Joe nodded.
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you know how we can reach him?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
Reed reacted as if slapped. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t want to lie to you,” Joe said. “So don’t ask me questions like that. Nate’s my friend. It’s possible he may reach out to me. I won’t betray him unless you can look me in the eye and say you know he’s done something bad.”
“It’s sure looking that way, isn’t it?” Reed asked. “The guy isn’t exactly stepping up to clear his name. And now this thing with his dad.”
“I honestly don’t know anything about that,” Joe said. “It does worry me, though.”
“That’s nice. You know, Joe, there are a few people who wonder about you. They wonder that when it comes to Nate Romanowski it’s a little questionable whose side you’re on.”
“Gee,” Joe said. “Who would those people be?”
Reed blew air out through his nose in a long sigh. “Jesus, Joe,” he said. “You’ve got to help me out here. Or I’ll start to wonder.”
Joe thought about it. His stomach was in knots. Reed was an honest cop and a friend as well. He might just be the next sheriff. Withholding information didn’t seem right.
Finally, Joe said, “Go out and talk to Pam Kelly. Sweat her if you have to.”
Reed looked up. “Did you interview her? Does she know something?”
“Go find out,” Joe said. He reached out for Reed’s empty cup and started for the house.
“Joe,” Reed said behind him.
Joe stopped.
“Tread lightly here,” Reed said. “Don’t get too tangled up in this. It isn’t your case. If it starts to seem like you’re playing games with us, well…”
“I know,” Joe said, and walked through the backyard to his house. While he was inside rinsing the cups, he heard the deputy’s vehicle start up and drive away.
Marybeth looked in on him in his office as he booted up his computer.
“If you’re trying to find John Nemecek, don’t waste your time,” she said.
He turned in his chair and raised his eyebrows. She stood there dressed only in flesh-colored panties and a matching bra.
“Good thing I didn’t invite Mike Reed in here for coffee,” he said, looking her over. “He might have been kind of distracted. I might have been kind of distracted.”
“How about you look me in the eye,” she commanded. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for down there.”
He did so, reluctantly.
She said, “Unless you somehow got the name wrong, he doesn’t exist,” she said. “Nothing. Nada. He’s never been born.”
“I didn’t get the name wrong,” Joe said.
“Then he’s got some pretty powerful capabilities,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Lucy and April were out of earshot, “because no one can simply not exist on the Internet. It’s impossible. It takes some real juice to scrub a name off every search engine. The fact that he doesn’t exist at all in cyberspace says we’re dealing with someone with clout.”
“Interesting,” Joe said. “But I wasn’t actually going to look for him.”
“Leave that to me,” she said. “When I get to work I’m going to access the networks I’m not supposed to know about. I’ll find him.”
“Call me when you do,” Joe said.
She agreed with a wink. When she left the room to try and hurry up their girls, he opened the falconry site.
No new entries.
16
Luke Brueggemann tried not to show his obvious relief when Joe Pickett arrived at the hotel in his pickup without the horse trailer. Brueggemann tossed a small duffel bag of gear, clothing, and lunch into the bed of the vehicle and climbed in.
“Sorry I’m late,” Joe said, adjusting the volume down on the universal access channel of the radio. “It’s been another busy morning.”
“No problem,” Brueggemann said, buckling in. “What’s going on? Aren’t we going up to check on those elk camps?”
“Not today.”
“What’s going on?”
Joe chinned toward the radio. “Haven’t you been listening in? I thought you did that.”
Brueggemann’s face flushed red. “Girlfriend problems,” he said. “I’ve been on my phone all morning with my girl in Laramie.”
“Does she go to the university?” Joe asked, pulling out of the parking lot onto the street.
“Fifth-year senior. She kind of misses me, I guess. But she doesn’t have to make it so hard on me because I’m not there, you know? She’s used to being in contact with me twenty-four/seven.”
Joe grunted. He didn’t know, but he really wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the details. His mind was racing from what he’d heard from Deputy Reed that morning.
Brueggemann got the message that Joe didn’t want to hear about his personal life. He said, “So what’d I miss out on?”
“A guy from the reservation is missing,” Joe said, nodding toward the radio. “A well-known guy named Bad Bob Whiteplume. I know him a little, but I knew his sister very well.”
“You mean like he was kidnapped?”
“No. Missing.”
“Doesn’t that kind of thing happen all the time?” his trainee asked.
When Joe shot him a look, Brueggemann flushed again and said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. Sorry. I just meant I’ve heard those folks tend to come and go more than… others.”
“You sound like the sheriff’s department. Did you learn that growing up in Sundance?” Joe asked.
“You know what I mean,” Brueggemann stuttered.
Joe said, “It’s an odd deal. There’s all kinds on the res, just like there’s all kinds here in town. His sister, Alisha, was one of the best people I’ve ever met, God rest her soul.”
“She died?”
“Not that long ago,” Joe said. “It was an accident. The guys who killed her were after someone else and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“This missing-persons case,” Brueggemann said. “What does it have to do with us?”
Joe cruised down Main Street, nodding hello to the few shoppers out on the sidewalk. “In normal circumstances, nothing,” he said. “But if you’ll recall, we had a triple homicide here a few days ago. Sheriff McLanahan has his hands full with that, and he’s apparently not getting anywhere finding the killer. He’s got FBI and DCI people here bumping into each other, and the voters are getting pretty antsy. And in the middle of all that, this doctor sets up camp and starts demanding a full-scale investigation to locate Bad Bob.”
Brueggemann shook his head, confused.
“If you haven’t noticed,” Joe said, “we don’t have a lot of law enforcement bodies around this county. When something major happens, everybody gets pressed into the effort. Highway patrol, local cops, brand inspectors. And
