by C. J. Box
"I hope to hell that's the last exploding cow in my county" Hersig lamented.
"So what is it that I'm not going to like?" Joe asked.
Hersig leaned back in his chair and put his boots up on the desk. He looked squarely at Joe.
"Jim Finotta is an asshole. Everybody knows that."
Joe nodded.
"But we're not going to take these poaching charges against him any further."
Joe waited for a punch line. There wasn't one. He felt anger start to well up, but he stayed measured.
"Yes?"
Hersig swung his feet down and leaned forward. "I went and talked to Matt Sandvick so we could prepare his affidavit. He denies that he ever did any work for Finotta and denies he even talked with you about the man. He no longer has that photo you told me about, and his records from June suddenly can't be found."
"I can't believe it," Joe said, stunned.
"You should have kept that picture, Joe," Hersig said.
Joe looked away Of course he should have. But he had taken Sandvick at his word.
"Did you tell Finotta that Sandvick was going to blow the whistle on him?" Hersig asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Joe thought for a moment, then: "Yup. I did tell him that when I saw him the other day"
Hersig raised his hands in a "what can I do?" gesture.
"I trusted Matt," Joe said.
"What's not to trust about Matt?" Hersig said cynically
"Finotta got to him, didn't he?" Joe asked. if Hersig looked thoughtful. "Probably But there's not a whole hell of a lot we can do to prove it unless Sandvick changes his mind again. And believe me, if he changes his mind, Finotta will slaughter him in court and point out that Sandvick changed his story three different times. That's not real credible."
Joe shook his head. "What kind of a guy are we dealing with here? Finotta, I mean. Would he intimidate a witness over a poaching charge?" Joe knew that if Finotta were convicted, he would, at best, lose his hunting privileges and have to pay $10,000 in fines. Finotta could certainly afford that. Game violations were shamefully lenient compared to other crimes, Joe thought.
Hersig smiled ruefully "You know about those big hunters he hosts every year. He's got the governor, both senators. Lawyers and judges from all over. It would be a real loss of stature if word got out that he was convicted for poaching. That's a crime for lowlifes not big-time lawyers and developers. It would get press attention and embarrass the hell out of Finotta in front of his big-shot pals. So you bet he'll fight it. He's the kind of guy who will work behind the scenes and call in all his chits to get what he wants. Finotta isn't the kind of guy to just accept a bad hand."
"Look, Joe," Hersig said, "Finotta's made most of his money by settling cases out of court. He's merciless in working the system and putting pressure on people. He's even been officially warned about intimidating those who plan to testify but never brought up on charges, and no sanctions have ever been filed against him."
Joe sighed. Then he thought of something. "I still have the DNA sample of the dead elk," Joe said eagerly "We don't need Sandvick if we can get that mount and prove that it's a match."
Hersig shook his head. "I thought of that. I brought it up with Judge Pennock and he won't sign a warrant to go get that elk. He told me he thinks you've harassed Mr. Finotta quite enough."
"He said that?"
"It's a direct quote."
Joe banged the desk with his knuckles. "Finotta is Pennock's pal. Pennock has an interest in Elkhorn Ranches." Finotta, Joe thought, played in a different league than he or Robey Hersig.
Hersig held up his hand to caution Joe. "It's best not to cast aspersions on the judge in this office."
"Shouldn't Judge Pennock give this one to another judge? Isn't this a conflict of interest?"
"Recuse himself, you mean?" Hersig said, raising his eyebrows. "Do you actually want me to suggest that to him?"
Joe read in Hersig's expression that challenging Judge Pennock was absolutely the last thing Hersig wanted to do.
"Yup," Joe said. "That's exactly what I want to do. What about Judge what's-his-name in Johnson County?"
"Judge Cohn?" Hersig placed both of his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes as if Joe were torturing him.
"There isn't a person in Twelve Sleep County that wouldn't think it was wrong for Judge Pennock to preside over a crime involving his business partner," Joe said. "Even Pennock can understand that"
"So you need to ask Pennock to assign the case to another judge," Joe said, and stood up.
Hersig looked up and spoke sharply "Joe, what you're talking about will get you in all kinds of trouble. You think Finotta is going to give up? He's got a personal line to the governor, and to your director. I've got to tell you this case is really weak. You've got a witness who recanted and the only way you can prove anything is to get an order from a judge in another county to search the home of a Twelve Sleep County rancher and lawyer. Do you really think that mount will still be on the wall when you go to get it? My guess is that instead of that elk, there will be a charming English hunting print or some damn thing."
Now Hersig stood up, his face softening. "Joe, I like you. You are one of the few good guys I know But this has turned into one of those cases where a truck backs up to the courthouse and dumps a huge pile of steaming shit on the floor. My job would be to try to convince the judge and jury that somewhere in all of that shit a gem of a case is buried, if they'll just be patient and get used to the smell. And to tell you the truth, if you were to keep pressing, it would start to sound a little like harassment."
Joe listened. He was surprised how vehement Hersig was. "Keep this up and I might be prosecuting you, Joe."
"This just really makes me mad," Joe said. "The guy killed the biggest elk in the Bighorns and left the meat."
Hersig waved Joe away "I know: I know. You already told me that. There's just not much I can do here."
Joe turned and fumbled to open the door without banging the chair he had been sitting in.
"Joe!" Hersig called after him.
Joe leaned back into the office.
"I hate to say this, but usually the assholes win." Joe stood silently for a moment, then put his hat on his head. "Seems like, in this county they do," Joe said, and closed the door hard.
***
Sheriff O. R. "Bud" Barnum was in his office and Joe walked in as Barnum checked his watch.
"I've got a lunch meeting planned," Barnum said, raising his heavy lidded eyes. "You should have called ahead."
"This will take five minutes," Joe stated. The meeting with Hersig had battered him. He was humiliated, angry, and frustrated with how it had gone. He was mad at himself for trusting Sandvick and not anticipating how slick and effective Finotta could be. He wondered how much time Finotta had spent in the last week anticipating Joe's moves and countering them, and wondered what Finotta was telling the judge, the governor, and the director of the agency about him.
Joe decided to start the conversation with the less incendiary topic and told Barnum about the branch in the tree and asked if it had been examined for blood, hair, or fiber. Barnum looked at Joe with barely disguised impatience.
"You're here to ask me about one particular branch in a particular tree?"
"It's in the shape of a fishhook," Joe said.
Joe accepted how silly it sounded. But after the meeting with Hersig, his well of embarrassment was dry Joe described the location of the tree, how the branch could almost certainly support the weight of a man, and how the branch was stained dark red. He left out his feeling of being watched that night.
Barnum shook his head slowly as if Joe Pickett had disappointed him.
"So you're cowboying again, huh?" Barnum asked. "Following up on my investigation like you did when those outfitters got killed?"
Joe fought the urge to bring up the fact that Barnum had botched that investigation and had reached the wrong conclusion well before Joe ever got involved.
"We're through except for one thing."
"And that is?" Barnum asked, reaching for his jacket.
"I'm going to petition Judge Cohn in Johnson County for a search warrant for Jim Finotta's residence," Joe said flatly "Then I'm going to arrest that son-of-a-bitch for poaching."
This froze Barnum. Slowly, the sheriff swiveled his head toward Joe. Barnum's eyes, which had seen just about everything, showed surprise.
"I just thought you ought to know, so that when you hear about the arrest, you can say you were officially forewarned," Joe said calmly
A crooked smile formed on Barnum's face. "I'd sure miss that half a beef at Christmas," he said. "But something tells me I don't have much to worry about in that regard."
Joe ignored the insult. "And when I bring him in I'm going to ask him how he knew about that exploding cow before I told him about it."
***
THERE WAS A "CLOSED" SIGN in the front window of Wolf Mountain Taxidermy and a hand-lettered sign taped to the inside of the front-door window Joe stopped to read it.
gone fishing until sept. 1. can't wait until hunting season!
for rates and orders, see www.sandvicktaxidermy.com
Joe slumped against the doorframe and looked down the empty Main Street of Saddlestring. At the end of the street, on the bridge, a knot of teenage boys were cheering on a buddy who was underneath them in the river. The boy had tied a rope to the railing on the bridge and was waterskiing in place on the fast summer runoff of the Twelve Sleep River. Joe suddenly felt very old.
***
Mary Beth was at the master bathroom sink, cleaning her face for bed and thinking about the day when Joe came and flopped down on their bed. He was in a foul mood.
"Finotta outmaneuvred me," he said bluntly "He was ten steps ahead of me all the time, and he got to Sandvick. I really screwed that one up by not getting that photo from Sandvick on the spot."
Marybeth sighed inwardly. Sometimes her husband was a little too quick to take people at their word and it frustrated her. She hated it when he got taken advantage of. "You're too trusting, Joe." She looked at him in the mirror. "You're not cynical enough sometimes."
"I'm working on that."
She turned, the washcloth still poised near her cheek. "Finotta is a reptile, but you need to give up on him right now, Joe. He could buy and sell us if he wanted to. And if he's as bad as we think he is, you'll get another crack at him some day"
Joe grunted.
Marybeth thought of Ginger Finotta and about their aborted conversation in the library She thought about the Tom Horn book, which hadn't yet been returned.
17
July 1
Through billows of sulfur-smelling steam, the Old Man watched and waited for Charlie Tibbs. The Old Man reclined on the mineral-slick steps of a very hot pool and closed his eyes. He willed the muscles in his neck and back to begin to loosen up and untie what he imagined as a series of complicated, technical knots. He sighed heavily and slid forward another step so the hot water lapped at his chin.
They were in the Central Wyoming town of Thermopolis, hard against the border of the Wind River Indian Reservation. Thermopolis claimed to have the "largest hot springs in the world," a claim based not on the number of spas or facilities but on the volume of hot water that poured from the earth.
The Old Man slid forward on the step and leaned further back. His mouth was now under water, then his ears. Total submersion created a static whooshing sound. He breathed slowly through his nose. He was big and white and the hair on his legs and chest riffled beneath the water like a bed of kelp. In addition to helping his sore back, the Old Man hoped the water would somehow purge his wracked, tormented soul. But that was a lot to ask of Thermopolis.
It had been the Old Man's idea to drive to Thermopolis and he had been mildly surprised that Charlie had agreed. The Old Man had limped from the pickup, rented a suit at the counter, and located the hottest and calmest water. In another part of the complex, children and families splashed and shrieked and funneled down a water slide. The pool he sat in was for old people. The Old Man's only company was an ancient Shoshone woman with jet black eyes and droopy chocolate colored skin. Occasionally she coughed wetly After half an hour, she left the pool and the Old Man was alone.
From the corner of his eye, the Old Man saw the black Ford pickup come into view through the chain-link fence that surrounded the pools. The truck parked against the curb. Afternoon sunlight penetrated the smoked windows enough that the Old Man could see Charlie inside the cab talking on the cell phone. The Old Man had not expected that Charlie would join him and was relieved that he hadn't. They had been spending too much time together and the Old Man couldn't even imagine what Charlie would look like in a swimsuit. Charlie had said he would try to contact their employers, and apparently he had. The cell phone was a technologically advanced model that scrambled voices so that eavesdroppers, or innocents with FM band radios, could not overhear the conversation.
The pickup truck was a wonder and a virtual weapon in itself. Although from the outside it simply looked like an intimidating late model four-by-four, the truck had been customized to serve as a rolling armory capable of "taking on an entire police department if necessary," as Charlie had put it. Even though the job was nearly finished and they had so far accomplished what they had set out to, they hadn't used even one-tenth of their available firepower and equipment.
Apparently, Charlie said, their employers had listened to him when he told them he believed strongly in the old Western maxim about never being caught outgunned. And they hadn't been.
In addition to the pickup truck, they were also armed with shotguns and hundreds of rounds of double-ought buckshot shells, a MAC-70 machine pistol, plastic explosives with both altitude-sensitive and remote-control detonation devices, a 400-pound crossbow with telescopic sights, night-vision goggles and scopes, remote audio transceivers, nerve gas, and concussion grenades. Charlie Tibbs was especially proud of the custom-made, machine-tooled Remington Model 700 .308 sniper's rifle with the Leupold 4x14 scope. The rifle had been built to his specific demands and specifications. It used custom match 190 gram boattail bullets that were accurate beyond 1,000 yards, even after the slug began to flip end over end. The rifle could be steadied by bolting it to a special pole-mounted stand in the bed of the black Ford pickup. The stand itself was connected to a small atmospheric theodolite computer that gauged wind, altitude, trajectory, and distance to enable incredibly long-range shots. Under hidden panels beneath the bed of the pickup was a shoulder fired rocket launcher as well as an armored pod of pressure-sensitive and frequency-activated land mines.
The cab of the pickup had the scrambled cell phone, handheld wireless e-mail, and a pager, as well as an experimental computerized GPS directional mapping system loaded with American backroads and routes. They had only used the road-map computer once, and that was on the streets of Washington, DC. Both the Old Man and Charlie Tibbs knew the Rocky Mountain region well enough that the computer was not necessary Their employers had supplied them with a lockbox of cash--thousands of dollars in used bills. Charlie kept track of their expenditures, but there was nothing they were prevented from buying at any time. They paid for everything with cash and cashiers often acted as if they didn't know what to do when, for example, Charlie counted out $400 in bills to pay for hotel rooms. They left no paper trail, no credit card receipts anywhere in the United States.
Originally recommended for this job by Charlie Tibbs himself, who had already been hired to oversee the field operations, the Old Man had been contacted late at night by a man who wouldn't leave his name. When the Old Man stated that he was interested in hearing more, a meeting with Charlie Tibbs was arranged at a loc
al Denny's Restaurant to fill him in on the details. Tibbs told him that their employers had recommended at least six operatives, and possibly two different teams, but Charlie had convinced them that everything could be accomplished by two experienced men. Since then, only Charlie Tibbs had been in contact with their employers. The Old Man was not included in these conversations by design, to minimize the number of people involved in the planning of the operations. It was understood that Charlie would speak to the intermediary who would then speak directly with their employers. The Old Man was kept in the dark except for the details of the operation most immediately at hand. The Old Man had agreed to this, but now wished he had a better idea, overall, of what was going on. Obviously they were targeting high-profile environmentalists. But how many? And for how long? He had expected their work to take about two weeks going in, and they were now into their second month.
He had no idea what Charlie Tibbs had told their employers about him. He wondered if his recent doubts and complaints were being reported. Charlie could honestly say that the Old Man had recently shown more reluctance on the job. Would they relieve him if the complaints got too loud? Would they pay him off? Would they have Charlie Tibbs walk up behind him and put a bullet in the back of his head?
The Old Man had begun to question Charlie Tibbs's sanity. One of the reasons for this was that Tibbs had recently insisted on replaying a CD of Oklahoma! over and over again while they drove. Tibbs sang along with full force. And even before Emily Betts crashed, Charlie seemed to like this job way too much. He enjoyed what they were doing. It was as if Charlie had been given the opportunity to vent a lifetime of rage, and he just got a big old kick out of it. Charlie was driven by something, and absolutely relentless. He believed in this cause even more, he said, than their employers believed in it. And he still did not sleep.
Charlie emerged from the pickup and signaled through the fence for the Old Man.
