When they got to the airport in Moab, it was just before noon, and within twenty minutes, John Barber was taking them up to fifteen thousand feet in his roaring twin prop.
They began their bumpy descent into Jackson only a little over an hour later.
Gannon, who had never been to Wyoming, looked out the window in awe. At the flat glass lakes, the flat grass plains, the mountains and cliffs sharp-edged as cutlery.
If the hugeness of the Utah landscape made you feel like an ant, he thought, shaking his head, Wyoming made you feel microscopic. How could the mountains actually still have patches of snow on them here in August?
As they touched down, the tower directed them over to the private plane aviation company hangar tucked at the airport’s southwest corner. Surprisingly, the plane parking area was actually quite full. Gannon counted three large corporate jets before John taxied them in beside a small Lear.
Barber powered down the plane and flipped the door. They crossed the tarmac into the lounge of a sleek polished glass-and-mahogany pagoda-style building that looked brand-new. Barber was sitting by its front exit doors holding a couple of bottles of water two minutes later as Gannon came back out of the head.
“Rental company is sending over a car,” Barber said, handing him a bottle. “Owen’s buddy, Don, isn’t picking up his phone. Where do you think we should head first? Sheriff’s office?”
“Do we know where the crime scene is?” Gannon said.
“No.”
“Then we should go to the medical examiner’s office,” Gannon said.
“The medical examiner?”
Gannon nodded.
“They’ll know as much as the sheriff’s office and being doctors, they’ll be far more likely than the cops to actually tell a family member what’s up. Especially if you’re staring at them face-to-face.”
“You don’t think we should call them first?”
“No way. Let’s just show up,” Gannon said. “Did you call your wife? Tell her we made it?”
Barber nodded.
“Funny, you’re starting to sound just like her,” he said as they saw a white Nissan Pathfinder pull up outside the glass doors.
As Barber drove them up the airport road, Gannon wasn’t done gaping at the landscape. In the northern distance, out the windshield, there were massive mountain ranges and unfenced grasslands of a vastness he’d never experienced before.
There wasn’t a house. Not a tree. In every direction for miles and miles and miles, there was nothing. Nothing but grass and wildflowers until your eyes gave up.
“What’s up, city slicker?” Barber said, noticing the awe in Gannon’s face.
“How much land do you think that is out there?” Gannon said.
“That little field there?” Barber said squinting as they came to the turnoff for US 191. “Oh, I’d say that’s in around about the size of Connecticut.”
It took them twenty minutes to get into Jackson. There was a welcome arch made of antlers set up in a park by the main road. Gannon looked out as they passed it. There was an A-frame log cabin diner. A bright shiny gas station. A two-story motel with batwing saloon doors.
It looked like a life-size Western town from a model train layout, Gannon thought.
The medical examiner’s was in the Teton County Health Department building on Pearl Street deep in the east part of town past all the tourist stuff.
Gannon had thought there might be some media news vans but as they approached, he saw that there were just some regular cars and pickups in the lot.
Barber parked and killed the engine and took a deep breath.
“Okay, wait in the car,” he said as he opened his door.
“No,” Gannon said, getting out with him. “I’ll tag along if you don’t mind. I need to stretch my legs.”