Chapter 9
Jamie
In the dim morning light, Jamie pulls up to the only motel in town—the Grandview Mountain Lodge. When the sun rises, he knows
the view will be pretty. He has to give the founders credit for truth in advertising. But the Grandview is no lodge. No pool,
no hot tub, no mints on your pillow. It is still the grim, flat-roofed, two-story motor inn where twelve-year-old Jamie and
sixteen-year-old Juneau lived with their mother when they moved to Nightjar. Jamie’s mother was the night manager and cleaned
for this motel. It wasn’t easy work and paid poorly. That summer, he and Juneau spent a lot of time helping their mother clean
up other people’s shit, and Jamie prayed they could move on. A strong statement from a kid who only wanted to settle into
the same town for more than a year or two. He didn’t expect much—his own bedroom, a nearby skate park, and kids who’d rather
play video games than castrate cattle after school. Then his sister disappeared, and he was left for dead. Ultimately, Jamie
got his wish when he and his mother moved away from Nightjar. He got his skate park and gamer friends, but all he wanted was
his sister back.
Jamie parks and walks to the unit where a dingy sign that says Office hangs in the window.
He pulls open the creaky door, and a jingling bell announces his arrival.
Same annoying bell, even, Jamie thinks. The space is stuffy and overwarm and smells of cigarette smoke.
The clerk behind the counter is in her seventies with rheumy eyes and deep crevices around her lips.
“Is room seventeen available?” he asks before he can stop himself.
“Ah, the presidential suite,” the woman says with a small uptick of her mouth. “Good choice.” She runs his credit card. “Returning
customer?” she asks.
“Yeah, but it’s been a while,” Jamie says, accepting the key hanging from an orange plastic key tag adorned with the faded
silhouette of the motel.
He goes back outside, grateful for the cool morning air, and takes the metal steps to the second level. He walks along the
balcony until he finds himself standing in front of the door with a crooked number 17 affixed just above the peephole. Using the key the clerk gave him, Jamie opens the door, and a wave of nostalgia sweeps over
him. That’s not the right word. Wistfulness, maybe? How about a bad idea? comes Juneau’s voice. You know you can stay at a La Quinta over in Jackson, right?
The layout of the room is the same: a small area with a pullout sofa and a coffee table with a scuffed laminate top. In the
kitchenette there’s a small table that sits two, a hot plate, a sink, and a dorm-size refrigerator. Behind two closed doors,
Jamie knows he will find a bathroom with dingy tile and a small bedroom that only has room for a bed and a dresser. On the
walls are the same tacky velvet paintings of a buffalo, a wolf, and a bear. He can’t help smiling. Juneau had named them—Barney,
Winston, and Bianca. He moves across the carpet, squishy beneath his feet, to the closed bedroom door. Inside is a queen-size
bed and, thankfully, what looks like a relatively new comforter. He’s not tired, though. His nerves are still jangling from
coming back to Nightjar and seeing Wes Drake at the hospital.
He goes back outside and moves down the stairs, his footsteps making the iron vibrate.
The sun has risen. The sky is watercolor-blue, and the grass is still wet with last night’s rain.
The morning sunshine softens the sharp edges of the mountains off in the distance.
Jamie knows better, though. There is nothing soft or welcoming or gentle about the mountains.
It’s a hard life, living in this part of the world, especially if you don’t have the money to pay others to do the work for you.
He unhooks his bike from the rack and wheels it back up the steps and into his motel room.
There will be no bike ride this morning.
Once in his car, Jamie pulls out his phone and calls Tess.
“Hello,” she answers shortly, and Jamie winces.
“Hey, I made it to Nightjar. I’m getting ready to head to the scene now,” Jamie says.
“Okay,” Tess says, and Jamie can feel the chill over the line.
“What are you up to today?” Jamie asks, as he watches a mule deer and her fawn cross the asphalt parking lot.
“The same thing I’ve been doing for the last two months. Looking for a job. But wait, that’s right. There are zero jobs in
consulting right now. Especially in Wyoming,” Tess says irritably. “But you knew that already because I told you this would
happen.”
“Tess,” Jamie says wearily. “Come on . . .” His voice is loud in the morning quiet, and the sound startles the deer and fawn,
and they scurry away.
“Yeah, got it,” Tess says, her voice thick with tears. “You don’t really want to know what I’m doing today, just want the
credit for asking.”
“I’ll call you later,” Jamie says. “We’ll talk about it when I get back to my motel. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Tess sniffs. “Me too.”
Jamie disconnects. He knows it’s been hard for Tess, but she agreed to move to Cheyenne.
He didn’t force her, and at the time she had some job leads.
It wasn’t his fault they fell through. He had wanted to tell Tess about seeing Wes Drake after all these years, wanted her take on things.
They used to be able to do that, talk about everything.
As Jamie pulls out of the parking lot and drives toward the Drake ranch, he tells himself that things with Tess will sort
themselves out. They’ll work it out. They always do. But he can’t help but kick himself for not identifying himself to the
Drakes. His presence at the site of an explosion involving the man who once saved his life could easily and understandably
be misconstrued. No matter how fastidiously he investigates, even the whiff of favoritism could blow a potential murder case
and sully Jamie’s reputation as an ATF agent. He has to make this right. He’ll have to say he didn’t make the connection at
the hospital. It has been twenty-seven years after all, and the Drake name is common in the area.
Thirty minutes later, he turns onto the road that will take him to the ranch. In a recently mowed stretch of the meadow are
a dozen vehicles. The guests and hired workers must have parked here for the party. Grimly, Jamie knows the remaining cars
probably belong to the injured and dead.
Today Jamie is dressed for the crime scene. Lace-up waterproof boots, jeans, an ATF windbreaker, and service revolver at his
hip. Using his cell phone, he pauses to snap photos of the vehicles and their license plates, hoping that local law enforcement
will have already done so. Still, at some point he’ll speak with the owners. He leaves his car parked on the side of the road
and begins the trek toward the house and the explosion site. The guests would have made this same walk after parking their
cars, or more likely, the Drakes would have had an ATV or golf cart handy to bring them the rest of the way to the house.
The Drake home, made of stone, lumber, and glass, looms large against the rugged landscape. Jamie guesses with its three thousand acres, the property has a price tag of upward of around twenty million.
The Drakes were well-known in Woodson County when Jamie was a kid. Wes’s father was one of the biggest landowners in a county
where the number of acres you own means everything. Jamie didn’t meet him until after Juneau disappeared and Jamie was out
of the ICU. Mr. Drake wanted to meet the young man his son had rescued and express his condolences. Jamie remembered Wes’s
dad as a large man, with a sun-craggy face and sharp blue eyes. He was warm and kind and said goodbye to Jamie’s mom with
a lingering hug.
After Jamie was released from the hospital, he and his mother tried to get on with life in Nightjar, but it was too hard.
The sky was too big, their motel room strangely too small without Juneau. At night, after his mother passed out from the sleeping
pills the doctor prescribed, Jamie would sneak out of the house and find himself limping along the gravel road where his sister
disappeared, searching. Without fail, Deputy Colson would end up on the same stretch of road, flashing his truck’s brights
to let Jamie know it was him.
“Aren’t you nervous being out here by yourself so late at night?” Colson asked one night after cajoling Jamie into his truck.
“Not really,” Jamie said dully, looking out the passenger-side window. “Why would he bother killing me now? It’s obvious I
didn’t see anything.” Colson didn’t have anything to say to this but tried to fill the silence with small talk while he drove
Jamie home.
Juneau’s case grew cold, and just before Christmas, his mother told them they were moving on. They argued bitterly, and Jamie
vowed to stay behind. “How can you give up?” he would shout. “How can you leave, knowing she’s out there somewhere?”
“Because she’s not,” his mother said, tossing their meager possessions into plastic tote boxes. “She’s gone, Jamie.” She paused to look at him, her eyes uncharacteristically clear. “She’s dead and never coming back.”
Now in the light of day, the ranch is abuzz with law enforcement. Crime-scene techs dressed in their protective gear sift
through the rubble of the burnt-out barn. Another cluster of techs are standing around a large crater in the meadow just beyond
the stables. It appears there are two explosion sites. Not unheard of, but they are so far apart with no apparent destruction
in between.
“Thanks for coming,” a voice behind him says. Jamie turns to find a man dressed in coveralls and a hard hat. “Dave Ostrenga,
Wyoming State Fire Marshal,” he says sticking out his hand. “Glad you could come out so quickly. This one’s got us a little
stumped.”
“Jamie Saldano,” Jamie says, taking the marshal’s hand. It’s cold and calloused. “Glad to be of help. I spoke briefly to the
homeowners last night at the hospital. Sounds like a gender reveal gone rogue.”