Joe pulled off the road and waved at Norwood and the deputy as they went by, hauling the ATVs to the ranch. He continued on toward the county road. Daisy was curled up in the passenger seat after leaving muddy prints all over the cab. His clean new truck had lasted exactly half a day, he thought.
He could hear Tibbs requesting an ambulance for the body over the mutual aid channel on his radio. Ruthanne, the dispatcher, asked him if everything was all right with him, and Tibbs was terse in his response and deflected the question. He was still playing it coy when it came to their personal relationship, Joe thought. But it was a small town and Tibbs was a public official. Word would eventually get to Mrs. Tibbs, and all hell could break loose.
He hesitated at the junction on the county road. Then instead of turning right toward the highway and back to Saddlestring, he turned left.
* * *
—
Bert Kizer’s small home was two miles from the ranch turnoff and was tucked into an alcove of mature river cottonwoods still blazing yellow and red with fall colors. The visual feast surrounding it made Kizer’s place look even more faded and drab than it already was. The structure was a simple ranch-style bungalow covered by unpainted siding. Yellow leaves blanketed the gray roof and covered the small unkempt lawn in the front. A twenty-year-old Dodge Power Wagon was parked on the side of the house. On the other side was a low-profile ClackaCraft drift boat on a trailer covered by a tarp. Next to the drift boat was an NRS river raft. Tools of Bert’s trade.
Joe parked in the ditch on the side of the road. He didn’t want to drive to the house on the two-track that led to it because he feared driving over and obscuring any recent tire tracks.
He knew he shouldn’t go to the scene there before the sheriff and his team arrived, but he had to be sure. This, he thought, was the kind of thing that had gotten him into trouble in the past. Not that it would stop him now.
He walked the sixty yards from his pickup to the house over a carpet of just-fallen yellow leaves. The cool morning made his joints stiff and he limped as he walked from both his recent injuries and the bullet wound in his leg from the year before. It took longer to recover from injuries than it used to, he’d found. It was annoying.
There were no sounds coming from inside, and he noted that the front door was open a crack. Kizer had obviously not taken his truck anywhere. So he was either inside, or . . .
“Bert, are you in there?” Joe called out. “It’s Joe Pickett, the game warden.” He wanted to give the man plenty of notice that he was trespassing. The last thing he wanted to see play out was for Kizer to step outside his home with a shotgun. Wyoming’s Castle Doctrine would render it a justified shooting.
Joe placed his hand on his Glock as he got closer. He called out several more times, and the only response from the shack was when a dog peered at him from around the corner of it. The dog was some kind of mixed breed, tall and willowy with mottled coloring, a long snout, and piercing hazel eyes. It trembled and looked scared and ready to bolt away at any second. Joe didn’t feel threatened.
That’s when he smelled it: gasoline.
He mounted the wooden porch and called out again. There was no response.
Drawing his weapon, Joe stood to the side of the door. He glanced at the dog to see it had taken a couple of steps toward him, but it was still too wary to come any closer. Then he leaned over and pushed the door all the way open and peered inside.
Although he didn’t know Bert Kizer’s housekeeping regimen, it was obvious the interior had been wrecked. Side tables and lamps were overturned and a board-and-block bookshelf had been ransacked. A single hardwood chair had been repositioned from the table to stand alone in the middle of the living room. Strips of duct tape hung from the arms and legs.
The facing wall was filled with cheaply framed photos and most of them were askew. There was a younger Bert with a fine 5×5 bull elk, Bert offering a thick twenty-two-inch rainbow trout to the photographer, Bert holding up the severed head of a pronghorn. Two older black-and-white photos showed Bert as a child. In one, he sat on the back of a horse. In the other, he stood thigh-high next to a man with haunted eyes wearing a U.S. Army uniform. His father?
The dining room table was empty except for a long-billed cap that looked as if it had been tossed there haphazardly. A jacket hung from the top of one of the chairs.
On the kitchen counter next to the table were assorted hand tools: a hacksaw, a hammer, pliers, and a DeWalt twenty-volt hand drill armed with a dark-stained bit. Joe knew the drill because he had one exactly like it himself.