Page 60 of Battle Mountain

“You said Bishop was there as well?” Sheridan asked.

“Yes.”

“What didhewant?”

“I’m not really sure,” Marybeth said. “I think he was here to make the introduction, but he seemed most interested in Kestrel. And where you were.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Not really. He knows where you work.”

“Why does he care?”

“I don’t know, other than he thinks anything that goes on around here is his business,” Marybeth said.

“I don’t trust that man,” Sheridan said. “He’s creepy.”

“Let’s talk more about that. What are you doing tonight?”

“No plans at the moment.”

“Come over for dinner.”

Sheridan hesitated a moment. “I can do that.” Then: “What’s going on, Mom?”

“I’m not sure, and of course your dad is out of town. But please bring a change of clothes, just in case you decide to stay over. I could really use some company, and we can talk about Sheriff Bishop.”

“I’ll see you after work.”

“Thank you,” Marybeth said. “I’d appreciate that.”

—

She punched offand speed-dialed Joe’s number. He answered immediately, but his voice was hushed.

“I’m in a meeting,” he said. “I’ll call you right back.” Then he disconnected.

Frustrated at her husband and still awash from the strange conversations with Bishop, Orr, and Sheridan, she gathered up Kestrel and plopped her on her lap. Kestrel loved to sit there and watch what happened on the computer monitor, hoping Marybeth would open up a video application that featuredPeppa PigandBluey.

Instead, Marybeth reached around the child to her keyboard and called up the first of many search engines she planned to access in the next few minutes while waiting for Joe’s return call.

She keyed in:Richard Orr Special Agent FBI Langley Virginia.

Chapter Fourteen

Joe said, “I’llcall you right back,” and slipped his cell phone into his uniform dress pocket.

“Sorry about that,” he said to Sheriff Regan Haswell, who sat behind his desk with a bemused expression on his face. “That was my wife.”

“Gotcha,” Haswell said. “I used to have one of those.”

Susan Kany bristled at the remark and squirmed a bit in her chair.

The Warm Springs branch of the Carbon County Sheriff’s Department was located on East Springs Street with its back facing a public parking lot and the rear of the Hotel Wolf. Haswell apparently rotated between his county office in Rawlins and the branch in Warm Springs, according to the receptionist out front. It was fortuitous that they’d caught him at the right time.

Haswell was thin and dark and had a trim mustache and probing brown eyes. He wore jeans, boots, and a beige and brown uniform shirt with a bolo tie festooned with ivory elk teeth. He was younger than Joe had imagined him to be, maybe midforties.These days, Joe thought, most people he dealt with were younger than he was. He still wasn’t used to it.

The sheriff had nodded a greeting to Kany when the two of them entered his office, and Kany had acknowledged him back. Kany had told Joe on the way down from Rankin’s camp that she didn’t think the sheriff respected her authority yet, and he didn’t seem to place a high priority on the cases she brought forward to his office. She attributed that to the fact that Haswell was tight with a group of similarly aged men, longtime locals who treated Game and Fish regulations as recommendations instead of statutes. They camped together while elk-hunting and drank together at the Rustic Bar and the Wet Fly Saloon at the outskirts of town.