“Interesting,” Joe said, making conversation.
“Pretty slick, is what it is,” Birdy said, pleased with himself.
“Excuse me,” Joe said, seeing the sheriff and taking leave of Pi and Birdy.
...
Sheriff Tassell looked up as Joe approached, but continued to eat a cracker with a cheese cube. His animus was palpable. Joe assumed that Tassell was being territorial, like every county sheriff Joe had ever met, but he forged ahead anyway.
“I’d like to be able to get into the Game and Fish house later today if I could,” Joe said. He pointedly did not say Will Jensen’s house. “I couldn’t find any keys at the office. I assume you’re done inside.”
Tassell didn’t look directly at Joe, but continued to chew.
“I don’t know what you might hope to find in there that we haven’t already looked at.”
“I’m not sure you understand,” Joe said, his voice patient. “That’s where I’m expected to stay while I’m here.
The department doesn’t have the budget to put me up in a hotel while their house sits empty.”
Hotel rooms in Jackson were by far the most expensive in the state, Joe knew. He was keenly aware that he had already overspent his per diem and the overage would need to come out of the family budget, stretched as it was.
Tassell met Joe’s eyes for a moment, then looked away again. “I figured you were checking up on us.”
Well, Joe thought, that too.
“I’ll visit with my team and make sure they’re through,”
Tassell said with no enthusiasm. “I need to run it by the ME also. I think he got the place all cleaned up, but I’m not sure about that. A .44 Magnum going through soft tissue makes a hell of mess on the ceiling and walls.”
Joe said quietly, “I’ll bet it does.”
“I think his personal effects have been pretty much cleaned out and given to the wife.” Tassell looked toward Susan Jensen. “Just a bunch of boxes. Clothes and stuff like that.”
Joe wondered if he should ask to see them at some point.
“Do you know if there were any spiral notebooks in there?” Joe asked.
Tassell shrugged. “I don’t remember any, but I didn’t personally pack up everything or really look it over myself.”
Yes, Joe would need to look inside the boxes. “Do you have his truck keys at your office? His truck’s locked up.”
“I believe we do,” Tassell said woodenly.
“Can I—”
Tassell cut Joe off with a hard glare. “Look, I’m busy this afternoon. I can’t just drop everything and cater to you.
I’ve got a diversity training workshop scheduled for my officers that I’ve got to be at, and we need to meet with the Secret Service to set up the security for the vice president, who’s coming in two weeks. I’ll get to this stuff when I get to it.”
Joe stepped close to Tassell, looked right at him. “Sheriff, we seem to have started off on the wrong foot, and I’m not sure why. But I’d rather work with you than against you.
All I’m asking for is keys to the statehouse and truck.”
Tassell didn’t step back. “Bud Barnum was a legend among sheriffs in this state. He was old school, and I can’t really call him a friend, but sheriffs tend to stick together.”
Now Joe understood. “What happened with Barnum was his own doing,” Joe said. “He can blame everyone else, but Barnum did himself in.”
“That’s not his version.”
“I’m not surprised,” Joe said.
“In his version, he doesn’t blame everyone else. He blames you.”
Barnum had cut a wide swath across northern Wyoming, Joe thought.
“I can’t help that,” Joe said.
“He says you get into the middle of things you should leave alone. That you press too damned hard into areas where things are best left to the professionals.”
“Do you think that’s why I’m here?” Joe asked.
“Aren’t you?” Tassell asked back.
“I’m here to fill in during hunting season, and then I’m sure I’ll be sent back home. I’m curious about Will, I admit that. It doesn’t make sense to me that things were so bad that he took his own life.”
That seemed to mollify Tassell slightly. He said, “Will may not have been all you seem to think he was, Joe.”
Joe cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Will started losing it over the past six months or so.
Even before the wife took the kids and moved out on him.
He was becoming a public embarrassment, and we don’t like embarrassments here in Jackson.”
“What do you mean?” Joe felt a coldness growing inside.
“He was arrested twice for driving drunk. That was after a half dozen warnings. He spent a night in my jail when he was so blitzed he couldn’t even get out of his own truck. He was arrested again just a couple of weeks ago for threatening one of our local business leaders.”
“Will?” Joe asked, incredulous.
“Will. I arrested him myself out at the ski resort, where he was having the argument. Bet you didn’t know that?”
“No,” Joe said, “I didn’t know that.” He doubted that Trey did either, or he would have told Joe.
“Will just kept getting worse. I could see it coming.”
Tassell gestured toward the room. “And so could anybody who knew him. He was in a death spiral and it was only a matter of time.
“The ME concluded that Will’s death was suicide,” Tassell said. “There’s no doubt about it at all, if that’s what you were thinking. He got drunk, ate dinner, and shot himself at his table. Simple as that. There was a photo of his family on the table, which was probably the last thing he looked at. His fingerprints were the only prints on the gun.”
“Is it true that all he ate was meat that night?”
Tassell looked at Joe quizzically. “Where did you hear that?”
“Just a rumor.”
“Yeah, it’s true. He cooked himself up quite a bunch of meat that night. All of the frying pans were dirty, and there was meat still on his plate when he died. It smelled pretty good in there, actually. But so what?”
“I’m not sure,” Joe said.
“It’s not that unusual, is it?” Tassell asked. “Hell, I do it myself. I ask the wife about once a month for what we call ‘the Meat Bucket’ dinner. Steak, pork, elk sausages. Maybe a piece of bread. She doesn’t like it—she’s a healthfreak type—but she cooks it up.”
“There wasn’t an autopsy?”
Tassell shook his head. “No need. The cause of death was clearcut. We don’t do autopsies in Teton County when the cause of death is obvious. We have to watch our budget too.”
Of course—so you can afford diversity training workshops, Joe thought but didn’t say. He wondered how many murders there had been on Sheriff Tassell’s watch. Joe couldn’t recall hearing of any recently in Teton County.
As if reading Joe’s mind, Tassell went on, “We lose a couple of people a year here, but not because of crime. A tourist or two may drown in the whitewater, or a skier might crash into a tree, or a ski bum will overdose on a slick new designer drug. But just because we don’t have major crime doesn’t mean we’re not trained to handle it. This is a tight little community, and there are important people here with lots of money and influence. They don’t like things happening that take place in bad country and western songs, you know? Those things should be left to the rest of the state. And they don’t like bad news, either, because this is their special playground.”
Joe watched Tassell carefully. What exactly was he getting at?
“This place is special,” Tassell said. “We’ve got the highest per capita income than any county in the U.S., because of all the millionaires and billionaires. There are people here who don’t think they need to play by the rules.
And you know what,” the sheriff said, arching his eyebrows, “they don’t. They don’t like a sloppy suicide happening in their town. Neither do I.”