Breaking Point

you’re thinking this happened last night?” Joe asked.
    Woods shrugged. “No way to know for sure yet, but that would be my guess.”
    Joe looked over at the mound again.
    “Yeah,” Woods said. “If somebody was buried alive . . .” He let his voice trail off.
    Woods nodded toward his colleagues, who leaned on their shovels in a pool of late-afternoon sunlight. “I’d kind of like to get these guys started before it gets dark.”
    Joe felt a pang of frustration. He glanced at the deputies with their spades and the Forest Service ranger talking to the highway trooper. He could tell by the way the ranger was gesticulating that he was showing the size of a fish he claimed he’d caught recently in Meadowlark Lake on the other side of the mountains. He thought,
So much of law enforcement work is just standing around.
    He heard the pop of gravel under tires and looked up to see Sheriff Mike Reed’s van strobing through the trees. It was a ten-year-old handicap-equipped panel Ford that had been specially purchased in Billings at an auction for the sheriff’s use. Joe could see Reed was at the wheel, using the hand controls, with the evidence tech, another new employee named Gary Norwood, in the passenger seat. The election the year before had taken place while Reed was in surgery from his gunshot wounds. He’d emerged from the hospital as the paraplegic new sheriff of Twelve Sleep County. The county commissioners had agreed to buy the van, but they were balking at purchasing the motorized wheelchair he’d requested, so Reed rolled down the side ramp and was immediately stopped fast in the soft dirt. Norwood bounded over to help, but the sheriff waved him off. Instead, Sheriff Reed leaned forward and grasped the thin wheels with his big hands and shoved, powering his way to firmer ground, where Joe met him.
    “I hate this,” Reed said to Joe under his breath. “I’m fine in the office. I can get around. But out here it’s another story. But I’m the
sheriff
. I need to get out into the county.”
    “Yup,” Joe said, stepping aside.
    “And I don’t want anyone helping me, including you.”
    “I know.”
    “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this,” Reed said. Joe wasn’t sure he would, either. Before he’d been cut down by a desperate suspect, Reed had been tall and strapping, with a graceful, loping stride. It had been less than a year since the shooting, but Joe could see the loss of muscle mass in Reed’s legs. His uniform trousers hung from bony thighs.
    Reed spun in his chair toward Woods and asked for an update.
    Joe listened in as Woods briefed the sheriff. Norwood tiptoed around the scene, snapping digital photos and placing evidence markers. Finally, Reed nodded, then called out to his men, “Okay, do this gently. Don’t get your weight behind the shovel. Sift the dirt off and put it on a plastic tarp. You don’t want to slice into anything with those shovels, gentlemen.”
    The deputies nodded and got to work. Reed glanced at his wristwatch and instructed Woods to call back to the sheriff’s department and request a walled outfitters’ tent, a generator, and portable lights.
    “This may take a while,” he said.
    When Woods walked back to his SUV to get on the radio, Reed said to Joe, “I think I know what we’re going to find.”
    “What?”
    “At least two federal employees of the Environmental Protection Agency from Denver.” His tone was solemn.
    Joe looked over. The deputies were proceeding with caution, as instructed. When streams of soil were dropped on the blue plastic tarp, it made a sizzling sound.
    —
    “Y OU SAW HIM, THEN,” Reed said to Joe, as they watched the fresh dirt get removed from the mound an inch at a time.
    “Butch Roberson?” Joe said. “Yeah, I ran into him just above Big Stream Ranch this afternoon. He told me he was scouting elk.”
    Joe described Butch’s clothing, gear, and rifle.
    “On foot?” Reed asked.
    “Yup.”
    “And you believed his story?” Reed asked, flat.
    “No reason not to,” Joe said, a little defensive.
    “If you’d brought him in, we might be a long way to solving this thing,” Reed said, not meeting Joe’s eyes.
    Joe didn’t respond.
    “Sorry,” Reed said, shaking his head. “There was no reason for me to say that, and no reason to bring him in. You didn’t know anything at the time. But you know him, right?”
    “Through my daughter,” Joe said. “We aren’t fishing buddies or