Nowhere To Run - A Joe Pickett Novel Part 11

McCue looked up. "Eventually."

"I'm done answering questions until you let me know why you're asking them."

"Fine," McCue said, closing the folder. "I've got what I need for now."

"That's it it?"

McCue unhooked his reading gla.s.ses from his ears and let them drop on the cord. "That's it."

"Where can I contact you?" Joe asked, "Cheyenne? One of the other offices? Where are you out of? I've never seen you around."

McCue simply nodded.

"Was that a yes or a no?"

"Thanks for your time," McCue said. "I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again."

"Leave me your card," Joe said. "I may think of something later."

McCue said over his shoulder, "I'll leave one for you at the nurses' station."

And he was gone.

Ten minutes later, Joe pressed his nurse call b.u.t.ton and asked for Agent McCue's DCI business card.

"What?" she said. Then: "There's no card here I can see. I'll check with the other nurses, but I didn't see him stop by on his way out."

"Is there another nurse station?"

"There are several on each floor."

"Would you mind checking with them?"

The pause was no doubt accompanied by rolling eyes, Joe thought. She said, "I'll ask around and let you know."

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Joe opened his eyes and saw something he didn't want to see, so he closed them again, hoping it would go away.

"I know you're awake," his mother-in-law, Missy, said from the foot of his bed.

"I'm sleeping," Joe said.

"You most certainly are not."

"I'm sleeping and having a real bad dream."

"Open your eyes. I need to talk to you."

Joe sighed and cracked his right eye. He knew he was wincing because it hurt when he winced. "Where's Marybeth?"

"She's getting some lunch down in the cafeteria with the girls. She should be back in a half hour or so."

"I wish she'd hurry," Joe said.

Missy narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, her small manicured hands gripping the footrest. "You could be a little more grateful," she said. "Earl and I sent one of his jets to bring you up here from that little Podunk clinic near Baggs so you could have the finest medical care available in the region. Where was it?" she asked, then answered her own question. "Craig, Colorado, or someplace vile like that."

Joe vaguely remembered the flight. He nodded his appreciation, but he knew strings would be attached. As far as Joe knew, Missy had yet to perform a stringless act in her adult life.

"So the least you can do is hear me out," she said.

"I don't like the doctor," he said. "He's arrogant." Joe based his appraisal on an exchange he'd had with Dr. Nadir two days before, when Nadir had shaken his head at Joe and said, "An arrow and buckshot wounds? What is this, the Wild West again? The OK Corral?"

"All good doctors are arrogant," she said. "Especially the Indian ones. That's because they're good. The only ones better are j.a.panese or Chinese, you know. Unfortunately, it's a little too cold for Asians out here. They like warm weather, I understand."

"I was fine in the clinic," Joe said, ignoring her comments.

"That clinic is for oilfield workers who get hit on the head with a wrench. It isn't for the husband of my daughter or the father of my grandchildren."

Joe shrugged, which hurt his right shoulder where they'd removed the double-ought shot pellet.

"Listen," Missy said, "I want to know where Nate Romanowski is hiding."

"Lots of people want to know that," Joe said.

"I need to ask him for a favor."

Joe nodded. Marybeth had filled him in on her mother's plan to hire Nate to intimidate her ex-husband. "So that's why you're here?" Joe said. "The reason why you flew me up to Billings? So you could be here if and when Nate shows up?"

Her eyes sparkled, revealing her answer.

"And here I was thinking you cared about my health and welfare," Joe said.

"Someone has to care about it," she said. "You certainly don't. Don't you think you're getting a little old for this sort of thing? Don't you think maybe it's time to grow up and settle down and get a real job that provides for your family? A job where you can come home at night and be there for your wife and daughters?"

Joe said, "Don't beat around the bush, Missy. Tell me what you really think."

"It needs to be said."

"Not all of us can be media moguls. Or married to one."

Her eyes flashed. "Earl Alden turned a million-dollar inheritance into a seven-hundred-million-dollar empire."

"That first million probably helped," Joe said.

"You're over forty years old," she said, "and your life consists of running around through the woods like a schoolboy-or a kid playing cowboys and Indians."

She leaned forward and her eyes became slits. She said, "For the sake of my daughter, maybe it's time to put away childish things."

Joe didn't have a comeback and he couldn't say what he was thinking, which was, Maybe you're right Maybe you're right.

TALKING WITH THE GIRLS was awkward, he thought. He got the feeling they agreed with that sentiment because they seemed to look at everything in the room besides him. They didn't like seeing him sick or injured in a hospital bed any more than he liked being seen by them in one.

"You look like you're doing better," Sheridan said.

"I am."

"We're all ready to go home."

"Me, too," Joe said.

"Did Mom tell you about basketball? Coach is mad at me already, and he said if I missed practice so I could come see you, I wouldn't play anymore."

"I'm sorry," Joe said.

"I'd rather be here," she said, and smiled sadly. Joe reached out and squeezed her hand.

"Billings sucks," April said. "Billings is nearly as boring as Saddlestring."

"Our little ray of suns.h.i.+ne," Joe commented. April scowled at him.

Sheridan said to April, "Maybe you should have stayed in Chicago."

"Maybe I should have," April shot back.

"Girls, please," Marybeth said, sadness in her eyes.

Sheridan huffed and crossed her arms and looked away. April narrowed her eyes and glared at her, reminding Joe of a rattler coiling to strike.

April looked older than she was, he thought, which was perfectly understandable given the life she'd led. Her Wyoming reentry had not gone smoothly. She was sullen, sarcastic, and pa.s.sive-aggressive toward her foster parents. When Marybeth complained to Joe about her, Joe responded by reminding Marybeth that April was fifteen and her behavior was fairly normal for her age. When Joe complained to Marybeth about April's sullen att.i.tude, Marybeth defended her foster daughter with the same reasoning. Both wondered if they'd be able to wait her out, all the while hoping she'd become sunny and productive and not wreck the dynamics of the family in the meantime. Meanwhile, the process for adoption had begun but stalled due to the complexity of April's legal status. According to their lawyer, the problems weren't insurmountable, but they'd take time to sort through. It would be costly, and Joe and Marybeth had asked him to set the case aside until Joe returned permanently to Saddlestring and could help oversee the progress. Since then, April hadn't asked about how the adoption was going, and Marybeth hadn't brought it up. The silent impa.s.se, Joe knew, would have to be broken soon.

"There's a nice mall," Lucy said about Billings, ignoring April. "Mom said she'd take us there this afternoon."

"Good," Joe said, winking at Marybeth.

"Wow," April said, rolling her eyes, "A mall mall. These people in Montana have thought of everything."

"April," Sheridan moaned.

April gestured toward the television set mounted on the ceiling that Joe had yet to turn on. "They've even got television, but probably, like, one channel."

Joe searched in vain for the remote control to prove to her Montana had cable, but he couldn't locate it.

"I just want everyone to be happy," Lucy said, grinning. "Starting with me."

"It always starts with you," April said.

"It's got to start somewhere." Lucy grinned, but her eyes showed a glint of triumph for the comeback.

"Nice one," Sheridan said.

"Get me out of here," April said to no one in particular.

Marybeth took them to the Rimrock Mall.

12

TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY SHERIFF MCLANAHAN SAID, "KNOCK-KNOCK" but didn't actually knock when he entered Joe's hospital room with a deputy trailing. McLanahan was Joe's age and the two had known each other for ten years, since Joe had moved to Saddlestring and McLanahan was a nascent deputy under the legendary Sheriff O. R. "Bud" Barnum. Barnum had vanished off the face of the earth five years before, and there had always been whispers that Nate Romanowski had had something to do with it. Unfortunately, McLanahan had run for sheriff and won as a protege of Barnum. He'd adopted the same hamfisted, authoritarian approach to the job that Barnum had perfected. Nothing happened in the county that McLanahan wasn't aware of or involved in, but at the same time he managed to keep an arm's-length distance from the machinations, using intermediaries-often his team of four dull-witted cookie-cutter deputies-so if the situation went sour he could claim no knowledge of it.

Joe knew McLanahan disliked him and resented his presence, and he was aware that behind the scenes the sheriff had tried to get him rea.s.signed or fired outright. The sheriff saw Joe as unwanted compet.i.tion, and their clashes over the years had got more bitter, again a continuation of Barnum's reign. Joe hadn't seen McLanahan in the year he'd been in Baggs, but their relations.h.i.+p resumed where it had left off, when the sheriff said, "I'm startin' to wonder if they've got you in the right kind of hospital here, Joe. I'm startin' to think maybe it might be best to put you in one of those facilities with the rubber walls and elevator music because there's a bunch of us fellers startin' to believe you've gone crazy as a d.a.m.ned tick crazy as a d.a.m.ned tick."

He ended the sentence with a tinny uplift and a rural flourish, and the deputy behind him snorted a laugh of pure obligation.

Joe winced and fished for the control that powered his hospital bed so he could raise the head of it. He didn't like the sheriff seeing him p.r.o.ne or in his stupid cotton gown. The fabric, he'd discovered to his horror, was decorated with a pattern of tiny yellow ducks. As the motor whirred and the head of the bed raised, Joe said, "I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing you again, sheriff."

McLanahan clucked his tongue as if to say, Too bad for you Too bad for you, then settled heavily in a straight-backed chair to Joe's right where Marybeth had been for two days. She'd left her sweater over the back, but McLanahan either didn't notice or didn't care.

McLanahan, originally from Virginia, had long ago completed a physical and mental transformation from a hotheaded deputy who spoke in a rapid-fire cadence to a slow-talking Western character who collected and used frontier folkisms that often made absolutely no sense to Joe. He wore a scuffed brown leather vest with a five-star sheriff's badge, a big silver buckle, jeans, and crepe-soled cowboy boots. He owned three horses he'd never ridden that served as props for campaign posters and a twenty-acre parcel he referred to as his "ranch." His huge mustache now stretched from his upper lip to his lower jaw and obscured his mouth, although his eyes were still sharp, small, and devious and gave him away as someone more into calculation and mythmaking than cow's punching, Joe thought. The sheriff c.o.c.ked a heel over the lower railing of Joe's bed and removed his brown sweat-stained hat and fitted it on his raised knee. McLanahan was losing his hair, Joe noted, and he'd gained thirty pounds since he'd last seen him. The deputy, whose nametag read SOLLIS, was dressed in a crisp department uniform s.h.i.+rt and dark black jeans. He had a military buzz cut and dull, hooded eyes. McLanahan had long ago established a policy that the only Western character in the sheriff's department would be the sheriff.

"Two hours ago, I got off the phone with the state DCI boys and Sheriff Baird down in Carbon County," McLanahan said. "They're coming down the mountain as we speak. What they told me made me climb in my rig and drive two hours north across the state line so I could tell you in person."

Joe nodded. After Joe gave his version of events to the sheriff, Baird had quickly requested a team of investigators from the state to ride with him and his deputies into the mountains after the Grim Brothers.

"Does this have to do with some kind of inconsistency in my statements?" Joe asked. "An agent named McCue from DCI was asking me more questions earlier today."

"I don't know him," McLanahan said. "And no, it has nothing to do with him, whoever the h.e.l.l he is. Naw, what I heard I found out from the search team themselves."

Indeed, Joe thought.

"Unlike a certain game warden," McLanahan said, "the search team didn't misplace their communications gear, so I've been getting updates every few hours for the past three days. There's eleven men on horseback been all over those mountains. They been everywhere you described. Guess what they've found?"

Joe felt his mouth go dry.

"Nothin'," McLanahan said. "Not a single G.o.dd.a.m.n thing to corroborate your tall tale."

Joe shook his head. He remembered describing the saddle slope where he'd found the arrow, his ride with Caleb to their camp, and the location of Terri Wade's cabin. Although it had been dark when he found the cabin and escaped from it, he vividly recalled the cut-back where it was and the distance from the creek.