Page 31 of Three-Inch Teeth

He was in his late sixties or early seventies, Cates thought. Tall but soft, no muscle tone, a weak chin, and a classic cop mustache. An unimposing man who happened to have a badge and a gun.

“I mean, there’s no cash,” the marshal said, his voice rising with anxiety. “This place runs strictly on donations, and I’m afraid to say there just aren’t many.”

Cates replaced the railroad spike with the Glock and he used the muzzle to push the marshal forward against a glass display case. As he did so, the marshal nearly tripped over the almost-severed head of the grizzly bear.

“What in the hell are you doing in here to old Zeus?” the marshal asked. His eyes slid from the bear to the glass, and Cates found himself looking into the man’s eyes in the reflection.

“Hey,” the marshal said. “I think I might know you.”

“You don’t.”

“I met you through Cody a few years back. You’re Dallas Cates.”

“I’m not.”

“Look—”

Cates grabbed the marshal by his opposite shoulder and spun him around until they were face-to-face, nose to nose, eye to eye. “I’m not going back to jail,” Cates said.

The marshal started to speak, when Cates shoved the muzzle under his chin and fired. The exit wound blew his hat off his head and painted the glass of the display case red.

Cates stepped back while the marshal slid down the glass case to the floor, where he sat with his head flopped to the side and his legs sprawled out.

“Dallas? Are you all right?” Johnson yelled from the window.

“Fine,” Cates said.

“I thought I heard a shot.”

“You did. Now start up the truck. I’ll be right out.”

*

BEFORE TOSSING THE bear’s head and paws out the open window, Cates returned to the marshal’s body and stood over it. He thought about staging a suicide, leaving the gun in the marshal’s hand. Cops killed themselves all the time with their own weapons, and it wasn’t out of the question that a small-town marshal, who probably got paid next to nothing with no further job prospects due to his age, might be the victim of depression.

But Dallas Cates wanted to keep the gun. He needed it.

Plus, his DNA was probably all over the museum. He hadn’t worn gloves, and his fingerprints were on the saw and his footprints were everywhere in the fine plaster dust on the floor. That idiot Shell station attendant could place him in the vicinity the night of the murder.

So, after locating several gallons of isopropyl alcohol in the storeroom and splashing it across the floor, Cates tucked the Glock into his belt and climbed out the window. He loaded the bear parts into the back of Johnson’s truck bed. That grizzly head was as heavy as he thought it would be.

Then he returned to the building and tossed a lit match through the open window. Not until the fire caught with a breathy whoosh did he jump into the truck and tell Johnson to get the hell out of Hanna, Wyoming, now population six hundred and eighty-two.

CHAPTER NINE

Jeffrey City

LEE OGBURN-RUSSELL LIVED in Jeffrey City in the home he’d grown up in, for better or worse. Dallas Cates wanted to find him.

The wind howled across U.S. Highway 287 as Cates and Bobbi Johnson approached the town from the southeast. Tumbleweeds the size of medicine balls rolled across the asphalt and a massive dust devil descended from Green Mountain to the south, its tail tethered to the ground and its funnel top splayed out like an opened fan. Waves of wind buffeted Johnson’s pickup from the side and rocked it while they drove. To the north were two central Wyoming landmarks: Devil’s Gate and Independence Rock, both on the Oregon Trail. Devil’s Gate was a severe slash down the middle of a granite mountain where the Sweetwater River flowed. Independence Rock was a lone turtle shell–like rock formation covered with initials and carvings made by pioneers headed west a century and a half ago. Both faded out of view as the pickup got closer to the town.

“Slow down or we’ll miss it,” Cates said to Johnson. “There ain’t much there anymore.”

“Why do we keep going to places like this?” Johnson whined. “Can’t we go to someplace with people in it? Someplace to eat and shop? And maybe someplace a lady can take a shower?”

“I’ll tell you why,” Cates said. “Because a guy like Lee can’t live among actual human beings.” Then: “You’ll see.”

*

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