Joe shrugged. “I’m not trying to sell you anything.”
“How’d you get access to the club, anyway?”
Joe caught himself before he looked away. “I know the keypad combination.”
“Right,” McLanahan said, snorting. Joe thought he was caught, and he felt cold dread in his belly.
“Probably got it from your dear mother-in-law,” McLanahan said, sure of himself.
Joe felt the dread dissipate. He said, “Rather than screw around with me, I’d suggest you put out an APB on your star witness, Bud Longbrake. He’s gone.”
The sheriff grinned and looked over his shoulder at Sollis, who smiled back at him. Reed found something interesting to stare at on the top of his boots. They knew something he didn’t.
“No need for that,” McLanahan said. “Bud’s safe and warm in sheriff department custody, but I ain’t sayin’ where. He’s probably enjoying a cocktail to calm his nerves. He called us because he heard you were coming after him. He said he feared for his life.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Joe said. “I’d never hurt Bud.”
“Poor old guy,” McLanahan said, ignoring Joe. “He’s under so much pressure, and you make it worse. He’s a sick man, you know.”
Joe shook his head. He recalled Orin Smith saying something similar. “I don’t know about that,” Joe said. “I just need to talk to him.”
“Not before the trial,” McLanahan said, shaking his head. “Not unless he tells me to let you in. Even then, you’d have to get through Dulcie Schalk, and I don’t think you’re real popular with her right now.”
Sighing, Joe said, “You’re on the wrong track, McLanahan. You’ve been wrong since the murder. Bud wants revenge on Missy and he’s using what happened to get back at her. I don’t blame him, but this crime . . . there’s a lot more to it. Things you’ve never even considered or looked at.”
“Yeah, yeah yeah,” McLanahan muttered, dismissing him. Then to Sollis, “Take this yahoo in and get his statement. Then we’ll decide if we want to arrest him and on what charges. Reed, you drive his truck down to the county building. I’ll call Dulcie and see how she wants to proceed.”
Joe said, “You don’t have to do this.”
“Sure I do,” McLanahan said, turning aside to spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the lawn. To Joe, he said, “Why aren’t you out there trying to catch poachers or something? Shouldn’t you be doing your job instead of mine? You ever think about that?”
“I do,” Joe said. “I just figure one of us needs to do your job.”
Reed snorted a laugh and looked away quickly.
McLanahan froze, and Joe saw something ugly pass over his face. Joe squared up, ready if McLanahan swung.
The sheriff took a deep breath and said to Sollis, “Cuff the son-of-a-bitch.”
On the way through the grounds of the Eagle Mountain Club, handcuffs biting his wrists, Joe thought that he was pleased to have hooked back up with Nate. But he couldn’t help thinking it might be too late to affect the outcome of the trial. And he’d never imagined spending a night in a county cell.
He thought of his daughters. Their grandmother up for murder, their father in jail.
April’s words mocked him: “I guess maybe
Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.
On Wednesday morning, the day Bud Longbrake was to take the stand to testify against Missy Alden for the murder of Earl Alden, Joe sat next to Marybeth in the eighth row of the Twelve Sleep Country Courthouse and dug his index finger into his shirt collar to try to loosen it against the tight cinch of his tie. It didn’t give much, and he felt that he was slowly strangling to death.
He surveyed the room. Everyone seemed to have taken the same seats they’d occupied the previous two days since the trial began.
Judge Hewitt’s courtroom was full and warm and close. Family members, local gadflies, civic leaders, Bud’s drinking buddies from the Stockman’s including Timberman and Keith Bailey, law enforcement personnel, the all- male morning coffee crowd from the Burg-O-Pardner, and local, state, and regional press took every seat. There was a low murmur as everyone waited for what the
Marcus Hand and Dulcie Schalk were at the bench discussing the schedule and rules for the day with Hewitt, who stood and leaned down toward them so the conversation could be kept confidential. Hand wore a dark charcoal suit, white shirt, bolo tie, and his pointy cowboy boots. A silverbelly Stetson sat crown-down on the defense table, but Joe never saw Hand actually put it on. It was solely for effect.
Schalk was dressed sharply in a dark pin-striped business suit and skirt with a cream-colored bow at her throat.
