“Oh, just shut up,” Portenson said.
Joe grinned. “I can count on you, can’t I?” “Why do you even care?”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t want this kind of thing happening in my mountains, or my district. Not around my family. They’ve gone through enough in the last few years without worrying about something like this.”
Portenson looked genuinely sympathetic. Then something changed in his face.
“I still think you and that Nate Romanowski maniac are guilty of something. I’ll find that out one of these days, and I’ll bust you both. Then I’ll get out of this hellhole I’m in.”
Joe nodded. “That’s fine. But right now, we’ve got killers out here who are just about as scary as anything I can think of. You know that.”
Portenson lit another cigarette, then tossed it away angrily after one drag. “I’m hoping the whole thing just goes the fuck away,” he said. “There haven’t been any incidents in a few days, not since that stupid horse got his face ripped off. I just hope the whole thing goes away.”
“Maybe it will,” Joe said, thinking again of Cleve Garrett’s theory. “Or maybe just part of it will. If that happens, we’ve still got the other part to figure out.”
Barnum leaned on the horn, even though Portenson was just feet away from his vehicle.
“What an asshole,” Portenson said. “That’s just the half of it,” Joe said back.
25
Lot c17 at the riverside resort and RV Park was empty. “Damn it,” Joe said, thumping the steering wheel of his pickup with the heel of his hand. He looked over to Maxine, remembered that he had left her home to sleep today, then looked back at the vacated lot.
He wondered when they’d left. How long had the Airstream been gone?
A sick feeling welled up in Joe’s stomach. He hoped that Deena was all right. He felt responsible for her, since she had reached out to him even in her pathetic way. If he had acted sooner, had come over to see Deena the morning after the first message, could he have averted something? Had Cleve Garrett discovered their correspondence and hurt her? Or had he simply moved his operation to some other place?
He found Jimbo behind his trailer, raking leaves in his postage-stamp backyard.
“Jimbo, when did Cleve Garrett pull out?” Joe asked the resort manager. Jimbo froze, then slowly looked up. “What do you mean?”
Joe was confused for a moment. “Don’t you know that he’s gone? I just came from there. The lot is empty.”
Jimbo let the rake fall into the pile of leaves he had made. “Well, what do you know,” he said. “He musta’ left during the night. He was all paid up, so he doesn’t owe me anything. But he at least could have said goodbye so I’d have known I have another space to rent.”
“Didn’t you hear him go?” Joe asked, incredulous.
Jimbo pointed at his own head. “I don’t hear nothing without my hearing aids anymore. I take ’em out to sleep, so I guess he left after I went to bed.”
“When was that?”
Jimbo pondered the question. “Let’s see, I watched the news, read a little. You ever read Harry Potter?”
Joe had, but he didn’t want to discuss it.
“I’m hooked,” Jimbo said. “I’m on the third one now. I never thought I’d care a good goddamn about a little Brit orphan, but . . .” “Jimbo, what time?”
Jimbo’s face lost enthusiasm, and he thought for a moment. “Must have been after 11:30 or so. I think that’s when I packed it in.”
Deena’s last e-mail to Joe had been sent at 11:15, Joe remembered. In it, she hadn’t said they were leaving. Maybe she hadn’t known yet, he thought, the sick feeling coming back. Maybe Cleve read Joe’s response over Deena’s shoulder, and decided then that they needed to go immediately.
But what difference did it make what time they left? Joe thought. What was significant was the fact that they were gone, and that they felt a need to leave in the middle of the night.
Why?
As he crossed the Twelve Sleep County line into Park County, Joe called Hersig and told him that Cleve Garrett was gone and mentioned Deena’s e-mail.
“I think we should put out an APB,” Joe said. “Locating their truck and that big Airstream shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Hersig hesitated. “What?” Joe asked.
“We don’t have any grounds to stop him,” Hersig said. “A man has a right to move his trailer from place to place, Joe.”
“What about Deena?”
“What about her? Can you honestly make a case that you think she’s in danger? Or threatened? From what you told me she hasn’t ever indicated that she’s in trouble. It doesn’t sound like we have anything to go on at all here, Joe.”
Joe held the phone away from his ear and looked at it, scowling at Hersig. Then he pulled it back. “They left right after she sent me an e-mail, like I said. She was going to tell me something this morning that she thought was important. I’m telling you, Cleve Garrett is dirty in some way. Why else would he hightail it out of town so quickly when just the other day he was begging me to get him on the task force? I think he’s going to hurt her, if he hasn’t already.”
“Aw, Joe.. .”
“Damn it, Robey, if we find her body somewhere I hope you remember this conversation.”
Hersig sighed, “Okay, I’ll call the highway patrol. But if he’s located, we need more than what you’ve given me to search the trailer or arrest the guy. If she’s with him and looks okay we’ll have to cut him loose with our apologies.”
Joe hoped that if Garrett was stopped the man would give something away that would invite inquiry. At least Joe would know if Deena was with him, and if she was unharmed.
Maybe Barnum had a point, Joe thought, as he slowed his pickup to enter Cody. Maybe Joe didn’t know what he was doing.
Park County sheriff Dan Harvey had agreed to meet with Joe in his office to go over the case file of Stuart Tanner’s death. Harvey seemed younger and more at ease than he had been during the task-force meet-ing, Joe thought. Maybe he was just more comfortable on his own turf.
The sheriff offered coffee, and Joe accepted. They sat in the sheriff ’s office, which was larger and much neater than Barnum’s rathole, Joe observed. There were even books on the bookshelves.
“I asked Deputy Cook to sit in with us, Joe. He received the callout and was the first officer on the scene.”
Joe nodded to Cook, who nodded back. Joe thought the deputy seemed capable and serious.
“Anything happening in Twelve Sleep County?” Harvey asked, as a receptionist delivered three Styrofoam cups of see-through coffee.
“Need anything in it?” she asked Joe.
Maybe some coffee beans, Joe thought, but declined her offer. “Has Robey been in contact with you?” Joe asked.
“Every afternoon.”
“Then you know that we haven’t made any progress. That paranormal guy Cleve Garrett has disappeared, though. We’re looking for him. But nothing of significance has happened yet.”
Harvey shrugged. “This is a bad case. I just wish it would go away somehow. There’s just no real evidence anywhere.”
Cook nodded in agreement. “The only good thing about it is that there haven’t been any more murders or mutilations in Park County.”
“We found a horse,” Joe said, grimacing a little. “I heard. You were there, right?”
Joe nodded.
“You heard that the FBI said there was no toxicology on Mr. Tanner, right?” Harvey said. “Nothing unusual, I mean. He died from a blow to the head, and he would have died from severe exposure anyway. His mutilation occurred postmortem.”
Cook said, “Basically, there’s nothing we’ve found that we haven’t already given to Robey Hersig,” an edge of jurisdictional integrity creeping into his voice. “So frankly, I’m not sure why you’re here.”