Page 90 of Three-Inch Teeth

“My pleasure.”

*

THREE-QUARTERS OF A mile away, Dallas Cates made the turn on the river road toward the Eagle Mountain Club with his headlights off. Suddenly, he hit the brakes. Soledad reached out to brace himself against the sudden halt and Johnson cursed from the backseat as she was thrown to the floor.

“Christ,” LOR exclaimed from the back of the pickup through the open rear-window slider. “What’s going on?”

“Look,” Cates said, pointing through the windshield to the north.

In the distance up a long manicured slope, on the left side of the eighth fairway, was the location where they’d attacked the judge. It was bathed in light. Three vehicles were parked astride the cart path with their headlights aimed into the alcove. A figure passed through the beams, then another.

“They’re up there now,” Cates said. “Shit. They’ll be on to us.”

“I wonder who it is?” Soledad asked. “I can’t see them clearly enough in the dark.”

As he said it, a man wearing a red uniform shirt and a cowboy hat walked through a set of headlights and disappeared again in the gloom.

“That was the game warden,” Cates said. “Joe Pickett.”

“Well, that son of a bitch,” Soledad said. “I thought he’d be home by now.”

“I’ve learned not to underestimate him,” Cates said, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “But it looks like I did it again.”

Soledad took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. He said, “There’s no reason to panic. No reason at all. We’ll just have to change the order of things tonight.”

“Change the order?” Johnson asked from the backseat.

“We won’t go to his place first like we talked about,” Soledad said. “We’ll go there second.”

Cates saw the logic immediately. He turned in his seat and said to LOR, “Keep the compressor on and let me know when the cylinders are full.”

Then he carefully backed the truck up without using his brakes until it was fully hidden in the dense cottonwoods next to the bank of the Twelve Sleep River, where he did a precise three-point turn.

“They’ll probably find and study our tracks,” Soledad said. “Maybe take impressions. That’s fine—finding our tracks will slow them down. It’ll give us plenty of time to move to our alternate destination and get set up.”

Johnson said, “I’m confused about what’s going on. Aren’t we going to the game warden’s house?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Soledad said dismissively.

*

AT THE SAME time, Marybeth swung into her van in the parking lot of Valley Foods with a grocery bag. She liked the idea of making a big pot of spaghetti with elk burger red sauce for dinner, along with garlic bread. That way, she could get it prepared and let the sauce simmer and they could eat at whatever time Joe got home.

She dug her phone out of her purse to call Sheridan to see if she’d like to join them for dinner when she got back to town from Walden. As she lifted the phone, it lit up in her hand. The screen read: WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

“Yes? This is Marybeth Pickett.”

“Marybeth, Dick Weber from the DOC. We met last year, if you’ll recall. I’m sorry for calling so late.”

“Not a problem at all and I do remember meeting you. Thanks for calling me back.”

As she spoke to him, Marybeth pictured the man she’d met in Rawlins at the food bank: crew cut, square jaw, icy blue eyes, military bearing, no-nonsense.

“First, I really have to apologize to you,” Weber said. “I’ve been out on a two-week hunting trip in the Wind Rivers and I’d assigned a list of tasks to my staff, but it seems the ball got dropped around here. I really had to chew some asses today and it didn’t make me very popular, as you can imagine.”

“Really,” she said, “there’s no reason to apologize. I just left the message a few hours ago. I didn’t expect you to be at your desk.”

Weber hesitated before responding. “To be honest, I didn’t hear your message. But I understand that you’re probably pretty upset. It’s all my fault.”

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