He sighed. He'd call tomorrow, when he had some time, when he'd gathered his thoughts. Maybe before the funeral.

He picked up notebook #1 and began to read. Soon, the writing began to swim off the page.

Joe awoke to the sound of gunshots. He sat up quickly, disoriented for a moment. He glanced around, remembering where he was, surprised that he was still dressed and the bedside lamp was on. The opened notebook was on his lap.

No, it wasn't a gun. It was something on the other side of the motel room wall. Joe stood, rubbing his eyes. He looked at his watch: 4:45 A.M. He heard rustling in the next room, then another bang. The sound was coming through his closet. He opened the closet door, where he'd hung his uniform shirt and jacket on hangers that couldn't be removed from the rod.

He sighed, knowing now what had happened. Someone in the next room was packing up their clothing from the closet. Because the hangers couldn't be taken off the rod, as each piece was removed the rod swung back and banged into the wall.

Cheap motels, Joe thought. State-rate motels. Marybeth probably imagined him in someplace much finer. Maybe he should call her now and tell her how great it was.

He shook his head, ashamed at his thoughts, while he gathered up the notebooks and papers on the bed and stowed them neatly in his briefcase. He brushed his teeth, folded his clothes, turned off the light, and crawled into bed.

That's when something about Will's office hit him. Will Jensen was a meticulous man, from what Joe knew about him. His notes were precise, detailed, well reasoned. His office was spare and utilitarian, without a single frill or anything personal in it. Will was known for his even temper, his calmness. He was probably like Joe, who even when flustered or bad-tempered couldn't just forget about something and move on until everything was neat and in order. It didn't fit that Will, contemplating his own suicide, would rise from his desk in his office with papers scattered and a half-drunk can of Mountain Dew on his desk, his computer still on, and go home and end it all. Wouldn't Will have at least cleaned up a little, knowing what he was going to do?

TEN

On Friday morning, ex-Twelve Sleep County Sheriff O. R. "Bud" Barnum was seated at his usual place in the Stockman's Bar when he saw the stranger. The tall man stepped inside, let the door wheeze shut behind him, and stood there without moving, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness inside. It was eleven in the morning. Barnum didn't know the man, which in itself meant something. Barnum knew everybody.

Rarely did someone simply happen by Saddlestring, Barnum knew. The town was too out-of-the-way. It wasn't conveniently en route to anywhere. The ex-sheriff had studied strangers coming into his town for over thirty years. He could usually size them up quickly. They tended to fall into categories: outdoorsmen, roughnecks, tourists, ranch hands looking for work, junior sales representatives stuck with a bad, far-flung territory. This man wasn't any of those. Something about him, the way he moved and the fact that he seemed supremely comfortable in his own skin, Barnum thought, was menacing.

The tall man was in his late fifties or early sixties, with a shock of gray hair and a chiseled face. He was slim with broad shoulders, and Barnum noted how the stranger's dark brown leather coat stretched across his back as he found a stool and sat down. The man had a flat belly, which to Barnum was a physical characteristic he mistrusted. Cop, Barnum thought, or military. He had that ramrod-straight, no-nonsense air about him. Barnum wondered if the tall man felt the same thing about himsitting there. Barnum knew helooked like a cop, and always had. His mother once told him he looked like a cop when he was born. She said that even as a baby he had those suspicious, penetrating eyes, and the jowly, hangdog face that seemed to say, in cynical resignation, "Now what?"

Barnum had been reading the Saddlestring Roundupand drinking coffee. He hated both the local newspaper and the bitter coffee, but this is what he did now that he was retired. It was part of his routine. He still began each morning at the Burg-O-Pardner, as he had when he was sheriff, drinking coffee, catching up on local news and gossip, and eating rolls with the other local "morning men." The morning men at the Burg-O-Pardner were the men who owned most of Saddlestring and much of the county. Most were retired now as well, but still had local business interests. Guy Allen owned the Burg-O-Pardner and had the majority share of the Stockman's. Just that morning, Guy had been talking about the weather in Arizona, how pleasant it was. He'd be leaving soon, going to his home in Arizona, as winter moved into Wyoming. So would half of the other morning men. Barnum, who still lived full-time in Saddlestring and probably always would, got quiet during discussions of Arizona weather. Any chance he'd had of buying a winter place somewhere warm had disappeared when a bad land investment the previous year had taken his pension, and the ensuing scandal had cost him his job and his reputation. All that was left of his career was a solid gold

Parker pen his deputies had chipped in for. The pen was inscribed: TO SHERIFF BARNUM FOR 28 YEARS OF SVC. "svc" meant "service," McLanahan had explained, but the in-scriber ran out of room on the pen.

He was acutely aware of how differently the morning conversations flowed since he was no longer sheriff. The men used to listen to him, to defer, to stop talking when he spoke. They would nod their heads sympathetically when he complained. Now he could see them glancing at one another while he spoke, waiting for him to finish. Sometimes, the mayor would cut him off and launch into a new topic. He was just another retired old bastard, taking up their time. The kind of old fart Barnum used to glare at until the interloper would pick up his coffee cup and go away.

When the morning men broke up around 9:30, Barnum walked down the main street and set up shop here, in the Stockman's, where he would remain most of the day and some of the night. If people needed to talk to him, they knew where he would be. If someone came into the place before he got there and took his seat, which was the farthest stool at the corner of the bar where the counter wrapped toward the wall, the bartender would shoo the customer away when Barnum walked in. That's Sheriff Barnum's office,the bartender would say.

Barnum didn't stare at the tall man who had come into the bar. Instead, he shot occasional glances at him over the top of the half-glasses he needed to wear to read the paper. The tall man ordered coffee, and as he sipped it he looked around the place, taking in the ancient knotty pine and mirrored back bar, the mounted big-game heads that stared blankly down at him, the black-and-white rodeo photos that covered the wall behind him. The Stockman's was a long, narrow chute of a room with the bar taking up over half of it and some booths and a pool table at the back near the restrooms. A jukebox played Johnny Cash's "Don't Take Your Gun to Town."

As the bartender refilled the stranger's mug, the man asked him something in a muted voice. Barnum couldn't hear the exchange over the song on the jukebox. Then the tall man stood and nodded at Barnum. Barnum nodded back.

"Cute little town you've got here," the tall man said, making his way toward the bathroom.

"It doesn't look like a place that can eat you up and spit you out, does it?" Barnum asked.

The tall man hesitated a step, looked curiously at Barnum, then continued.

As the restroom door shut, Barnum slid off his stool, walked the length of the bar, and stepped outside. The cold sunshine blinded him momentarily, and he raised his arm to block out the sun. The tall man's late-model SUV was parked diagonally in front of the bar. Barnum circled it quickly, noting the Virginia plates, the mud on the panels probably from back roads, the fact that the back seat was folded down to accommodate duffel bags, hard-sided equipment boxes, and a stainless steel rifle case as long as the SUV floor. He walked back into the bar and assumed his seat.