Out of Range

"Thank you," Joe told Tassell. He looked at Trey, said, "Thanks for telling Marybeth that, but I didhit the guy. My only regret is that I didn't shoot him-"

"Joe," Trey cautioned, interrupting, "watch what you say here."

Joe was struck by the wisdom of that and went silent.

"We might have a way to get you out of this," Pope said.

Joe turned to him. Pope sat on the other side of the table with Tassell.

"I talked with Don E

"Was he in the boat when it happened?" Joe asked.

Pope looked back, confused. "What difference does that make? Didn't you hear me? He said he'd consider dropping the charges."

"Who was in the boat?"

Pope angrily slapped the table and addressed Joe's supervisor. "Trey, we have a terrible situation here, as you know. We could have one of our game wardens charged with aggravated assault-the second employee in this same district to get arrested. If that happens, it will look like the governor has completely lost control of this agency. I risk my reputation to get this guy out of it, and he doesn't seem to care!"

Trey sighed heavily and leaned toward Joe. "Joe, what's going on? We could both lose our jobs over this."

"His wife drowns but he has the presence of mind to negotiate my transfer?" Joe asked. "Does that sound like a grieving widower to you?"

"Shock affects people in different ways," Pope said weakly, again talking to Trey as if he couldn't deal with Joe. "Don E

"What did you offer him?" Joe asked Pope. "Did you tell him we'd approve Beargrass Village?"

Pope flushed red but didn't answer.

"You did," Joe said.

"I'm trying to keep you out of jail!" Pope shouted. "Why can't you get that?"

Joe stood up, and he noticed that both Trey and Tassell pushed back from the table in case they needed to restrain him.

"Don E

The room was silent, until Pope asked, "Can you prove a single thing you're saying?"

Joe hesitated. "Some of it," he said. "But you'll need to give me the rest of the day to nail it all down."

Trey looked from Pope to Tassell. "Let's give Joe a chance here. Is that all right with you, Sheriff?"

"I don't think I like where this is headed," Sheriff Tassell said, shaking his head. "I don't think I like it at all."

On the way to the statehouse in Tassell's Cherokee, the sheriff kept shaking his head. "We lose a couple of people every year on the river," he said. "Unlike homicides, it isn't that unusual." He had told Joe, Pope, and Trey that while going through the rapids, Stella apparently lost her grip on the rope and was thrown from the boat. Don E

"We've had situations where the body isn't found for weeks," Tassell said, "sometimes even longer. If it gets pi

"Who else was in the boat?" Joe asked again.

"Don, of course," Tassell said, "Pete Illoway, and some guy named Shane Suhn, who works for E

"How do we know she was in the boat?"

"Some other rafters saw her when they launched," Tassell said.

"Where did it happen?" Joe asked. "Where on the river?"

"At the start of the worst stretch of whitewater," Tassell said. "That's where most of the drownings take place. People get used to nice easy rapids, and then they hit the hard stuff and they aren't prepared for it."

Tassell leaned across the table to look at Joe. "You've seen all those Snake River rafting pictures around town? That's where they're taken, because the rollers are so big."

Joe thought about the photos he had seen in the window of Wildwater Photography.

"She wasn't inexperienced," Joe said. "She'd been on that stretch of the river many times."

"But why would Don kill his wife?" Tassell asked.

"She discovered something about him," Joe said. "And he was pla

Trey turned in his seat, hanging an arm over the back of it, narrowing his eyes at Joe. "How well did you know her, anyway?"

"Well enough," Joe said.

"I thought you were going to say 'not well enough.'" Pope gri

Joe glared at him, and Pope looked away.

At the statehouse, Joe showed them how the piece of siding on the back of the house could be removed. They watched as he took it off and peeled back a layer of pink insulation, revealing a line of copper tubing and a metal screw-top fitting that had been soldered onto the tube.

"This line co

"Christ," Tassell said, looking over the mechanism.

"The first night I was in the house I heard somebody out here," Joe said. "I heard a clunking sound, probably after they hooked up the bottle and fumbled with putting the siding back up. But I didn't figure this out until yesterday. Once I knew it was drugs, things started to make sense."

"So they didn't actually murder him," Trey said. "They created a scenario where he would either get fired, get arrested, or do himself in."

"Right," Joe said. "He was under a lot of strain after his wife left, and that's when they installed it. And they also knew that after she left he'd be in worse shape, and more vulnerable. E