Suddenly, Susan turned her wrist and looked at her watch. If her glass hadn’t been empty, Joe noticed, she would have spilled wine on her lap. “I need to get back to the boys and the, um, mourners.”
“Thank you for your time, Susan. I really appreciate it.”
Again, she patted his hand.
She slid down from the stool, a little shakily. Joe steadied her by holding her forearm until she was standing. She put the glass down and smoothed her skirt. She started to say goodbye and then stopped. “Joe, with all of your questions I nearly forgot why I needed to talk to you in the first place.”
She said, “A year ago, just as Will was starting to lose his bearings and six months before I left him, he took me out to dinner. It was a fairly nice evening, even though we couldn’t afford it. Everything here just costs so much. Anyway, out of the blue, he said that when he died he wanted his remains scattered in a specific place. When I look back on that now, I think he knew something was going to happen.”
She had her legs back and was walking out of the lounge, Joe following.
“Two Ocean Pass, that’s the place,” she said. “It’s somewhere up in the wilderness area, where he patrolled. He described it pretty thoroughly, for Will.”
She stopped in the hallway and turned to face Joe. He could hear the fog of conversation coming from the reception room, where no doubt mourners were waiting for the widow.
“He said a creek comes down from the mountains. I think he called it Two Ocean Creek. Anyway, the stream flows south through a big meadow and splits at a lone spruce tree. It’s exactly on the Continental Divide. One part of the stream flows to the Atlantic and the other to the Pacific. He said it was the most beautiful meadow he had ever seen. He wants his ashes scattered there, by the tree.”
Joe now grasped what she was asking.
“I’ll never get up there,” she said. “I don’t even want to try. But it’s in your new district, and you can probably find it.”
“I’ll do it,” Joe said. “I’m honored.” He knew vaguely of the location from the map on the office wall. “Do you want me to do anything else?”
She shook her head. “That’s more than enough, Joe. I’ll give you my number in Casper, if you don’t mind calling me when it’s done.”
The urn looked like an extra large beer stein. Joe carried it to his pickup, thinking how light it was, wondering guiltily what the ashes looked like (brown, gray, or white?). On the street, a jackedup Grand Am filled with teenagers slowed, and a window rolled down and an unformed simian face jutted out, asking, “Dude, where’s the party?”
Thirteen
At 4:45 p.m., Joe entered the office of the Teton County Sheriff ’s Department and told the receptionist he was there to meet with Sheriff Tassell. The receptionist said the sheriff was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. Behind her he could see a hallway with several closed doors, and he could hear the hum of voices from behind one of them.
Joe was annoyed. “When will he be free?” “He didn’t say.”
“Did he leave me a message? Or a set of keys?” “And you are . . . ?” she asked archly.
He told her.
“No, there’s nothing for you here.”
Joe considered waiting, and looked around the small reception area. There were two chairs, and one of them was filled with a sinewy man wearing khakis, a polo shirt, a jacket, and light hiking boots. Not local, Joe thought, but buttonedup and urban, attempting to appear casual and outdoorsy. The man looked straight back at Joe, as if daring him to take the seat next to him.
“Are you waiting for the sheriff too?” Joe asked.
“Could be,” the man said. There was something coiled up about him, Joe thought. Then he noticed the earpiece, and the thin wire that curled from it into the man’s collar.
“Are you Secret Service?” Joe asked, remembering Tassell’s other meeting about the vice president’s visit.
“Could be,” the man said again. “I think the sheriff will be in there awhile.”
Joe was being dismissed. He glanced at the receptionist, who was suddenly busy reading a magazine and wouldn’t look back.
“When you see the sheriff,” Joe told the receptionist, “please ask him to call me.” He wrote down his cell phone number on a business card and handed it to her. “Tell him if he doesn’t call me, I’ll need to bother him at home later.”
She took Joe’s card without comment.
The Secret Service agent watched him coolly, but turned away as if to say, “You’re dismissed.”
He drove out of town to the north and parked in a pullout overlooking the river. The urn with Will Jensen’s ashes sat on the passenger seat where Maxine should have been, the seat belt securing it. The urn gave him a feeling of macabre unease.
The Tetons, backlit from the setting sun, were black sawteeth against the purpling sky. On the Snake River, through the gold aspen, Joe could see a blue rubber raft floating down the river filled with tourists bundled up in life vests. The guide who manned the oars pointed upriver for his guests, and Joe followed his gesture. A large bald eagle’s nest, the size of a small car, it seemed, occupied an oldgrowth cottonwood treetop. With his binoculars, Joe could see two fledgling eagles in the nest. The mother duckwalked around the rim of the nest, looking down at her young ones. He could see their hooked beaks opening and closing, pink inside their mouths.
Which made Joe think of Nate’s falcons. Which made him think of Saddlestring. Which made him think that he better call home. He plucked his phone from the cradle and hit the speed dial.
