Breaking Point

he’d provided fuel to one of her burning fires.
    “I worry that getting too close to the locals might make some of my people go . . . native,” she said, looking closely at him for his reaction. “You know, it might not be as easy to arrest somebody whom you saw at PTA board the night before, for example. Or you might be a little more sympathetic than necessary to a local rancher making a damage claim if that same rancher is on your softball team.”
    Joe shrugged. “Seems to me we do a better job if we know the people we’re working for—if we’re among them.”
    “Unless you forget who you’re working for,” she said, and shifted in her seat in a way that said the conversation was over.
    —
    H E TURNED on Fourth Street and slowed down under an overgrown canopy of ancient cottonwood trees. The duplex he was looking for, Bryce Pendergast’s last known address, was one half of the house. There was a marked difference between the condition of the duplex on the left side and the one on the right. The right side was freshly painted, and there were flowers planted on the side of the porch and floral curtains in the window. The right side of the lawn was green and well maintained. An ancient Buick was parked under a carport.
    On the left side of the duplex was a jacked-up Ford F-150 parked in front on the curb so it blocked the sidewalk, and the small yard between the unpainted picket fence and the front door was dried out and marked by burned yellow ovals on both sides of the broken walk between the gate and the door.
    “Guess which one Bryce lives in,” Joe said, pulling over and killing the engine.
    He called in his position to dispatch and said he planned to question a potential suspect in a wildlife violation and gave the name and address.
    “GF-forty-eight clear,” he said, and racked the mic. Then he remembered and said to Greene-Dempsey: “I should have said GF-twenty-one, I guess.”
    She nodded nervously, her eyes dancing between Joe and the dark duplex.
    Joe dug a digital audio micro-recorder out of the satchel on the floor and checked the power, then turned it on and dropped it in his front breast pocket.
    She said, “Is that legal? To record somebody like that?”
    “Yes. As long as one party knows the conversation is recorded, it’s legal,” he said patiently.
    “So you’re just going to walk up there and knock on the door?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to call for help? For backup?”
    “Don’t have any,” Joe said, trying to maintain his calm. “Plus, I think the sheriff’s department has enough on its plate right now, don’t you think?”
    “Still . . .”
    “Relax,” he said. “This isn’t unusual. I’ll go up there and see if Bryce is in, and if he is, I’ll check him out.”
    “How? You don’t have a warrant . . .”
    Joe said, “Here’s what I do, and I’ve done this many times. It’s my standard operating procedure. If Bryce or Ryan McDermott come to the door, I’ll be friendly and professional and say, ‘Hi, guys. I guess you know why I’m here.’ And then I’ll see what happens, whether they act like they don’t know, or they start lying and overtalking, or what. I’ve had people confess right on the spot quite a few times. Sometimes, they blurt out confessions to crimes I didn’t even know about, and sometimes they implicate their buddies.”
    Greene-Dempsey looked at him with obvious doubt.
    She said, “Maybe you should wait a few days for this. You know—after the sheriff’s department can provide some help.”
    He thought about it, then shook his head. He said, “It’s been a week since that antelope was shot. They probably think they got away with it. But something about killing wildlife bugs many of them worse than if they’d shot a person. It’s like that little tiny bit of conscience they’ve got tells them it’s
really
wrong. So when you just ask them, sometimes they’ll start spilling.”
    He touched the digital recorder with the tips of his fingers. “So if they confess, I’ve got it here.”
    Joe said, “Even if they keep lying and don’t admit a thing or invite me in, they’ll know they’re under suspicion. That alone sometimes leads to them turning themselves in later or ratting on their buddy. Just showing up gets things moving in the right direction.”
    She shook her head and looked at him as if he were crazy.
    “Tell me this isn’t what you do all day.”
    “It isn’t.” He reached for the door