Off the Grid

by C. J. Box

  But not only did he want to complete this last job as Governor Rulon’s range rider, he wanted to find Nate Romanowski. He missed Nate. So did Marybeth, but she’d never admit it to Joe.

  As if she could read his thoughts, the woman at the bar rotated a slow quarter turn on her stool and looked at him over her shoulder in a sidelong stare. She was striking, he thought: alabaster skin, long black bangs, big brown eyes, a bee-sting mouth. Her expression was both bold and amused.

  She doesn’t belong here, he thought, but she acts like she owns the place.

  After making eye contact for a beat too long, she swiveled back around. He felt unjustly dismissed. And he immediately felt guilty about his reaction.

  • • •

  HE TOOK A SEAT in a booth so he could face both the door and the bar. The tabletop was sticky and punctuated with cigarette burns.

  “Would you like to see a menu?” the bartender asked.

  “Sure. Bring two. I’m meeting Phil Parker. Do you know him?”

  “He’s the game warden around here?” the man asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Yeah,” the man sighed. “He comes by here every once in a while. He’s a character.”

  “That’s him,” Joe said.

  Phil Parker had a reputation within the department as a game warden who worked hard, played hard, and liked the ladies. He’d been married and divorced twice and he’d gotten into trouble in his former district in Star Valley when he was accused by a local Mormon bishop (who was also a Game and Fish commissioner) of sneaking around with the man’s wife. Thus, he was reassigned to the Red Desert country.

  Joe didn’t know Parker well, because their districts were hundreds of miles apart, but he had once bunked with him at a mountain tactics workshop in the Wyoming Range near Afton. Parker had snuck out of the room to go to town when Joe went to bed, but he’d shown up for breakfast the next morning with everyone else. Joe didn’t ask, and Parker didn’t tell. The only indication of what Parker had been up to all night was a wink over scrambled eggs and bacon.

  The bartender came out from behind the bar with two laminated sheets—the menus. He placed one in front of Joe and the other where Phil Parker would sit.

  “I’m Cooter,” he said.

  “Of course you are.”

  Cooter looked at Joe quizzically.

  “Nice to meet you, Cooter. I’m Joe. Are you the owner of the Mustang Café?”

  “Part owner,” Cooter said. “I’ve got a few silent partners who live in the area. They like to have a place to go at night, you know? As you can see, there aren’t a lot of other options here.”

  Joe nodded. “Must be tough at times.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Cooter said. “We do okay.” Which surprised Joe a little, considering he was the only customer in the place besides the woman at the bar.

  “Should I wait to take your order when Phil gets here?”

  “Please,” Joe said, noting that Parker had already gone from a good guy who stopped by once in a while to being on a first-name basis. Maybe the Mustang Café was back to its old tricks after all, he thought.

  Joe checked out the menu. It read:

  Hamburger

  Cheeseburger

  Bacon Cheeseburger

  Chiliburger

  Double Chiliburger

  Hot Dog

  Chili Dog

  “Quite a variety,” Joe said.

  Cooter shrugged. He said, “We pared it down to what everybody orders all the time.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Cooter hesitated for a moment, then said, “We got some other things, too. On the other side.”

  Joe flipped the menu over. It read:

  Vegan Chunky Chili

  Al Kabsa

  He said, “Really?”

  “Them’s a couple of local specialties,” Cooter said.

  “Vegan chunky chili?”

  “Kidney beans, white beans, brown lentils, tomatoes, celery, onion, red onion, extra-firm tofu. Jan over there orders it every time,” he said, chinning toward the bar. She didn’t turn back around.

  Joe paused, looking closely at Cooter to see if it was a joke.

  “No meat in the chili?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And what is al kabsa?”

  Cooter rubbed his hands together. He said, “It’s really pretty good. Chicken over rice. Lots of spices, including one called shattah that’ll blow your mind.”

  Joe waited a beat, then said, “Why?”

  Cooter laughed. “Ah, a local guy around here showed me how to make it and he orders it every time he comes in. Sometimes he brings his friends and they all eat it. I thought I’d never get it down, but he says he thinks it’s great now. He scored me some Maggi cubes I put in it that really makes it go zing.”

  “It just seems strange, is all,” Joe said.

  “Oh,” Cooter said, widening his eyes and nodding his head emphatically, “this is a strange place! Stranger than hell! You never know who will show up and what they’ll want, but I am smart enough to cater to the few folks who really get a jones on for a particular item, you know?”

  In his peripheral vision, Joe noticed Jan had turned and was looking over at them with a slightly annoyed expression on her face, as if silently imploring Cooter to shut up.

  Before Joe could ask about these locals, the door pushed open and Phil Parker entered and said, “Cooter, you should have poured me a beer by now.”

  “On it, Phil,” Cooter said, raising one finger and scuttling back behind the bar.

  “Jan, how’s my favorite little rock hound?” Parker asked with a big smile.

  “I’m fine, Phil. Thanks for asking.” She had a sultry voice, Joe thought, with articulate phrasing.

  He thought: Rock hound?

  Parker strode over to Jan and gave her a hello hug. Joe could tell the difference between a woman who wanted to be embraced and a woman putting up with it. In Jan’s case, it was the latter.

  • • •

  PARKER WAGGLED HIS EYEBROWS conspiratorially as he left Jan and approached Joe, who had started to scoot out of his booth seat.

  “Naw, don’t get up,” Parker said.

  They shook hands and Parker sat down across from Joe. Tall and broad-shouldered with large hands and a sweeping gunfighter’s mustache, an angular face, and weathered skin under a black cowboy hat with a sharply upturned rodeo brim, Phil Parker looked like a walking Marlboro ad.

  “I hate to sit with my back to her,” he whispered with a sly smile. “I’m missing the scenery. Tell me if she looks around.”

  “She’s not looking around.”

  Parker leaned across the table closer to Joe. “She’s something else, ain’t she? Who would think you’d find a trust-fund beauty who likes to collect rocks way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “It does seem odd,” Joe said.

  “Jan Stalkup,” he said. “I run across her out in the desert every once in a while, but usually in here. She likes that vegan crap Cooter has learned to cook up. Sometimes her friends show up here and she takes them south to look around, I guess. Maybe they go camping or whatever. She seems to know a lot of people and they seem to know where to find her.”

  Joe sat back and cocked his head.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but as far as I know she isn’t a prostitute,” Parker said. “I wish she was,” he added with a guffaw.

  They made small talk for a few minutes, discussing the latest policy initiatives sent down from the agency’s director, Lisa Greene-Dempsey, whom Parker despised. “What do you think about that GPS deal?” he asked.

  Cheyenne had recently required all state vehicles, whether pool cars for bureaucrats or pickups for game wardens, to have installed GPS transmitters that would track and record every mil
e they took on the roads. While it made sense for state employees from the Department of Family Services and other personnel, game wardens across the state instantly rose up in arms. That’s because much of the time they spent watching hunters and fishers was done from their parked trucks. They didn’t want bureaucrats in Cheyenne asking them why they had just sat there on a certain hill for hours the previous week, or why they were in a neighboring county when dispatch called them to respond to an emergency.

  “You know what I did after they installed that GPS on my truck?” Parker asked.

  “I can guess.”

  “I took it off and threw it in a ditch. Since I don’t plan to go to Cheyenne again in the future, I don’t know when they’ll get a chance to install another one,” he said with sly sidewise smile.

  “My truck still doesn’t have one,” Joe said. “I missed the appointment.”

  “Clever,” Parker said with a wink. “I thought they’d probably made a cost-benefit decision not to put one on your truck because it would just get damaged anyway.”

  “Very funny,” Joe said.

  “The rest of us game wardens like it when you waste another truck out in the field,” Parker said. “It makes us all look good by comparison.”

  Joe changed the subject. “How come Cooter acted like he barely knew who you were when I asked about you?”

  Parker shrugged. “You know the type. He’s got a suspicious mind-set like a criminal. His default mode is to obfuscate and deflect. I don’t even know if he’s aware of it.”

  “Cooter’s a bad guy?”

  “Most folks around here are . . . colorful,” Parker said with a laugh. “Including me.”

  Parker had a devil-may-care manner and an infectious laugh that made Joe want to laugh along with him.

  “So how in the hell are you, Joe?”

  “Keeping up.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “It has.”

  “You have many run-ins with LGD?” he asked, meaning Lisa Greene-Dempsey.

  “A few.”

  “Is she as annoying as everyone says?” he asked. “Whenever she comes through, I’m conveniently out in the field or assisting another game warden somewhere. I’ve never actually met the woman.”

  “She’s not as bad as all that,” Joe said.

  “I have a feeling she wouldn’t like me very much,” Parker said.

  “I have a feeling you’re right.”

  Parker threw back his hands and laughed again, nearly knocking a glass of draft beer out of Cooter’s hand before it could be placed in front of the game warden.

  “Sorry about that, Cooter,” he said.

  Joe thought there was no reason to remind Parker that drinking on duty was against the rules.

  “Do you gentlemen know what you want?”

  “I do, but she won’t agree to it,” Parker said.

  Joe rolled his eyes and Cooter stifled a laugh.

  They both ordered cheeseburgers.

  • • •

  WHILE COOTER WAS IN BACK frying the patties, Parker said, “So do you really think that grizzly bear came all the way down here? It’s a hell of a long way.”

  Joe said, “Honestly, I doubt it. There’s two hundred and fifty-five miles between where we sit and where we last tracked that bear. But let me show you what we know,” he said, pulling a weathered Wyoming highway map out of his back pocket and spreading it across the table.

  With his index finger, he jabbed an X he’d made with a pen in the Bighorn Mountains.

  “This is where he jumped and killed that hunter,” Joe said.

  Another jab to the south on a second mark: “This is where we last got a signal from him immediately afterward.”

  Parker said, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but that bear nearly attacked you, right?”

  “Yup,” Joe said.

  “I want to hear that story.”

  “In a minute. Now back to the map. The day after we thought we’d lost the signal completely, there were two more pings. Apparently, the battery wasn’t completely worn out and it rallied back and sent out a couple of transmissions before it died for good.”

  Joe indicated a third mark south of the second. The closest town was Mayoworth. Then a fourth mark north of Waltman.

  He reached over and retrieved the laminated menu and used its edge to line up all four ink marks.

  “I’ll be damned,” Parker said. “It looks like that grizzly is making a beeline to the Red Desert, don’t it?”

  Parker reached out and tapped the map. “He’ll have to cross a whole lot of country, including the Rattlesnake Range and the Green Mountains. But he doesn’t have to worry about too many roads, does he?”

  There were only two paved roads between the Bighorns and where they sat waiting for lunch: U.S. Highway 20 between Casper and Shoshoni and U.S. Highway 287 between Muddy Gap and Lander.

  “We contracted with a couple of pilots to fly the route,” Joe said. “Obviously, they didn’t spot the grizzly. There’s just too much terrain to cover.”

  Joe wasn’t lying, because he didn’t lie. The unexpected transmissions from the GPS collar were marked exactly where they had occurred. And LGD had authorized several flyovers by a single-engine aircraft.

  That the route of the grizzly happened to be headed to where Joe had to go anyway was fortuitous. He tried not to factor in Nate and Nate’s strange way with wild creatures as part of the explanation for why the bear might be acting the way it had. Over the years, Joe had seen Nate do things that defied rational explanation. Like the way he hunted by letting game animals come to him. And that time he was telling Joe a story and reached out with a pointed index finger and a wild meadowlark lit on it. Nate hadn’t even hesitated while he continued talking, but Joe lost the thread of the story because he couldn’t stop marveling at the bird.

  • • •

  “SO, WHERE ARE YOU STAYING?” Parker asked after Cooter delivered the food.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Joe said. “There aren’t a lot of options, are there? I’ll probably camp out for a couple of nights in the desert while the weather holds.”

  “Bring water,” Parker warned. “And send me the coordinates of where you’re camped. I might be able to stop by and join you for a while, if you don’t mind.”

  Joe did, but he didn’t say that. He didn’t want Parker to know about his assignment, or to get into the middle of his investigation. Joe had no reason not to trust the local game warden, but he’d been burned before.

  “If I see GB-53, I know I could use some help,” Joe said. “This time I’m afraid we need to put him down. He’s too unpredictable and he’s already killed one hunter.”

  “Just let me know,” Parker said, acting a little distant. He’d picked up on the vibe that Joe didn’t really want him around, Joe guessed. Joe felt bad about that because this was, after all, Parker’s jurisdiction.

  Joe changed the subject by asking questions about Parker’s district—about the desert elk herd, the growing wild horse herd, the sage grouse population. Parker knew his district well and seemed to be on top of everything. Despite his reputation and the beer for lunch, Joe thought, Parker was serious about his job and his responsibilities.

  When Parker mentioned issuing two falconry permits recently, Joe’s ears perked up.

  To become a legal falconer in Wyoming, the applicant had to pass an exam based on the California Hawking Club guidelines, unless he or she was a certified master falconer. In that case, the nonresident master falconer could obtain a hunting permit from the local game warden for sixteen dollars.

  “Two of them at once?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah, a master falconer and his apprentice. They said they wanted to hunt rabbits and sage grouse. Middle Eastern–looking guys.”

  “Do you remember the master falconer’s
name?”

  Parker thought for a moment. He said, “I’d have to go check my records. The master falconer was named Abraham Muhammad, I think. I can’t remember the other guy’s name. Maybe Saeed or some such nonsense. He didn’t say much, but Abraham was a really good guy, very friendly. He was a master falconer out of Virginia and very personable, very knowledgeable. I don’t worry much about guys like that who know what they’re doing.”

  “Interesting,” Joe said. “I’ve probably not issued more than a half-dozen falconry permits in my career.” He could have added: None to Nate. Nate didn’t believe in government-issued permits.

  “Middle Eastern, you say?” Joe asked.

  “They spoke perfect English.”

  Parker paused for a minute and said, “As you can imagine, being so close to the interstate, we get all kinds down here. The desert seems to attract people who just sort of wash up like they have noplace else to go.

  “You should come back here at night,” Parker added, meaning the Mustang Café. “There’s nobody here now but us, but if you come at night you’ll see the strangest collection of people you’ll ever meet. Survivalist types, dead-enders, computer geeks I would swear are probably anarchist hackers, trappers, and trust-fund babies like Jan. There’s no place in Wyoming where you’ll find an odder group of folks.”

  Joe took that in and wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  “I’d suggest Adobe Town,” Parker said.

  “What?”

  “If you’re camping out, I’d suggest camping around Adobe Town. There aren’t any developed sites, but it’s an amazing place if you haven’t seen it. There’s no water, but if I were camping, that’s where I’d go.”

  Joe thanked him for the advice.

  Cooter brought the check over and handed it to Parker, who handed it to Joe. “Visiting game warden pays,” he said with a smile.