Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(20)
Joe stopped and got out adjacent to the open garage door that led to the maintenance supervisor’s office inside. He entered the dark building and looked around. Unlike the immaculately decorated homes and club facilities up on the bench, the maintenance facility had the blue-collar ambience of an auto shop: grease-stained floors, benches cluttered with tools and parts, the hum of an ancient radio playing classic rock, the smell of spilled diesel fuel, and a ubiquitous Snap-on Tools calendar featuring a blond model in a hard hat and a yellow bikini.
“Hello?” he called out.
There was a dull thump from underneath a utility pickup to Joe’s left. Joe turned at the sound and saw a pair of legs writhing from beneath the truck.
Darin Westby, the maintenance supervisor, rolled out on a creeper, wincing and rubbing a red welt on his forehead. When his eyes focused, he said, “Joe?”
“Yup. I’m sorry I startled you.”
“I banged my head a good one,” Westby said. “I didn’t hear you roll up and I didn’t expect any company today.”
“Really?” Joe asked. He wondered if sheriff’s department personnel had been by the shop but hadn’t noticed Westby underneath the pickup.
Westby sat up on his creeper and Joe extended his hand to help him to his feet. Westby was a tall man with lengthy arms and legs and oversized hands that looked like paddles attached to his wrists. He’d been the center for the Casper College basketball team before he wrecked his knee, and he’d started as a seasonal golf course groomer and had risen until he was now the maintenance supervisor for the entire Eagle Mountain Club. He’d married a local girl and they had two young children who already looked destined to star in basketball. Joe knew Westby to be a hard worker whose passion, aside from his family, was hunting sage grouse and mourning doves with his two golden retrievers.
The month before, on the nationwide mid-September opening day of dove season, Joe had encountered Westby in a wild-bean field in the breaklands. Although Westby had a bird license and conservation stamp, he’d forgotten to obtain a federal Migratory Bird Harvest Information Program (HIP) stamp. It was a technical violation that could have resulted in a citation, but Joe had given the man a pass and suggested he obtain a HIP stamp at his earliest convenience.
Joe hoped Westby remembered that favor.
“Why should I have expected visitors?” he asked.
Joe said, “I would have thought the cops would be crawling all over this place because of the shooting. Are you saying you haven’t seen them?”
Westby wiped grease from his hands with a soiled red rag and shook his head. “You’re the first guy I’ve seen today.”
“You know about Sue Hewitt, though.”
“Of course I do,” Westby said. “She’s a really nice woman and I feel terrible about her getting shot. It’s such a crazy thing to have happened here at the club.”
“So the sheriff’s department hasn’t questioned you?”
“Nope. Not that I’d have much to tell them,” Westby said. “I had to run to Casper yesterday to pick up a new blade for the snowplow. I was gone when it happened. I didn’t get back until eight-thirty last night and I went straight home. You can check that out with my wife if you want to. I didn’t hear about the shooting until my wife told me she read about it on Facebook this morning.”
Joe nodded. Because the weekly Saddlestring Roundup newspaper wouldn’t come out until Wednesday, that’s how locals kept abreast of breaking news, he knew.
“Did you see any suspicious people around the club before you left?” Joe asked. “You know, maybe someone driving slowly on one of the perimeter roads?”
Westby thought about it. “No.”
“What about in the last week? Like maybe scouting the grounds?”
“It’s been really quiet since the club closed for the season,” he said. “The only thing I can remember is there were a couple of out-of-state antelope hunters I found standing outside the fence on the west side. This was last week. They said they’d wounded a buck that crawled under the fence and they wanted to come in and get it. I let them in and we found the buck dead on the ninth fairway. They started to field dress it right there and I told ’em, ‘Nope, that’s not a good idea.’ Can you imagine that—leaving a gut pile on the fairway?”
Westby related the story of how he helped the hunters load their gut pile into their truck and drive it out of there. He confirmed for Joe that the two hunters didn’t learn the code to the front gate, and hadn’t done anything suspicious while he was with them. He agreed to email Joe their names and plate number.
“Another thing,” Joe said. “Is there a record of everyone who went in and out of the club in the last week? Especially last night?”
“Sure,” Westby said. “We’ve got CCTV at the gate and if someone entered using their transponder there’s a printout at the front office. Are you suggesting a member might have done it?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Joe said. “I’m just trying to cover all the bases.”
“Talk to Judy in the office,” Westby said. “She can get you the printout and copies of the video.”
“I’m sure the sheriff already has,” Joe said. Even though he wasn’t sure about that at all since they hadn’t even been to the shop to question Westby, who was one of the few permanent employees on the grounds.