Out of Range (11 page)

The tall man’s eyes narrowed. “And who are you, exactly?”

“I used to be the sheriff here,” Barnum said.

“To a lot of us,” Timberman interjected, “he’ll always be our sheriff.”

Barnum humbly nodded his thanks to Timberman.

The tall man seemed to be thinking things over, Barnum observed, trying to decide if he was going to say more or take his leave.

“I might be able to help you out,” Barnum said.

The tall man turned to Timberman, and the bartender said, “You ought to ask the sheriff.”

While the tall man pondered, Barnum closed his newspaper, folded it, and put his reading glasses and gold pen in his shirt pocket.

“Let me ask you this,” Barnum said. “Are you looking for a falcon, or are you looking for a particular falconer?”

The tall man’s face revealed nothing. “I don’t believe we’ve actually met.”

“Bud Barnum. You?”

“Randan Bello.”

“Welcome to Saddlestring, Mr. Bello.”

Bello picked up his shot and beer, walked down the length of the bar and sat down on a stool next to Barnum.

Timberman watched, then went to the far end of the bar to wash glasses that were already clean.

“I’m looking for a falconer,” Bello said, speaking low and looking at his reflection in the back bar mirror and not directly at Barnum.

“I know of a guy,” Barnum said to Bello’s face in the mirror. “He’s got a place by himself on the river. Carries a .454 Casull. Is that him?”

Bello sipped his beer. “Could be.”

Barnum described Nate Romanowski, and let a halfsmile form on his mouth. “If he’s the one, he’s been a thorn in my side since he showed up in my county. Romanowski and a game warden named Joe Pickett. I’ve got no use for either one of them.”

Bello turned on his stool and Barnum felt the man’s eyes bore into the side of his head.

“So you can help me,” Bello said.

At the end of the bar, Timberman made a loud fuss over cleaning some ashtrays.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Barnum said, surprised that his bitterness betrayed him.

“I see.”

Barnum said, “I understand you’re looking for a place to sight in. There’s a nice range west of town with bench rests.

I could make a call.”

“Let me buy the next round,” Bello said.

Eleven

In Jackson, the funeral service for Will Jensen was being held in a log chapel built to look much older and more rustic than it actually was. Joe sat in the next to last row wearing the same jacket and tie he had worn for the wedding of Bud Longbrake and Missy Vankueren. His clothes were wrinkled from his suitcase. He had arrived a half hour early, to observe the mourners as they arrived, after calling home to find no one was there. There was a dull pain behind his eyes from the bourbon the night before and a practically sleepless night. It was cold in the chapel, and he welcomed the throaty rumble of a furnace from behind a closed door near the altar, indicating that someone had turned up the thermostat.

A brass urn sat squarely on a stand atop a red tapestry in front of the podium. Damn, Joe thought, there wasn’t much left of Will, just his ashes in the urn and a framed photo of him in his red game warden uniform. In the photo, Will was saddling one of his horses and turning to the photographer with a loopy smile on his face. Who knew what was so funny at the time? Joe wondered. On the other side of the urn was a framed photo of the Jensen family—Will, Susan, his two sons wearing illfitting jackets and ties. The photo looked to be a few years old to Joe because the boys appeared to be the same age they had been when he saw them in the Jensen house for the first and only time. In the photo, the family looked stiff but happy. All those ties made Will, and the boys, uncomfortable, he guessed.

Joe had spent the morning in the office, reading through the first three spiral notebooks and halfway through the fourth. Patterns were emerging. During the deep winter, in January when the notebooks all began, Will spent a good deal of time in the office, writing up reports on oftencontroversial policy issues that he was required to comment on, and visiting with local ranchers, outfitters, and the Feds. Spring was consumed with more reports and comments, but also preparations for the summer and fall, working with his horses, repairing tack and equipment, signing off on outfitter camp locations, and making recommendations for season lengths and harvests. During the summer months, he was out in the field nearly every day, checking licenses of fishermen on the rivers and lakes, doing trend counts of deer, elk, and moose, or horsepacking into the backcountry to check his remote cabin and repair winter damage. Fall, as Joe suspected, was a whirlwind of activity once the hunting seasons started and opener after opener arrived. The pattern in the fall was the lack of a pattern, and at first Joe thought Will was flying by the seat of his pants, dashing from place to place. Will patrolled the front country and backcountry seemingly at random, covering his district in a way that seemed haphazard. One day he would be in the southeastern quadrant in his pickup, the next he would be on horseback in the northwestern corner—where he might be gone for days. But then Joe saw the logic in it, and admired the way Will worked.

The only way a single game warden could be effective in nearly nineteen hundred miles of rough country was to be as unpredictable as possible, to keep his movements erratic. If he patrolled in a systematic way, sweeping from north to south or methodically along the river bottoms, the poachers and violators could anticipate his location and change their plans to avoid him. But by moving from here to there, front country to backcountry, changing his itinerary and location, they would never know when and where he might show up. Joe had no doubt the hunters and fishers—and especially the professional outfitters—shared information about Will’s whereabouts. If they didn’t know when he’d be patrolling the outfitter camps, and from what direction, they’d have to be ready for him at all times, meaning proper licenses, good camp maintenance, and adherence to rules and regulations.

Joe had experienced the “familiarity” of hunters and fishers before, and had learned to be friendly but closedmouthed about his intentions. Over a beer at the Stockman’s Bar or with his family at a restaurant or function in Saddlestring, someone occasionally sidled up to him in all apparent innocence and asked him about his day—where he’d been, if he’d seen game, where he might be going tomorrow. Although the questions were often just conversation, sometimes they were more than that.

He’d learned not to say anything.

Joe turned in his pew when he heard the door open behind him and a murmur of voices. Susan Jensen arrived at the chapel with her two boys and three older people, two women and a man. The older man, no doubt their grandfather, ushered the two young boys ahead of him and down the aisle. Will’s boys were small versions of their father, Joe thought. Stolid, serious, allboy. The younger one took a swipe at the older one when the older boy crowded him, and the embarrassed grandfather leaned forward to gently chastise him.

Susan looked to be much older than Joe remembered; her face was pinched, pale, and drawn. She had shortcropped brown hair, blue eyes, and was well dressed in a professionallooking suit. Joe stood, and she looked up and saw him. A series of emotions passed over her face in that instant: recognition, gratitude, then something else. Revulsion, Joe thought.

“I’m real sorry, Susan,” he said, moving down the aisle toward her.

“Thank you for coming, Joe,” she said. Her eyes were blank, but her mouth twitched. Joe guessed she was cried out. “It’s good of you to come.”

He didn’t want to admit he was there to take over Will’s district. He wanted her to think he was in Jackson on his own accord.

“Are other game wardens here?” she asked, looking quickly around the empty chapel.

“The assistant director will be coming,” Joe said, wishing it was the director, or someone other than Randy Pope.

“Okay,” she said vacantly. He could tell she was disappointed, but resigned to it. There was a lot going on in her mind, he thought. If Will had been killed as the result of an accident or at the hands of another while on duty, the chapel would have been filled with red shirts. But that was not the case.

“Are you coming to the reception later?” she asked.

He hadn’t thought about it. “Yes,” he answered.

“Good.” Then: “Is your wife here? Marybeth?”

“She couldn’t make it,” he said. “School, too many things going on.”

“I know how that goes,” Susan said, her eyes already wandering from Joe. “The singleparent household.”

Joe tried not to cringe.

“Maybe I’ll see you at the reception,” she said, extending her hand. He took it. It was icy cold.

...

Joe had just sat back down, still reeling from the look of distaste that had passed over Susan Jensen’s face, when the back door banged open and a rough man’s voice said, “Damnit.”

Joe turned to see a man closing the door with exaggerated gentleness. Then the man wheeled and entered the chapel, blinking at its darkness.

The man was big, barrelchested, thicklegged, a wedge shape from his broad shoulders in a sheepskin coat to the points of his laceup highheeled cowboy boots. He wore a stained and battered gray felt hat, which he immediately removed to reveal a steelgray shock of uncombed hair. His bronze eyes burned under wild toothbrush eyebrows, and he squinted into the room like a man who squints a lot, looking for distant movement on mountainsides and saddle slopes. He was a man of the outdoors, judging by his leathery face and hands and thick clothing.

“Didn’t mean to throw the door open like that,” he mumbled to no one in particular.

And Joe stood to say hello to Smoke Van Horn.

Smoke pumped Joe’s hand once, hard, and let go.

“You’re the new guy, huh?” Smoke said, too loudly for the occasion, Joe thought. He could sense Susan Jensen and her boys turning to see what the commotion was about.

“Yes, sir,” Joe replied softly, attempting to provide an example to Smoke to lower his voice.

“Hope we get along,” Smoke said, just as loudly as before. “Me and Will had some issues. But he learned to get along with me. For a while, at least.” Smoke barked a laugh at that.

In the notebooks he had read that morning, Smoke Van Horn’s name had come up several times. Smoke had been accused of salting by another outfitter as well as by a National Park ranger. Salting involved hiding salt blocks to draw elk to where his paying clients could kill them. Will had written that he’d asked Smoke about salting, and although Smoke hadn’t really denied it, he hadn’t admitted it either.

“Dared me to locate the salt station,” Will had written in his notebook. “Couldn’t find it. Suspect it’s somewhere on Clear Creek.”

“I’ll be seeing you around, I’m sure,” Joe said softly.

“No shit.” Smoke laughed again. “You’ll be sick of me, I’d guess. I have strong opinions.”

But let’s not hear them now, Joe thought.

Smoke looked to the front of the chapel, saw the urn and the photos.

“For Christ’s sake,” Smoke said, “they put him in a jar.”

“It’s an urn,” Joe said, glancing toward Will’s boys, who were now watching Smoke and no doubt hearing him.

“And Smoke, please keep your voice down.”

Smoke eyed Joe intently, narrowing his eyes. “Already telling me what to do?” Smoke said menacingly, but at least his voice was lower.

“Will’s family is up front.”

Smoke began to speak. Then, in an action Joe guessed was unusual, the outfitter didn’t say anything for a moment.

He leaned forward, and Joe could smell horses on his coat.

“Will was too damned tough and determined to kill himself like that,” Smoke said to Joe, his voice low. “I spent many an hour with him in the backcountry. We rarely agreed on anything, but I suspect he thought I was right more than he would let on. But he wasn’t, you know, troubled. Except for the last few months, when the son of a bitch wanted to ruin me.”

Joe leaned closer to the outfitter. He asked quietly, “You don’t think he killed himself ?”

“No fucking way,” Smoke said, his voice loud again.

“Sorry, boys,” he said toward the front of the chapel.

“I’d like to talk with you later,” Joe said. More people were starting to arrive, and Smoke was oblivious to them.

He was blocking the aisle.

“That’s why I come,” Smoke told Joe. “When a man sets out to ruin me, I take a real personal interest in him. So I had to make sure he really was dead. I didn’t expect to see him in a jar. Or an urn, or whatever the hell it is.”

“Later,” Joe said firmly, finding his seat.

Smoke Van Horn ambled down the aisle, somehow exuding a presence that was bigger than his huge physical self. Joe guessed that when Smoke picked an aisle, the rest of it would remain empty as the mourners arrived to find seats.

He guessed correctly.

Joe knew very few of the mourners, and most looked like locals. The majority sought out Susan and her boys, and either hugged her, waved sadly to her, or, in some cases, simply stood and shook their heads, commiserating.

Randy Pope chose Joe’s aisle, but sat three seats away.

That was fine with Joe.

Pi Stevenson came in with Birdy. She had combed her hair and looked almost businesslike in a casual suit. When she saw Joe she smiled at him, and he nodded back.

He looked over his shoulder to see the Teton County sheriff and two deputies, who sat in the last row, behind Joe. They wore their uniforms, hats on their laps. Even though the service had started, Joe twisted in his seat and shook their hands, introducing himself. Joe assumed they had been the investigating officers at the Jensen home, since the sheriff, not the town police, had placed the notice on the door there. The sheriff, named Tassell, according to his badge, did not greet Joe warmly. Tassell was handsome, in a distant, preppy kind of way, Joe thought. He had longish hair and a gunfighter’s mustache that drooped over both corners of his mouth. He was young and fit, his shirt and trousers crisp. He probably looked very good in campaign posters. He was the antithesis of Sheriff Barnum in Twelve Sleep County the way Jackson was the antithesis of Saddlestring.