“Oh, my God, do you know where he is?”
“I’m very sorry,” Joe said. “Cam is gone. We were too late to save him. Nurse Bob is dead too. We think he may have participated in killing Cam.”
Marie gasped, seemed to hold her breath, then let out a gut-wrenching wail that sent shivers up Joe’s forearms. Marybeth stepped back and covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide.
In mid-scream, Marie turned and raised the pistol, pointed it at Helen, and before Joe could lunge across the room and grab it, Marie pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped on an empty chamber. Joe grasped the pistol with two hands, and Marie let him take it from her. She ran across the room to Marybeth, who held her.
Letting out a long breath, Joe checked the gun and saw that Marie hadn’t racked a shell into the chamber from the magazine. Then he looked at Helen. Her expression hadn’t changed from before, when Marie pulled the trigger. Her eyes were dead, black, reptile eyes, masked by the face of an old woman.
“They got Cam?” she asked. “Yes.”
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“Too bad Marie didn’t know how to load a gun,” Joe said. “That’s uncalled for,” Helen hissed back.
Then Joe froze, and it was as if the room was spinning around him while he stood. On a shelf behind Helen and Clancy were a set of framed photos. The photos were of Cam and Marie’s wedding, Jessica, and a couple he assumed was Marie’s parents. But there was a single framed picture in the middle that seemed to grow larger and sharper as he stared at it.
The photo was of Helen and Clancy and a much younger Cam. Standing next to Cam, a head taller, was Cleve Garrett.
Joe leaned over Clancy and Helen, snatched the photo from the shelf, and shook it in front of them.
“Why is Cleve Garrett in this picture?” he shouted.
Clancy looked at Joe like Joe was crazy. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said. “That’s Eric. Our son Eric. The doctor. The surgeon.”
Then Joe recalled Nurse Bob’s last words: “You din’t fo’get about me, did you, Doc?”
37
Cleve garrett was dr eric logue . Dr. Eric Logue was Cleve Garrett. And despite the search teams, the helicopters, and the dogs, neither was found. The closest they came to him, three days after the shootout, was the discovery of a crude, abandoned lean-to campsite fourteen miles due west from the river. The camp was in the mountains, in a stand of aspen. They found the remains of a small, sheltered campfire and a half-eaten fawn. The investigators determined that the last occupant of the shelter had likely been Garrett/Logue because the fawn’s haunches— and face—had been removed. Another trophy.
Following the discovery, the search was intensified. Governor Budd authorized the use of the Wyoming National Guard, and for a week they walked the west face of the Bighorns in concentric circles. No other camp, or track, was found.
Garrett/Logue knew the terrain like someone who had grown up there. Because he had.
he day after Cam Logue’s funeral, Marie and Jessica had stopped by the Pickett house on Bighorn Road. According to Ken Siman of Siman’s Memorial Chapel, it was the largest funeral in Saddlestring in a decade. Marie was on her way out of town. Marybeth had agreed to let Jessica stay with them until Marie got settled in Denver, which delighted Lucy. Marie told Marybeth they would live in Denver to be near her parents. Cam’s life insurance, she said, would take care of her and Jessica for years. Both women embraced and cried, saying their good-byes. Joe and Sheridan stood un-comfortably by, trading glances.
“I think it was finding those files,” Marie said, looking to Joe as if he had asked her the question. “They brought it all back to him. I think he was trying to get revenge on his past.”
Joe nodded. “Is it possible that Eric was trying to help him? By driving land values down so he could buy the ranch back?”
Marie stared at the floor. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think he knew Eric was here until that morning. I really don’t.”
She looked up. “I don’t want to think that. So I won’t.”
As the days passed into weeks, Joe found himself thinking more about Cam Logue and less about Eric. It hurt to think about Cam. He felt more and more sorry for the man, and how things had gone. Cam was the product of cruel, twisted, unloving parents. Parents who had produced two children; one an outright miscreant and the other an emotional orphan. Despite that, Cam had tried to make something better of himself and his own family. He was a hard worker, and as far as Joe knew, Cam was a good husband and father until the end. Much like Joe himself, whose parents specialized in alcoholism, neglect, and lack of direction, Cam had been driving without a road map. Cam needed Marie for structure as Joe needed Marybeth. Under her guidance, Cam had participated in the community, won awards and accolades, received deserved admiration. His doubts, frustrations, and outright fears were kept well hidden. Unfortunately, Cam had likely not shared his fears with Marie, who might have been able to help him. In the end, he didn’t so much betray her as allow deeply imbedded inclinations to reemerge.
Cam was guilty of greed, of trying too desperately to provide a better place and a better life for his wife and daughter than he’d had growing up. He was not a criminal by nature, or an unchecked, unprincipled entrepreneur. He had succumbed to his desire to make things right, to try and reclaim and rewrite his past. But his past came roaring back, driving a battered old pickup with South Dakota plates.
Joe thought he had glimpsed the true Cam Logue that day in the real estate office when he confronted him. What he had seen wasn’t the cocksure businessman, but someone who was unsure and bitter, someone who was deep into a scheme and situation that he never should have pursued.
Trey Crump had called Joe with startling and disturbing news.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Trey said. “You were right about that bear collar. It was older than hell, and the bear guys said it had been out of inventory for thirty years. We have no idea how it showed up in that sheep wagon.”
Joe digested this, his mind swimming. “It showed up there because it came off the bear, Trey.”
“The bear guys say no way, Joe. No way a bear wandered around for thirty years without emitting a signal, and then showed up in your district. The only thing they can figure out is that the sheepherder must have found it somewhere along the line.”
Joe remembered the trashed trailer, remembered the smell of the bear inside of it.
“Not a chance,” Joe said, confused.
Trey cleared his throat. “This is where things start to get really weird, Joe. The thing is, the rogue grizzly bear that came out of Yellowstone was killed by some idiot roughneck over by Meeteetse a month ago. That bear never made it to the Bighorns.”
“WHAT?”
“The guy shot him, skinned him out, and crushed the radio collar. We never would have known except that the idiot took the hide to a taxidermist in Cody to get a rug made. The taxidermist called me, and the roughneck confessed everything this afternoon. We even found the decomposed body and what was left of the collar.”
Joe was stunned.
“There was a bear here, Trey. I saw the tracks. I saw what he did to the body of a dead cowboy.”
“Must have been another bear, I guess,” Trey said unconvincingly.
Joe fought against telling Trey about the bear Nate had been “communicating” with. If he told his supervisor, both Joe and Nate could be faced with federal charges.
The telephone was silent on both ends for two full minutes before they hung up.
Joe stared out his window, confused. A thirty-year-old bear collar? A bear that had vanished off the face of the earth for three decades had suddenly reappeared?
“Nah,” Joe said out loud, deliberately shutting off that line of inquiry.