“Over there in the Hummer. They’re about to run out of gas from operating the heater, so they’re in a hurry.”
“Oh, really?”
“I told them you’d be real concerned.” She stamped her feet, trying to get some feeling back in them. “I wasn’t sure about how to secure the sight, but Ferg and I thought we could zip-tie the tarp to the top of the truck and then tie it off to another vehicle. It’s probably going to flap like a Windjammer cruise, but…”
“Yep.” I looked around me, trying to absorb it all because in another hour it might look like Stalingrad. There were trailing wisps of snow dunes arching away from the higher points of Jacob’s body already. “Tire tracks?”
She kneeled down beside me. “Only those guys, pulling in once, circling back out, and then pulling in again.”
“How did they call?”
“Cell phone.”
“Why did they pull out?”
“Bad reception.”
“You look at the boot prints?”
“Yeah, Vasques. So’s the dearly departed and one of the execs.”
“Popular boot.”
“Popular size.”
We both shrugged and looked at Jacob. “No sheep?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No sheep. Preliminary triangulation indicates an area across the lake, maybe even over where those really shitty-looking cabins are.”
I turned in the opposite direction from the truck and peered through the darkness and the snow. The headlights of Vic’s unit weren’t helping. We stood up to escape them and strained our eyes into the darkness. “Where would you shoot from?”
“Top of that ridge, along the tree line.”
I turned to look at her. “Any local activity?”
“They say they heard somebody shouting over on the other side about the time they pulled in, around nine.”
“What’re they doing pulling in here at nine o’clock at night?”
“Supposed to borrow a cabin from Dave McClure; drove up from Casper after work. Now they’re not sure if they have the right day.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
She nodded. “That fact’s been established and corroborated. Ferg is checking with Dave about their plans.”
I thought about the next move. “Get the tarp tied down as soon as Ferg gets off the radio.”
She stomped her feet again. “DCI in Wheatland by now?”
“Weather permitting.”
She was looking at the side of my face as I looked at Jacob. “We’re not going to be able to keep them out.” I continued to look at Jacob. “Walt?”
“Get Ferg to help you get the tarp done. Then tell him to get that metal detector he has at home and check that hillside over there when he gets back…”
“Gets back?”
“Then get in your truck, put on your winter gear, and warm up.” She stopped stomping, looked at me for a while longer, and then went off to check on Ferg.
She was right. We had gone from a sleepy little death by misadventure to a multiple homicide, and the Division of Criminal Investigation was going to want their pound of postmortem flesh. The nagging voice of reason kept reminding me that their experience and technical capabilities gave them a much better chance of breaking the case, but then a stronger voice came in and stated flatly that this was my case and my county. Along the way, it had gotten personal. The first thing I had to do was get the two remaining boys out of county, out of state, out of the country if I had to. Lucian would say there was a fox in the henhouse, and I would say it was time to get the chickens on down the road. I turned back to Jacob. He hadn’t changed much. Dead men don’t tell tales, but I always expect them to pop up and tell me it had all been a big joke. In thirty years of law enforcement, I had been deeply disappointed.
The interior light of Jacob’s truck was on, but very dimly. The door was ajar, key chain hanging from the ignition. I looked under the truck at the exhaust where a few drips of condensate were frozen at the bottom of the tailpipe. There was a shallower impression in the snow where the exhaust would have blown out and a large slick of ice under the engine. I glanced down the fender for insignia and, sure enough, it said diesel. Jacob had started his truck to let it warm up, and whatever had happened had happened when he was exiting or reentering the vehicle. With the orientation of the body, I would think that he was getting out. I’m pretty sure he had been sitting here, like this, and the truck had run out of fuel.
There were no fishing rods lying about, and he wasn’t wearing a vest, waders, or any of the other accoutrement that fisherman usually wore. I stood up and walked around the truck to get a look inside. The passenger-side door was locked; hardly anybody ever does that in Wyoming. There was frost on the inside of the windows, but I could still make out a couple of aluminum fly-rod cases lying along the seat, two vests, and a small cooler. The cooler was a battered old thing with a bumper sticker on it that read CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.
Working with the preliminary observations, without checking for discoloration of the right and left sides of the abdomen, the victim had been dead approximately, and I was guessing, fourteen to sixteen hours, which placed the TOD at the earliest at five o’clock this morning. If there were trout in the cooler, I could reasonably assume that Jacob had been fishing early. Before dawn? I looked around the rest of the truck for a tent, sleeping bag, or any other evidence that he might have spent more than one day. There were the cabins, but we were going to have to do a sweep of them anyway.
I walked back around the truck and looked at the spot where the gore of his heart and part of a lung had sprayed against the edge of the bed. That meant there was lead in the hillside adjacent to the gravel lot, or in the truck, or in Jacob. Maybe. Something moved under the truck, and I lowered my perspective to see what it was. Jacob’s black cowboy hat had blown under the transfer case and had lodged against one of the front wheels. There was a small collection of feathers stuck in the side of the headband. I looked back at the boy’s dull eyes, shining my flashlight along his body, and got to wondering. I stood, leaning over the body, and extended the flashlight to the open section of his jacket and pushed it back, just enough to reveal the pristine tip of a bleached, straightened, Minwaxed turkey feather.
“What the hell is going on over here!”
I’m pretty sure I stood up and turned around faster than I ever had before. He was a little older than me, well below medium height but nowhere near medium build. He had a face like an old prizefighter, bulbed and knobby wherever it protruded. It was like life was bound to come out even if circumstance was bound to pound it in, and circumstance was standing over him at the moment. Circumstance also noted the broken blood vessels and the flaccidness of the rest of his face; this was not an amateur drinker but a full-blown alcoholic. As my eyes traveled down the open, olive drab parka, past the polyester fur around the hood and the red-and-white-striped tank shirt to the bulging stomach, I noticed the floral print swimming trunks and the thin, birdlike legs that extended into a pair of unlaced arctic boots. I also noticed the drink in his hand, in a martini glass, complete with a sour apple slice and a little green paper parasol. “Who are you?”
He wasn’t paying any attention to me but had leaned to one side to get a better look at the crime scene. “Holy shit!”
I moved over a little, blocking his view. “Excuse me?”
He looked back at me and actually saluted. “Sorry, General. What’s up?” I sighed and repeated the question. “Al Monroe, I got one of them cabins over by the lake.” He listed farther to the side. “Jesus, he’s deader than hell.”
“Mr. Monroe, have you been up here long?”
“Last three days, had a hell of a drunk goin’ till I saw all these damn lights over here; thought somebody’d died.” He took a sip of his martini and looked at me thoughtfully. “Looks like somebody fuckin’ did.”
