C. Box - Breaking Point

“Or not,” Joe said.

“I trust you and Marybeth,” Pam said. “Right now, I’m not sure who else I can trust. Is it true some big shot from the EPA put a reward out on Butch’s head?”

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Can he do that?” Pam asked, wide-eyed.

“He seems to think he can.”

“Joe, what is going on?” Pam asked.

Joe chewed deliberately on a slice of pizza. He swallowed and said to Pam, “I was hoping you’d tell me what’s going on. Sheriff Reed said it was something he couldn’t even believe happened.”

She nodded, and took a deep breath.

Before she began, Joe said, “Pam, you need to have something clear in your mind before you start. I’m-we’re-your friend, but I’m also in law enforcement. I have an oath to keep. I’m not officially interrogating you, and you don’t have to tell me a thing if you don’t want. But if you do, keep in mind that it isn’t between friends, so to speak.”

Pam looked desperate, and turned to Marybeth.

Marybeth said, “Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” Pam said, “I want you to stay. But I already told the sheriff everything. I don’t have any secrets. I’m just surprised Joe is acting like this.”

“He has to,” Marybeth said, reaching out and patting the back of Pam’s hand. “Don’t take it personally.”

“I’ll try not to,” Pam said, gathering herself together and throwing her shoulders back. Then, to Joe, “I’ll start at the beginning.”

“Good place to start,” he said.

“Butch wanted a place to retire in the mountains, on a lake,” Pam Roberson said, “and he didn’t want to leave Wyoming. Montana would have been okay, or Idaho, but it was his dream to own a home closer to where he hunts and fishes. He practically lives for those things, you know. He likes to say he feels like he was born one hundred fifty years too late.”

Joe nodded. It was a familiar story. He knew dozens of men who were hard workers and could pull in more income if they relocated elsewhere. North Dakota was booming, and it wasn’t that far away, for example. But the reason they lived and worked in Wyoming, he knew, was because of the outdoor culture, the lack of people, and the resources; specifically, big-game hunting and great trout fishing. It certainly wasn’t because of the wind or the weather.

“So five years ago,” Pam said, “he was talking with one of the developers of Aspen Highlands. They wanted him to build a spec home up there to help get it going. As you know, we’re not wealthy people and our little construction company kind of exists week-to-week. Not many people are building homes these days, and those that want to can’t get bank loans, so it’s tough. So, financially, we really couldn’t make it work to do a spec home with no guaranteed return right away. But the developers offered Butch and me a deal: build the home in exchange for a lot that was worth sixty thousand dollars. We didn’t get first pick because they wanted real money for the first few sales, but we saw it as our opportunity to have the place Butch had always wanted in the mountains.”

“What about you?” Marybeth asked. “Is that your dream, too?”

Pam looked away rather than answer. Finally, she said, “I wanted Butch to be happy. I wanted him to have something to aspire to, if you know what I mean. You don’t know this about him, but he has a tendency to get down in the dumps. He was raised in a tough household where his dad had nothing good to say to him. Ever. He doesn’t have a lot of confidence in himself at times, even though he should, because he’s a good husband and father and he’s solid as a rock most of the time. But Butch can really be hard on himself, and when he gets like that he’s not much fun to be around.”

“That surprises me to hear that,” Joe said. “I’ve always found him rough and ready.” As he said it, he was reminded of Butch Roberson’s haunted eyes just that afternoon.

“He comes off that way,” Pam said. “He doesn’t like to talk, and sometimes I have to practically scream at him to say something. But when he told me that the most important thing to him-besides Hannah and me-was a nice home in the mountains, well, I wanted to do all I could to make that happen for him. So I agreed on the deal, even though we were taking a risk if the spec home didn’t sell. We had to really beg our bankers to max out our loan ceilings, and we knew the bankers and the material suppliers were nervous about getting paid back.

“But we did it,” she said, with a proud smile. “It took too long, almost eighteen months, to sell the spec home. Did you see that nice A-frame up there?” she asked Joe.

“I did.”

“That was it. And when it sold, we paid off everyone and got the title to the lot you saw. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Butch so happy. He was like a little boy because it was the first time in his life he really had his own property. Even though we can’t afford to do anything with it yet, he goes up there after work and on weekends just to putter around. He’s got targets set up for archery and for his hunting rifle, and he’d ask Hannah to go with him. It makes me almost cry when I think about how happy he was, how proud he was.”

Joe glanced over at Marybeth and saw her eyes glisten as she listened to her friend.

“So this was five years ago,” Joe said. “But it doesn’t look like anything was done with the lot until very recently.”

Pam placed both of her hands around her tea and focused on the glass itself.

“Not until a year ago,” she said. “That’s when Butch put our company tractor on the trailer and took it up there to start leveling out the ground for the foundation. Until then, we hadn’t really done anything with it except get all the permits we needed and design the house. We spent hours at night drawing floor plans and crunching numbers. I’ll have to show you the plans, Marybeth,” she said. “Two levels, three bedrooms, three baths, and a wraparound deck for the whole place. It really is wonderful.”

“I’d like to see it,” Marybeth said wistfully.

Joe got a pang. He wondered if Marybeth harbored similar dreams that were unattainable to them right now.

Pam said, “I told him it might be years before we could actually finish the house, but he took on extra work-driving the school bus and working part-time at Bighorn Liquors-to sock enough away that we could at least pour the foundation. We figured if he did most of the work himself we could save a bundle and maybe even be able to use the place once Hannah went to college.”

“She didn’t want to move up there?” Marybeth asked.

“Ha!” Pam coughed. “Don’t get me wrong-she loved to go up there with her father, but I think it’s more because she wanted to be with him. The last thing on earth she wanted was to move so far out of town away from her friends.”

“Sounds like Lucy,” Marybeth said, and laughed. “A social butterfly.”

“Exactly,” Pam said.

“So. .” Joe prompted.

“Right,” Pam said, switching back on track. “Butch saved enough to get the foundation dug out, framed, and poured. So a year ago, he went up there on a Friday and started moving dirt. He also had fill dirt brought up and dumped because the lot slopes toward the lake.”

“Two acres, right?” Joe asked.

“Yeah. Not very big, but big enough.”

“So tell me how this involves the EPA,” Joe said. “I’m not connecting the dots.”

Pam looked at him and her expression was fierce. “Even when I tell you what happened, you won’t be able to connect them,” she said.

“Okay,” Pam said. “Three days after Butch started grading the lot, on a Monday-Hannah was up there with him because it was Memorial Day-he was on his tractor when he looked up and saw a car coming down the road. Three middle-aged women get out, and one starts waving at him- summoning him -to come over. He shuts off the tractor and climbs off and walks over to where they parked, which is the road right next to our lot.”