Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(37)

“Yup.”

“Give me a minute to think about it.” The judge sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. Joe had seen the gesture many times in court just prior to his making a ruling.

Hewitt dropped his hand to his lap and looked up. “I think I know who it might have been.”

Joe raised his eyebrows while he waited for a name. But he noticed that the judge’s attention had strayed to something behind him.

Joe turned to see that Dr. Arthur had paused just inside the door. He was standing there in his white coat, reading a display on an iPad.

Dr. Arthur was in his midthirties and he was trim and fit, with thinning rust-colored hair. He’d come to Saddlestring from a critical care hospital in eastern Montana, and was the pride of the hospital foundation’s recruiting committee, who had issued a press release about how, prior to coming to Wyoming, Arthur had done stints in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Joe didn’t know him well, but he’d met him a couple of times in the last year at community events Marybeth had wanted to attend. He seemed competent and Joe hadn’t heard disparaging things about him—the last emergency room doctor had been accused of unnecessary pelvic exams on young women who’d arrived at the ER with broken arms or legs.

Medical doctors in small isolated communities like Saddlestring were recently regarded as a kind of royalty, Joe knew. It was difficult to convince doctors to forgo the security and structure of narrowly defined specialties in large urban environments and move to rural locations where they were obligated to work more hours for less pay and become general practitioners. Dr. Arthur was an exception, and his reputation had apparently spread to the point that people made appointments with him from hundreds of miles away. Rumors were already circulating that he was such a fine doctor that he’d soon be lured elsewhere and Twelve Sleep County would once again have to begin the search for a new one.

“Am I interrupting something?” Dr. Arthur asked Joe and Judge Hewitt.

“You’re the doctor,” Hewitt said. “I think you’re allowed to enter a hospital room.

“Did you bring me good news?” Hewitt asked Arthur. His tone had returned to its usual intimidating cadence.

“I wish I could say yes,” Arthur said while keeping his eyes on his tablet. It was obvious to Joe that Dr. Arthur was cowed by Judge Hewitt and didn’t want to meet his withering glare.

“Then what is it?” Hewitt demanded.

“As you know, we removed all of the remaining bullet fragments and repaired what internal damage that we could, but her heartbeat is weak and irregular,” Arthur said. “We may need to increase her oxygen.”

“Then do it, for God’s sake,” Hewitt snapped. “What are you waiting for?”

“I’ll order it right away,” Arthur said.

Hewitt asked, “Did you FedEx the bullet fragments to the state lab like I asked?”

Dr. Arthur said he had.

Joe was puzzled. “Just fragments?” he asked them. “Not an intact slug?”

Arthur nodded.

“Why do you ask?” Hewitt demanded of Joe.

“I do a lot of necropsies on big-game animals,” Joe said. “I realize that’s different, but a bullet does the same damage to a deer or elk that it would to a human. It mushrooms on impact and burrows through flesh and organs. Sometimes it hits a bone and deflects its angle. But I’ve rarely seen a bullet disintegrate within a carcass. Sometimes I find it whole after digging around, but it’s usually caught just under the hide after passing through the body. The hide is tough and elastic and the round is out of energy by the time it gets there and gets trapped.”

Dr. Arthur shrugged. “I haven’t operated on a lot of gunshot wounds in my career, but I can tell you that this bullet fragmented.”

“Why would that happen?” Hewitt asked Joe and the doctor.

Arthur shrugged again. “Maybe it was a unique round. Maybe it was designed to fragment.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Hewitt said.

“Neither have I,” Joe agreed. Then he asked the doctor, “Was there enough of the bullet left to identify the caliber?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Arthur said. “Maybe it could be pieced back together by an expert, but that’s out of my field.”

“Damn,” Hewitt said. “Another impediment to the investigation.” Then to Dr. Arthur, “Thank you. Now get that oxygen going.”

Dr. Arthur spun on his heel quickly and exited the room. Joe guessed it was unusual for the doctor to be ordered around like that by a patient or the spouse of a patient.

“I’ve heard good things about him, but he may turn out to be an incompetent quack,” Hewitt said sotto voce to Joe. “I may have to airlift Sue to Billings for decent care before that man kills her.”

Judge Hewitt paused to reconsider his words. He said, “At the same time, I don’t want to be the one to run him off. He might actually know what he’s doing, unlike our sheriff.”

Then: “I seem to be surrounded by incompetent fools.”

Then: “Dennis Sun. He’s rich enough to have one of those ultra-long-distance rifles and I know he thinks he’s quite the marksman. Plus, he’s got a crew of assistants around him at all times and one of them could be his spotter. He’s had a bug up his ass for me after I took away his hunting privileges. So go talk to that son of a bitch, and if he doesn’t have a good alibi you need to string him up.”