Chapter Two #2
The windshield was shattered and had turned white with bullet impacts, but the glass had held together.
There were three large holes in the glass on the driver’s side, as well as concave dents in the hood and side doors that were clearly made by bullets.
Two of the holes were centered at eye level to a driver.
EMTs huddled around the driver’s side. They were shouting and moving quickly. One of them motioned to the driver of the EMT van to bring a stretcher. She heard the word “stat.”
As she neared the pickup, Marybeth felt as if her soul were leaving her body and hovering above her and that she was taking everything in through the eyes of a dispassionate third party. It was all so surreal.
Then she felt a firm grip on her shoulder.
“Ma’am,” a deputy she didn’t recognize said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”
The deputy looked as young as her daughters. He was trying to grow a mustache. His cheeks were flushed.
“I’m Marybeth Pickett,” she said, her voice flat. “That’s my husband’s truck.”
He winced at that. “Please don’t get in the way of the medical professionals.”
“Why can’t I see him?” she asked.
The deputy shook his head. He was at a loss for words.
Deputy Frank Carroll approached her. He had been at the pickup and his face was ashen. He had a tough time meeting her eyes at first.
“It’s Joe, isn’t it?” she asked.
He nodded that it was.
“Is he dead?”
“Not yet,” Carroll said. “The EMTs said there’s a faint pulse. They’ve already called for a Life Flight helicopter. They’re going to fly him straight to Billings and bypass Twelve Sleep County Hospital.”
“Why? How bad is it?”
“Marybeth,” Carroll said with empathy, “they said he’s been hit at least twice. They stopped the bleeding, but…the worst is that it appears he’s been shot in the head.”
As he said it, Carroll touched his index finger to the middle of his forehead. Marybeth felt her legs wobble. The unknown deputy reached under her arms to keep her standing.
“I’m going with him,” she said. “But first I need to text our daughters.”
Carroll ordered the younger deputy to put Biscuit into his patrol vehicle and deliver the dog to the Pickett home.
—
Airborne, with the Twelve Sleep River meandering through snow-choked hayfields below them, Marybeth reached under the sheet and grasped Joe’s hand. He didn’t respond.
Plastic bags of fluid were suspended above him and fed into both arms. She could see only the bottom half of his face because his head was wrapped in thick bandages. Joe’s lips were parted and he breathed softly.
They’d been accompanied on the flight by an EMT, who sat on a stool on the other side of the gurney and kept a close eye on the monitor apps on his iPad.
“Where exactly was he hit in the head?” Marybeth asked him.
“I don’t know exactly, ma’am.”
“I mean, was he grazed or…”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
Deputy Carroll was also on the flight. He was crowded into the rear of the compartment near Joe’s feet.
“Did you locate the hunter who called it in?” she asked.
“I didn’t get a name,” Carroll said. “Whoever it was, was gone when we got there.”
“Gone? Where did he go? There’s only one road out and we were all on it.”
Carroll shrugged.
She said, “That means the hunter probably went to one of the three ranches. I wonder which one?”
“We’ll find out,” Carroll said. It was obvious he hadn’t thought that far. Then: “Do you have any idea which ranch Joe was headed out to this morning?”
“No, you already asked that. I know he’s had business with all of them over the years. But if I were to guess, I’d guess it was the Mac Ranch.”
“Why them?”
“They’re poachers and it’s hunting season,” she said.
“I’ll call the sheriff,” Carroll said, pulling his phone out of his breast pocket. He looked at it and said, “Crap, I don’t have a cell signal up here.”
He yelled across Joe’s body to the front of the chopper. “Captain, how long before we land in Billings?”
“Twenty-three minutes,” the pilot responded.
Marybeth looked at Joe and stroked his chin gently. She prayed to God he had that long.
—
They’d first met in college at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Thirty years ago, but Marybeth could remember it as if it had just happened.
Although Joe said he’d been well aware of Marybeth for the entire school year and they’d even been in a couple of classes together, she had to honestly admit that she’d never noticed him. It was an anecdote that he brought up from time to time, but always with a wry smile.
Back then, Marybeth was popular, good-looking (she was told), and on track to graduate and move on to law school.
She was invited to all the parties and events, and her sorority was located in one of the finest and largest Victorian-era buildings on campus.
Her life was a swirl of highly structured obligations and social events overseen by her mother, Missy, who had been on her second husband at the time.
Missy could keep close track of her daughter because Loren, the stepfather, was on the board of trustees at the state’s only university.
Joe entered Marybeth’s life the night after the Wyoming Cowboys football team upset the mighty Brigham Young University Cougars during a night game at War Memorial Stadium.
Students had charged the field after the game and tore down the goalposts, although Marybeth had remained in the stands with her boyfriend, Colin Hughes, and her sorority sisters.
But they’d joined in with the crowd as the students hoisted the hardware and paraded it into downtown Laramie to the Buckhorn Bar.
After the wild celebration at the Buckhorn and too many red Solo cups of Coors, they all wound up at a rambling rental house in West Laramie packed with students. Marybeth couldn’t recall for sure how she got there.
One of the residents of the house, a handsome but slick fifth-year senior nicknamed Cooter had pinned her against a cinder-block–and–board bookcase.
Cooter was the son of a well-known rancher and politician from Jackson Hole, and he was the kind of boy Missy wanted Marybeth to end up with.
When Marybeth turned away from him, he jammed his tongue into her ear and told her that a lot of girls really liked that.
She didn’t. But when she looked frantically at the crowd for Colin to come to her rescue, she saw him furtively glance away and make his way to the keg in the next room. Cooter was bigger and stronger than Colin, and it was his house, but…
That’s when she noticed that there were now three of them leaning against the bookcase: Cooter, Marybeth, and a dark-haired student of medium height and build. The boy said to Cooter, “If you don’t leave her alone, things are going to get western around here.”
Cooter scoffed and glared at him. He said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Joe Pickett.”
She was struck by his demeanor. He was calm but intensely focused on Cooter, who stood a head taller.
Marybeth braced for a fight that didn’t come. Instead, Cooter stepped away from her and laughed at Joe Pickett. Joe didn’t react in any way, which apparently unnerved Cooter.
Cooter said, “Later” to Marybeth, then rejoined the crowd in his front room.
When she turned to her new acquaintance, Joe breathed a visible sigh of relief and said, “That went better than I thought it might.”
She asked, “Who are you, Joe Pickett?”
And he shrugged in response and replied, “Nobody special, I guess.”
—
Missy was on her third husband, marrying up each time, selecting her next target based on his prominence and net wealth, when Joe asked Marybeth to marry him.
It was on a dinner date at the Cavalryman Steakhouse and he’d downed two strong bourbons before he could screw up the courage to ask.
They’d been exclusive for only seven months.
She’d surprised both Joe and herself by accepting.
Missy was shocked most of all, and she accused her daughter of doing it out of spite.
Missy found Joe ordinary and unimpressive, having researched the broken family he’d come from in northern Wyoming.
The news sent Colin Hughes into a tailspin, only later to reemerge as a prominent real estate executive in Cheyenne who was accused by a series of babysitters of inappropriate behavior.
Missy referred to her son-in-law as “Average Joe” and she’d despaired when he got a job with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department as the lowest-ranked game warden in the state.
As the Picketts moved from district to district and Joe moved up in badge numbers and seniority, Marybeth gave up the idea of continuing her education to be a lawyer.
Instead, she took local jobs as an accountant, a business adviser, and eventually a librarian.
Missy saw it all as abject failure and “settling.”
Marybeth saw falling for Joe as the best decision of her life.
When the family eventually included three stong-willed and independent daughters, and their situation in the Saddlestring District stabilized with Joe as the longtime game warden, Marybeth had no regrets.
—
She looked at her watch. It was fourteen more minutes to Billings.
“How am I supposed to get home?” Deputy Carroll suddenly asked Marybeth. It had apparently just occurred to him that he’d left his SUV at Antler Creek Junction.
“I don’t know,” Marybeth said. “I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”
“When are you going back?” he asked her.
Marybeth shook her head. She had no idea.