by Box, C. J.
Because Joe had his hand on Patterson’s shoulder to steer him toward the door, he could feel the man’s muscles suddenly tense.
“Oh, Jesus,” Patterson said. “He let her die.”
“It might be hard to prove,” Joe said, “but an autopsy might show that it wasn’t even the bullet that killed her. Maybe it was really bad care. Or maybe it was a dose of the drugs he’s selling to rich folks.
“Let me ask you a question,” Joe said. “That morning I walked in on the two of you it seemed like you were having an argument. What was it about?”
“He was pissed at me,” Patterson said.
“Why?”
The man sighed. “Because I told him Sue had briefly regained consciousness and I’d apologized to her for what happened. I hoped she’d find it in her heart to forgive me, but I’ll never know. I’m not even sure she actually heard what I said, and she slipped back into sleep.”
“Did you tell her Dr. Arthur was the shooter?”
“Yes. I confessed everything.”
“So in a way,” Joe said, “you killed her.”
Patterson froze. “What?”
“Dr. Arthur didn’t want Sue to recover if she had that knowledge. He knew that if she lived, he might go down for this. So he made sure she’d never talk.”
“He should be next,” Patterson hissed. “He should be the one going to prison. My God—if he’s responsible for Sue’s death . . .”
“You both are,” Joe said.
Patterson turned his head and stared at Joe. His eyes were pleading. He was suddenly scared.
Joe drew his digital recorder out of his breast pocket and clicked it off. Patterson watched and said, “I forgot about that trick.”
“It isn’t a trick.”
Joe checked to make sure the device had worked by scrolling through the recording file and turning the audio on.
Patterson could be heard saying, “You know, it doesn’t seem like murder when it’s that far away. When you kill something so far from you that you can’t even see the target, it’s more like a game than a crime.”
Patterson winced. Then his eyebrows arched as he thought of something. “You didn’t read me my Miranda rights,” he said. “It isn’t on the tape.”
“I didn’t officially arrest you, either,” Joe said. “I’m simply detaining you for your safety and mine. I’m giving the arresting honors to Deputies Woods and Steck at the department. They’ll Mirandize you, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
Patterson sighed. “Technically, that won’t fly.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
*
OUTSIDE ON THE SIDEWALK, Joe kept behind Patterson and prodded him on toward his pickup. The county attorney was sobbing again. Big, racking sobs.
It was getting colder. Joe looked down the length of Main Street until it vanished in darkness beyond the street lamps. He could hear the river flowing like liquid muscle beneath the bridge. Far beyond the river, the rise of the foothills blacked out the bottom of the starry night sky.
From within the distant hills, he saw a tiny yellow blink of light that almost didn’t register at first. When it did, Joe had no more than a second to react. But when he reached out to shove Patterson aside, he was too late.
The bullet hit Patterson with a fleshy thunk. The man rocked back on his heels and stiffened, then fell hard to his side. His head hit the exterior brick wall of the hardware store on his way down.
Joe went down with him because he still had a grip on Patterson’s collar. Joe’s face was spattered with hot blood.
The crack of the rifle shot washed over them, the sound bouncing off the walls of downtown buildings. The crack was muted, likely because the shooter had used a suppressor.
Joe scrambled over Patterson, trying to see in the light of the street lamps where the man had been hit. Patterson’s body jerked and his feet thrashed. He was unable to reach for the hole in his throat because his hands were bound behind his back. His eyes were panicked and wide.
“I’ll get those off,” Joe said, rolling Patterson to his side so he could get at his hands. He fumbled in his pocket for the cuff keys, but he was shaking too hard to locate them. The exit wound in the back of Patterson’s neck pulsed blood.
By the time he found the keys, Duane Patterson was still and gone.
The second round smacked into the bricks inches above Joe’s head and the debris from the wall stung the side of his face and neck. He scrambled away from Patterson’s body and flattened himself facedown on the concrete of the sidewalk.
He lay there with his eyes wide open and his cheek bleeding while the muted crack of the second shot rolled over him. Joe didn’t move for several minutes until he heard the wail of approaching sirens and he was convinced the shooter was gone.
TWENTY-SIX
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, JOE WAS THIRD IN A TASK force of law enforcement vehicles speeding out of town toward Dr. Tom Arthur’s home on Buckbrush Road. The hastily organized strike force was led by Deputy Woods with Steck right behind him, then Joe, then Saddlestring chief of police Williamson, followed by two cruisers driven by town cops. Flashing light bars lit up the passing brush and trees in psychedelic colors, although only the lead SUV had turned on its siren.
After Woods had arrived on Main Street to find Patterson’s lifeless body, they’d pulled it into an alcove next to the hardware store out of the line of fire. Joe and Woods had huddled together in the shadows between the buildings while Joe explained what had happened. Woods listened, then he’d called Deputy Steck on his cell phone at home and shouted that they needed him on scene immediately.
At first, Joe wondered why Woods hadn’t made the request via county dispatch. Woods was rattled, he thought. Then he realized what Woods was up to and he agreed with the decision: keep Sheriff Kapelow in the dark, so their boss wouldn’t show up at the scene. Woods then called Williamson at home, then the EMTs at the clinic on the remote possibility that Patterson was still alive, then Gary Norwood to secure the crime scene on the sidewalk and in the alcove.
“Where did the shots come from?” Woods asked.
Joe gestured to the east.
“From the hills?” Woods asked. “That far?”
“At least a thousand yards away, judging how long it took between the flash of the muzzle and the bullet hitting Patterson.”
“Shit,” Woods said. “That was a hell of a shot.”
He raised his Maglite and thumbed it on.
“You need to get your face looked at,” Woods said to Joe.
“I will. Eventually.”
“If I were you, I’d go now.”
“If I were you, I’d get that flashlight out of my eyes.”
“Sorry.”
The beam was squelched and Joe could see nothing but orange spangles in the dark.
“Steck’s on his way,” Woods said. “When he gets here, you can cut out and go get patched up.”
Joe ignored him. He said, “Kapelow is going to find out what’s going on soon enough. You know he’s not going to be happy.”
“Screw him,” Woods said. “We don’t want him anywhere near us right now if we’ve got an active shooter situation. Who knows what he’d do? He completely botched the investigation and let the shooter kick his feet up on his desk just down the hall from us. Then he arrested the wrong man and crowed about it to the media. Now his terrific instincts have led to the murder of our county attorney.”
Joe nodded, but didn’t respond.
“Is the Game and Fish Department hiring these days?”
“Steck asked me the same thing. Nope. There’s a hiring freeze.”
“I think they’d take me over him, don’t you?”
“Not my call,” Joe said.
Woods shined his flashlight on Patterson’s body and the beam lingered on the grotesque exit wound on the back of his neck. Joe felt his stomach convulse and he quickly turned away before he threw up.
“Poor guy,” Woods said. Th
en: “Wait until the judge finds out.”
*
AS HE DROVE, Joe winced when he raised his left arm and rubbed his uniform sleeve over his face. The numbness was wearing off and his cheek and neck were stinging with pain and oozing blood. He could feel the grit of the vaporized brick embedded in several large contusions. He was grateful his eyes had been spared of the debris.
Using Bluetooth, he called out, “River Home,” and Marybeth answered the landline on the second ring. He wasn’t sure the cell signal on the county road was strong enough to sustain both his cell phone and hers.
“Everything has busted open,” he said to her. “You were right about Duane and Sue Hewitt, although it sounded pretty one-sided. He confessed the whole thing to me before he died. I’ve got him on tape.”
“Oh my God,” Marybeth said. “Did he kill himself?”
“He had help.”
Joe briefed her as succinctly as he could about Dr. Tom Arthur’s involvement.
“Was he the shooter?” she asked, incredulous. “Our doctor shot our county attorney in the street?”
“Yup. At least that’s what it looks like.”
“He tried to kill you at the same time?”
“He missed.”
Joe chose not to tell her about his face and neck.
“This is insane,” she said.
“Agreed. Like I said, we’re going out to Arthur’s house now. We’ve got him outmanned and outgunned. I don’t know if we’ll catch him there, but that’s the plan.”
“You need to be careful,” she said. “He’s shown he’s desperate and he’s proved he can kill from a long distance.”
“I’m glad it’s dark,” Joe said. Despite Arthur’s long-range skill, darkness would complicate an accurate shot. If it weren’t for the illumation of the streetlights in town, Patterson would likely still be alive.
“We’re getting close to Buckbrush Road,” Joe said. “I’ll let you know how it goes. But you can tell Liv when she wakes up that Nate will be free sooner than we’d hoped.”
“I’ll call her right now,” Marybeth said.
“Call her? Isn’t she there?”
Marybeth said Liv had received a text message from her nanny. Something about a big problem with Nate’s Air Force.
“The falcons?” Joe asked.
“That’s what Liv said. A mountain lion or a bear got into the mews. Liv went out there to see what she could do. She took Kestrel with her.”
“She took the baby? At two-thirty in the morning?”
“Kestrel was awake when the nanny called,” Marybeth said. “Liv was feeding her. You remember those days. Time of day means nothing to a baby.”
“I’ll go out there as soon as I can shake free,” Joe said.
“She’ll appreciate that.”
Joe left it there. He hoped, in fact, that a bear or mountain lion had somehow gotten into the mews and that it wasn’t something—or someone—more sinister.
*
DR. ARTHUR’S HOME on Buckbrush Road was lit up like a riverboat when the law enforcement caravan swept under the archway and drove across a wide lawn toward it. The house was a New West three-story rustic mountain design built of prefab logs with a pitched metal roof and a massive river-rock chimney. Joe caught a glimpse of a massive elk-antler chandelier through the great room windows and he noted that the porchlights were on, there was light in nearly every window, and two of the three doors of the garage were open. Floodlights embedded beneath the eaves cast inverted Vs of light on the front of the house and a series of short lamps bordered pathways leading from the structure to various outbuildings. A dark barn sat next to it with a sign in front indicating there was a yoga studio inside.
The place looked strangely welcoming, Joe thought. Dr. Arthur obviously wasn’t waiting inside in the dark with the purpose of ambushing them. Either that, or it was a trap.
Light up the exterior grounds as much as possible, Joe thought, and it would be easier for Arthur to pick his targets.
Woods’s headlights lit up the interior of the garage as his SUV roared up into the driveway. Joe could see a bundle of what looked like clothing strewn beneath a workbench on the concrete floor at the far end of the garage.
Steck parked his SUV next to Woods and bailed out. He had a departmental AR-15 and he positioned himself behind the open door. The town police cars roared around Joe’s pickup into the front lawn and stopped. Their headlights lit up the front of Arthur’s house even more, and the multicolored wigwags from their light bars made the exterior of the home appear to be dancing in the dark. One of the town cops moved a car-mounted spotlight from window to window.
Joe stayed well behind the line of law enforcement vehicles. He pulled to the side, got out, and unlocked the large Kobalt gearbox in the bed of his pickup. He retrieved a tactical Kevlar ballistic vest and pulled it on over his uniform shirt. Then he dug his twelve-gauge Remington Wingmaster shotgun out from behind the front seat. It was loaded with double-aught buckshot and he racked a shell into the magazine as he walked across the pulsating lawn toward the back of Woods’s vehicle. He kept his eyes on the windows of the house for movement, especially the top-floor bedroom on the south side, which was the only one that was dark. But he saw no blinds being pulled or windows opening.
He was well aware that while the vest offered some protection, it wouldn’t stop a high-powered projectile fired from a high-tech long-range rifle. It was unsettling and terrifying, he thought. A bullet could be headed toward him at that second and there was no way he would know it was fired or to avoid getting hit. But at least, he thought darkly, Marybeth couldn’t chide him about not taking any precautions, like the usual case when he was shot down like a dog.
*
JOE JOINED WOODS, Williamson, and a town cop crouching behind the back of Woods’s SUV. Steck was behind his vehicle next to them with a town cop of his own.
Woods said to Williamson, “Send two of your guys around the back so they’re ready to intercept him if he comes out that way. I’ll wait until they’re in position and try to talk him out.”
Williamson nodded eagerly. He turned to his officers and said, “You heard him.”
The two town cops, who both looked to be in their early twenties and who both sported wispy cop mustaches, exchanged a baleful glance with each other before heading out. Joe guessed that they had the same contempt for the chief as Woods and Steck had with Sheriff Kapelow. Both, he thought, had the same fear he did: that they could be struck down at any moment by a sniper a long distance away.
When they were gone, the chief turned to Woods and Joe. He looked animated and gleeful, Joe thought. He was eager for a firefight.
“I wish you would have let me bring my MRAP,” Williamson said to Woods. “This here situation is why we need it.”
“You can go get it if we need it,” Woods said. “But right now we don’t know what we’ve got.”
Joe was grateful their departure from Saddlestring had been chaotic and rushed. He could envision the MRAP crashing through the front door of Arthur’s home with a giggling Williamson at the wheel.
After a few moments, one of the town cops reported via Williamson’s radio that they were in position.
Woods shinnied along the side of his SUV and reached in through the open driver’s-side window for his PA microphone. After keying it, he said, “Dr. Arthur, this is Deputy Justin Woods of the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department. We have your house surrounded. There is no way out. I’m asking you to lay down any weapons you might have and step out through your front door with your hands on top of your head. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Joe peered around the back of the vehicle toward the house. He could see no movement inside.
Woods repeated his command. While he did, Joe saw Deputy Steck crabwalk toward the open garage. It was both a courageous and foolhardy action to take, Joe thought. He held his breath until he could see Steck enter the garage and sweep it with his rifle. Then Steck
stood up, obviously relieved that there was no threat to him from inside.
Steck’s voice came over Woods’s handheld radio. “I’m inside the garage. Dr. Arthur’s pickup is gone and there’s a door into the house from here. I’ll go inside, but I want to make sure you can cover me. Tell the cops to make sure all of our team knows what I’m doing, so they don’t see movement inside and decide to shoot me.”
“We don’t want a friendly-fire incident,” Williamson said to no one in particular. He was simply repeating what Steck had said.
Williamson continued: “And we don’t want to shoot the doctor if we can help it, either. I was on the search committee for a new doc for the clinic. Believe me when I tell you how hard it is to convince one to move here. Dr. Arthur was the only doc who would agree to come.”
Joe and Woods simply stared at Williamson, and the chief seemed to realize he’d been thinking out loud. In his defense, he said, “It’s gonna be hard to convince a new doc to come here if he knows we shot the last one.”
“We hope to arrest him,” Woods said. “Not shoot him.”
“Either way, we’ll have to find a new doctor,” Williamson said.
“Then just tell your guys not to shoot Deputy Steck or the doctor unless he threatens anyone,” Woods said to the chief. Joe could tell he was trying to keep his irritation out of his voice.
Williamson told his men to sit tight until Steck was inside and he gave the all-clear.
“Hey,” Steck said through the radio, “there’s somebody in here. Oh, fuck—there’s a woman down in the garage.”
Joe looked to see Steck gesturing toward the bundle of clothing by the workbench.
“What’s her condition?” Woods asked Steck over the radio.
“She’s breathing. I don’t see any blood.”
It was at that moment that Joe recognized a vehicle parked in the shadow of a grove of aspens on the side of the house. He hadn’t seen it earlier because of the bright lights everywhere else.
