Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(32)
As she walked between her car and Tom’s truck, she noticed the pickup was covered with a thin layer of road dust and the tires were discolored by dried mud. This was out of character for Tom, who kept his vehicle immaculately clean.
She paused and peered over the bed well into the back. In the bed of his pickup were several sandbags and two gearboxes, plus a canvas duffel bag. She didn’t open any of them.
Candy was puzzled. She cast a glance at the door from the mudroom on the off-chance that Tom would open it and see her snooping, but he wasn’t there. Then she opened the truck’s rear door.
On the floor mats was a pair of lace-up hunting boots next to crumpled coveralls. Under the backseat on the floorboards was a stout oblong aluminum case that spanned the width of the cab. She recognized it as an expensive rifle case. Nicolas had had one for his prized big-game hunting rifle.
However, she couldn’t recall seeing this case before, although she knew Tom, like so many others in the area, enjoyed target shooting. He was also a big-game hunter and had several fine elk heads in the great room to show for it.
So when, she wondered, had he taken a break from his shift and gone to the range to blow off steam? Even if he hadn’t, she thought, he’d obviously taken the Raptor off-road recently. That he hadn’t mentioned either bugged her, and she made a mental note to ask him about it later. She’d do it in a gentle way that was not accusatory, because the last thing she wanted was for Tom to think of her as controlling or hectoring. He’d mentioned that those qualities had annoyed him greatly in his first wife.
Instead, she’d say that she’d learned to shoot in Alaska and she enjoyed it almost as much as she enjoyed four-wheeling. Perhaps Tom would like a couple’s date at the range?
It was so easy.
Then she fitted in her earbuds, launched her carefully curated playlist called Yoga Sounds, and went outside toward her studio sanctuary.
NINE
JOE ASKED NATE, “IF YOU WERE A MILITARY SNIPER WITH a designated target, where would you set up to take that shot?”
“Are you sure it was from this side of the river?” Nate asked back.
“No, not at all. But these foothills can be seen very clearly from the picture window of the Hewitt home, and the angle seems right, even though the sheriff dismissed the idea.”
Nate nodded that he understood.
They were rumbling along a rough two-track on the other side of the river in the WYDOT pickup. The path led to nowhere, but it paralleled the river and it was used primarily by fly fishermen. Across the river was a vast, flat, irrigated hayfield and beyond it was the green smudge of the Eagle Mountain Club.
It was a sunny and cool fall morning with no clouds. A slight breeze in the treetops along the river dislodged errant yellow leaves, which floated down and carpeted the old road or became small rafts in the current. Fall in the Rockies brought the widest swings in temperature at high elevations, with thirty-degree mornings climbing to the upper sixties or low seventies by midafternoon. Everyone dressed in layers and they were constantly stripping off clothing or adding it back on. Joe had started the morning with his uniform shirt, wool vest, and windproof outer shell. The shell was now discarded and crumpled on the seat between them. Nate wore a heavy hooded sweatshirt with yarak, inc. printed over one breast.
Joe had noted there was still plenty of law enforcement activity on the faraway golf course. Tiny commandeered golf carts moved in and out of the trees driven by cops completing their assigned grid searches. He wondered if Sheriff Kapelow had kept them at it the entire night, and he hoped not. And he doubted they’d found anything of significance, because there had been very little chatter on the mutual aid band from his handheld radio.
Nate didn’t answer the question Joe posed for a while. He’d rolled down the passenger-side window and stuck his head out of it so his blond hair blew back behind him. He studied the terrain on their right and measured it against the club on their left, looking for angles and locations.
“Daisy does the same thing,” Joe said. “She likes to stick her head out the window like that.”
Nate scowled, but didn’t respond.
Then, pointing up a steep hill on the side of the road, he said, “Here.”
The sagebrush-covered hills undulated from the riverbank all the way to the base of the mountains. The one Nate indicated rose the highest and, Joe assumed, afforded the greatest view of the river valley and the golf course in the distance.
“I don’t see a road to the top,” Nate said.
“If there was, I doubt this truck would make it,” Joe grumbled as he stopped and killed the engine. “We’ll need to hike.”
He climbed out and stretched and he could hear and feel his spine pop like muffled fireworks. His knees ached. He felt all of his fifty years.
Joe threw a daypack filled with a spare evidence kit over his back and cinched it tight for the climb.
*
HE’D BEGUN THE DAY five hours before at Duane Patterson’s Toyota 4Runner on the side of Four Mile Road. The county prosecutor had still been huddled on the floorboards when Joe arrived and shined his flashlight inside. Bits of glass in Patterson’s hair sparkled like diamonds. Duane was relieved to see him and he smiled grimly. There were trickles of blood on his face from cuts in his scalp, but he seemed okay.
Within minutes, Deputies Woods and Steck arrived in their SUVs, grateful for being released from their posts at the golf course. There were no other vehicles on the road or in the area, although Patterson said he thought he heard one start up and drive off right after his windshield exploded and he was on the floor. He hadn’t looked up to get a description of the car.