Savage Run

by C. J. Box

  “Please help me,” Finotta called to Joe. “You are an officer of the law. Despite our earlier disagreements, you have a duty to protect me. Please . . . I’m friends with the governor . . . I can be of great influence on your behalf.”

  Stewie snorted. “Up until that last bit, he was kind of convincing.” Stewie stepped forward so Finotta could see him, then raised the transmitter and took several steps backward. Finotta shrieked and buried his face in the hide of the cow. The cow continued to graze, and Stewie lowered the remote control, and winked at Joe.

  “You’ve given him a scare,” Joe said, his voice as steady and flat as he could make it, given the circumstances and his condition. “You’ve scared the hell out of him. Now let’s untie him and go have some lunch. Think about it, Stewie: Does Finotta seem like the kind of guy who wouldn’t rat out his buddies in a plea bargain? We’ll find out who the Stockman’s Trust is and we’ll put them all into prison. If Finotta ordered the killings, he may get the death sentence.”

  Stewie listened, thought about it while he rubbed his chin and studied Finotta, then laughed.

  “Like I believe that a great lawyer and butt-buddy with the governor will ever see the inside of a prison in this state,” Stewie said sarcastically.

  Then Stewie turned to Finotta, waving the remote control in front of him like a wand. “Let me remind you, Jim Finotta, of some names,” he said. “These names are only names on a list to you. But to me they are real people—friends, lovers, colleagues.”

  “Annabel Bellotti. Hayden Powell. Peter Sollito.” Stewie shouted each name. And with each, his face got redder, and he got angrier. “Emily Betts. Tod Marchand. Britney Earthshare. Even John Coble and Charlie Tibbs!”

  Stewie was so enraged that Joe, even from a distance, could see Stewie shaking.

  “You started the first fucking range war of the twenty-first century!” Stewie bellowed. “You waged that war in a vicious, cowardly way! And now you’re going to find out what it is like to be on the receiving end!”

  Stewie backed away further from Finotta and the cow. There was now about one hundred feet between them. He again raised the remote control.

  “The headlines about the environmental activist getting blown up were good ones, Jim. I bet they made you chuckle. But the headlines about the president of the Stockman’s Trust getting blown up by his own cow are even better!”

  In his peripheral vision, Joe saw a stream of vehicles with flashing lights emerge from the cottonwoods on the ranch road from the highway. Joe turned. Sheriff Barnum’s Blazer was leading two other sheriff’s trucks. Trey Crump’s green Game and Fish pickup, lights flashing, followed. The vehicles drove straight across the ranch yard and braked at the first fence. Doors opened and officers poured out with rifles and shotguns. Joe saw Barnum, Trey Crump, Deputy McLanahan, and Robey Hersig. Marybeth jumped down from the passenger door of Trey Crump’s pickup. Joe didn’t recognize the armed deputies who spread out along the corral fence.

  “Is that you, Mary?” Stewie called, working his way behind the cow in the distance so that Finotta and the cow were between him and the deputies. Joe heard the racketing pumps of the shotguns and the bolts being thrown on the rifles.

  “It’s me, Stewie,” Marybeth answered. Her voice was strong. “Please don’t hurt anyone, and don’t hurt yourself.”

  Joe felt a strange pang hearing the familiarity with which she addressed Stewie and he addressed her. For a moment he was buffeted with several emotions; jealousy, confusion, anger, and deep sadness.

  Mary?

  “Joe,” she cried, “you need to get back here with me.”

  “You are still a beauty, Mary,” Stewie said, both admiring and wistful. “Joe is a lucky man. And Mary—Joe Pickett is a good man. That’s a very rare thing out in this cow pasture.”

  Finotta swung his face toward the line of officers behind the corral fences. “Barnum, you need to take him out! Now!”

  Joe heard Barnum hiss at his deputies not to fire.

  Deputy McLanahan, farthest away from Barnum in the line, used the post of the fence for a rest, fitted the top half of Stewie Woods into the notch of his rear open sight, and squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The high crack of the shot snapped through the air.

  Stewie jerked and sat back heavily in the wet grass. Marybeth screamed, and Barnum let loose a firecracker string of curses toward McLanahan.

  Jim Finotta raised his head, saw Stewie sitting on the ground with the remote control and revolver in his lap, and yelled, “Hit him again! He’s still moving! Take him out!”

  Joe slipped down from the fence into the pasture and took a few tentative steps. He locked eyes with Stewie across the field. Pain gripped Stewie’s face, making the edges of his mouth tug up in an inappropriate smile. How alone he is, Joe thought, feeling gut-wrenching pity. Practically everyone he cares about is gone. Joe thought about rushing Stewie and wrenching the transmitter away, but the look in Stewie’s eyes warned him not to. With a wistful shrug, Stewie pushed the button on his transmitter.

  The force of the explosion hurled Joe back toward the corrals, where he smashed full force against the fence.

  Through slitted eyes and with the dead silence of instant deafness, Joe watched as pieces of Jim Finotta, the cow, Stewie Woods, and bromegrass turf rained from the sky for what seemed like hours.

  38

  The dreams Joe had in the hospital were not good dreams. In one, they were once again climbing out of Savage Run Canyon with Charlie Tibbs and his long-range rifle on the opposite rim. Only, this time, Stewie was the target. One shot ripped Stewie’s left arm off at the socket, but he kept climbing one-handed. Stewie kept making jokes, saying he was happy he still had his right hand because without that he would have no dates anymore. Joe was scrambling to the top, ahead of Stewie, his muscles shrieking, contracting, in terrible pain. Another shot hit Stewie in the thigh, breaking the bone, leaving his right leg useless. A third hit Stewie square in the back and exited out the front, his entrails now blooming from a hole in his stomach like a sea anemone. But he just kept climbing behind Joe, joking that he no longer had the guts for this sort of thing.

  Joe’s problem was that a large piece of the cow—either the head or a meaty front shoulder—had hit him hard enough in the chest to crack his sternum and break his collarbone. He couldn’t remember actually being hit. Marybeth told him that when she had reached him near the fence, he had been vomiting blood. The EMTs had suspected a much more serious injury at first as well, because he was spattered by gouts of blood and it was difficult to discern if the source was internal or external. Marybeth rode with him in the Twelve Sleep County ambulance, holding his hand, wiping his face clean.

  Although neither injury required a cast, his doctor decided to keep him for rest and observation at Twelve Sleep County Hospital for three days. He had lost fifteen pounds since Sunday, and was dehydrated enough to require an IV.

  Outside the hospital window, cottonwood leaves rattled in the summer wind. Daylight was lengthening. Joe could smell and feel a long summer coming.

  While he was in the hospital, Joe was interviewed by the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI), the FBI, the Game and Fish Department, and an officer from the Washington, D.C., Police Department who was in charge of the investigation into the death of Rep. Peter Sollito. He told them all the same story, the truth. When they asked him questions about the motivation behind the Stockman’s Trust or Stewie Woods, Joe said he wasn’t the person to ask and that he wouldn’t speculate. Trey Crump came and Joe went into great detail about the long march through the Bighorns, about Savage Run. In turn, Joe asked about the events of the day when Trey Crump discovered his disabled pickup and the black Ford.

  News of the Stockman’s Trust and what they had done was strangely muted. It was a scandal few really cared about, because it was too murky and too complicated to grasp. No one knew, or was willing to admit, who the executive board members were. Inquiries went nowhere, because
a search of Finotta’s home and office revealed no list of membership, no past meeting minutes, no record of incorporation. A run of Finotta’s phone records showed that all of the participants in the conference call had apparently called him, so there were no clues in Finotta’s outgoing calls. The Stockman’s Trust, apparently, had long ago reorganized without a centralized hierarchy—a perfect model of the nonstructural organization Stewie had wanted to emulate. Although he tried, Joe was unable to positively identify the voices that were on the telephone, even when the FBI asked him to listen to tapes of various nationwide wiretaps. As far as the various law enforcement agencies were concerned, Jim Finotta was the president of the board of executives and Jim Finotta had been blown to vapor by an exploding cow. Further investigation, as far as Joe knew, would go nowhere.

  Just as the Stockman’s Trust had gone into dormancy after the hanging of Tom Horn at the turn of the last century, the new Stockman’s Trust had seemed to recede into silence once again, at the turn of this century. The Stockman’s Trust had arisen, won their brief war, and had vanished.

  Sheriff Barnum had come, hat in hand, to see Joe the day before he was released. They exchanged pleasantries while Joe eyed the sheriff warily. Barnum stared at the tops of his own boots and mumbled that it was unfortunate he had been out of town when Joe rode up to the cabin.

  “According to Trey Crump, you were with him the day he found my pickup and the burned-up cabin,” Joe said gently. Barnum nodded, looking up above the dark bags under his eyes.

  “You volunteered to stay there while Trey circled around the mountain in the helicopter.”

  Barnum nodded again.

  “So how did Charlie Tibbs ride back, get in his truck, unhook his horse trailer, and drive to Jim Finotta’s place without you seeing him?”

  Joe watched Barnum think, watched the tiny veins in his temples pulse. Barnum had lowered his eyes again, and stood still. Joe could hear Barnum’s nicotine-encased lungs weakly suck breath in and push it back out.

  “You saw Charlie Tibbs ride back out of the mountains, didn’t you?” Joe asked, nearly whispering. “He was badly wounded, but you saw him coming back toward his truck, didn’t you? And when you called Jim Finotta, you both agreed that you ought to get away fast, so you would have no contact with Tibbs and plenty of deniability.”

  Barnum coughed, looked around the room at everything except Joe.

  “I can’t prove it, and you know that,” Joe said. “Just like I can’t prove you’re a member of the Stockman’s Trust, unless you admit it to me.”

  Barnum shuffled his boots on the hard linoleum floor, then briefly raised his eyes to Joe. Joe detected an almost imperceptible quiver of Barnum’s lower lip. Then the sheriff clamped on his hat, turned, and reached for the knob on the door.

  “Sheriff?” Joe said from the bed. “I know now that you’re a man who will look the other way.”

  Joe lowered his voice and spoke calmly, but with a hint of malice: “Someday, we need to have a conversation.”

  Barnum hesitated, his back to Joe, then let himself out of the room.

  The biggest focus of attention was on Stewie Woods. Old-line environmental activists now had themselves a mythic, noble, butt-kicking martyr. One Globe exceeded all of its records for fund-raising. A photo of Stewie’s pre-explosion face was now used on their stationery, envelopes, business cards, website, and on the cover of their magazine. He was being touted as the “Environmental Movement’s Ché Guevara.” A move was afoot to rename Savage Run the “Stewie Woods/Savage Run National Wilderness Area.” It was a losing effort, using Stewie’s name, but it gave the group a new cause to rally around. Politicians and others who objected were called “environmental racists” and targeted for future vitriol. Joe smiled bitterly when he read about it, knowing that in his last days on earth, Stewie considered himself an outcast from the organization he had founded, promoted, and lived for. Now One Globe had taken Stewie back. He was good for business.

  39

  At home, Joe placed the battered Cheyenne doll on top of the bookcase. Both April and Lucy said they wanted to play with it, and Joe let them after they promised to be gentle. But they preferred their Barbies, choosing nice clothes, long hair, and massive breasts over featureless leather, and Joe later found the doll on the floor and put it back on the bookcase.

  After a fried chicken dinner, Joe’s welcome-home request, he and Marybeth cleared the dishes and the girls went out to play.

  Marybeth told Joe that she had received another call from a reporter looking for a comment. According to the reporter, the rumor was floating through the environmental community that Stewie’s body had not been positively identified. Joe scoffed, saying that the damage had been so great that it was unlikely that Stewie, Finotta, or the cow could have been positively identified. So it was a good thing there was no need for medical testing, since seven law enforcement officers and Marybeth had witnessed the entire incident.

  “I couldn’t tell the reporter with any assurance that I actually saw Stewie’s body,” Marybeth said. “There was so much smoke and stuff falling from the sky that we all covered our heads and eyes. When we finally recovered from the shock of the explosion, you were the only person I looked for.”

  Joe liked hearing that. Marybeth asked if he still felt jealous. Joe said yes, a little. But he said that it was hard not to like Stewie. And he told her that he had punched him in the nose.

  “Somehow, I like it better that no one is sure about Stewie,” Marybeth said. “This is what he would have wanted. It’s right up his alley.”

  Joe smiled.

  Sitting on a bale of hay in the last light of the evening, Joe watched Marybeth work Toby in the round pen. Sheridan sat beside him, reading a Harry Potter book. Lucy and April played in the backyard. It was a perfect, still, warm summer evening. Joe wished he could drink it in. Instead, he settled for a tumbler of bourbon and water.

  “Are we going to get another horse?” Sheridan asked, while Toby’s hooves thundered in the soft dirt.

  “Eventually,” Joe said. He still didn’t like thinking or talking about Lizzie.

  “Dad, I’m trying to figure out what happened between the environmentalists and the ranchers, how it got so bad.”

  “First, Sheridan, it isn’t ‘the ranchers.’ Most ranchers take their role as stewards of the land seriously. This was a particular group of people who went too far.”

  “But how did it happen?”

  “I’m not sure what it was that set it off,” Joe said, putting the drink down. “I think it had been building for the last ten years, maybe more. On this end of the scale,” Joe started to gesture with his hands, felt a sharp pain from his right arm, which was in a sling, and settled for gesturing with his left hand, “you’ve got the environmental terrorists, the most extreme of the extreme. Stewie Woods was one of those guys, at least at first.

  “Over here,” Joe straightened his fingers from the fold of the sling in lieu of sweeping with his arm, “you’ve got the other end of the scale, which is the Stockman’s Trust group of hard-core, violent men. What this war did was cut back just a little on both sides of the scale.”

  “Where do we fit on the scale?”

  Joe chuckled. “Somewhere near the middle. Like most folks.”

  “I hope it doesn’t happen again.”

  Joe nodded. “Me, too. But I’m not as optimistic as I’d like to be. This wasn’t the first range war. There will be others, I’m afraid.”

  Sheridan turned and looked hard at him. They had had a conversation like this before.

  “I love you, Dad,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  Joe felt his face flush. He leaned forward and buried his head in her hair. “I love you too, honey. And it’s good to be back.”

  Slicked out and sweating, Toby pounded the packed earth in the round pen. Marybeth turned him and asked him to lope in the other direction. She was working him hard, very hard. As if she were exorcising something out o
f him. Or herself. Joe was intrigued by the fact that he was still learning about the woman who was his wife.

  Joe’s eyes wandered away from the horse, over the corral to the humpbacked Bighorn Mountains. There was no conceivable way that Stewie could have survived the explosion. No possible way.

  No possible way.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  PART TWO

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  PART THREE

  28

  29