This morning his arms were wrapped in blood-stained bandages. An IV tube snaked from the back of his hand to a machine. She and the sheriff were told that a gastrointestinal tube had been removed from his throat so he might be a bit hoarse. And that they shouldn’t push him to talk too much.
The scratches on his face looked raw against his pale skin. The bandage on his neck hid a wound that seeped. But the thing that bothered Maggie most was that the boy still looked scared.
Sheriff Skylar had insisted he direct the interviews with the teenagers. They were kids from his area. He knew many of their parents. They’d feel more comfortable talking to someone they knew rather than a state patrolman or an FBI agent. She agreed, letting him believe that in doing so, he had won a major concession, when in fact, Maggie didn’t actually have official approval to proceed as lead investigator.
She had left a message for her boss, Assistant Director Raymond Kunze, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. She already knew what he’d say: “Hand it off to the locals. You have a conference to attend.”
The “locals,” Maggie had discovered in the meantime, would be either the FBI field office in Omaha, two hundred and eighty miles away, or the Forest Service in Chadron, which was two hundred miles away. Kunze wouldn’t comprehend that distance, nor would he care what difference losing the first twenty-four hours could make.
Besides, detouring her to visit the site of a cattle mutilation was, no doubt, only a favor he had been repaying, one of those courtesies that government officials gave each other. Maggie suspected Kunze hadn’t intended for her to give any of it more than a cursory look and write the obligatory report that would be his proof of repayment. If he had intended for her to actually create a possible profile of the cattle mutilators, he certainly would have included many more of the details in the file.
Truth was, it didn’t matter. Maggie didn’t want the case. She’d never been a lead investigator. Her job had always been to assist law enforcement agencies at their request. She was the outside observer, the specialist who could be objective and catch details that might otherwise be missed. She liked being the outsider.
Earlier she’d decided to stay long enough to make sure as many pieces of the investigation—especially the collecting and processing of evidence, including witness accounts—was placed in the hands of officials who could properly take over.
So she didn’t argue with Sheriff Skylar.
She didn’t like hospitals—who did? She wanted to be back at the crime scene. That’s where Donny Fergussen was. At Maggie’s request, he was meeting a State Patrol crime-scene unit. They’d go over the area again, widen the perimeter, cast several footprints, and collect any other remaining traces that the tarps hopefully had preserved. She would much rather be out there than with Sheriff Skylar. Witnesses were notoriously inaccurate, and a bunch of teens tripping out on salvia would probably be worthless narrators of what had happened last night in the forest.
But Maggie wanted—no, she needed—to see that Dawson Hayes was okay.
“Dawson, I’m Sheriff Skylar. Your dad used to work with me.”
Maggie studied the boy’s face, watching for signs of recognition. If he knew the sheriff there was no relief in seeing him. Was he worried about being in trouble?
Skylar didn’t wait. He pulled a chair from the corner and placed it beside the bed. As he sat down directly in the boy’s line of vision, he threw a thumb over his shoulder and said, “This is Agent O’Dell from the FBI.”
Dawson’s eyes swung up to hers then darted back. It was enough for Maggie to see his panic was real now.
She remained standing and stayed by the door where she could watch not only Dawson but Skylar as well. When Skylar told her he wanted to conduct the interviews, it was because the teenagers would be “less rattled” with someone they knew. So she was surprised when he began by saying, “We know about the Taser, son,” immediately putting the boy on the defensive.
Earlier the sheriff couldn’t wait to tell her he had already traced the serial number on the Taser back to Dawson’s father who used it for his job as a security guard at a meat-processing plant outside of North Platte. Skylar had explained that the gun was standard issue at the plant and all he had to do was check their database. Possession of the Taser seemed to be Skylar’s smoking gun, so to speak, though there was no evidence it had caused any of the injuries.
Maggie would quickly regret not changing the subject.
“Did you shoot any of your friends with the gun, Dawson?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Come on, Dawson. I know it was fired. You might just as well fess up. We’re going to find out the truth soon enough.”
The boy’s eyes looked up at Maggie, to Skylar, then back to Maggie, staying with her for a beat longer, imploring her as though she might be the more understanding one.
“I shot at … something,” he said.
Instead of leaning in for the explanation, Skylar sat back and shook his head like he had heard this before and didn’t have the patience to hear it again.