where Marybeth would be. Her name was written on a card outside the door and the ink was still wet. She would be alone inside, he noted. She wouldn't have a roommate. He walked down the hall to the maternity ward and heard babies crying. He found himself staring at a young mother still plump and flushed from delivery. She was cradling a tiny red baby in her arms, waiting for a nurse to wheel her to her room. The scene pole axed him. In a daze, he ascended a set of stairs to the next level.
Joe wandered aimlessly but conveyed a sense of purpose that he didn't really have, and no one stopped him. When he glanced into the rooms he was passing, he saw there were older people on this floor. People waiting to get better or die. A television set was on and Jay Leno was interviewing someone.
A Billings police officer stood casually at the nurses' station and leaned on the counter. He didn't give Joe a second glance as Joe walked past. The policeman was talking in low tones to an attractive nurse who seemed interested in what he was saying but was feigning boredom. Joe noticed the policeman's empty chair near a room at the end of the hall, and he walked past it. The card on the wall of the room read C. Lidgard.
Joe took a few steps before it hit him. He stopped and looked down the hall over his shoulder. The policeman had his back to Joe, and he could hear the nurse giggle. Joe hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked into the room. He eased the door shut behind him.
Clyde Lidgard lay in the dark room illuminated by a small bulb mounted in the headboard. Joe hardly recognized him. Lidgard looked like he was 80 years old and was little more than a skeleton. His skin was waxy and yellow and harshly wrinkled. Webs of tubes sprang from his arms looking like the white roots of a neglected potato. His head was turned on the pillow toward the door, and the light from the bulb infused his feathery silver hair with a glow.
Joe stared at Clyde Lidgard's face as if willing him to wake up out of his coma.
'Tell me what you know, Clyde,' Joe said. 'Just tell me what you know.'
When Clyde Lidgard's eyes slowly opened, Joe stood riveted to the floor.
Lidgard's eyes were rheumy and caked with mucus. Joe wasn't sure Lidgard could even see out of them. It didn't seem possible that Lidgard was actually awake or had any idea that Joe was in the room. Maybe Lidgard normally did this while he slept.
'Can you hear me, Clyde?' Joe asked softly. He half-expected the nurse and police officer to burst in at any moment and throw him out.
Lidgard's lips pursed as if he were sucking on a candy. 'You're dry. Do you want some water?' Joe said, pouring some from a plastic pitcher into a small paper cup. He held the cup to Lidgard's
lips, and Lidgard drank. His eyes followed Joe's movements.
'Do you know who I am?' Joe asked quietly.
'Warden.' The response was so weak that Joe almost didn't hear it.
'Warden.' Joe replaced the pitcher and bent over Lidgard's face. He smelled the odor of decay on Lidgard's breath. It was the same smell a deer or an elk had after it had been shot.
'That's right,' Joe said.
'I'm Game Warden Joe Pickett from the Saddlestring District. You need to tell me what happened up there in that elk camp.'
Lidgard's eyes closed momentarily then opened again. 'I'm going to die now,' Lidgard said.
'Not before you tell me about the elk camp,' Joe persisted. 'Not until you tell me about the Miller's weasels.'
There was a tiny reaction on the corner's of Clyde Lidgard's mouth, as if he were trying to smile.
'I took some good pictures of them weasels,' Lidgard replied. 'But I never got to see if they turned out. Instead, I died.'
Joe gave Clyde Lidgard some more water. It was still quiet in the hallway.
'You talked for a while and cleared your conscience. A huge weight lifted off of you,' Joe said.
'And then you died, feeling much better about yourself.'
'I did?' Lidgard asked.
'Starting now,' Joe said.
When Joe Came out of the room, the policeman was still leaning over the nurses' counter, and Clyde Lidgard was dead.
***
The first thig Joe noticed as Marybeth was rolled out of the operating room was that, compared to Clyde Lidgard, she looked remarkably healthy. He found her hand under the sheet and squeezed it as he walked alongside the gurney. The emotion he felt when he looked at her flat bandaged belly brought tears to his eyes.
They made him let go of her hand for a moment while they situated her bed in the room, but when the nurses moved to set up the IV bottle, he went back to her. They told him they had just given her some powerful sedatives and that she would be asleep until morning. But the drugs hadn't kicked in completely yet, because for a moment, she awakened.
'You're going to be all right,' Joe said, forcing a smile. 'You're going to make it and be just fine.'
She seemed to be looking to him for some kind of reassurance. He hoped he was providing it.
'Marybeth, do you know who did this?'
'I couldn't see. All I know is that it was a man.'
'Is there anything you can tell me?'
'What about my baby?' Her voice was thick.
