C Box - Blood Trail

“Okay,” Joe said, raising his hands to her and smiling. “I’ll stop.”

She nodded her appreciation to him.

“One more question,” Joe said.

Marybeth sighed. Alisha arched her eyebrows, as if saying, What?

“Would she protect him, no matter what he’d done?”

Alisha didn’t hesitate. “For the sake of her daughter, yes.”

JOE EXCUSED himself while Marybeth and Alisha cleaned up the glassware and dishes. He was tired, but he was also charged up, thinking at last he was on the verge of something. In the bathroom he shut the door and drew his old notebook out of his back pocket, flipping through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

JOE AND MARYBETH saw Nate and Alisha to the door. It was 4 A.M. and cold and still outside. Joe thanked Alisha and apologized for asking so many questions. Nate held out his hand to say good-bye, and Joe shook it.

“Nate,” Joe said, “are you available in three hours for a trip to Rawlins and back?”

“Rawlins? Three hours?”

“I’m not supposed to go anywhere, but I think we can get there and back by midafternoon before Randy Pope gets here and McLanahan even knows I’m gone.”

Nate looked at Alisha. She shrugged.

“Why Rawlins?” Marybeth asked.

“Because that’s where the state penitentiary is,” Joe said. “Home of Vern Dunnegan.”

IT TOOK three and a half hours-pushing the speed limit-to get to Rawlins from Saddlestring via I-25 south to Casper, then paralleling the North Platte River to Alcova, past Independence Rock and Martin’s Cove on the Oregon Trail, then taking US 287 south at Muddy Gap. Nate slept for most of it. Joe listened to Brian Scott on KTWO out of Casper taking calls about the hunting moratorium but he had trouble concentrating on either the radio or his driving because he was testing and discarding scenarios that had opened up since the night before and thinking Nate was right when he said the investigation had been too narrowly focused.

Nate awoke and stretched as Green Mountain loomed to the east. The landscape was vast and still, sagebrush dotted with herds of pronghorn antelope, hawks flying low, puffy cumulus clouds looking like cartoon thought balloons.

With Rawlins itself nearly in view, Joe spoke for the first time since they’d left.

“Nate, do you have any idea what we’re about to find out?”

“Do you mean did Alisha tell me?”

“Yes.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“When I dropped you off, did you know you’d be picked up by Klamath and Shannon Moore as well as Alisha?”

“Yup. Alisha told me when I called her from Large Merle’s.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“Nope. I knew if I told you, you’d get all hot and bothered and you wouldn’t let me do my work on my own schedule.”

“You’re probably right,” Joe said sourly.

“Plus, you’d probably mention it to somebody-the governor or Randy Pope-and it could have gotten back to Klamath. He’s got sympathizers everywhere who keep him informed. He’s even got someone at the FBI who told him about your meeting Bill Gordon.”

“Apparently.”

“True believers,” Nate said, shaking his head.

WHEN HE was close enough to Rawlins to pick up a cell phone signal, Joe called the Wyoming state pen. Like all the inmates, Vern Dunnegan would have to agree to talk to Joe and put him officially on his visit list. If Vern declined, Joe would need to go to the warden and try to force a meeting where Vern could show up with his counsel and refuse to talk. The receptionist said she’d check with security and call Joe back. For once, Joe was happy he worked for the governor and therefore had some clout in the state system.

As Joe punched off, Nate said, “There are many things about this case that baffle me, but one really stands out for an explanation.”

“What’s that?”

“Your boss, Randy Pope.”

“What about him?”

“He hates you and me with a passion and a viciousness reserved for only the most cold-blooded of bureaucrats.”

“That he does.”

“So why did he become your champion?”

Joe shrugged. “I’ve wondered that myself. My only answer is that he’s more pragmatic than I gave him credit for. He values his agency and his title more than he hates me. I took it as sort of a compliment that when the chips were down he put our problems aside and even argued for your release.”

Nate said, “Hmmmm . ”

“Maybe we’re about to find out,” said Joe.

THEY PASSED through town and dropped off the butte and saw the prison sprawled out on the valley floor below them, coils of silver razor wire reflecting the high sun. Joe’s phone chirped. It was the receptionist.

“Inmate Dunnegan has agreed to meet with you,” she said.

“Good.”

“In fact, he wanted me to relay something to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“He wanted me to ask why it took you so long.”

Joe felt a trill of cognition.

“Tell him I was finning in the wrong channel,” Joe said.

“Excuse me?”

NATE STAYED in Joe’s pickup in the parking lot while Joe went in the visitors’ entrance of the administration building and put all his possessions including his cell phone into a locker. He’d left his weapon and wallet in the truck, taking only his badge and state ID. He filled out the paperwork at the counter, passed through security, and sat alone in the minibus that took him the mile from the admin building past the heavily guarded Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and other gray, low-slung buildings to a checkpoint, where he was searched again and asked the nature of his visit.

“I’m here to see Vern Dunnegan,” Joe said.

At the name, the guard grinned. “Ole Vern,” he said. “Good guy.”

Joe said, “Unless he’s trying to get your family killed.”

The guard’s smile doused. “You’ve got history with him, then.”

“Yup.”

To the driver, the guard said, “Take him to A-Pod.”

When they were under way, Joe asked, “A-Pod?”

The driver said, “A, B, and C pods are for the general population. A-Pod is the lowest security and it goes up from there all the way to E-Pod, which is Max and Death Row. You don’t want to go there.”

“No,” Joe said, “I don’t.”

At a set of doors marked A, the driver stopped. “When you’re done, tell the guard at the desk and he’ll call me.”

Joe nodded. “So this means Vern Dunnegan is considered low-risk, huh?”

“That’s what it means.”

Joe shook his head. “Man, he’s got you guys fooled. I guess he hasn’t changed.”

THE VISITATION room was large, quiet, pale blue, and well lit. It was filled with plastic tables and chairs, the kind used on decks and in backyards. The feet of the chairs were bound with athletic tape so they wouldn’t squeak when moved. There was a bank of vending machines against a wall and a television set hanging from the ceiling with ESPN on with no volume. One corner of the room was filled with neatly stacked children’s toys and multicolored pieces for kids to climb on while wives or girlfriends visited. Joe had to sign in again with an officer behind a large desk in the southeast corner. The desk itself was empty except for a clipboard and a huge box of wet wipes and a smaller container of disposable latex gloves. On the sign-in sheet were listed categories for visits including “Friend/ Relative,” “Legal counsel,” “Religious,” “Kissing Only,” and “Other.” Joe checked “Other,” and the guard gestured expansively, indicating Joe could sit wherever he wanted.

The only other occupants in the room were a couple at a table in the far corner and their child (he assumed), a toddler, playing quietly with plastic blocks. Although the couple was required to sit on opposite sides of the table (she’d checked “Kissing Only”), they strained forward across the tabletop to get closer. She was dark and Hispanic, her perfume so strong Joe could smell it from across the room. He wondered how she’d outmaneuvered the admin guards in regard to the posted “No skintight or revealing clothing” regulation. She wore jeans that looked spray-painted on and a tight white Lycra top that clung to her breasts like a film. He was lean, shaved bald, olive-skinned, and heavily tattooed. His arms were outstretched, his hands on her shoulders, pulling her toward him. She strained toward him, her own arms outstretched, her fingers furiously caressing the tips of the collar of his white jumpsuit with a kind of unrestrained animal lust that Joe found both riveting and revolting. The inmate looked as if he would explode at any second. He was red-faced, his eyes wide, his face inches from hers. Joe hoped the guard had his wet wipes at the ready.