Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(24)

Joe bent over so he could peer through the hole itself. He could see the top of the rise, but at a downward angle.

From where he was, he turned his head and imagined where Sue Hewitt had been next to the table. The line was off. If the shooter had fired from the top of the berm, he would have been aiming up and the bullet would have hit the top of the west wall or even the ceiling.

“That doesn’t work,” Joe mumbled to himself.

“What doesn’t work?” Kapelow asked.

Joe explained his reasoning. He said, “You might want your guys to do a grid search of the berm down there, but I’d bet they won’t find anything.”

“We’re losing our light,” Kapelow said.

“Do it tonight,” Joe said. “Sometimes you can see more by flashlight, especially when you keep the beam low along the top of the grass. If the shooter was there, you’ll see a shadowed depression that would be hard to see in daylight.”

Kapelow grunted as if indulging a crank. Joe ignored the sheriff’s reaction.

Joe placed his hands on his thighs and slowly lowered himself while concentrating on the view through the bullet hole. The berm passed out of view, then the crowns of the trees. The hole filled with the mottled gray of a distant sagebrush-covered hillside.

He kept lowering his point of view. The hillside got murky with shadow and distance. Then it topped out. Behind the apex of the hill was the dark blue of the distant Bighorn Mountains.

He raised up again, studying the top of the hill. Then he turned his head again to visualize where Judge Hewitt had been sitting.

Joe’s knees popped as he stood up to full height. He pointed at the distant sagebrush foothill.

“I think it came from there,” he said, pointing.

Kapelow scoffed. “That’s insane. It isn’t even on the property and it must be a mile away.”

Joe nodded. That’s what he’d guessed as well.

“What a waste of our precious light and time,” Kapelow declared. Then: “Thank you for your effort, Mr. Pickett. We can take it from here.”

“Sheriff . . .”

“That will be all,” Kapelow said.

Joe turned again and watched the last slice of evening sun glide over the top of the sagebrush hill. Within minutes, he knew, it would blend into the view of the mountains until it couldn’t be seen at all.

Joe said, “Sheriff . . .”

“That will be all.”

Joe sighed and retraced his path through the dining room. Sheriff Kapelow didn’t even watch.

On his way out, Joe clamped on his hat in the hallway and said, “Sheriff . . .”

“That will be all.”

Joe bit his tongue, turned on his heel, and strode down the hallway toward the door. It was either that or punch Twelve Sleep County’s new sheriff in the mouth.

*

BEFORE RETURNING THE RANGER to the maintenance shed for his WYDOT pickup, Joe walked around the outside of the house to cool down. He reminded himself that it was the sheriff’s investigation to conduct, not his. It had been a very long day and his nerves were frazzled.

While he debated with himself if he should share his concerns about Kapelow’s methods with Judge Hewitt, Joe found himself on the side of the house where he could see the golf course. There wasn’t much light left in the evening, and the ongoing search already looked like something out of a Hollywood premiere.

Dozens of deputies and town cops walked the grass in individual grid patterns with their flashlights bathing the turf in front of them. Joe wondered how long Kapelow would allow the search to go on before calling it a night.

Joe’s gaze lifted from the golf course and trees to the sagebrush-covered hills in the distance. They were nearly out of view in the gloom and they were a very long distance away: beyond the grounds of the club, beyond an irrigated hayfield of a ranch, over the river. He wished he had his range finder (which was in his pickup in Jackson) to get an accurate estimate of the distance, but he guessed the top of the hills were over fifteen hundred yards away.

That was three times what a typical long-distance shot would be on a big-game animal, he knew.

Still, though . . .





SEVEN


ON THE FOURTEEN-MILE JOURNEY FROM THE EAGLE Mountain Club to his state-owned game warden station and house on the east bank of the river, Joe called dispatch in Cheyenne on his cell phone. He’d gotten used to using the Bluetooth system inside the cab of his pickup and it felt odd to talk with the phone pressed to his face like he used to have to do.

“This is GS-19,” he said. “Can you patch me through to GS-18? I don’t know whether he’s still in the field on his sat phone or back in town.”

“Have you tried him on your radio?” the dispatcher asked. She sounded young and a little put out by Joe’s request.

“I don’t have my radio,” Joe said. “I don’t have my truck. It’s a long story.”

The dispatcher paused. “Stand by,” she said. The music playing on hold was Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus doing “Old Town Road.” Joe wondered who at headquarters had made that choice. The only reason he recognized it was because his oldest daughter, Sheridan, had blasted out the country/rap hybrid the last time she’d visited.

I’m gonna take my horse to the old town road

I’m gonna ride till I can’t no more . . .