by Box, C. J.
“Hello?” he called out.
There was a dull thump from underneath a utility pickup to Joe’s left. Joe turned at the sound and saw a pair of legs writhing from beneath the truck.
Darin Westby, the maintenance supervisor, rolled out on a creeper, wincing and rubbing a red welt on his forehead. When his eyes focused, he said, “Joe?”
“Yup. I’m sorry I startled you.”
“I banged my head a good one,” Westby said. “I didn’t hear you roll up and I didn’t expect any company today.”
“Really?” Joe asked. He wondered if sheriff’s department personnel had been by the shop but hadn’t noticed Westby underneath the pickup.
Westby sat up on his creeper and Joe extended his hand to help him to his feet. Westby was a tall man with lengthy arms and legs and oversized hands that looked like paddles attached to his wrists. He’d been the center for the Casper College basketball team before he wrecked his knee, and he’d started as a seasonal golf course groomer and had risen until he was now the maintenance supervisor for the entire Eagle Mountain Club. He’d married a local girl and they had two young children who already looked destined to star in basketball. Joe knew Westby to be a hard worker whose passion, aside from his family, was hunting sage grouse and mourning doves with his two golden retrievers.
The month before, on the nationwide mid-September opening day of dove season, Joe had encountered Westby in a wild-bean field in the breaklands. Although Westby had a bird license and conservation stamp, he’d forgotten to obtain a federal Migratory Bird Harvest Information Program (HIP) stamp. It was a technical violation that could have resulted in a citation, but Joe had given the man a pass and suggested he obtain a HIP stamp at his earliest convenience.
Joe hoped Westby remembered that favor.
“Why should I have expected visitors?” he asked.
Joe said, “I would have thought the cops would be crawling all over this place because of the shooting. Are you saying you haven’t seen them?”
Westby wiped grease from his hands with a soiled red rag and shook his head. “You’re the first guy I’ve seen today.”
“You know about Sue Hewitt, though.”
“Of course I do,” Westby said. “She’s a really nice woman and I feel terrible about her getting shot. It’s such a crazy thing to have happened here at the club.”
“So the sheriff’s department hasn’t questioned you?”
“Nope. Not that I’d have much to tell them,” Westby said. “I had to run to Casper yesterday to pick up a new blade for the snowplow. I was gone when it happened. I didn’t get back until eight-thirty last night and I went straight home. You can check that out with my wife if you want to. I didn’t hear about the shooting until my wife told me she read about it on Facebook this morning.”
Joe nodded. Because the weekly Saddlestring Roundup newspaper wouldn’t come out until Wednesday, that’s how locals kept abreast of breaking news, he knew.
“Did you see any suspicious people around the club before you left?” Joe asked. “You know, maybe someone driving slowly on one of the perimeter roads?”
Westby thought about it. “No.”
“What about in the last week? Like maybe scouting the grounds?”
“It’s been really quiet since the club closed for the season,” he said. “The only thing I can remember is there were a couple of out-of-state antelope hunters I found standing outside the fence on the west side. This was last week. They said they’d wounded a buck that crawled under the fence and they wanted to come in and get it. I let them in and we found the buck dead on the ninth fairway. They started to field dress it right there and I told ’em, ‘Nope, that’s not a good idea.’ Can you imagine that—leaving a gut pile on the fairway?”
Westby related the story of how he helped the hunters load their gut pile into their truck and drive it out of there. He confirmed for Joe that the two hunters didn’t learn the code to the front gate, and hadn’t done anything suspicious while he was with them. He agreed to email Joe their names and plate number.
“Another thing,” Joe said. “Is there a record of everyone who went in and out of the club in the last week? Especially last night?”
“Sure,” Westby said. “We’ve got CCTV at the gate and if someone entered using their transponder there’s a printout at the front office. Are you suggesting a member might have done it?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Joe said. “I’m just trying to cover all the bases.”
“Talk to Judy in the office,” Westby said. “She can get you the printout and copies of the video.”
“I’m sure the sheriff already has,” Joe said. Even though he wasn’t sure about that at all since they hadn’t even been to the shop to question Westby, who was one of the few permanent employees on the grounds.
“Anything else you can think of?” Joe asked.
“Not really,” Westby said. But he hesitated when he said it.
“What?”
Westby pursed his lips. “It’s club policy not to gossip about the members, you know. And it’s a good policy, because they pay our salaries.”
“But?” Joe asked, urging him on.
“Judge Hewitt is not exactly the most popular man around here. I know of a dozen members who just plain don’t like him. I’ve always gotten on with him fine, but I know he can be really cantankerous.”
“True,” Joe said.
“Sue’s great, though,” Westby said. “She’s always kind and nice to everyone here. We all love her. It’s too bad she got shot and not . . .” He caught himself and turned red. Westby said, “I didn’t mean to say it like that at all.”
“I believe you,” Joe said.
“Judge Hewitt is crabby, but it’s hard to believe a member took a shot at him for it,” Westby said. “Most of our members are type A executives from around the country. They have strong opinions about everything under the sun and they’re used to getting their way. But taking a shot at another member? Nah. They’d just sue him instead.”
Joe agreed and gave Westby his card so the supervisor could have his email address to send the names of the hunters.
“Oh,” Joe said, “I have a favor to ask.”
“Shoot.” Then, realizing the double meaning of the word given the circumstances, Westby reddened further and said, “That’s probably the wrong thing to say as well.”
“Don’t worry about it. Could I borrow one of your ATVs? I don’t want to drive my truck out on the golf course.”
“Sure you can,” Westby said while looking over Joe’s shoulder at the WYDOT pickup parked outside. “I wouldn’t want to drive that thing anywhere.”
While Westby went to the attached garage to pull the Polaris Ranger around for Joe to use, Joe opened his notebook again. Well underneath the list of three suspects he wrote: Second Tier.
Then he wrote: Club member? Ask Judy.
Then: Darin Westby: Check Casper alibi.
Then: Out-of-state antelope hunters.
Joe fully expected to cross Westby’s name off the page in the coming hours. His story about not being in town and picking up a part in Casper—which was a four-hour round trip—would be easy enough to verify.
As for the hunters, Joe could use the database of the Game and Fish Department to cross-check their names and verify that they’d drawn the antelope hunting area. Since the computerized drawing had been held months before and there was no guarantee to applicant hunters of successfully obtaining a license, it made little sense that assassins would use that procedure for gaining access to the area.
Joe expected he would cross their names off his list of suspects as well.
*
HE DROVE THE RANGER up the dirt service road to the bench and turned onto the smooth asphalt drive that accessed the outer circle of fine but empty homes. He glanced over at the houses as he passed them and tried to guess how much they’d cost to build. Most had five or six bedrooms and bathrooms and oversized garages to house
several vehicles plus personal golf carts. In the first quarter-circle of the drive, the homes faced the golf course. In the second quarter-circle, as the road turned, the houses had been built so the views and access to the course were in the back.
That’s where the Hewitts lived, in a low, sprawling McMansion with a driveway flanked by perfectly spaced mature cottonwood trees flush with fall colors. Joe had never been to the judge’s house before, but it was obvious because of the number of sheriff’s department SUVs in the driveway and the single deputy—Ryan Steck, the other losing candidate for sheriff—who stood in the middle of the road to turn away any oncoming vehicles.
Steck turned toward him with a stern expression on his baby face and his right hand resting on the grip of his sidearm, but when he recognized Joe, his face and posture relaxed.
Joe pulled up alongside him.
“Sheriff inside?” Joe asked.
“He is,” Steck said. “He’s supervising Gary Norwood’s crew.”
Gary Norwood was the crime scene forensics investigator shared by three northern Wyoming counties. He had a part-time assistant. Although the square mileage of the combined counties was just slightly smaller than the state of Massachusetts, only one CSI was necessary and there were weeks when Norwood complained they had nothing to do.
They did now, Joe thought.
“Have you figured anything out yet?” Joe asked Steck.
“Not that I’m aware of.” Steck shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I’d be the last to know.”
Joe grimaced.
“Yeah,” Steck said. “It’s like that. It’s like working for the Finks.”
“Do you mean the Sphinx?”
“Yeah, that guy. The one who just stares ahead and never talks.”
“Gotcha,” Joe said. “I need to go see him. I’m supposed to share information with you guys.”
“Information?” Steck said theatrically. “You mean you’ve got some?”
“Some.”
“That’s more than I’ve got. I’m just supposed to stand here and keep people away from the scene while the boss does his work.”
Joe asked, “Aren’t you and Justin the lead investigators for the department?”
“Not anymore,” Steck said. “We’ve been busted back to patrol. There are no lead investigators anymore. Sheriff Kapelow assumed our duties. He’s the only chief investigator now.”
“I guess he has his reasons,” Joe said. Although he sympathized with both Woods and Steck over their demotions, he was in no position to get involved with an interdepartmental reorganization or to clearly take sides.
“It’s almost like he doesn’t trust us,” Steck said with barely disguised sarcasm. “Is the Game and Fish Department hiring these days?”
“Nope,” Joe said. “We still have a freeze on.”
“Let me know if it thaws,” Steck said. “And if it does, tell me before you tell Justin, okay?”
Joe smiled and said, “Will do.” Then: “I’m going to park here for a minute while I go inside.”
“Don’t expect to be welcome in there,” Steck said. “And if the boss asks, I did everything I could to stop you, short of pulling my weapon.”
*
THE HEAVY DOUBLE front entrance doors of the Hewitt home were unlocked, and Joe stepped inside and closed them behind him. He found himself in an anteroom with gray stone tile and dark wood paneling. Coats and jackets of every weight hung from hooks inside, and lined neatly on the floor beneath them were men’s and women’s shoes ranging from Columbia fishing sandals to golf shoes to Sorel Pac boots for winter.
The hallway was festooned with trophy big-game mounts and carved fish. Joe noted not only a display featuring Wyoming’s own Cutt-Slam of native trout including the Bonneville cutthroat, Yellowstone cutthroat, Colorado River cutthroat, and Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat, but Judge Hewitt’s prized display of the North American Wild Sheep Grand Slam. An eight-foot-tall full-size Alaskan brown bear mount stood at the end of the hallway as if to scare away visitors.
Although Joe wasn’t good at guessing the price of real estate, he knew the Hewitt home was worth millions, as were all the other Eagle Mountain Club residences. A multimillion-dollar home and extensive domestic and international trophy-hunting excursions couldn’t have been underwritten by Hewitt’s compensation as a county judge. So either Hewitt had a fortune behind him or—more likely—the wealth came from Sue. Joe made a mental note to find out. Great wealth often birthed great resentment and envy, often within extended families. Joe had experienced that situation before among area ranch scions. That angle was one he hadn’t thought about before and he wondered if it might open a whole new can of worms.
Joe could hear the murmur of voices coming from the back side of the house. On the way to the source, he passed several bedrooms, a home office, and a trophy room packed with more dead creatures from around the world.
“Sheriff Kapelow?” he called out.
“Back here, Joe,” Gary Norwood responded.
Joe walked around the bear, saw the kitchen to his left, and paused on the threshold of the dining room when Kapelow said, “Stop where you are.”
Joe did.
The sheriff stood facing Joe with his hands on his hips. Norwood and his evidence tech were on their hands and knees near the kitchen table wearing surgical masks and nitrile gloves. Norwood looked up and nodded a greeting to Joe. The forensics investigators were placing numbered cardboard tents on the perimeter of a large dried pool of blood on the hardwood.
“Don’t contaminate the crime scene,” Kapelow said.
“I didn’t intend to,” Joe replied.
“How did you even get in here?” the sheriff asked. His cadence was choppy and flat and he displayed no emotion.
“I took the back way,” Joe said.
“There’s a back way?” Kapelow asked, looking to Norwood.
Norwood shrugged. “Must be,” he said. “Joe said he took it.”
Kapelow said, “My explicit orders were to keep everyone away from the crime scene until it was investigated and secure. We haven’t even photographed it yet.”
“Don’t blame your men,” Joe said. “I bigfooted my way in.”
Joe looked over the sheriff’s shoulder into the room. He could see the large kitchen table, which was set with two empty place settings and a three-quarters-full bottle of wine. A mottled pile of food was on the floor to the left of the table next to a platter broken into white shards. The chair in which the judge had sat the night before was pushed back, and the large plate-glass window that spanned most of the back wall had a neat bullet hole in the center of it laced with a spiderweb of cracks in the glass.
“What are you hoping to find in here?” Joe asked. “It’s obvious where the bullet came from.”
He noted in his peripheral vision that Norwood looked away in response so Kapelow wouldn’t see him grin. Joe guessed that the sheriff had been an overbearing presence in the room and he hadn’t let Norwood simply do his job without interference.
“Solving a crime is as much about ruling things out as anything else,” Kapelow said. “It’s imperative that we corroborate everything the judge told us. In a panic situation like what he and Sue went through, memories can sometimes be less than accurate.”
Joe had no idea what that meant. “Do you suspect that something happened in here other than what Judge Hewitt told us?”
Kapelow narrowed his eyes and didn’t respond. There was an uncomfortable silence.
Finally, the sheriff said to Joe, “I’d appreciate it if you let me conduct this investigation without interference or second-guessing. I thought I’d made that clear.”
“You did,” Joe said. “I’m here to help.”
“You aren’t.”
Joe let that sit. Then he said, “I talked to the maintenance supervisor. His name is Darin Westby. He said he wasn’t on the property yesterday, but he suggested a few leads we should talk to. I thought maybe you’d like me to share that
information with you since you’re in charge of the investigation and you have the manpower, and I’m just me.”
Kapelow didn’t react in any way. After a long half minute, he said, “Write it up and email it to my office. We’ll follow up.”
Joe moaned. “I could just tell you—”
“Write your report and forward it to my office,” Kapelow said, cutting in. He thrust out his jaw and said, “I don’t know how things were done around here in the past, but an investigation is a process. It’s linear. It starts by ruling things out and then proceeding in the proper direction and not everywhere at once. We gather and then evaluate hard evidence and don’t run around due to speculation. Too many inputs and it goes off track. I understand that you’re trying to offer assistance, but it needs to be done in a methodical way.”
It was the longest Joe had heard Kapelow speak.
“I’ll write it up,” Joe said through gritted teeth.
“Thank you.” Kapelow turned his back to Joe and said, “That will be all.”
Joe bristled. It went against his grain to be dismissed like that. He said, “I drove an ATV up here, so I could go down on the property and take a look. Maybe I can help figure out where the shooter set up.”
Kapelow didn’t move except for slightly turning his head. He said, “I’ve got the rest of my men and most of the PD down there on the golf course doing an inch-by-inch grid search. We’ve only got a half hour of daylight left and I can’t let you disturb their search.”
“So it’s a no?” Joe asked, even though he knew the answer.
“It’s a no.”
“Have they found anything?”
“Not yet. So I can’t risk you driving around down there like a maniac. You could run right over the depression in the grass where the shooter set up.”
Despite himself, Joe saw the logic in it. And there was no doubt Kapelow was in charge.
