Endangered

by C. J. Box

  Joe agreed.

  “You and Marybeth ought to come see me at the Daddy, last week of July,” Dallas said, meaning Cheyenne. “I can get you some passes for the east-side stands.”

  “Maybe,” Joe said.

  “And you let me know how April’s doin’, okay?”

  “Yup,” Joe said.

  —

  “SO,” BRENDA SAID as they went down the hall toward the living room, “are you finally satisfied?”

  Joe said, “I have to say I am.”

  There was no way Dallas could have administered such a serious beating to April in his condition. The broken ribs alone would have prevented it, Joe knew. He remembered the searing pain he had experienced simply lacing up his boots. And how Dallas had managed to drive from Houston to Saddlestring in his condition was both foolish and heroic, Joe thought.

  Brenda shook her head and said, “You’re a hardheaded man.”

  “I just needed to be sure,” Joe said. “I guess it still stings that April ran off.”

  Brenda reached out and grasped his elbow before he entered the front room, and he turned.

  She nodded at the Cheyenne photo of Dallas flinging his hat and said, “You know, this community don’t appreciate what we’ve got here.”

  Joe was momentarily puzzled.

  “Dallas,” she said. “He’s a champion. He’s our world-class athlete, and he comes from right here in Twelve Sleep County. There should be signs outside the town telling everyone they’re entering the home of Dallas Cates. There should be parades every summer. We ought to name the high school after him, or at least the rodeo arena.”

  Her eyes were blazing.

  “I talked to your wife about it a while back. I was trying to get her on board because I think she’d have some influence, bein’ the head of the library and all. Maybe you can talk to her. Maybe you can let her know what a big deal that boy is back there. Sometimes I think people around here don’t appreciate what they’ve got. They see Eldon pumping out their septic tanks and they don’t think, ‘That man—he’s the father of a champion.’ They just think, ‘That man is pumping out my shit.’”

  Her grip on his arm was surprisingly strong.

  She leaned into him and said, “What do we have to do to get it through all the thick skulls around here that they’ve got a rodeo champion right here? Who grew up right here? What’s wrong with them?”

  “Brenda,” Joe said, “I don’t know that I’m the right guy to ask.”

  “That boy back there is special,” she said. “He’s one-in-a-million. Do you know how many people have asked me about how he’s doing? Less than ten, I’ll tell you that. The newspaper should have been out here. The mayor should have been out here.”

  “I hear you,” Joe said. He meant that literally, not that he actually agreed. He thought, Too many locals know about Dallas’s role in the sexual assault when he was in high school. Too many locals had been beaten up or terrorized by Timber before he was sent to prison. Too many local hunters have been burned by Eldon or Bull while they’re out trying to get meat for the winter. Too many locals have been harangued by Brenda about building monuments to her son.

  He said, “Have you thought about letting it be their idea instead of yours?”

  Her face turned to stone. After a beat, she said, “It would never happen. They all look down on us. We know if we don’t take care of ourselves, no one else will.”

  “That isn’t my experience,” Joe said. “People around here are pretty decent. Maybe you ought to give ’em a chance.”

  She looked at him with contempt.

  “Thanks for letting me see him,” he said, twisting away from her grip.

  He clamped on his hat and reached for the doorknob. Behind him, Brenda Cates said, “Don’t forget what we talked about here, Joe Pickett.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t.”

  He couldn’t get out of the Cates home fast enough.

  —

  JOE FROWNED against the sound of the air compressor until he was back in his pickup. Daisy was happy to see him, but she threw nervous looks toward the house as if expecting the pack of dogs to come out at any second. As Joe backed up and pointed the nose of his pickup toward the gate, he noted that Brenda was watching him out the kitchen window and that Bull had cocked back the curtains in the living room.

  As he squared the pickup to leave, he saw Dallas’s late-model four-wheel-drive pickup parked on the side of an equipment shed filled with a flatbed trailer with two snowmobiles on it. The pickup was a gleaming red Ford F-250 with a chrome cowcatcher and Texas plates. PRCA, PBR, and NFR stickers were on the windows. Anyone in the know would recognize the acronyms for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Professional Bull Riders, and National Finals Rodeo.

  Eldon stood in the shadows inside the garage next to one of his pump trucks. Joe waved good-bye to him, but Eldon didn’t wave back. Joe could see the compressor vibrating at Eldon’s feet. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be a pneumatic hose attached.

  —

  SOMEBODY LET THE DOGS out of their run and they followed Joe’s pickup all the way to the county road. When he finally turned onto the graded road, he called Marybeth on his cell phone.

  “I saw Dallas Cates,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”

  “You saw him? Where?”

  “At his house. I was checking out this sage grouse thing and the Cates place was within sight, so I stopped by to see if they’d seen anything.”

  “How convenient,” she said, deadpan.

  He described Dallas’s condition.

  She said, “There was still a small part of me that was suspicious. Now I guess we can move on.”

  He agreed. “They’re an odd bunch, though. Brenda buttonholed me about the town doing more to recognize her son. She might have a point, but she’s a little scary when she gets going.”

  “She does that to everyone,” Marybeth said.

  “Oh, and I might have gotten a lead on who shot all those birds,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back,” Joe said, knowing he was about to hit a long dead zone for cell phone coverage. Then: “I’ll have to tread real lightly on this one.”

  His phone blinked out and he didn’t know if she’d heard that last part.

  —

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Liv heard the compressor shudder into silence. She knew what it meant and she fought back tears. Whoever had arrived was gone.

  The footfalls came and she could tell there were two sets of them.

  “Open that up,” a woman said from above. Liv recognized the voice as belonging to the person who’d claimed she was Kitty Wells.

  Dirt sifted into the root cellar when the doors were thrown back. Liv covered her face and eyes with her hands until it settled.

  “You can go,” the woman said to the man.

  “Are you goin’ down there?” Bull asked his mother with alarm.

  “No. I just need to have a private conversation with this young lady. Go over there and help your dad.”

  Bull slunk away.

  “I’m Brenda,” the woman said, standing over the opening with her hands on her ample hips.

  Liv brushed grit from her face and opened her eyes.

  “I heard you screamin’ down there. Luckily, nobody else did. Eldon can’t hear much these days and the game warden thought it was the compressor goin’ out.”

  Liv didn’t know what to say. She’d screamed so hard she was still wet with sweat. She’d guessed her screams were drowned out by the motor. That was the reason, she was sure, they’d fired it up in the first place.

  Brenda said, “If you ever do that again, I’ll send Eldon out here to fill up this hole.”

  By the tone of her voice, Liv had no doubt she’d do it.


  “I’m thinkin’ you might go without dinner tonight,” Brenda said.

  Liv hugged herself but didn’t respond. Brenda stood there, looking down at her.

  Finally, Liv asked, “Why are you doing this?”

  “You know, I ain’t never had a daughter.”

  “What?”

  “I always wanted a little girl,” Brenda said wistfully, more to herself than to Liv. “I wanted a little girl so I could dress her up in dresses and brush her hair and sing songs with her, you know? Instead, I got boys. All they done was run wild, punch each other, and break things. Of course, my little girl would be a little paler than you.”

  Liv stayed quiet.

  Brenda said, “But at least them boys didn’t scream. I’ve gone my whole life without a screamin’ female in it. I don’t plan to start now.”

  With that, Brenda turned and vanished from the opening. Liv heard her say, “Bull, go close that back up now.”

  —

  TWO HOURS LATER, more footfalls. Bull. Liv was wondering if the game warden had been Nate’s friend Joe Pickett, and she planned to try to get the name out of Bull. She dutifully threw off her blanket and relocated her chair to accommodate the ladder.

  When the doors were open, Bull said, “We got meat loaf and apple pie tonight.”

  “Really?” Liv asked.

  “I guess she changed her mind.”

  Bull leaned over and tied a knot in the handle of the feed bucket and lowered it down to Liv.

  “Is Joe Pickett coming back?” she asked in a conversational tone.

  “He better not,” Bull said. “If he does, I’ll put him down and let the dogs clean up the remains.”

  Liv nodded. “Aren’t you coming down?”

  “Naw,” Bull said sullenly. “I ain’t supposed to anymore. Cora Lee, she . . .” He let his point trail off. But it had been made.

  Liv reached up and grasped the bottom of the bucket with both hands. The plastic was warm to the touch.

  “Besides,” Bull said, “what do you care if I come down there or not?”

  Liv pretended she was thinking long and hard about what she was about to say. Then she said it.

  “Because it gets kind of lonely down here.”

  Bull was silent. She looked up. He seemed to be frozen there. She couldn’t see his face well because the sun was behind him, but she thought he might be blushing.

  He closed the doors, locked them, turned, and went back toward the house.

  Liv ate, but not because she was hungry. She ate because she needed fuel to survive.

  As she did, those words came back.

  I ain’t never had a daughter before. It chilled Liv to the bone.

  But the trap was set.

  16

  After his encounter with the Cates family, Joe drove on the highway toward his home. He knew Marybeth was planning a big dinner with all the items Lucy liked best—pasta, garlic bread, green salad—as a way to atone for the time she’d been in Billings and for Joe’s food, and he wanted to be home for it. As he drove, a window opened in the storm clouds and he found himself suddenly bathed in warm yellow afternoon sun. The beam was small and concentrated, and the pool of light was no bigger than a half mile in every direction. It was as though he were the subject of some kind of cosmic spotlight. It felt good—Summer was on the way—although he was disappointed no revelation came along with it. It was just sun.

  When his cell phone went off, he expected to see Marybeth’s name on the screen. That wasn’t the case.

  “Governor,” Joe said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you on a Saturday evening.”

  “Damn, I’m so jet-lagged I don’t even know what day it is,” Rulon said. Joe imagined the governor pacing back and forth in his home office as he’d seen him do—one hand holding his phone to his face and the other gesticulating and wildly punching the air as he talked.

  “I just got back from a two-week trip to Asia,” Rulon said. “I was over there selling Wyoming coal—or trying to. We produce more coal than any other state, and the feds are shutting us down so they can stop global warming. The Asians want to grow so someday they can have First World problems like us. They want our coal, and as much of it as they can get. So we’ll shut down our coal-fired utilities over here and pay higher utility bills while they build them up over there and provide power and air-conditioning to their people so they can make things and get wealthy. You know, like Americans used to do.”

  Joe smiled to himself. Rulon liked to rant. The governor said, “Somehow, we’re going to stop global warming by shutting down our clean power plants so the Chinese can burn our coal in their dirty power plants. Ah, the geniuses in Washington! They never fail to constantly lower the bar on common sense. Anyway . . .”

  “Anyway,” Joe repeated.

  “What’s this I hear that our precious sage grouse are being wiped out in your district?”

  Joe sighed. “It’s true. I found an entire lek that had been—”

  “I know all about it,” Rulon said, cutting him off. “I read the report from the Sage Grouse Task Force.”

  Joe grunted.

  “They’re required to keep me informed of their activities. And it’s attracting plenty of attention in the usual quarters, as you can imagine: ‘Wyoming Neanderthals Fail to Protect Endangered Species.’ That’s not the actual title, but it sure as hell is the tone.”

  Rulon paused, then said, “Joe, I need you to clear up this sage grouse thing. I know you can’t bring those birds back to life, but if you find out who did it and throw the book at them, it’ll show the feds we aren’t complacent. Plus, it will set an example for other yahoos who might have the same idea.”

  Before Joe could tell the governor what he’d learned, Rulon said, “The damned problem is the feds create reverse incentives and they don’t even realize they’re doing it. If you tell landowners that all their grazing land will be put off-limits for energy exploration or anything else if sage grouse are found up to two miles away, the incentive will be to get rid of the damned birds. Ranchers can’t make money ranching anymore, so they have to make deals for wind towers, or solar, or some damned thing Washington loves. So where does that leave a guy who wants to use his property?”

  “I considered that,” Joe said. “The location where the grouse were shot is on BLM land.”

  “Is it two miles away from anyone?”

  “Well,” Joe said, “there’s one family.”

  “Start with them.”

  Joe knew Rulon fancied himself an amateur detective. He said, “I did that.”

  “And?” Rulon prompted, ready to declare victory.

  “They don’t have enough land for wind towers or fracking, so I doubt they’d have any lease opportunities. That’s not to say they might not be ornery enough to do something like this, but in this case I don’t think so. But they gave me a lead I’m going to track down,” Joe said. “If it goes where I think it could, we might have a bigger mess than we’ve got right now.”

  Joe could hear Rulon take a breath, ready to continue with one of his rants. Then he paused. Joe understood why. Cell phone conversations could be monitored.

  Rulon said, “Let’s meet tomorrow in my office. My afternoon’s free and I’ll try like hell to be lucid. Maybe I’ll send somebody out to get me one of those energy drinks, I don’t know. It’ll take me a couple of days to get back on track, I’m afraid.”

  “I can drive down there tomorrow,” Joe said.

  Saddlestring to Cheyenne was four hours. Denver was two hours beyond that. He could kill two birds.

  “I’ll see you then,” Rulon said. “My antennas are up now.”

  —

  TWO MINUTES LATER, Joe’s phone lit up again. Rulon again.

  “Joe, I heard about what happened to Romanowski and to your daughter. I meant to say how
damned sorry I am, but I completely forgot when I called you the first time. Anyway: I’m damned sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said.

  “Are they connected somehow?” Rulon asked, once again playing amateur detective.

  Joe said, “No, sir. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Two things like that happening in the same week in the same place,” Rulon said. “It just seems hinky. But you’re on the ground there, and I’m not. So how is your daughter doing?”

  Joe told him.

  “But they got the guy who did it?”

  Joe hesitated before he said yes. Rulon had jarred him with his speculation.

  “And the guy killed himself in his cell?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s why I think we should issue nooses or electrical cords to every slimeball brought in on a nasty felony,” Rulon said. “Maybe with a little instruction book on how to do yourself in. It would save us a lot of money and time if we did that.”

  Joe didn’t comment.

  “What about Romanowski? I give him a conditional deal and he goes out and gets himself shot the very next day. That guy is something else.”

  “As far as I know, he’s alive,” Joe said. “But the FBI has him under wraps. I can’t get anything out of him.”

  Rulon cursed. He said, “I’ll talk to those bastards tomorrow. This is that Dudley guy, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “He’s a crap-weasel. I’ll go over his head. Maybe by the time you get here, we’ll know more.”

  “I appreciate that,” Joe said.

  “I’m fading fast,” Rulon said. “You’re a good man, Joe. Good night.”

  “Good—”

  Rulon had terminated the call before Joe said, “Bye.”

  —

  IT WAS DUSK when Joe cruised through the rows of cars in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. The lot was nearly full, which used to be unusual in March because it wasn’t yet tourist season. Things had changed, though, because the lot was filled with muddy oil service trucks on their way to—or from—the oil boom in North Dakota. Saddlestring was a logical halfway point between Denver and the Bakken formation, where the oil had been discovered.