Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(47)
“It doesn’t really work,” Joe said to Vieth. “I can’t scratch him out completely, but he goes a lot farther down the list, based on what you’ve told me.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she said. “Dallas likes to talk because he really does think he can charm anyone who’ll listen to him. I’ll play along, but I’ll be very subtle. I think between the psychologist and me, we’ll be able to tell if Dallas knows anything at all about the shooting. He wouldn’t admit it outright if he did, but there might be a tell when we talk to him.”
“Please let me know when you do,” Joe said.
“I’ll get right on it,” she promised.
“Thank you, Sarah.”
“You bet, Joe. We can’t have our guests putting out hits on sitting judges—or their wives.”
*
THE TALK WITH Sarah Vieth prompted Joe to make another call to check on someone he hadn’t considered earlier: Dallas’s mother, Brenda Cates.
Brenda was also in prison, but across the state in Lusk at the Wyoming Women’s Center. Brenda was a quadriplegic incarcerated for life for kidnapping and murder, and she’d almost maimed Joe a few years before with her high-tech wheelchair when he went to question her. Dallas was a chip off the old block when it came to Brenda.
Whereas Joe doubted Dallas had been behind the sophisticated shooting at the Hewitt home, Brenda was mean and diabolical enough to have arranged for something like that to happen. She’d once had a stash of money that she’d used to hire people to get jobs done, and although the account had been seized, it was possible she had more funds squirreled away somewhere to pay off an assassin.
The warden of the Women’s Center, Martha Gray, took Joe’s call. After catching each other up on their families and the weather, Joe asked, “So how is Brenda doing?”
“Not well,” Gray said. “She’s in Stage Five.”
“Meaning what?” Joe asked.
“There are five stages of isolation in East Wing,” Gray said. “One being the most lenient and five being the most severe. Brenda is the sole occupant of the Stage Five ward.”
“Like mother like son,” Joe said. “What did she do to deserve that?”
“Oh, she’s so clever,” Gray said. “You know—you’ve met her several times. She looks and acts like everybody’s sweet old grandma. After you were here and she attacked you in that wheelchair, I foolishly thought that she was getting old enough and sick enough that the fight had gone out of her. We put her back into the general population and she was a model prisoner. After a year, since she miraculously regained the use of her hands, she got a job in the kitchen because whatever else you say about Brenda, she can cook.”
Joe waited for the rest of the story.
Gray said, “Of course, that lasted until one of our girls disrespected her in the dinner line, as Brenda put it. So Brenda bribed one of the girls who works in our Aquaculture building to smuggle out some items for her. At the next meal, the girl who disrespected Brenda started choking horribly and grabbing at her throat. It seems Brenda had put a handful of fishhooks into her stew. They nearly killed that poor dumb girl.”
“Yikes,” Joe said, inadvertently reaching up and touching his own throat.
“So Brenda got moved back to the East Wing,” Gray said. “She’s had no communication with the outside world and there are no visitors allowed. We know she figured out how to thwart us before, but believe me, she can’t do that this time. We took away her fancy chair, too. She’s absolutely miserable, but at least she’s not a threat to our COs and other girls. And I’m not falling for her sweet grandma act ever again.”
“Yikes,” Joe said again.
“I’m two weeks away from retirement,” Gray said. “I have good people here, but I won’t miss this place for a minute.”
*
JOE REVIEWED HIS NOTES further and then confirmed that Darin Westby had indeed picked up a new snowplow at the implement dealer in Casper on the day of the shooting. Joe spoke to the salesman who had helped Westby load the item at three in the afternoon and saw him drive away after that. There was no way Westby could have been back to Saddlestring and the club by the time the shooting happened.
That left two groups of suspects on his list. He checked with headquarters in Cheyenne on the two antelope hunters from Greeley. As he guessed, their names were in the database because they’d been drawn for the specific hunting area that bordered the Eagle Mountain Club. They hadn’t given bogus names or address details to Westby when he met them. It was incomprehensible to Joe that if the men were anything other than what they claimed to be, it made no sense to try to gain access to Judge Hewitt in such a convoluted way. The deadline for the antelope tags had taken place May 31—five months prior to the shooting. Especially when their odds of drawing the antelope tag in the first place weren’t assured.
The last item to check off in his notebook was: Club member? Ask Judy.
Judy ran the administrative office for the club and she was a full-time employee. Joe didn’t know her well enough to call and interview her, he thought. That needed to be done in person.
But, as Westby had mentioned, a club member targeting Judge Hewitt was unlikely. Two members teaming up to make an extreme long-distance shot bordered on the unbelievable.