Her eyes flared briefly. “I’m not,” she said.
“You heard about Rope?”
“Yes. The sheriff called this morning. Thank you for arresting him.”
“Yup.”
“Please tell me what happened,” Carrie said.
She listened, staring at her winter boots, while Joe told her everything Rope had said.
When he was done, she nodded.
“I believe it,” she said.
“You do?”
She nodded sadly. “I wish it didn’t make sense, but it does. The roofers even called our house a couple of times to complain. I spoke with Spud Cargill once, and he told me about it, so I asked Lamar about it when he got home that night.
“Lamar was going through a real tough time last summer. I guess he realized he wasn’t going any further in the Forest Service and it was really bothering him. He’d been applying for other districts for the past three years, and jobs at regional headquarters, but he wasn’t getting any encouragement. I think he realized that he would always be a midlevel manager, and he didn’t take it well at times. It was hard on me, and on the kids.”
Joe listened, shifting his gaze occasionally to watch the team of movers emerge from the house with something and disappear into the back of the truck.
“I’m not excusing what Lamar did up there in the mountains,” she said. “Shooting all those elk makes me sick to my stomach. But I know that his frustration level was really high. For the first time since we’d been married, he was snapping at me and the kids. He was drinking too much. I was thinking about leaving him just before, well, you know . . .”
“Carrie, what about the roofers?”
“Oh, yes.” She flushed. “From what Lamar told me, he did a standard request for bids in the spring to get all the buildings shingled. Bighorn Roofing—Spud and Rope—had the best bid. Lamar said he gave them a verbal okay to start working, then submitted the paperwork to the regional office in Denver. He said that in the past, submitting the paperwork was just a formality.
“But this time, after a couple of months, the regional office sent him everything back and said he hadn’t filled out a couple of the forms properly. Lamar was really angry when they did that, so he resubmitted everything and didn’t tell the roofers about it.”
“When was this?” Joe asked.
“I think it was about August,” she said. “The work was just about done already, and the roofers were getting mad about having to front the Forest Service all of the materials and labor without getting paid. Then the regional office denied the request altogether, because they said Lamar had entered into a contract without their approval.”
Joe shook his head.
“Lamar was fit to be tied over that one.”
“I can believe that he would be,” Joe said.
“They hung him out to dry,” she said. “They didn’t give one bit of consideration to what it would be like for him out here in the field. They didn’t really care that he had to look people in the eye and tell them they wouldn’t get paid for the work they did.”
It was so . . .
He thanked her and told her once again that he was sorry she was leaving.
As he approached his pickup, she called after him.
“Oh, Mr. Pickett—I didn’t tell you who at regional headquarters kept sending back Lamar’s request.”
Joe turned.
“It was Melinda Strickland,” she said bitterly. “The woman who thinks my name is Cassie.”
The combined law-enforcement agencies in and around Twelve Sleep County scrambled to find Spud Cargill, who was still at large. From the radio in his small office, Joe monitored their progress while writing an overdue report to his supervisor. A rookie deputy sheriff reported that Spud Cargill’s empty pickup had been found near the Saddlestring landfill with the driver’s-side door open and tracks in the snow indicating that Spud had run toward the two-lane highway. “The suspect’s tracks end at the pavement,” the deputy said. “He either had another car to climb into, or he stole one, or somebody picked him up on the highway. I don’t know where in the hell he is.” A citizen in town reported seeing someone who looked like Spud running across the Saddlestring High School football field, and the police were sent to check it out. It turned out to be the boys’ basketball team running outdoor windsprints for punishment. An all-points bulletin was issued by Sheriff Barnum, and the Wyoming highway patrol set up roadblocks on all four highways out of Saddlestring to check drivers, passengers, and anything that looked suspicious. Barnum dispatched his deputies to Bighorn Roofing, Spud’s residence (where he lived alone except for a caged badger in the garage), and the Stockman’s Bar, where Spud liked to drink beer after work.
Spud Cargill could not be found.
It had turned out to be a nice day for a manhunt, Joe observed through his window. After he had come home from seeing Carrie Gardiner, the wind had stopped, the sky had cleared, and the sun swelled bright and warm in the western sky. Water from the melting snow dropped like strings of glass beads from the eaves of the house and melted holes in the snow on the ground. The sound of running water through the outside drainpipes sounded like music to Joe. He loved water like a true Westerner. There was never enough of it. It pained him when the wind kicked up and blew the snow away. It seemed unfair.
He finished the report and e-mailed it to Terry Crump. He ended it by writing that since Rope Latham was in jail and Spud Cargill would no doubt soon be caught, the pressure that had been building in Twelve Sleep County should ease up.
