Joe’s eyes left the page and settled on an envelope on the table, the invitation to Don and Stella Ennis’s party. Stella was the only person Will trusted. She was the connection. Was she close enough to Will in the end to report his movements? And how, exactly, could she facilitate “them” getting into his head, as he wrote?
Joe couldn’t make himself believe it was Stella, not after the way she had looked at him across the table. No one, he thought, could fake that kind of concern in her eyes, act that well. She had been on Will’s side in his struggle; he had trusted her. But during breakfast, when Joe had mentioned the traces of drugs the doctor said were in his system, she reacted unpredictably. The information clearly triggered something in her mind. But he knew one thing—he had to make a decision about Stella that had nothing to do with Will. And he had to do it tonight.
Joe rubbed his eyes. His head was full of questions about Will, but as of yet, he had no answers. He felt tired and frustrated and mainly just wished he had a beer. Forgetting about his stitches, he pushed back from the table and felt a sharp stab of pain. As the day wore on, his wound hurt more. Dr. Thompson had given him a prescription for Tylenol 3 to dull the pain, and he decided to take one.
As he filled a glass from the tap on the refrigerator, he looked absently out the window at Will Jensen’s old pickup in the driveway. Along the sidewalk, a neighbor wearing a tam was walking his dog, glancing furtively toward the house the way nosy neighbors do.
Suddenly, Joe froze, the tablet on his tongue, the water glass an inch from his lips, several thoughts hitting him at once.
Traces of drugs.
Will’s pickup.
The intruder in his yard that night, clunking against the house.
He knew how they had done it.
And they were doing it to him.
He lowered the glass, spit out the tablet, and opened the front door. The neighbor looked up, his eyes widening for a moment, then his face broke out into a relieved smile.
The neighbor said, “Goodness, for a second there I thought you were—”
“I know,” Joe said.
Puzzled, the man continued down the sidewalk.
Joe threw open the pickup door and shone a flashlight into the entrails of colored wires under the dashboard. It took a moment before he found what he was looking for.
Even as he touched it with the tips of his fingers, he was chilled how they had pulled it off.
He climbed out of the truck shaking his head.
“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” Joe yelled to the neighbor, who was halfway down the block.
“Me?” the neighbor asked, pulling on his dog to turn it.
Joe waited until the man came back. “You’ve lived here for a long time, right? You knew Will Jensen?”
“Yes,” the man said cautiously.
“Do you walk your dog every night?” Joe asked.
The man nodded. “As long as the weather doesn’t keep us in.”
Joe’s mind was spinning. “Were you walking your dog the night Will Jensen died?”
Thirty Four
There were Secret Service agents in addition to armed security guards checking invitations at the front gate of the Ennis home. Joe waited behind a black Lexus SUV until it was cleared to proceed, wishing he’d washed the pickup before coming.
A security guard shone a flashlight into Joe’s face and asked him to remove his driver’s license from his wallet.
“I know you,” the guard said, seeing his name. “You’re the guy who shot Smoke Van Horn.”
Joe nodded and looked away. A Secret Service agent stepped from behind the guard and walked around the front of the truck to the passenger side and opened the door. The agent was lean and young, with an earpiece and cord that snaked down into his jacket. “Are there weapons in this truck?” he asked, looking around inside.
“Standard issue,” Joe said, pointing out the carbine under the seat, the shotgun in the gunrack, the cracker shell pistol in the glove box. He was glad he’d left his holster and weapon in the statehouse.
“This is a problem,” the agent said, stepping back and speaking into a microphone in his sleeve.
Joe waited, and several cars pulled up behind him.
Finally, the agent climbed into the cab with Joe and shut the door. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but the vice president will be here soon. We’ll need to park you away from the premises,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the front door, and I’ll need your keys while you’re inside. When you’re ready to go tonight, just tell one of my colleagues and I’ll meet you at the front door and walk you back to your truck.”
The Ennis home was spacious, with high ceilings, marble floors, and walls of windows that framed views of the Tetons. The furniture was made of stripped and varnished lodgepole pine, the style favored locally, and a massive elk antler chandelier with hundreds of small lights hung from a faux–logging chain. The home was crowded with guests bunched around portable bars, waiting for bartenders in tuxedos to pour their drinks. Joe scanned the crowd in the front room for anyone he might know, and saw no one familiar. Everyone, he noticed, looked exceedingly healthy and fit. The men wore open collars and jackets with expensive jeans or khakis, and the women wore cocktail dresses or ultrahip outdoor casual clothes. He felt out of place, as he normally did. The feeling was made worse when guests gestured toward him and nodded to one another and he realized he was, in fact, being talked
