BILL GORDON was sitting partially in shadow on a park bench when Joe arrived. Gordon appeared to be looking him over as Joe parked and opened his door.
“What about me?” Byron asked.
“Stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes and we can get this all straightened out.”
“You’re gonna shoot me, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” Joe scoffed, “and I’d probably miss if I tried. I’m a horrible pistol shot.”
Byron’s eyes did a “now you tell me” roll.
Joe hoped Gordon wouldn’t get nervous and run when he saw the cop inside the van. He was relieved when he shut the door and saw that Gordon was still there.
“Bill?” Joe called, walking across the grass that was stiffening with cold. “It’s Joe Pickett. I’m sorry I’m late. I got nailed in a speed trap coming into town.”
Gordon didn’t move, just sat there slightly slumped to the side, a wash of pale moonlight on the side of his face.
“Bill?”
Joe froze when he was ten feet away. He saw it all at once—the gun held loosely in Gordon’s fist, the small hole in one temple and the larger exit hole in the other, bits of brain and bone flecked across the backrest of the bench.
Joe whispered, “Oh. No.”
24
JOE SAT alone at a scarred table in Witness Room Number Two in the Twelve Sleep County Building at one in the morning, waiting for Sheriff McLanahan and Deputy Reed to return. They’d been gone over an hour. On the table was a mug of weak coffee that had gone cold.
The amoral eye of a camera mounted in a high corner of the room watched him. The mirrored plate of one-way glass in the wall reflected the image of a man who very much wished he was home in bed. Anywhere but where he was.
He groaned and sat back, staring at the blazing light fixture inset in the ceiling. He thought,
AFTER HE found Gordon’s body and confirmed he was dead, Joe called county dispatch and asked Wendy, the dispatcher, to locate the sheriff and send him to Winchester right away. He told Wendy he’d stay at the crime scene until the sheriff and the coroner’s team arrived.
“And please put out an APB for a light-colored SUV heading toward Saddlestring from Winchester on the highway. The subject inside I believe is Klamath Moore, and he may have information on the death of the victim here on the park bench.”
“That Klamath Moore?” Wendy asked.
“That Klamath Moore,” Joe said, punching off.
“Jesus, is that guy dead?” said Officer Byron. Joe hadn’t heard Byron walk up to him.
“Yes.”
“This is my first dead body,” Byron said. “I mean, other than a car wreck or some old lady dying of a heart attack. It sure looks like he ate his own gun, don’t it?”
“That’s what it looks like.” But Joe had his doubts.
“I want my gun back now.”
“No,” Joe said. “Go sit down until the sheriff gets here. Don’t get any closer to the crime scene.”
Byron turned from Gordon’s body to Joe. “You are in
“I know.”
Joe made two more calls before the sheriff’s department arrived, the first to Marybeth advising her not to wait up for him because he’d discovered a dead body and assaulted a police officer. She was speechless.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“You assaulted a cop?”
“Sort of, yes.”
“And you say not to worry?”
“I’ll be home soon,” he said, wishing it were true.
The other call was to Special Agent Tony Portenson, telling him his confidential informant had just been found dead.
Portenson had predictably exploded, and Joe told him he’d get back to him with more details and closed his phone.
ANOTHER HOUR. Joe paced the witness room, tried to see if anyone was looking at him through the one-way mirror into the hallway. The repercussions of what he’d done, what had happened, crushed in on him from all sides. At one point, he had to hold himself up with one hand on the wall and breathe deeply, get his wits back. His heart raced and slowed, raced and slowed.
When the door opened he jumped.
