptied their pockets. The woman seemed flustered. She clucked at her husband, asking him whether he thought her thick old nurse’s shoes would be okay. The old man shrugged. She wore a billowy print dress that did little to disguise her bulk. Thick, mottled ankles stuck out below the hem of the dress and looked stuffed into the shoes. Nothing sexually revealing there, he thought, and smiled.
. . . Visitors must wear undergarments; children under the age of ten may wear shorts and sleeveless shirts. No rubber slippers or flip-flops will be allowed.
It took the couple three tries to get through the metal detector. First, the old man had to remove his suspenders because of the metal clips. The second time, the woman had to confess that the bra she wore to hold up her massive breasts contained wire. Then, the man had to remove his work boots because of the hobnails in the heels. Finally, the guards allowed the old couple through provided the suspenders be put away in the locker.
He watched the old man close his locker door and noted the number: 16.
He approached the check-in desk, smiling.
“You are . . . ?” the guard asked.
He said his name.
“Give me your ID so I can hold on to it here.”
He handed his driver’s license to her. She looked at it and matched up the photo.
“That’s quite a name,” she said, and the corners of her mouth curled up a fraction. Was she amused? Contemptuous? Flirty? He couldn’t decide.
He said, “It never bothered me none.”
“All the way from Mississippi. And you’re here to see . . .” She paused, following her finger across the page, then said it.
“That’s right.”
She handed him a key to locker number 31, and gave him a speech about metal objects she had memorized. He’d heard it before down South.
“All I got with me is this,” he said, digging in his pocket for a can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco. “I want to give it to him.”
She took the Copenhagen from him and screwed the top off. The strong smell of powdered black tobacco filled the room. He felt his stomach muscles clench, but he tried to keep his face expressionless. He could not smell anything other than tobacco, and he doubted she could either. So far, so good.
“I guess that will be okay,” she said, handing it back.
“Oh,” he said, smiling his warmest smile and letting his eyes drip on her a little, “and I ain’t wearin’ any underwear.”
This produced an amused shake of her head. “That’s just for women visitors,” she said.
“I shoulda figured that out,” he said. “You live around here?” He’d be willing to take her home, even though she was a little too heavy and plain in the face. Or at least he’d take her out to his car. She had a nice full mouth.
“Of course I do,” she said, sitting back in her chair, looking at him closely, making a decision. She voted no, he could see it happen. Maybe it was his beard. “Where do you think I’d live if I work for the Department of Corrections in Rawlins? Hawaii? Now please proceed through the metal detector.”
HE PLACED THE locker key in a plastic basket and showed the two guards at the metal detector the can of Copenhagen.
“She said it was okay,” he said, gesturing to the waiting room.
“She did, huh?” a guard wearing horn-rimmed glasses said, taking the can and opening it. Unlike the woman, the guard stuck his bare finger into it and swirled it around.
“What are you looking for?” he asked. “You’re getting your germs in it.”
The guard looked up, not sympathetic. “People try to smuggle things in here all the time,” he said. “How do we know you didn’t mix something in here?”
He felt his neck get hot. “But she said it was okay. It’s a gift.”
“Nope,” the guard said. “Leave it here. You can get it on your way out.” The guard replaced the top, and wiped his finger on his uniform pants.
