Tassell cleared his throat. He looked wrung out and angry. “I’d like to remind everyone here that Mr. Pickett is under arrest for assault, so I’d appreciate you not having side conversations. Letting him out of the cell to talk with you is a courtesy.”
“Thank you,” Joe told Tassell. He looked at Trey, said, “Thanks for telling Marybeth that, but I did hit the guy. My only regret is that I didn’t shoot him—”
“Joe,” Trey cautioned, interrupting, “watch what you say here.”
Joe was struck by the wisdom of that and went silent.
“We might have a way to get you out of this,” Pope said.
Joe turned to him. Pope sat on the other side of the table with Tassell.
“I talked with Don Ennis an hour ago at the hospital,”
Pope said. “He was very distraught, as you can guess. The poor guy lost his wife this morning. But he did say he’d consider dropping the charges if we would transfer you out of here.”
“Was he in the boat when it happened?” Joe asked.
Pope looked back, confused. “What difference does that make? Didn’t you hear me? He said he’d consider dropping the charges.”
“Who was in the boat?”
Pope angrily slapped the table and addressed Joe’s supervisor. “Trey, we have a terrible situation here, as you know.
We could have one of our game wardens charged with aggravated assault—the second employee in this same district to get arrested. If that happens, it will look like the governor has completely lost control of this agency. I risk my reputation to get this guy out of it, and he doesn’t seem to care!”
Trey sighed heavily and leaned toward Joe. “Joe, what’s going on? We could both lose our jobs over this.”
“His wife drowns but he has the presence of mind to negotiate my transfer?” Joe asked. “Does that sound like a grieving widower to you?”
“Shock affects people in different ways,” Pope said weakly, again talking to Trey as if he couldn’t deal with Joe.
“Don Ennis has a direct line to the governor, Trey. He’s not somebody we can fuck around with anymore. We let you give Will Jensen a long leash, and then Joe here. Things couldn’t have gone worse under your watch. Now we’ve got to think of our survival, and I’m talking about the whole agency.”
“What did you offer him?” Joe asked Pope. “Did you tell him we’d approve Beargrass Village?”
Pope flushed red but didn’t answer.
“You did,” Joe said.
“I’m trying to keep you out of jail!” Pope shouted.
“Why can’t you get that?”
Joe stood up, and he noticed that both Trey and Tassell pushed back from the table in case they needed to restrain him.
“Don Ennis caused Will Jensen to break,” Joe said. “He started to do the same to me. He probably killed his wife this morning. And you”—he pointed awkwardly across the table with his handcuffs at Pope—“just gave him what he wanted all along.”
The room was silent, until Pope asked, “Can you prove a single thing you’re saying?”
Joe hesitated. “Some of it,” he said. “But you’ll need to give me the rest of the day to nail it all down.”
Trey looked from Pope to Tassell. “Let’s give Joe a chance here. Is that all right with you, Sheriff ?”
“I don’t think I like where this is headed,” Sheriff Tassell said, shaking his head. “I don’t think I like it at all.”
On the way to the statehouse in Tassell’s Cherokee, the sheriff kept shaking his head. “We lose a couple of people every year on the river,” he said. “Unlike homicides, it isn’t that unusual.” He had told Joe, Pope, and Trey that while going through the rapids, Stella apparently lost her grip on the rope and was thrown from the boat. Don Ennis said she must have been tugged underneath his raft because they didn’t see her again. Teams were searching for the body, but they hadn’t found it yet.
“We’ve had situations where the body isn’t found for weeks,” Tassell said, “sometimes even longer. If it gets pinned under the water against rocks, we just have to wait. One guy wasn’t found for over a year. His body washed all the way down to Palisades Reservoir and an ice fisherman found him when he was drilling a hole in the ice.”
“Who else was in the boat?” Joe asked again.
“Don, of course,” Tassell said, “Pete Illoway, and some guy named Shane Suhn, who works for Ennis. They all corroborated the story.”
“How do we know she was in the boat?”
“Some other rafters saw her when they launched,” Tassell said.
“Where did it happen?” Joe asked. “Where on the river?”
“At the start of the worst stretch of whitewater,” Tassell said. “That’s where most of the drownings take place. People get used to nice easy rapids, and then they hit the hard stuff and they aren’t prepared for it.”
Tassell leaned across the table to look at Joe. “You’ve seen all those Snake River rafting pictures around
