There had been six different state-owned houses in nine years, five different towns. All of the homes--and especially this one--had been plebeian and small. They were careful at headquarters not to give the taxpayers the idea that their hunting license fees were going toward elaborate homes for state employees. The Pickett house was built into the mouth of a small canyon on a lot that included a barn, a corral, and a detached garage. They had brought their family routine back to Saddle string district after Vern suddenly retired from the state and Joe finally got the job he wanted most, in the place he and Marybeth liked the best.
It was a job Joe almost didn't get. Vern had recommended Joe and had used his influence at headquarters to get Joe an interview with the director. In what Joe and Marybeth later called "one his larger bonehead moves," Joe had written the wrong date for the appointment with the director in his calendar and simply missed it. When Joe screwed up, he tended to do it massively and publicly. The director had been furious for being stood up and it was only through Vern's intervention that Joe was able to later meet with the director and secure the post.
Both Marybeth and Joe had commented how much bigger the house had seemed to be when Vern and his wife occupied it, back when Joe worked under Vern and he and Marybeth would visit. They both remembered sitting in the shaded backyard, sipping cocktails while Vern barbecued steaks and Vern's attractive wife, Georgia (they had no children), mixed drinks and tossed salad inside. The house at that time seemed almost elegant in a way, and both Joe and Marybeth were envious. The future seemed so bright then. But that was two children and a Labrador ago, and the same three-bedroom home was filled. After only four months in the house it seemed to be shrinking. The baby would make the house even smaller. And everything about it was falling apart. The shelf life for a state-owned and -constructed home was short.
Today was, he knew, likely to be the last Sunday for at least three months that he would be able to cook breakfast for his girls and read the newspapers--and now he hadn't even been able to do that. Big game hunting season in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming, would begin on Thursday with antelope season. Deer would follow, then elk and moose. Joe would be out in the mountains and foothills, patrolling. School would even be let out for "Elk Day" because the children of hunters were expected to go with their families into the mountains.
Hunters began before dawn, and Joe would begin before dawn. Hunters could legally take game up to a half an hour after dark, and Joe would be out among them until well after that, checking permits and licenses, making sure that the game was tagged properly, that laws weren't broken, and that private land wasn't trespassed on. In Wyoming, the people owned the game animals, and they took their ownership to heart. Joe took his job just as seriously.
He thought about Sheridan saying "Better take your gun," and it bothered him.
Sheridan had certainly noticed his Sam Browne belt and the pistol in it when he came home every night. His .270 Winchester rifle rested permanently in the window gun rack of the department green Ford pickup he drove. They knew that his job entailed carrying a gun with him. But never had either child ever suggested he go out and shoot something. Maybe they didn't realize what he really did all day. He had heard Sheridan say in passing that her Dad "saved animals" for his job. He liked that definition, even though it was only partially true.
Joe slowed on the highway to let a herd of pronghorn antelope cross. He watched as they ducked under a barbed-wire fence and continued their journey toward the foothills, toward Wacey Hedeman's district.
Wacey and Joe had both been trained in the field by Vern Dunnegan at different times. Vern told anyone who would listen that they were his "best boys." Because their districts adjoined each other--the warden in the Saddlestring district and the warden in the Basin district--Wacey and Joe often teamed up on projects and investigations. They built hay fences together, shared horses and snow machines when needed for patrol, called on each other for support if necessary, and traded notes. As a result of spending many predawn hours together in one or the other's trucks, Joe had come to know Wacey well. They had even become friends, of a sort. Wacey fascinated Joe at the same time he repelled him. Wacey knew the county and was intimate with ranchers and poachers alike. Wacey was an ex-rodeo cowboy who had an easy, oily charm that worked on just about everyone, Joe included. Even Marybeth seemed to enjoy Wacey, although she startled Joe once by saying that she didn't trust him. Some of the things Joe knew about Wacey would have confirmed her opinion, but he kept them to himself.
Joe turned his pickup off of the highway into the entrance of the Eagle Mountain Club. A uniformed guard in a white clapboard guardhouse waved at him to go through, and the motorized wrought-iron gate swung wide. But as Joe drove forward, the guard suddenly swung out of the door of the house and approached his window.
The guard was in his late fifties, and his uniform strained across his belly.
"I thought you were somebody else when I waved at you," the guard said, bending his head to the side so he could see into the truck.
"You thought I was Wacey Hedeman," Joe said.
"He has a truck just like this. I'm here to see Wacey."
The guard stared hard at Joe. "Have you been here before?"
"Once, with Wacey." Joe let his voice drop. "Now please let me through now. There was a homicide near Saddlestring, and I need Wacey s help on it now."
The guard stepped back but took a moment to wave Pickett through. In his rearview mirror, Joe watched the guard step into the road and write down Joe's license plate number on a pad he took from his pocket.
The Eagle Mountain Club was an exclusive private resort on a hilltop overlooking the Big Horn River. From what Wacey had told him, initial dues to the club were $250,000 and members joined by invitation only. The Eagle Mountain Club had only 250 members, and new members joined only when old members died, dropped out, or were denied privileges by a majority of the members. This had happened only twice to Joe's knowledge, once to the famous televangelist who "baptized" a housekeeper by inserting the neck of a vodka bottle into her and then dunking her in the tub-stocked trout pond and the other time when a member, a former astronaut, was found guilty of beating his wife to death with a bronze replica of the Lunar Landing Module. The club had a 36-hole golf course that fingered through the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, as well as a private fish hatchery, shooting range, airstrip, and about 60 multimillion-dollar homes that had been constructed when a million dollars was an obscene amount of money. The one thing the exclusive membership had in common was a passion for privacy. Few people in the state even knew about the Eagle Mountain Club, and access to it was purposely difficult. It was more than 200 miles from the nearest city of any size-Billings, Montana--and more than 500 miles from Denver.
The Eagle Mountain Club was nearly vacant in the fall, and Joe encountered no vehicles or golf carts on the road. Few residents stayed during the winter, and most were already gone. As he drove along the wide empty roads bordered by manicured lawns with the Bighorns looming all around him, Joe got the sense of being on top of the country that spread out around him. It was a false oasis hidden away on a mountaintop in Wyoming, a high and dry place where the grass grew only because of nonstop, unrepentant irrigation and where all of the food in the four-star restaurant was flown in from other places. Joe felt that this place didn't belong, and he knew it was there for precisely that reason. The Eagle Mountain Club predated the recent flight to the Rocky Mountains by rich celebrities by about 30 years.