Breaking Point

finishing the question for him.
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know yet. I just got him today. A customer at the restaurant hit him with his truck and he was stuck inside the grille. I think he’s got a broken wing. I couldn’t just let them get rid of him somewhere.”
    “I sympathize,” Joe said, “but that kind of rehabilitation takes a lot of time and patience.”
    “I know that, Dad,” she said. “But what else was I going to do?”
    Joe shrugged. Twenty or thirty times a year, he was called to the scene of an injured animal or bird. The person who called was always happy to turn the cripple over to Joe and wash their hands of it. On rare occasions, Joe could find a shelter or volunteer who would accept the creature. Usually, though, he had to kill it. It was a necessary part of his job that he didn’t enjoy at all.
    “I’ll help you out when I can,” Joe told Sheridan. “I learned a little about falcons from Nate. But we’ll have to make a decision when it’s time for you to go back to Laramie.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    He walked over and gently ran the back of his hand down the length of the bird while it ate, then did the same along both of his wings. He felt a pronounced bump under the feathers of the right wing.
    “Yes,” he said, “I think it’s broken.”
    “Will it mend on its own? I know that happens sometimes.”
    “And sometimes it doesn’t,” Joe said. They both knew what would happen to the bird if the wing didn’t heal itself. No veterinarians in the area accepted wounded wild birds because there was little they could do other than stabilize them. There was a rehabilitation center in Jackson and another in Idaho, but Joe didn’t know when he’d have the time to get to either—or if either place would want the bird.
    “Be right back,” he said, and went out of the barn and around the house to his pickup. He came back with a thick roll of Ace bandage from his first-aid kit and asked Sheridan to hold the bird still. He carefully wrapped the elasticized tape around the bird so its wings were bound tight. The bird didn’t squawk while he did it, and Joe was pleased with the job.
    “Let’s keep this on him,” he said. “See if that wing mends. Who knows? Maybe he’ll fly again.”
    Joe put his hand on Sheridan’s shoulder. She was tough, and had grown up with a full awareness of the circle of life in the wild. She could deal with it, however this turned out.
    “I hope so,” she said. “I’m already kind of fond of him. Did Nate ever name his birds?”
    “No.”
    “I might.”
    He nodded and turned to go back to the house, when she said, “The EPA isn’t entirely evil.”
    Joe stopped short of the door. “I didn’t say they were,” he said. “They paid for my water guzzlers.”
    “I feel they mean well in most cases,” Sheridan said. “The good they do outweighs the bad, I feel.”
    Joe turned and nodded. “Probably,” he said, and no more.
    “I just wanted to get that out,” Sheridan said, looking away. “I don’t want to get in a big argument about it.”
    “I’m not arguing with you. There are bad eggs in every bureaucracy, and the bigger the agency gets, the more there are. We have a few knuckleheads in the Game and Fish Department. But I can’t figure out how this could have happened
twice
.”
    “Well,” she said, “thanks for listening, anyway.”
    “Sure,” Joe said, reaching for the barn door.
    “Oh—I need to show you something else later.”
    “What?”
    “Are you investigating a case where some idiots shot an antelope buck about a million times and left it to rot in a field?”
    “Yes,” he said, taken aback.
    “I think I know who did it,” she said.
    “Did you hear something at the restaurant?” he asked.
    “No. They posted some photos on Facebook.”
    Joe smiled. “Yes, I’d like to see it.”
    “Is Mr. Roberson a murderer?”
    He hesitated, but when she looked hard at him, he said, “Probably.”
    “Poor Hannah,” Sheridan said, and fed her kestrel another piece of chicken.
    —
    J OE LAY IN BED with his fingers laced behind his neck and stared at the dark ceiling. The curtains rustled slightly with a cool breeze coming down from the mountains, and he could hear the horses tussling in the corral. It was 2:30 in the morning.
    Pam had left, and Hannah stayed over again. While Joe was in the barn with Sheridan, Lisa Greene-Dempsey had called his cell phone and left a message saying she was in town and he was to