“I was making my nightly rounds,” Wade Dawkins explained to Sheriff Nick Scarpelli at the hospital where the EMTs had taken his son Randy. “I like to check up on things before I go to bed.” The whole county knew that Jeremy Travis was away getting married. “He’s probably way too busy to call,” Wade added, “but if he does, I’d like to be able to assure him that everything’s all right.” The irony struck him like a knife in the chest.

“Go on,” coaxed the sheriff.

“Well, I came out to the barn, and that’s when I found them—just like they were when you got there. As soon as I realized that Randy...my son...was alive, I ran back to the house to call for the ambulance. Then, I ran back to the barn and waited until you got there.”

“And you didn’t touch anything else or move the bodies?”

“No,” answered Wade.

“And you didn’t see or hear anyone else in or around the barn?”

“No.”

“What about earlier?”

“No. After I dropped Jeremy and Amy off at the airport, I came back to the ranch and checked in with the boys down at the bunkhouse to make sure that everything was in order. Then, I came up to the house to write up my daily report for Jeremy.”

“And do you normally sleep in the Travis house?”

“No, I have an apartment attached to the bunkhouse, but Jeremy asked me to stay in the house while he’s away—just to keep an eye on it.”

“And was everyone accounted for when you checked in with the boys in the bunkhouse?”

“Well, now that you mention it, no.”

“Oh?”

“Carl Pipkins, the...the man in the barn...he was not there and neither was the other new man, Eddie Culver.”

“Did you ask the other boys if they knew where they were?”

“Yeah, sure. They said they hadn’t seen them since they went out to the range this morning.”

“And your son Randy. Where was he staying?”

“He bunks with the other boys, but he wasn’t there tonight either.”

“Didn’t you think that was strange?”

“Not really.” Wade explained how his son had come to live with him and how he had had very little time to try to turn around his delinquent behavior.

Wade’s admission of Randy’s drug problem came as no great revelation to the sheriff. On his cursory examination of the boy’s body, Sheriff Scarpelli had taken note of Randy’s pupils, dilated like full moons.

“Look, Sheriff. I know you have your job to do, but I really need to be with my son right now, and I don’t know what more I can tell you that I haven’t already said.”

“All right, but don’t go anywhere.”

“How is he, doc?” the sheriff asked Dr. Ravi Singh as he exited Randy’s hospital room.

“He’s strung out on drugs. We’ll have to send a blood sample to the lab to find out just what kind. He’s got a pretty nasty bump on the head and a number of bruises scattered over the rest of his body, mostly minor.”

“No knife wounds?”

“No. All that blood on his clothes wasn’t his. It came from somebody else.” And the sheriff knew exactly who that somebody else was.

All of a sudden, Randy Dawkins was looking more like a suspect than a victim, and his father Wade couldn’t be ruled out either.

Sheriff Scarpelli thanked the doctor and called Adam Holloway, the deputy he had left in charge back at the ranch.

“Nothin’,” reported Deputy Holloway. “No new evidence.”

“OK,” replied the sheriff. “Lock the place down, and we’ll take another look in the morning. Call Sheriff Mabry over in Laramie and ask him if he can spare a few men to help out.” Sheriff Scarpelli reasoned that Sheriff Mabry probably wouldn’t mind since the Travis Ranch stretched over into Albany County, and he had scratched Mabry’s back more than once in the few months that he had been Acting Sheriff of Laramie County. (Nick still thought it was odd that the City of Laramie was in Albany County, not Laramie County, which was his own jurisdiction, but he hadn’t been there long enough to learn the historical roots of that distinction.) “Meanwhile, tell the ranch hands that I’ll want to speak with them tomorrow as well, and leave a man there to make sure nobody splits. And put out an APB on Eddie Culver.”

“You want me to call Jeremy Travis?” asked the deputy.

“No, not yet. There’s no point in disturbing his wedding. But check with the airlines to make sure that he got on that plane and got off in New Orleans.”

From the moment he set foot in Wyoming, Nick Scarpelli had heard nothing but praise for Jeremy Travis and his people. In the four months that he had been the county’s sheriff, he had come to concur with that opinion; on the other hand, he had been a cop much longer than he had been a resident of Wyoming.

Before leaving the hospital, Sheriff Scarpelli turned to the two other deputies who had arrived with the ambulance. With a nod of his head toward the room where Wade Dawson held vigil over his son Randy, the sheriff directed, “Don’t let either of those two out of your sight.”

Jeremy could not believe that he had let Brad kiss him. He had found the prospect of a kiss from another man in the Clown Car disgusting, but this was different. Was it because the other man had just sucked him off, or was the difference in the man who kissed him?

Brad again sized Jeremy up, and still seeing no objections, grasped Jeremy’s head with both hands and kissed him again, more passionately this time. He gently bit Jeremy’s lower lip and drew it between his. He brushed his tongue across Jeremy’s teeth and gums. Jeremy began to breathe more heavily, and as he did, Brad stuck his tongue into his mouth and explored every inch of the cavity. Jeremy could not believe what he was doing, but he actually reciprocated, as he had done so many times with women. He stuck his own tongue into Brad’s mouth and swapped saliva fervently. Without realizing what he was doing, he threw his arms around Brad and ran his hands feverishly all over his back, arms, neck and shoulders. He could not get enough.

Jeremy felt terribly confused about letting Brad kiss him, the ordeal in the Clown Car, and the whole goddam fuckin’ situation. What the hell am I doing? He did like Brad and Red, though. They both seemed like genuinely nice guys, the kind of guys he would have a beer with back in Cheyenne.

“Well, how do you like it?” Brad asked.

“Like what?”

“The whole thing,” replied Brad. “The blow job you got in the Clown Car, the show on the pool table...us?”

After pausing to consider the question, Jeremy answered. “Well, the blow job was fan-fuckin’-tastic! That, I gotta admit. The show on the pool table, I can’t believe I actually stood there and watched it, but I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it.”

Jeremy played with his bottle of beer, trying to end the conversation at that point.

Brad again wrapped his arm around Jeremy’s shoulder. “And the rest? This? The kiss?”

Breathing heavily, Jeremy continued to stare silently at the bottle of beer. Brad placed his hand under Jeremy’s chin and lifted his face toward him. He leaned in to kiss Jeremy again, but just before their lips touched, Jeremy pushed him away. “I’m sorry. I really should be going,” said Jeremy rising from his stool.

“No, Jack, wait...please...I’m sorry. I didn’t...I won’t.... Please, don’t go. Please.”

Jeremy paused. Reading the sincerity—indeed, the vulnerability—in Brad’s eyes, he reached out with both hands, grasped Brad’s shoulders, and lowered him to the stool that he had just vacated. He did not understand why the feel of Brad’s hard, muscled shoulders excited him, but it did. He slowly rubbed his hands up and down Brad’s thick biceps, again experiencing that inexplicable tingling sensation. “Look...Brad. I dunno. Like I said, I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I’ve never had a man kiss me before. I really don’t want to admit it, Brad, but your kiss was different. For some reason that I can’t explain, I...well, I...you know...it was...sweet.”

Brad rose up from the stool and, as he had done before, took Jeremy’s face in his hands and kissed him again on the lips. Jeremy’s resistance surrendered to the warm feeling he got from Brad’s romantic kiss and passionate embrace. Smiling tenderly at Jeremy, Brad whispered, “Like many of the finer things in life, sometimes you just have to develop a taste for it, but when you really care for someone, it soothes the palate like the nectar of the gods.”

Brad handed Jeremy his bottle of beer and raised his own, clinking them together. “Well, you ready for another?”

“No, I think I’ve had enough beer for one night.”

“Who’s talking about a beer? I was asking if you’re ready for another blow job?”

Jeremy’s eyes popped wide.

“Well, you did say that the first one was fan-fuckin’-tastic. What? You got a limit of one a night?”

“No,” Jeremy laughed, “I could outlast your puny little pecker any day,” he bragged. “It’s just, I don’t think I want to go back into the Clown Car.”

“Well, what about right here?”

“What? No, I don’t think so. I’m...I mean..I’m just not the exhibitionist type.”

“Oh, just the voyeur type, huh?”

“No! Well, I never thought I was, but I guess I have been tonight. I shouldn’t be staring like I have. Shit, man, I shouldn’t even be in here, and I shouldn’t be getting blow jobs from strange men I’ve never even met, and I shouldn’t...well, I like you, Brad...and you, too, Red. I really do. I wish I didn’t have to leave, but I’ve gotta be meeting somebody.”

“Jack, look, it’s only 10 o’clock. She can wait a couple more hours for you, can’t she?”

“Well, it’s not a she, but...”

“Ah, Jack, you sly little devil, you. You really had us believing that we were the first two men in your life, but now the truth comes out.”

“Eat me, asshole. You know what I meant.”

“I would like nothing better than to eat you,” Brad shot back. “And from the looks of that rocket in your pants, I’d say that you’re clearly ready to unload another one.”

The three men laughed at the verbal jousting.

“Seriously, Jack. My apartment is just a few blocks from here. Walk with me. We’ll talk and get to know each other better. If it turns into something more than that, great. If not, then we’ll part friends.”

“Well, I do have a couple of hours to kill,” Jeremy said, looking at his watch. “No strings?”

“No strings!”

“How about you, Red? Are you coming with us?” Jeremy asked.

Red started to accept the offer, but seeing the signal on Brad’s face, he quickly excused himself from the affair. “You boys go and have a good time, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Is there anything you won’t do?” asked Jeremy.

“Not much,” Red grinned.

As Jeremy and Brad walked down Burgundy Street, Jeremy told Brad about the two men he had observed earlier between the parked cars. “Why don’t they do something about this?” he asked Brad. “I mean, doing it in the bar is one thing, but doing it right out on the street?”

“Look, New Orleans runs on four things,” Brad explained. “The river, jazz, the world’s best food, and sex, not necessarily in that order. Without any one of those things, the tourist trade would evaporate, the city’s tax revenue would dry up, and the cops wouldn’t get paid. There’s just as much sex in the open during Mardi Gras, probably more, only it’s mostly straight sex. When Southern Decadence comes around, the locals know what goes on, and if they don’t wanna see it, they just stay away. Besides, the cops here in New Orleans don’t have the same attitude toward gays that cops in many other cities have. Hell, there were probably half a dozen off-duty cops in that bar we just came out of.”

“If they were off duty, what were they doing there?”

“Same thing you and I were doing there, gettin’ their rocks off.” Seeing the stunned look on Jeremy’s face, Brad added, “That guy gettin’ it on the pool table…Kenny? He’s a cop. And the dude bangin’ his ass is a fireman. Here in New Orleans, nobody really cares as long as you do your job.”

Immersed in the conversation, neither Brad nor Jeremy even noticed the two men in ski masks lurking in the dark doorway until they leaped out at them.