Vicious Circle

by C. J. Box

  “You’re damned right,” Marybeth said. “And my mother was completely useless the whole time.”

  Marybeth said the guard, Gary Bulla, was in critical condition, but his chances to survive were better than she would have thought.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said. He recalled his moment of absolute horror after the first call. For a minute, his life had gone empty, and all he could think was that he wished he were dead, too. The sensation he’d had of being untethered—of floating up and out of his body—still lingered. It would take a while to get over it, and he never wanted to revisit that experience.

  “I’m tough, you know,” she said.

  “Tougher than me,” he said.

  “With the tweaker in jail, we can come home now,” she said. “I’ve got to give a formal statement of some kind to the deputies. So do the girls. But then I think they’ll let us leave. It’s over, Joe. We can come home.”

  He said, “Dallas is still out there.”

  “I can’t stay another minute in my mother’s house.”

  “That I can understand,” he said.

  He listened for a while longer, and she recounted the ticktock of the entire night in more detail. He knew she needed to verbalize it, to get it all out, even though she’d already told him the basics of the story. It was how she processed what she’d gone through. Joe had learned many years before to simply listen and not interrupt.

  —

  AFTER THEY ENDED the long call, he said to Nate, “I’ll call Reed if you’re okay with leading him to the body tomorrow.”

  Nate agreed. “I need to get back up there anyway and check my traps. He can come along. Aren’t you coming?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I’m going to Jackson tonight. I want to see my family, and I want to talk to that tweaker. I want to find out who she’s working for and why she was there.”

  Nate stared at Joe with his hawklike blue eyes for what seemed like five minutes before he said, “What’s going on?”

  Joe sat back. Nate, like Marybeth, knew him too well for Joe to try to mislead him.

  He said, “For the past couple of weeks, and especially tonight, I had mixed feelings when it came to Dallas Cates. Even though I knew he was a bad dude, my heart wasn’t into sending him back to prison. I knew how he got there in the first place, and it was sloppy. He’d lost his livelihood and he’d lost his family. There was no way I couldn’t take those things into consideration and see my role in it.”

  Nate said with a sympathetic roll of his eyes: “Go on, Dudley Do-Right.”

  Joe ignored him. “There’s some truth to the fact that this whole valley has always treated the Cates family like white trash, and much of that was well deserved. There’s a kind of mob mentality I don’t like. The Cateses had such a bad reputation that some people would justify anything to keep them down. Spivak, for instance. He screwed everything up because he thought the ends justified the means when it came to locking up Dallas Cates.

  “But it can’t go any further than this,” Joe said. “Not with that phone call he made to me. I really thought for a few minutes that I’d lost everything. I can’t get over it, and I just want to put him away for the rest of his life. Or kill him and end this.”

  “There’s my boy,” Nate said. “So how do we do it?”

  “First,” Joe said, “remember that I’m a sworn officer of the law. I can’t just go after him, and I won’t do that. I’m not judge, jury, and executioner.”

  “Leave that to me,” Nate said with a cruel smile.

  “No. I can’t do that, either. But what I can do is work to connect all the dots so that we have a legitimate case against him. I think it starts with that tweaker.”

  Nate said, “I’m not sure where you’re going here.”

  “That’s okay. But in the meanwhile, can I ask you a favor for tomorrow?”

  “Ask away.”

  “When you take Reed’s guys up to find that body, could you not mention the two thugs you overheard? At least not yet?”

  Nate’s eyes narrowed and the smile got bigger. “That would be my pleasure,” he said.

  19

  Jackson Hole appeared in the dark night like a tangle of Christmas tree lights wedged between nearly vertical mountains. The moon exposed pale blue ski runs on Snow King Mountain.

  It was two-thirty in the morning when Joe parked his pickup in front of the Teton County Sheriff’s Department office on South King Street. Although only 207 miles as the crow flies from Saddlestring, it had taken six hours and 350 vehicle miles to get there through the sleeping communities of Dubois, Thermopolis, and Worland. Driving east to west across a state knuckled with north-to-south mountain ranges and rivers slowed things down. He’d crossed the Bighorn Mountains, paralleled the Bighorn River through Wind River Canyon, avoided the towering Wind River Range, and skirted the Gros Ventre Range to get there. Twice, he had to slow down for elk to cross the highway in his headlights and he’d almost hit a black bear loping across the road on Togwotee Pass.

  His back ached from the long drive and his legs felt stiff as he climbed out of the truck. He’d had plenty of coffee to keep him awake, and his first stop inside the vestibule of the sheriff’s department was the men’s bathroom.

  Cop shops always had a particular odor and sound—especially if there were people in custody in the jail cells. The glazed cinder-block hallway that led to a lighted receiving desk smelled of body odor badly masked by disinfectant. Inebriated snores and shouted sleeping sounds from the prisoners emanated from the air vents and echoed down the hallways.

  He approached the Plexiglas window at the end of the hall and startled a heavyset woman who was reading a thick novel by Diana Gabaldon.

  “My name is Joe Pickett,” he said through the round chrome grille mounted in the center of the glass. He rotated his upper body so she could see the badge and name tag over his uniform pockets. “I’m here to see my family.”

  “I can see you’re a game warden,” she said, “but I’ll still need to look at your ID.”

  As he fished his wallet out of his back Wrangler pocket, he said, “My wife reads those.”

  “Nothing gets my motor running like a man in a kilt,” the receptionist said as she looked over his state ID as well as his driver’s license.

  “So I hear,” he said.

  He’d left his weapon and gear belt in his pickup so he wouldn’t have to lock them up while he was inside.

  “They’re all back there in the waiting room,” she said, handing back his cards. “All four of them. That was a hell of a thing that happened tonight. We see a lot of odd things in Jackson, as you can imagine, but a female nut with an ax? We don’t see that very often.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said.

  The steel door next to the counter unlocked with an electronic clunk.

  —

  ON THE WAY to a door marked LOUNGE, he passed through a squad room filled with high-walled cubicles. The overhead lights were muted, and it was quiet and empty inside except for two deputies who tapped at keyboards. Their faces were lit up by the glow from their computer screens.

  They both looked up as he walked through the room. Joe approached the one nearest to him, a boyish deputy with a high-sidewall haircut.

  “I’m Joe Pickett from Saddlestring. Are you one of the guys who helped my family tonight?” he asked.

  The deputy, whose name badge read MCNAMEE, said, “I was the first on the scene with your wife. I’m working on the incident report now.”

  “I heard what you did,” Joe said, extending his hand. “I want to thank you for keeping your cool.”

  McNamee blushed. “If you woulda known how fast my heart was beating at the time, you wouldn’t say that. I thought that woman would pull her foot out of her boot and get away.”

  “But she didn’t,” Joe
said. “You held on.”

  The second deputy was much older and had a thick white mustache and a belly that hung over his belt.

  “And you made the arrest,” Joe said. “Good work.”

  “Doin’ my job,” the man said. He introduced himself as Ed Estrella. “Hey, it was more exciting than working a car wreck or arresting drunk skiers, that’s for sure.” He smiled and turned back to his screen.

  “You’re heroes,” Joe said. “Thank you.”

  McNamee blushed some more.

  “Do you have a name or a motive for the woman you arrested tonight?” Joe asked.

  “Neither,” McNamee said. “We do know she walked past four houses on her way to the Hand place, so she had a target in mind. And your wife and daughter told us about her stalking them and injuring your daughter’s roommate. Right now we’re guessing she was trying to finish the job in one fell swoop.”

  Estrella said, “She won’t tell us her name. All we know at this point is she’s covered with crappy jailhouse-quality tattoos. We’re hoping she’ll start singing when the drugs wear off. We won’t get the blood sample we took from her officially analyzed until later this morning, when the lab tech comes in, but she has the look of a meth head. We see a lot of them around here.”

  “How would I go about talking to her before she lawyers up?” Joe asked.

  Deputy Estrella assessed Joe as if for the first time. Joe was used to being on the other end of a cop-eye.

  “Permission for that would have to come from the sheriff himself.”

  “Sheriff Tassell?” Joe said.

  “Yes.”

  “I know him. We worked together on a case a few years back, after the local game warden here took his own life. In fact, I was assigned to this district for a while. Could you please call him and tell him I’m here and I want to interview the suspect?”

  The deputy shot out his arm and looked at his wristwatch. “It’s nearly three in the morning.”

  “I understand,” Joe said. “I also know that Marcus Hand is coming back here from Saddlestring right behind me.”

  Both men flinched at the name, and Estrella whispered, “That cocksucker.” Then, realizing who was in front of him, he said to Joe, “I’m sorry I called him that name. It just slipped out, because he’s not exactly a popular guy around here. Are you related to him?”

  “Nope,” Joe said. “I don’t claim him at all.”

  Estrella was visibly relieved. To McNamee, he said, “Go ahead and call the sheriff.”

  “Why me?” McNamee asked.

  “Because I’ve got seniority and you don’t.” To Joe: “We’ll see what we can do.”

  “Thank you again,” Joe said. He nodded the brim of his hat toward the door. “I’ll be in there.”

  Joe felt slightly guilty for intimating that Hand represented the tweaker, and he knew the deputies would likely figure that out once they thought about it. Why would Marcus Hand represent a woman who tried to break into his own house? Regardless, the simple mention of his name had resulted in a visceral reaction.

  He just hoped they didn’t think about that until Tassell had given Joe permission to talk to the suspect.

  —

  MARYBETH RAISED HER EYES from an old issue of Wyoming Wildlife magazine from a stack of them on a side table as Joe entered the room. She looked both relieved and exhausted, with dark rings around her eyes from stress and lack of sleep.

  “Hi, honey,” he said.

  Tossing the magazine aside, she stood up so he could embrace her. She melted into his arms and he could hear her sigh deeply.

  The room was institutional light yellow with several old photos of the Tetons on the cinder-block walls and was filled with mismatched steel-frame furniture, a coffeemaker, and a watercooler. It was likely used as a pre-interview room and for a place for the families of victims to gather together away from the squad room.

  Lucy threw off a light blanket from where she was resting on a couch and joined them in a hug. She was beaming. April watched from a hardback chair with one skeptical eye open for a moment before deciding to get up and do the same.

  Joe couldn’t recall a Pickett family group hug happening before and he wasn’t sure he loved the idea of it. Nevertheless, he wished Sheridan was there as well.

  Missy sat by herself in the far corner, resting an elbow on the top of her crossed legs and staring blankly into the middle distance. She stayed where she was, and Joe was grateful for that.

  “You need to get us out of here,” April said to Joe. Lucy agreed.

  “Yes,” Missy said bitterly. “Get them out of here, by all means.”

  “You look surprisingly at home detained in a police department,” Joe said. “Why is that?”

  She rolled her eyes and dismissed him with an angry wave of her hand.

  Deputy McNamee poked his head inside the lounge and cleared his throat to get their attention.

  “I talked to Sheriff Tassell,” he said to Joe. “He gave you permission to talk to the suspect, but on two conditions.”

  Joe waited for the terms.

  “One, I have to be in the room with you, and Deputy Estrella will be observing on the monitor. We’ll be videotaping the conversation, and we’re to intervene if anything improper happens.”

  “Two . . .” McNamee lowered his voice and looked down as if to spare Joe’s family from what he was about to say next. “He says after you’ve had your interview, you need to get out of Teton County as soon as you can.”

  “Did he say why?” Joe asked.

  “He said trouble follows you wherever you go.”

  “True enough,” Joe said.

  “Follow me to the interview room.”

  “I’m just the messenger,” McNamee said to Joe over his shoulder as they walked down the hall.

  “I understand.”

  —

  MCNAMEE FLASHED his key card in front of a reader and twisted the handle of a dented metal door. He opened it and stepped aside for Joe to enter first.

  The room was small and spare: a heavy wood table with a gouged top, three metal folding chairs, and a video camera with its red light glowing mounted in the top corner of the room.

  The woman who’d been arrested sat behind the table with her cuffed hands in her lap. Her head was bent forward with her chin resting on her chest. Long dirty-blond hair hung in front of her face like a peekaboo curtain.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” McNamee said to her.

  She raised her face and glared at Joe with glassy eyes.

  He said with surprise, “Hello, Cora Lee.”

  McNamee glanced at the camera and then at Joe. “You know her?”

  “Yup. But I’m not sure she knows me right now.”

  Cora Lee Cates had been Bull Cates’s wife. Joe had arrested them both for possession of an elk killed out of season and in the wrong area while Bull worked as a hunting guide. They’d been estranged when Joe killed Bull in self-defense, and he hadn’t seen or heard of her since that night.

  Cora Lee was a sturdy, foul-mouthed blonde who’d gotten married to Bull and immediately packed on fifty pounds. Joe knew that from seeing their wedding photo at the Cates’s compound. In the shot, they both wore camo-themed formal wear. She wasn’t that bad looking at the time.

  But she was now a shadow of the Cora Lee he remembered. The bone structure was the same, as well as the down-turned mouth that was spring-loaded to snarl and spew curses. But she’d obviously gone down a destructive path since leaving Bull that included crystal meth addiction. She’d lost a lot of weight, her face was cadaverous, her teeth were yellow-brown with several missing, and she’d covered her arms, legs, and neck with multicolored tattoos. The tattoos were of serpents, dragons, and hard-faced women with fangs that dripped blood. They were crudely drawn and sloppy, as if the tattoo
artist she’d gone to was using Cora Lee for practice.

  The realization that Cora Lee herself was in this room hit Joe hard. So the woman seen by Wanda Stacy hadn’t been a wannabe buckle bunny who had horned in on Dallas’s meeting, as Dallas had claimed. The woman was his sister-in-law.

  Joe pulled a chair out and sat across from her with his hands on the tabletop.

  A glint of recognition registered in her eyes.

  “Why is he here?” she asked McNamee in a raspy voice. “He’s the murdering asshole that killed my Bull.”

  “She knows me,” Joe deadpanned.

  “What does she mean you killed her bull?” McNamee asked.

  Joe held up his hand to request to the deputy that he hold his questions for now. “I’ll explain later.”

  “Cora Lee,” Joe said, “why have you been stalking my family across half the state?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Maybe you can tell me.”

  Cora Lee’s mouth curled down. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

  “Ah, got it,” Joe said. “You’re out for revenge. Just like Dallas.”

  Joe could feel McNamee’s eyes on the side of his head. But the deputy didn’t interrupt.

  Joe said, “So far, you’ve knifed a college student because you mistook her for my daughter, and you nearly cut the head off a security guard who was just doing his job. I’d say you are pretty bad at this eye-for-an-eye business.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Joe steepled his fingers. “But you’ve still got your gift for a witty comeback.”

  Cora Lee raised her manacled hands and extended a finger to her cheek. “See these tears? These tears came from what you did.”

  “I see.”

  Under the table, one of Cora Lee’s legs began to shake. Joe could feel the vibration through the tabletop. He didn’t know if it was due to fear, anger, or meth withdrawal. He guessed a combination of the latter two. He hoped she didn’t have a seizure right in front of him.

  “All you had with you when the good deputies here made the arrest was a kid’s wagon, an ax, a cell phone, and a wad of cash. I want to know about the cash. Who gave it to you?”