Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(22)
Joe asked, “Aren’t you and Justin the lead investigators for the department?”
“Not anymore,” Steck said. “We’ve been busted back to patrol. There are no lead investigators anymore. Sheriff Kapelow assumed our duties. He’s the only chief investigator now.”
“I guess he has his reasons,” Joe said. Although he sympathized with both Woods and Steck over their demotions, he was in no position to get involved with an interdepartmental reorganization or to clearly take sides.
“It’s almost like he doesn’t trust us,” Steck said with barely disguised sarcasm. “Is the Game and Fish Department hiring these days?”
“Nope,” Joe said. “We still have a freeze on.”
“Let me know if it thaws,” Steck said. “And if it does, tell me before you tell Justin, okay?”
Joe smiled and said, “Will do.” Then: “I’m going to park here for a minute while I go inside.”
“Don’t expect to be welcome in there,” Steck said. “And if the boss asks, I did everything I could to stop you, short of pulling my weapon.”
*
THE HEAVY DOUBLE front entrance doors of the Hewitt home were unlocked, and Joe stepped inside and closed them behind him. He found himself in an anteroom with gray stone tile and dark wood paneling. Coats and jackets of every weight hung from hooks inside, and lined neatly on the floor beneath them were men’s and women’s shoes ranging from Columbia fishing sandals to golf shoes to Sorel Pac boots for winter.
The hallway was festooned with trophy big-game mounts and carved fish. Joe noted not only a display featuring Wyoming’s own Cutt-Slam of native trout including the Bonneville cutthroat, Yellowstone cutthroat, Colorado River cutthroat, and Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat, but Judge Hewitt’s prized display of the North American Wild Sheep Grand Slam. An eight-foot-tall full-size Alaskan brown bear mount stood at the end of the hallway as if to scare away visitors.
Although Joe wasn’t good at guessing the price of real estate, he knew the Hewitt home was worth millions, as were all the other Eagle Mountain Club residences. A multimillion-dollar home and extensive domestic and international trophy-hunting excursions couldn’t have been underwritten by Hewitt’s compensation as a county judge. So either Hewitt had a fortune behind him or—more likely—the wealth came from Sue. Joe made a mental note to find out. Great wealth often birthed great resentment and envy, often within extended families. Joe had experienced that situation before among area ranch scions. That angle was one he hadn’t thought about before and he wondered if it might open a whole new can of worms.
Joe could hear the murmur of voices coming from the back side of the house. On the way to the source, he passed several bedrooms, a home office, and a trophy room packed with more dead creatures from around the world.
“Sheriff Kapelow?” he called out.
“Back here, Joe,” Gary Norwood responded.
Joe walked around the bear, saw the kitchen to his left, and paused on the threshold of the dining room when Kapelow said, “Stop where you are.”
Joe did.
The sheriff stood facing Joe with his hands on his hips. Norwood and his evidence tech were on their hands and knees near the kitchen table wearing surgical masks and nitrile gloves. Norwood looked up and nodded a greeting to Joe. The forensics investigators were placing numbered cardboard tents on the perimeter of a large dried pool of blood on the hardwood.
“Don’t contaminate the crime scene,” Kapelow said.
“I didn’t intend to,” Joe replied.
“How did you even get in here?” the sheriff asked. His cadence was choppy and flat and he displayed no emotion.
“I took the back way,” Joe said.
“There’s a back way?” Kapelow asked, looking to Norwood.
Norwood shrugged. “Must be,” he said. “Joe said he took it.”
Kapelow said, “My explicit orders were to keep everyone away from the crime scene until it was investigated and secure. We haven’t even photographed it yet.”
“Don’t blame your men,” Joe said. “I bigfooted my way in.”
Joe looked over the sheriff’s shoulder into the room. He could see the large kitchen table, which was set with two empty place settings and a three-quarters-full bottle of wine. A mottled pile of food was on the floor to the left of the table next to a platter broken into white shards. The chair in which the judge had sat the night before was pushed back, and the large plate-glass window that spanned most of the back wall had a neat bullet hole in the center of it laced with a spiderweb of cracks in the glass.
“What are you hoping to find in here?” Joe asked. “It’s obvious where the bullet came from.”
He noted in his peripheral vision that Norwood looked away in response so Kapelow wouldn’t see him grin. Joe guessed that the sheriff had been an overbearing presence in the room and he hadn’t let Norwood simply do his job without interference.
“Solving a crime is as much about ruling things out as anything else,” Kapelow said. “It’s imperative that we corroborate everything the judge told us. In a panic situation like what he and Sue went through, memories can sometimes be less than accurate.”
Joe had no idea what that meant. “Do you suspect that something happened in here other than what Judge Hewitt told us?”