“Because I can’t publicly execute him where he sits,” Hewitt said. As he spoke, he patted the bulge under his left arm, where, no doubt, his handgun was holstered.
*
AFTER JUDGE HEWITT had blown out of the restaurant, Marybeth turned to Joe. “Well, that was weird.”
“The AG part or the sheriff part?” Joe asked.
“Both, I guess.”
“I agree,” Joe said. “I don’t know why he thought we had that much influence around here. But I am curious to learn more about Jackson Bishop. I might call the Park County game warden and see what he thinks of him.”
“I’ll do a little digging myself,” Marybeth said. “I know some people in county government in Cody.”
*
AS JOE STOOD up from the table and clamped on his hat, he felt his cell phone vibrate in his breast pocket. He took it out.
“It’s Jennie,” he said to Marybeth. Then: “Hello, Jennie.”
The pause was unnaturally long, which to Joe signaled bad news.
“Oh no,” Joe said. “Was there another attack?”
“Yes. And like the previous one, this one doesn’t make any sense, either.”
“Where?” Joe asked.
“Yesterday. North of Rawlins.”
“Rawlins?” Joe said. “That’s two hundred and fifty miles south of here.”
“I know.”
“That’s not bear country,” Joe said. As he spoke, he noticed that Marybeth had paused to listen in. There was concern on her face as well.
“Don’t I know it,” Jennie said. “As far as I know, we’ve never had an incident this far south.”
“Is it our bear?”
“I don’t know that, either,” she said. “But the MO sounds similar and the photos they’ve sent me look very familiar. A man walks out of his rural house to go to work in the morning and the bear hits him before he can get into his truck. Tears the guy to shreds and kills him. His head was crushed and it appears to be an incidence of overkill.”
“Were there other wounds? Defensive wounds?”
“Yes,” she said. “There were deep claw marks on his forearms where it looks like he tried to fight off the attack. His belly was slashed as well.”
“That’s horrible,” Joe said. “Who is the victim?”
He could hear her flipping through her notes, then she said, “Ryan Winner. Sergeant Ryan Winner. Big guy in his late forties. He was a CO at the men’s prison down there.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Walden, Colorado
THREE HUNDRED AND forty miles south of Saddlestring, Sheridan Pickett learned quickly from the woman behind the counter at the gas station as well as the motel owner that residents of Walden and Jackson County referred to themselves as “North Parkers” and that they were not to be confused with the woke elites (many of them new residents) from Denver, Boulder, Aspen, or even nearby Steamboat Springs.
This was tough country—high, wild, and lonesome—and just barely over the Wyoming border. The town of Walden itself had barely six hundred people, and it was the only incorporated municipality in the county. North Parkers lived at over eight thousand feet in elevation and were rimmed to the west by the Park and Sierra Madre ranges, south by the Rabbit Ears Range and the Never Summer Mountains, and east by the Medicine Bow Mountains. The tops of those mountains were already white with snow.
In late October, the location reminded Sheridan strongly of where she’d come from, with its single main street consisting of saloons, shops, eclectic restaurants, and muddy four-wheel-drive pickups parked diagonally against the curb. The busiest enterprise in town seemed to be the wild-game processing facility, with elk hunters lined up along the street with dead animals, antlers bristling from the beds of their trucks. The lone grocery store was located so far out of town that it didn’t seem connected to it. A tall and magnificent granite courthouse stood just off the main drag, indicating that at one time somebody had very high hopes for the future of Walden.