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Show 164 It also occurred to me that this was not unlike my childhood landscape, specifically the west side of Utah Lake, where my extended family used to shoot shotguns while I waited, bored, on top of the Bronco as the sun dripped down. That space lacked the salt, but it had the same blended shotgun shell, sagebrush and dirt texture, with water in the distance. I picked up empty boxes of ammunition, checked the expiration dates on some bottles of Bud Lite. The bottles were months old. Clearly people besides Steve came out there to shoot-there were way too many shells, targets and bullet holes for any one person, even someone on the Palmer side of my extended family. Tamara was surprised that the place wasn't more secluded. You could still see 1-80 from where we were, and riders in passing trains, if they knew where to look, could have seen Steve shooting his gun out there. I thought it was open enough-I wasn't sure how isolated Steve would want to be, considering the body had to be found at some point. I was surprised by other things. We looked out onto the water, the last thing Steve saw. It was slow and thick, some distance off, not making much sound from where I was. Utah has a lot of desert, but I knew Steve liked mountains and water, and he could have wound up American Fork canyon to any number of lakes, watching light flicker through lines of aspen trees, reaching the blue reservoir at the top that looked like it was lined with silver glass on the bottom. Or waited for a storm on Utah Lake when rain hits the surface from one side and fish from the other, and |