Overall, the room was spartan, the office of someone who rarely used it or couldn’t get away from it fast enough. That fit with what Joe knew of Will and most of the other game wardens. Their actual workplace was outside, not inside. They used their desks with hesitation and profound regret, spending only as much time there as absolutely necessary between bouts in the field.
A cheap bookcase was a quarter filled with departmental memo binders and statute books. A retro Winchester Ammunition calendar was pushpinned into the wall. There were no personal photos, no drawings from his children.
The only adornment was a framed, faded photo hanging on the wall, cocked slightly to the left, of the elk refuge in winter. Joe instinctively knew that Mary, or maybe Will’s wife—but not Will—had put it there.
The left wall was dominated by a largescale Forest Service map of the North Jackson district. Pins with tiny paper flags numbered 1 through 37 indicated where the licensed outfitter camps were located. The camps followed river drainages in a march toward Yellowstone.
Joe sat in Will’s chair, still reluctant to settle in. The chair was uncomfortable, and was much older than the building itself. Joe wondered if one of the other employees had swapped out a chair at the news of Will’s demise. He brushed the pen aside and looked at the spiral notebook.
The red cover had a large “#10” written on the outside in black marker. Inside were entries scribbled in a tiny, cribbed block print.
10/02—0600. Rosie’s / Box Creek / front country. MI 567B Blk GMC / Rosie’s / Call / Okay per Disp. PA 983 Silver Ford 3/4 / HT / Rosie’s / Call / Okay per Disp.
WY 24BX Green Yukon / Rosie’s / Call / Antlerless. Citation issued.
1700—Turpin. 6b, 2s, 2 Wtbucks. Okay . . .
Joe quickly figured out Will’s shorthand code. It was similar to the notes he kept in his own field notebooks. In translation, the notes said that on October 2 at 6 a.m., Will was patrolling Rosie’s Ridge and the Box Creek front country in his pickup, checking on elk hunters. While he didn’t see the hunters themselves, who had most likely left their vehicles and set up somewhere in the vast country to look for elk, Will noted their parked vehicles—a black GMC from Michigan, a silver Ford threequarterton pickup with Pennsylvania plates, and a green Yukon with Wyoming plates. Will had called in each of the plates to dispatch and requested a crossreference computer check to determine the name of the hunter and whether or not that hunter had obtained a permit from the department to hunt elk in the area. While the outofstate hunters checked out (“Okay per Dispatch”), the Wyoming hunter had a license that only allowed him to hunt antlerless elk, which meant his particular season didn’t open up for two more weeks. Will had located the Wyoming hunter, confirmed that he had violated regulations, and issued a citation.
Later in the afternoon, at 5 p.m., Will had patrolled through the Turpin Meadow campground at about the time that the first backcountry hunters were returning to their camps. The hunters had harvested six bull elk, two spike elk (yearling bulls), and two whitetail buck deer. All the kills had been clean and legal by properly licensed hunters, because no warnings or citations were noted.
Joe closed the notebook and sat back. The notes, once deciphered, presented a detailed account of his movements and actions. Using the notebook, citation book, and callin record, a determined investigator could easily document what he did all day. Joe found that reassuring in his circumstances, since nearly everyone he encountered in the field was armed. The only game wardens who did mind, Joe knew, were the few with extracurricular activities like drinking while on duty or visiting lonely wives.
He reopened notebook #10 and scanned it. Since it was not yet October 2, it was from a previous year. On the last page with writing on it, in tiny script, he found where Will had written down the date of the year before. There were twenty or so fresh pages at the end of the notebook with no notes on them. Joe flipped back to page one, saw that the first entry was 01/02. So Will used a single spiral notebook for a given year.
He pushed back his chair and opened the desk drawers.
They were remarkably empty, again the sign of a man who rarely used his office. But in the bottom left drawer he found a stack of new and used spirals exactly like the one on the desktop. Joe pulled them out and fanned them across the desk. The used notebooks were numbered 1 through 9, and were ragged and swollen with wear. The tenth he had already looked at. There were four unused notebooks, all clean and tightly bound. In the bottom of the drawer was a balledup sheet of thin plastic, the original wrapper for the sheaf. Joe unwrapped the plastic and unfolded the paper band that had held the notebooks together. On the band it said there were fifteen to the package.
Which meant that the spiral for the current year was missing. Or in Will’s pickup (where Joe kept his) or in Will’s home. Joe opened his briefcase and slid all the notebooks into it. He would read them when he had the time, probably in the evening. What else would he have to do? He was determined to find #11.
Joe needed to call Marybeth and smooth things over. But as he reached for the phone, he felt more than heard the presence of someone in the doorway, and he looked up with a start.
“Are you here for the funeral tomorrow?” a man asked in place of a greeting.
Joe pushed back awkwardly from the desk because one of the rollers on the chair was damaged, and stumbled when he stood up. The man in the doorway was tall and thin with light blue eyes, sandy hair, and a pallor that came from working indoors in an office. He wore a tweed jacket over a turtleneck, and Wrangler jeans so new they were still stiff. The trendy hiking boots that poked out from his jeans looked like they had been taken out of the box only a few hours before.
Joe introduced himself and held out his hand. The man shook it languidly, and pulled his hand away quickly.
“Should I know you?” Joe asked.
“I would think so,” the man said. “I’m Assistant Director Randy Pope. From headquarters in Cheyenne. You were supposed to be here Monday night.”
Joe certainly recognized the name, even though he had never met Pope personally. Randy Pope was in charge of fiscal matters for the agency. Most of the memos that crossed Joe’s desk concerning procedure, the wage and salary freeze, the abuse of overtime and comp time, the unaccountability of game wardens in the field, had been issued by Randy Pope.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Pope,” Joe said, trying to sound friendly. “I’m late because I was helping Trey Crump out with a problem bear.”
