Page 92 of Three-Inch Teeth

“I don’t care about your hunting trip,” Marybeth seethed. “You’re telling me that Dallas Cates, the man who has threatened my family’s life more than once, was released from prison twelve days ago?”

“I’m sorry you have to hear it this way,” Weber said. “I really am. But when we got to talking about Ryan Winner, it got me on the wrong track.”

She could barely hold the phone because her hand was trembling.

“Where did he go when he got out?” Marybeth asked. “Who picked him up?”

“I don’t know. Once they’re out, they’re out. And, like I said, it happened while I was gone.”

“What was the relationship between Dallas Cates and Ryan Winner?”

“Like I said, Winner worked E pod. That’s where Cates was housed last. I don’t think they got along, but Dallas didn’t get along with most folks. Cates was always trouble, with a capital T, and Winner didn’t coddle types like that. It probably didn’t help that Cates was one of the big WOODS guys.

“Hold it,” Weber said. “Are you suggesting …”

“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Marybeth said, disconnecting the call. She angrily tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

She sat back and hugged herself while she looked around where she was parked. The highway was empty, and her headlights lit up the yellow grass in front of her on the side of the road. The only movement was the moonlit branches of the river cottonwoods swaying in the evening wind.

Beyond her headlights, all was dark and empty.

Twelve days. Twelve days. Her mind raced as she reviewed what had happened in the last twelve days.

She snatched the phone off the seat and called Joe. He answered on the first ring, which meant he was close enough to be in cell range.

“Joe—where are you?”

“About ten minutes from home.”

“Good. I’m less than that,” Marybeth said as she put the van in gear and floored the accelerator. The vehicle fishtailed in the loose soil of the borrow pit before her tires bit on the asphalt and launched her back onto the highway.

“Marybeth, are you okay?” he asked.

“No, I am not. Hurry home, Joe.”

*

HE FOUND MARYBETH at the kitchen table with her laptop open and a Wyoming Department of Transportation state road map unfolded on the surface. A plastic bag of groceries had been haphazardly tossed on the kitchen counter, its contents strewn across the Formica.

There was a frantic look on her face when she turned from the screen to greet him as he entered through the mudroom.

“Dallas Cates was released from the penitentiary,” she said.

The words stopped him cold. “When?” he asked. “They were supposed to notify us.”

“They didn’t, those bastards.” she said. Beneath the table, Marybeth shoved a chair free with her foot and it slid across the floor. “You had better sit down,” she said.

Joe did, although he felt like he’d had the breath knocked out of him. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen it coming at some point. For years, they’d both kept track of the ongoing incarceration of Cates. And since the offenses he’d been convicted of were flimsy at best, they’d known the time would come when the man was released.

Joe remained conflicted about the circumstances that had put Cates away, even though he firmly believed that the former rodeo cowboy had done much worse and deserved punishment. Cates was an evil man, the spawn of an evil family. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been convicted of the murders and kidnappings he was involved with because the evidence wasn’t there and they couldn’t pin it all on him. Dallas was diabolical and calculating and he had the ability to involve others in his crimes and insulate his own role in them. Since he was a youngster, he’d perfected the act of instigating wrongdoing and then stepping back when accused and claiming, “Who, me?”

The fact was that the combined law enforcement forces in Twelve Sleep County had overtly targeted Dallas, Joe included. He’d participated in a kind of conspiracy to get Dallas Cates off the streets. No one knew at the time that their effort would result in the deaths of the entire Cates family, one by one. Even Brenda, the matriarch and actual brains behind the malevolent actions of her clan, had recently died in prison.

No, it wasn’t a shock that Dallas Cates had been released. Joe just wished they’d had notice of the event and could have made efforts to track his movement.

The map was open in front of him and he saw that certain locations in the square state of Wyoming were marked with sloppy black marker. The circles, if joined, looked to Joe like a poorly rendered sketch of the Big Dipper, or a child’s drawing of a kite with a tail.

“What’s this?”

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