Breaking Point

McDermott.”
    She sat in the passenger seat wearing a sweater over her shoulders with her briefcase on her lap and her phone in her hand as Joe drove through Saddlestring. She looked to Joe like she was trying to be a good sport by coming along with him. He was embarrassed by the unkempt appearance of the gear and paperwork stuffed into every nook and cranny inside the cab, and he was grateful he hadn’t brought Tube or Daisy along as well that morning.
    “It’s kind of my office,” he said.
    “I understand. So what is it we’re doing?”
    “Checking on a couple of low-life poachers,” Joe said. “I’ve seen them around. They bounce from entry-level job to entry-level job and usually quit in a huff. Neither one of them graduated high school, although Bryce may have gotten his GED. I’ve seen Ryan McDermott’s name in the police blotter a few times for DWI, and I think Pendergast might have been picked up once for breaking into cars. I haven’t seen them out in the field, though, so I always considered them city troublemakers, not poachers.”
    She shook her head as he talked, and said, “It’s troubling what happens to youth that are without opportunities.”
    Joe shook his head and said, “Bryce’s parents are high school teachers, and Ryan McDermott’s dad is an Episcopalian bishop. They’ve had plenty of opportunities—they just didn’t want ’em.”
    “Oh,” she said quickly, and looked away.
    Joe said, “Sometimes people just turn out mean. You’ll go crazy trying to figure out ways to prevent it from happening altogether. The only thing we can do is arrest the bad guys and put them away if we can.”
    She nodded and said, “This we can agree on.”
    “Some common ground,” Joe said, smiling. He said, “People who violate our game and fish regulations often go on to do real harm to innocent citizens. It’s like a gateway drug to them to worse crimes down the road. You’ve heard of the ‘broken windows’ theory of law enforcement?”
    She nodded. “If we rigorously prosecute even the smallest crimes, it will set a tone and prevent bigger crimes, right?”
    “Right. Well, this is the frontier version. Someone who would kill an animal out of season for the thrill of it indicates a general lack of respect for rules and laws, and sets the stage for something worse to come. That’s why I throw the book at ’em if I catch ’em.”
    She considered what he said, and seemed to agree, he thought.
    —
    H E DROVE into an unincorporated area that hugged the west side of the town limit. The asphalt road gave way to rutted dirt, and the neat rows of suburban homes gave way to wildly incongruous houses, trailers, and lot-sized collections of junked cars and weeds.
    He briefed her on the crime itself and the entries Sheridan had found on Facebook. LGD listened with interest and said, “Do you really think they’re stupid enough to put the pictures up on the Internet?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Joe said.
    “That’s disgusting.”
    “Yup. And nothing makes me madder than slaughtering an animal and leaving it to rot.”
    “But to post things on Facebook . . . How dumb can they be?”
    “Dumb,” Joe said. “Most criminals aren’t very smart—that’s why they’re criminals. I’ve caught guys because they mounted the heads of illegal trophies in their living rooms. This is a new wrinkle, though, putting up a kind of cyber-trophy.”
    —
    “T HESE PEOPLE,” she said, looking out her window at the ramshackle homes and trailers with tires thrown on the roof to keep the tops from blowing off in the wind. Then, catching herself, she said, “You know what I mean.”
    “They’re not all bad,” Joe said defensively. “The kind of crime we’re investigating is actually pretty rare. Most folks around here hate poachers as much as I do, and they turn them in. They look at wildlife as a resource. They don’t want it violated any more than we do.”
    “There are degrees of violation,” Joe said, knowing he was pushing the line. “If I find somebody who killed a deer to feed his family, I usually don’t come down on him as hard as someone who killed a deer for the antlers only. And this type of thing—leaving the carcass—deserves no mercy at all.”
    She didn’t look at him when she said, “So you’re telling me you make your own rules?”
    “I’d consider it discretion,” he said.
    Then: “Do all my game wardens make their own rules?”
    “Can’t say,” Joe said, realizing