Chapter Eight #2
She said she understood. Then: “Did you recover a notebook? Or my dad’s phone?”
Sondergard hesitated for a moment, then said, “Not that I’m aware of. But I’ll let you know, like I said.”
Before Sheridan could ask about the missing reporting party, Sondergard stiffened in his chair and leaned across his desk.
“Tell me that you’re not going to investigate this on your own, Sheridan. I’d be disappointed to hear that’s what you plan to do. We’ll do a thorough and professional investigation, and we’ll keep you updated every step of the way.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “We’ll do the same with you,” she said finally.
“And we won’t interfere in your investigation.
But what you need to understand is that those ranch families out there go back generations, and they’re used to doing what they want despite who the sheriff is at the moment.
All three families are dysfunctional in their own way, and they don’t necessarily get along with one another.
There are secrets they don’t want found out, I can promise you that. ”
Sondergard eyed her warily. “What exactly are you saying? That you plan to investigate this with your sisters?”
“What I’m saying is that you’re new here, and so is your team, for the most part.
Frank has been here a couple of years, but both you and Deputy Bowkley are at a real disadvantage when it comes to looking into those ranch families.
I think it would be helpful for all of us to get a more local perspective on things as well. ”
Sondergard didn’t respond. Instead, he made eye contact with Sheridan, as if he could dissuade her that way.
“No disrespect meant in regard to you and your team,” Sheridan said, “but this is personal for us.”
“I see that,” Sondergard said. “I also see where it might help to get some local perspectives on the players involved.”
Sheridan sat forward in her chair, waiting.
He said, “Please don’t make me have to tell you and your sisters to back off. That would be really unhelpful.”
“I understand,” she said. “We can work together.”
Sondergard started to say more, but he apparently caught himself.
“Thank you again for the coffee,” he said. “I’d better get back to work unpacking my stuff.”
As he said it, Sondergard’s manner was cooler toward her than it had been and she felt a sharp pang of guilt. Had she just used his initial attraction to her to manipulate him? Had she derailed their relationship before it even got started?
She rose and reached out to shake his hand. He shook it.
“I’ve still got your number in my phone,” he said.
“And don’t hesitate to give me a call,” she said, relieved.
Later, she’d describe the conversation she’d had with the new sheriff to her sisters as him granting them “tacit approval” for their investigation.
Sheridan hoped that was the case.
—
Outside, Sheridan paused for a moment while she reached for the door handle of her SUV.
The county garage was right there in front of her and she could see it clearly over the top of her vehicle.
The garage was attached to the county building, a large, rambling redbrick structure with high ceilings inside and four roller-track doors facing the street.
She cautiously looked around the parking lot to see if any other employees were about. They weren’t. There was a parked police cruiser on the street in front of the Saddlestring Police Department, but no officer inside.
Sheridan shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and ambled across the lot in the general direction of the sheriff’s department entry, but as she neared it, she cut a sharp right along the sidewalk and continued on.
She didn’t want to try to access the garage through the interior of the building and possibly be noticed by Kristy or Deputy Carroll.
She ducked as she passed by Sondergard’s office window in case he glanced outside, then she proceeded on the sidewalk in front of the closed garage doors.
When she got to the end of the building complex, she turned left.
The first door she found on the side of the building was locked, as she suspected it would be.
So was another door on the back of the building in the alleyway.
There were four garage doors on the back side as well, but they were shut.
The building was designed so that vehicles could pull through it without having to back out.
Sheridan was about to give up and go back to her SUV when she heard the hum of an engine and then the crunching of tires on gravel behind her. A car was coming down the alley.
She stepped behind a dumpster next to the exterior garage wall and ducked down in time to see a county road maintenance truck cruise by in the alley.
Then it slowed and stopped and the driver positioned it in front of the first garage door.
While the truck idled, the driver apparently triggered a remote control device inside his truck and the door in front of him rumbled and rose.
When it was fully open, the maintenance truck driver drove it inside.
Sheridan gave it a five count, and before the door started to close again, she jogged from behind the dumpster and entered the cavernous building.
She could see the taillights of the truck ahead of her and to her left as it parked in its designated spot.
The driver didn’t look up and see her in his rearview mirror as she kept to the shadows and advanced through the building.
Spaces within the garage were obviously partitioned for each agency in the main county building. The first slot was for maintenance vehicles, the second for the EMT van, and the third for employees of the county court and the county clerk’s offices.
—
She located the green Game and Fish pickup parked under fluorescent lighting in a space reserved for the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department. It was backed into the space so that its toothy grille faced outward from the brick wall.
Sheridan held her breath as she took it in.
The Ford F-150 was punctured with bullet holes in both front fenders.
She counted seven bullet holes in the exterior of the pickup.
But it was the three bullet impacts on the windshield that rocked her.
Each was an imploded white starburst with a hole in the center.
One was directly above the steering wheel, where her dad’s head must have been.
She pulled out her phone and took rapid-fire photos of the pickup. April and Lucy, she thought, should see the damage firsthand. She did it quickly because she didn’t know how much time she’d have before someone came into the garage either through the alley or from the county building itself.
Then Sheridan pulled on a pair of ultralight gloves from her jacket. She hesitated a few seconds before opening the driver’s-side door and leaning inside.
The metallic smell of blood on the fabric of the seat and headrest made her gag. To think that it was her dad’s blood was traumatic in itself. Sheridan tried to push a rush of emotions aside.
What affected her in a surprisingly emotional way wasn’t just the blood on the seat, or the holes in the windshield.
It was looking into the cab of her dad’s pickup at the everyday items inside.
She’d grown up doing ride-alongs with him, and although he’d gone through a series of vehicles in his career and this was a newer-model pickup, the cab itself was arranged the same as she remembered it.
There was his thick bundle of local topo maps stuffed between the seats, and his thermos of coffee was on the passenger floorboard.
The Game and Fish Department regulations manual and citation book was clamped beneath the closed sun visor.
The passenger seat was fuzzy with dog hair from Biscuit.
The back seat was piled with clothing and gear and items he’d apparently picked up along the way, like shed antlers and a cow skull. A faded photo of the entire Pickett family taken the previous Thanksgiving was taped on the front panel of the glove box. That choked her up.
Joe Pickett’s pickup was his office, the place he spent the most hours of every day. Viewing all of the familiar items inside without him there felt like an intimate betrayal to Sheridan, as if she were rooting through his underwear drawer.
Sheridan kept in mind Sondergard’s admonitions about fouling the crime scene, so she didn’t touch anything. But she did strip off her right glove so she could work her cell phone, and she took more photos inside the cab.
She froze when she heard a door open and close in the garage. Had someone come in? Then she recalled the driver of the maintenance truck, who had probably returned to his office.
Sheridan leaned farther into the cab so she could look into the console between the seats. That was her dad’s junk drawer of sorts, and it contained protein bar wrappers, pens, a range finder, worn gloves, sunglasses, a small pair of binoculars…
As she leaned in to search for his notebook and cell phone, Sheridan felt a presence behind her.
“Who are you and what in the hell are you doing in there?”
She wheeled around to find a large man in a deputy sheriff’s uniform two feet away from her. He had a round Slavic face, close-cropped blond hair, a nose that had obviously been broken long before, and a wide, rubbery-lipped mouth. His small eyes were fierce.
His hand gripped his weapon in its holster. He was so close she couldn’t run away. Then he moved even closer. She could see that he wore a temporary name badge with hand-lettering that read Bowkley.
—
Bowkley was strong and quick as he pulled her away from the pickup by her collar and flung her face-first into the brick wall. As he did so, he kicked the pickup door closed behind them.
The deputy used the weight of his upper torso to pin her to the wall so hard that she had a difficult time getting breath.
“Let me explain,” she wheezed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he growled into her ear. She felt him pry her feet apart with his knee between her legs until they were spread, and then he jerked her right arm behind her back and then her left. The cuffs went on with a ratcheting sound and he cinched them tight.
He said, “What’s your name?”
She spat out, “Sheridan Pickett, Officer. This is my dad’s truck.”
“Well, Sheridan Pickett,” Bowkley said, “you are under arrest for tampering with a crime scene, interfering with a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest, and both breaking and entering and trespassing in a government building. And I might think of some more charges before we go inside.”
“What?”
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”