'What's there to solve?' Barnum asked. 'In my twenty-odd years of experience dealing with things like this, I've come to the painful and sometimes unpopular conclusion that many times things are exactly what they seem to be.'
'Maybe so,' Joe said. 'But I need to convince myself.'
The sheriff studied Joe for what seemed an inordinate amount of time.
'Go do what you need to do,' Barnum finally said. 'Lidgards trailer keys are in the file. Just don't take or disturb any of the evidence, because we might find a next of kin who wants some of that crap out there.'
Joe thanked him and stood up.
'Joe,' Barnum said, as Joe reached for the doorknob, 'shouldn't you be out there in the woods catching poachers or counting gut piles or whatever it is you boys do?'
That stopped Joe and turned him around. 'Yes, I should be,' Joe said quietly. He did not say what he was thinking, which was, Shouldn't you be out there following up every last possibility instead of sitting here on your butt, drinking coffee and worrying about the election?
***
Joe got a copy of the crime report and the trailer keys from Deputy McLanahan.
'Depressing, ain't he?' McLanahan asked Joe. 'This is a really fun place to work these days. When I try and make a joke or even smile about something, he tells me to quit trying to act like Jerry Lewis.'
Joe nodded and got his jacket and hat.
'Jerry Lewis,' McLanahan echoed as Joe stepped outside. It was still raining.
Written with a felt-tipped marker, the cardboard sign on Clyde Lidgards trailer read: Anyone caught vandalizing or attempting to enter these premises will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law by order of the Twelve Sheep County Sheriff's Department.
The rain had caused the letters on the sign to blot and run, and there were several long rivulets of black running the length of the door. It was dark inside the trailer, the heavy rain only allowing a meager amount of light to filter in through the grimy louvered windows. Joe searched for the light switch but discovered that the electricity had been cut off. It smelled musty, and there was the sharp stench of rotting food from the refrigerator and garbage. He decided to check them last, on his way out, because he guessed that the smell would be overpowering once he opened the doors. Joe drew his flashlight from his belt and turned it on. He felt wary and voyeuristic standing in the middle of the dead man's home. The investigations Joe conducted were usually done outside, more often than not over the carcass of a game animal shot and abandoned. In the trailer, Joe felt closed-in. He believed that he didn't know Clyde Lidgard well enough to be in his home. Plus he had no idea what he was looking for in the trailer. The trailer was small and filthy, years of grit coating the floors and counters.
He stood near the kitchen table in the middle of the trailer, trying to decide where to look first. He shone his flashlight around the room, exposing a hallway that branched off of the room he was standing in. All the doors were wide open, the result, Joe guessed, of the sheriff's search. At the end of the hall, Joe could just make out the foot of a bed in a large bedroom. There were two rooms off of the hallway. One led to a tiny bathroom and the other to a small room that appeared to have been used for storage.
Joe started down the narrow hallway, and his holster caught on an exposed nail. He stepped back and unbuckled his cumbersome belt and put the holster on the table. He kept his flashlight. Joe stepped inside the bathroom. Old Marilyn Monroe pictures, puckered from steam, covered the walls and ceiling. The staples that secured the pictures were rusty. Shelves against the corner were filled with dozens of brown, prescription drug bottles. Most of the bottles were dusty and hadn't been used in some time.
Joe read the labels and saw most had been prescribed by doctors at the local VA hospital. The most recent had been filled by Barrett's Pharmacy in Saddlestring. Joe recognized the names Thorazine and Prozac but knew little about either drug.
The small bedroom was filled with boxes, clothes, and junk. So much had been haphazardly piled into the room for so long that the room couldn't really be entered without taking boxes out. Joe shone the flashlight into several of the closest boxes and found them filled with envelopes of photographs. As Sheriff Barnum had said, there appeared to be thousands.
Joe then entered Lidgard's bedroom and found that the twin bed nearly filled all of the floor space. Joe had to turn sidewise and shuffle around the bed to look around. There were a couple of yellowed posters of Marilyn Monroe stapled to the wall along with an army photo of a younger Clyde Lidgard and a calendar from Lane's Feed and Grain in Saddlestring. The sheets on the bed were not beige as he had first thought, but were white sheets so dirty they appeared beige. There was a stale smell in the room.
Joe slid back the closet doors. Lidgard had a surprising quantity of clothing--they completely filled the closet rack--but none of them looked to have been worn for years. Dust covered the shoulders of the shirts and jackets. On the shelf above the clothes, Joe saw a dozen boxes for .30-.30 rifle cartridges. The price tags on the boxes ranged from $8.50 to $18.00, indicating they had been purchased over at least 20 years.
Joe reached up to find that the older boxes were empty but for whatever reason Lidgard had chosen to keep them. Judging by the photographs, junk, pill bottles, and cartridge boxes, Lidgard had been an obsessive collector of things. Joe stood on the end of the bed to make sure he had seen everything on the shelf.
The heavy coat of dust was tracked with recent finger smudges, and Joe assumed they had been left by the other investigators. But Joe didn't see what he was looking for.
Joe closed the closet and drew a small notepad from his shirt pocket.
'Lidgard's trailer,' Joe wrote. 'No nine millimeter cartridges.'
It took Joe several trips to bring out all of the boxes of photographs from the junk room to the kitchen table where the light was better. It appeared that the thick envelopes full of photos were not really arranged in any manner. But in general, the top envelopes contained more recent photos than those at the bottom of the boxes.
Joe took out the newer sets of photographs, looked at them, and was careful to return them into the proper envelopes. The most recent photos had been developed at Barren's Pharmacy, the same place Lidgard filled his prescriptions.
