Blood Trail (29 page)

“Would she protect him, no matter what he’d done?”

Alisha didn’t hesitate. “For the sake of her daughter, yes.”

 
 
JOE EXCUSED himself while Marybeth and Alisha cleaned up the glassware and dishes. He was tired, but he was also charged up, thinking at last he was on the verge of something. In the bathroom he shut the door and drew his old notebook out of his back pocket, flipping through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

 
 
JOE AND MARYBETH saw Nate and Alisha to the door. It was 4 A.M. and cold and still outside. Joe thanked Alisha and apologized for asking so many questions. Nate held out his hand to say good-bye, and Joe shook it.

“Nate,” Joe said, “are you available in three hours for a trip to Rawlins and back?”

“Rawlins? Three hours?”

“I’m not supposed to go anywhere, but I think we can get there and back by midafternoon before Randy Pope gets here and McLanahan even knows I’m gone.”

Nate looked at Alisha. She shrugged.

“Why Rawlins?” Marybeth asked.

“Because that’s where the state penitentiary is,” Joe said. “Home of Vern Dunnegan.”

27

IT TOOK three and a half hours—pushing the speed limit—to get to Rawlins from Saddlestring via I-25 south to Casper, then paralleling the North Platte River to Alcova, past Independence Rock and Martin’s Cove on the Oregon Trail, then taking US 287 south at Muddy Gap. Nate slept for most of it. Joe listened to Brian Scott on KTWO out of Casper taking calls about the hunting moratorium but he had trouble concentrating on either the radio or his driving because he was testing and discarding scenarios that had opened up since the night before and thinking Nate was right when he said the investigation had been too narrowly focused.

Nate awoke and stretched as Green Mountain loomed to the east. The landscape was vast and still, sagebrush dotted with herds of pronghorn antelope, hawks flying low, puffy cumulus clouds looking like cartoon thought balloons.

With Rawlins itself nearly in view, Joe spoke for the first time since they’d left.

“Nate, do you have any idea what we’re about to find out?”

“Do you mean did Alisha tell me?”

“Yes.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“When I dropped you off, did you know you’d be picked up by Klamath and Shannon Moore as well as Alisha?”

“Yup. Alisha told me when I called her from Large Merle’s.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“Nope. I knew if I told you, you’d get all hot and bothered and you wouldn’t let me do my work on my own schedule.”

“You’re probably right,” Joe said sourly.

“Plus, you’d probably mention it to somebody—the governor or Randy Pope—and it could have gotten back to Klamath. He’s got sympathizers everywhere who keep him informed. He’s even got someone at the FBI who told him about your meeting Bill Gordon.”

“Apparently.”

“True believers,” Nate said, shaking his head.

 
 
WHEN HE was close enough to Rawlins to pick up a cell phone signal, Joe called the Wyoming state pen. Like all the inmates, Vern Dunnegan would have to agree to talk to Joe and put him officially on his visit list. If Vern declined, Joe would need to go to the warden and try to force a meeting where Vern could show up with his counsel and refuse to talk. The receptionist said she’d check with security and call Joe back. For once, Joe was happy he worked for the governor and therefore had some clout in the state system.

As Joe punched off, Nate said, “There are many things about this case that baffle me, but one really stands out for an explanation.”

“What’s that?”

“Your boss, Randy Pope.”

“What about him?”

“He hates you and me with a passion and a viciousness reserved for only the most cold-blooded of bureaucrats.”

“That he does.”

“So why did he become your champion?”

Joe shrugged. “I’ve wondered that myself. My only answer is that he’s more pragmatic than I gave him credit for. He values his agency and his title more than he hates me. I took it as sort of a compliment that when the chips were down he put our problems aside and even argued for your release.”

Nate said,
“Hmmmm
.
”

“Maybe we’re about to find out,” said Joe.

 
 
THEY PASSED through town and dropped off the butte and saw the prison sprawled out on the valley floor below them, coils of silver razor wire reflecting the high sun. Joe’s phone chirped. It was the receptionist.

“Inmate Dunnegan has agreed to meet with you,” she said.

“Good.”

“In fact, he wanted me to relay something to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“He wanted me to ask why it took you so long.”

Joe felt a trill of cognition.

“Tell him I was finning in the wrong channel,” Joe said.

 
 
NATE STAYED in Joe’s pickup in the parking lot while Joe went in the visitors’ entrance of the administration building and put all his possessions including his cell phone into a locker. He’d left his weapon and wallet in the truck, taking only his badge and state ID. He filled out the paperwork at the counter, passed through security, and sat alone in the minibus that took him the mile from the admin building past the heavily guarded Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and other gray, low-slung buildings to a checkpoint, where he was searched again and asked the nature of his visit.

“I’m here to see Vern Dunnegan,” Joe said.

At the name, the guard grinned. “Ole Vern,” he said. “Good guy.”

Joe said, “Unless he’s trying to get your family killed.”

The guard’s smile doused. “You’ve got history with him, then.”

“Yup.”

To the driver, the guard said, “Take him to A-Pod.”

When they were under way, Joe asked, “A-Pod?”

The driver said, “A, B, and C pods are for the general population. A-Pod is the lowest security and it goes up from there all the way to E-Pod, which is Max and Death Row. You don’t want to go there.”

“No,” Joe said, “I don’t.”

At a set of doors marked A, the driver stopped. “When you’re done, tell the guard at the desk and he’ll call me.”

Joe nodded. “So this means Vern Dunnegan is considered low-risk, huh?”

“That’s what it means.”

Joe shook his head. “Man, he’s got you guys fooled. I guess he hasn’t changed.”

 
 
THE VISITATION room was large, quiet, pale blue, and well lit. It was filled with plastic tables and chairs, the kind used on decks and in backyards. The feet of the chairs were bound with athletic tape so they wouldn’t squeak when moved. There was a bank of vending machines against a wall and a television set hanging from the ceiling with ESPN on with no volume. One corner of the room was filled with neatly stacked children’s toys and multicolored pieces for kids to climb on while wives or girlfriends visited. Joe had to sign in again with an officer behind a large desk in the southeast corner. The desk itself was empty except for a clipboard and a huge box of wet wipes and a smaller container of disposable latex gloves. On the sign-in sheet were listed categories for visits including “Friend/ Relative,” “Legal counsel,” “Religious,” “Kissing Only,” and “Other.” Joe checked “Other,” and the guard gestured expansively, indicating Joe could sit wherever he wanted.

The only other occupants in the room were a couple at a table in the far corner and their child (he assumed), a toddler, playing quietly with plastic blocks. Although the couple was required to sit on opposite sides of the table (she’d checked “Kissing Only”), they strained forward across the tabletop to get closer. She was dark and Hispanic, her perfume so strong Joe could smell it from across the room. He wondered how she’d outmaneuvered the admin guards in regard to the posted “No skintight or revealing clothing” regulation. She wore jeans that looked spray-painted on and a tight white Lycra top that clung to her breasts like a film. He was lean, shaved bald, olive-skinned, and heavily tattooed. His arms were outstretched, his hands on her shoulders, pulling her toward him. She strained toward him, her own arms outstretched, her fingers furiously caressing the tips of the collar of his white jumpsuit with a kind of unrestrained animal lust that Joe found both riveting and revolting. The inmate looked as if he would explode at any second. He was red-faced, his eyes wide, his face inches from hers. Joe hoped the guard had his wet wipes at the ready.

“I think I’ll take the other corner,” Joe said.

“Good idea,” the officer said, then, shouting to the couple, “Hey, dial it back a notch over there! It’s kissing only—no fondling. You know the rules.”

 
 
A GUNMETAL gray door opened on the wall opposite where Joe had signed in and Vern Dunnegan entered the room. At the sight of his old supervisor, Joe felt his stomach and rectum involuntarily clench and his breathing get short and shallow. He hadn’t seen the man for eight years, but here he was.

Vern wore an orange jumpsuit with no pockets and blue rubber shoes. He was thicker than he used to be, his face more doughy and his limbs and belly turned to flab. His hair was thinner and grayer and pasted back on his large head, and he was clean-shaven, which revealed a reptilian demeanor that had always been there but was masked by the beard he used to wear. Despite the avuncular smile on his face when he saw Joe, Vern’s eyes were obsidian black and without depth, as if blocked off from the inside. Joe remembered the whole package. Vern could smile at you while he stabbed you in the heart.

Vern Dunnegan had once been the Wyoming game warden for the Saddlestring District. Vern had considered Joe his protégé and Joe naively thought of Vern as his mentor. But Vern was one of the old-time wardens, the kind who bent the law to suit his needs and curry favor, a one-man cop, judge, and jury who used his badge and the autonomous nature of the job to manipulate the community and increase both his influence and his income. In those days, before the discovery of coal-bed methane, Twelve Sleep County was in an economic slump and those who lived there were scrambling to stay afloat. Vern and Joe, both state employees with salaries and vehicles and insurance and pensions, were the envy of most of the working people. Joe fought against the uncomfortable recollection of how it once was between them, when he was the green trainee and Vern the wily vet. Although Marybeth always distrusted the man, Joe refused to see it while he worked under him. It wasn’t until Vern quit and came back as a landman representing a natural gas pipeline company that Joe found out what Vern’s bitter worldview was all about, as his former boss set up a scenario that led to Marybeth’s being shot and losing their baby—all so Vern could enrich himself. The last time Joe had seen Vern was when he testified against him in court.

“Long time,” Vern said, nodding hello to the guard at the desk and sidling up to Joe’s table. “And here I thought you’d forgotten all about me, like you didn’t care anymore.”

The last was said with a lilt of sarcasm and anger.

Vern settled down heavily in the chair opposite Joe. In Vern’s face, Joe could see traces of green and purple bruising on his cheekbones and the side of his head, and when Vern spoke Joe saw missing teeth. The man had been beaten, which really didn’t bother Joe in the least. In fact, now that Vern was just a few feet away from him, all the things he had done came rushing back. Joe had to tamp down his own urge to leap across the table and pummel the man.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a former peace officer in this place?” Vern asked softly, reaching up and touching the bruise on the left side of his face. “I have to be ready to defend my life every goddamned day, every goddamned minute. I never know when someone will take a whack at me just for the hell of it. I’ve been in H-Pod so many times I know all the nurses by name and they know me.”

Joe assumed the “H” stood for hospital but didn’t really want the conversation to be about Vern Dunnegan’s perceived victimization and self-pity.

“You probably noticed the color,” Vern said, patting himself on the breast of his orange jumpsuit. “Orange means I’m segregated from the general population for my own protection—supposedly. What it really means is I’m a walking target for these predators in here. You have no idea what it’s like. Some asshole will be walking behind me and for no reason at all he’ll elbow me in the neck and just keep going. Or he’ll cut me with a shiv . . .” Vern shot his arm out so his sleeve retracted, revealing a spider’s web of old scars. “Not enough to kill me, just enough for stitches.

“I’m all alone in here,” Vern said. “Nobody visits anymore. I get along with most of the guards but almost none of the population. It’s a living hell. At least if I were on Death Row I’d get the respect those guys get. As it is, I’ve got at least four more years of this. Bad food. Bad dreams. Eight head counts per twenty-four hours. This orange jumpsuit. Having to live my life with deviants, reprobates, and human scum as my neighbors.”

“Gee,” Joe said, “it must be rough.”

Vern did his trademark chuckle, the one that meant exactly the opposite of how it sounded. “You’ve changed,” he said. “You’ve gotten harder.”

Joe glared at him.

Vern said, “I’ve been following your career with great interest. I’ve got to say that you’ve impressed me with your exploits. I never thought you had it in you, to be honest. I always thought you were a little slow—too naive, too much of a Dudley Do-Right. But you’ve matured, Joe. You’re as cold and calculating as I was.”

Joe shook his head. “Wrong.”

“I’m not so sure,” Vern said, leaning back and appraising Joe with his cold eyes, the pleasant grin frozen on his face.

“Then you must have left that wife of yours by now,” Vern said. “I always saw her as an emasculator.”

Joe took a deep breath. “Nope. We’re still together with our two beautiful girls.”