agent, anyway. And it would be against Barnum’s nature to hurt him directly. Barnum was more of a corrupt, behind-the-scenes man.
Nevertheless . . .
Because of the rush in Joe’s ears, he didn’t hear the school bus on Bighorn Road until the brakes squealed to a stop and the accordion doors wheezed opened.
“Hello, Sheriff !” the bus driver called out cheerfully. “Hey, Joe!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Joe saw Portenson roll his eyes heavenward. The front door of the house opened and Sheridan and Lucy came out. Both girls were pulling on jackets and fumbling with their backpacks and lunch boxes. Marybeth stood in the doorway, watching them skip up the walk. But she was really watching Joe, Barnum, and Agent Portenson, Joe knew.
Sheridan made a point of walking between Joe and Barnum, and stopped long enough in front of Joe to tilt her chin up for a good-bye kiss. Lucy was right behind her.
The men watched as the girls boarded the bus and the doors closed. Both girls took seats near the window and waved as the bus pulled away.
Joe waved back. A thin roll of dust bloomed from the tires of the school bus as it labored away.
It was uncomfortably silent. Barnum still stood near Joe’s fender, but his hand had dropped away from the butt of his weapon. Marybeth still stood in the open doorway, watching the bus. Portenson leaned back against the sheriff ’s Blazer, and laughed silently.
“This is over,” Portenson said.
“No, it isn’t,” Barnum said, his voice low. “It’s just postponed.” “Anytime, Sheriff,” Joe said.
Barnum turned his back on Joe, nodded his head to Marybeth, and walked back to his GMC. He threw himself into the driver’s seat with more dexterity than Joe would have guessed, given Barnum’s age and health, and slammed his door shut.
“Agent Portenson,” Joe said. “How come you’re mixed up with him?” Portenson stared at Joe, smiling coldly. “I’ve got to go.”
“It isn’t birds, Portenson.”
Portenson waved his hand in front of his face, as if shooing away a fly. “Then what is it?”
“It’s two things, I think,” Joe said, keeping his voice low enough that Barnum wouldn’t hear. “I think we’ve got one set of killers responsible for most of the animals and Stuart Tanner. I think we’ve got another entirely separate killer who did Tuff Montegue.”
Portenson looked pained.
“Whether they’re connected or not I don’t know,” Joe said. “But if nothing else, we’ve got to figure out one or the other. We can’t look at the mutilations as one thing any longer, or we’ll never get anywhere.”
“We aren’t anywhere now,” Portenson said.
“No, we aren’t. But if we change the focus of the investigation, we might find something out.”
Portenson shook his head as if dispelling a bad thought.
“Look, Portenson, I know you’re not a bad guy,” Joe said. “I know what you did last winter, how you tried to stop the massacre. You blame me for putting you in that position, but you did the right thing. You can do it again.”
“Oh, just shut up,” Portenson said.
Joe grinned. “I can count on you, can’t I?” “Why do you even care?”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t want this kind of thing happening in my mountains, or my district. Not around my family. They’ve gone through enough in the last few years without worrying about something like this.”
Portenson looked genuinely sympathetic. Then something changed in his face.
“I still think you and that Nate Romanowski maniac are guilty of something. I’ll find that out one of these days, and I’ll bust you both. Then I’ll get out of this hellhole I’m in.”
Joe nodded. “That’s fine. But right now, we’ve got killers out here who are just about as scary as anything I can think of. You know that.”
Portenson lit another cigarette, then tossed it away angrily after one drag. “I’m hoping the whole thing just goes the fuck away,” he said. “There haven’t been any incidents in a few days, not since that stupid horse got his face ripped off. I just hope the whole thing goes away.”
“Maybe it will,” Joe said, thinking again of Cleve Garrett’s theory. “Or maybe just part of it will. If that happens, we’ve still got the other part to figure out.”
Barnum leaned on the horn, even though Portenson was just feet away from his vehicle.
“What an asshole,” Portenson said. “That’s just the half of it,” Joe said back.
25
Lot c17 at the riverside resort and RV Park was empty. “Damn it,” Joe said, thumping the steering wheel of his pickup with the heel of his hand. He looked over to Maxine, remembered that he had left her home to sleep today, then looked back at the vacated lot.
He wondered when they’d left. How long had the Airstream been gone?
A sick feeling welled up in Joe’s stomach. He hoped that Deena was all right. He felt responsible for her, since she had reached out to him even in her pathetic way. If he had acted sooner, had come over to see Deena the morning after the first message, could he have averted something? Had Cleve Garrett discovered their correspondence and hurt her? Or had he simply moved his operation to some other place?
