Endangered

by C. J. Box

  To Joe’s left, through thick steel panels, the bulls were herded down a runway and into individual chutes. Some of the bulls were so stout, the arena attendants had trouble closing the gates to pen them in.

  Joe approached a saddle bronc rider who looked affable and relaxed. The cowboy was stuffing tape and water bottles into a rodeo gear bag he’d sling over his back and take to the airport.

  “How’d you do?” Joe asked.

  “I got an 88,” the cowboy said with a smile. He was missing a front tooth and he had a high, southern accent.

  Joe knew the score was derived by judges in the arena who awarded up to fifty points on the animal and fifty points on the cowboy. The bull or bronco the cowboys rode was drawn at random. Eighty-eight was a good score.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  “I had a good draw,” the cowboy said, meaning he’d drawn a good bronc. “I think that score’ll hold up, so I’m in the money.”

  The cowboy introduced himself as Evan Lucey and said he was from Oklahoma City. He wore a necklace with a cross on it.

  Joe gestured to the other cowboys in the ready area and said, “I suppose you guys all know each other pretty well.”

  “Yeah, I’d say we do,” Lucey said. “I sat with most of ’em in Cowboy Church this mornin’.”

  “I’m trying to find a couple of cowboys who might know a guy I know.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Dallas Cates.”

  At the mention of the name, Lucey physically recoiled. His affability vanished.

  He looked down at his boots and said, “Yeah, everybody knows Dallas.”

  “Are you a friend of his?” Joe asked.

  “Can’t say I am.”

  He said it in a way that suggested the conversation was over as far as he was concerned.

  “Can you point me to someone who is friends with him?”

  “Friends? You got me there.”

  “Well, in that case, someone who knows him pretty well? I’m trying to get some information about him before he got injured.”

  Evan Lucey hoisted up his gear bag and threw it onto his back. He said, “Mister, you seem like a nice guy and I wish I could help you out. But I spent all my time stayin’ away from Dallas Cates, and I’m not the only one.”

  Joe frowned. He said, “Is there anybody you can suggest?”

  Lucey shrugged and said, “Maybe Little Robbie. He lives in Stephenville, and I think he and Dallas might have traveled together at some point.”

  “Little Robbie?”

  “Rob Tassel. We call him Little Robbie. He’s up right now,” Lucey said, nodding the brim of his hat to the bull riders on deck.

  “Thank you,” Joe said. “And good luck in the standings.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lucey said, tipping his hat. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

  Before Lucey left, Joe said, “What is it about Dallas Cates? Why did you avoid him?”

  Lucey hesitated, then looked straight into Joe’s eyes and said, “Like I told you, these boys are good people. Just hard-workin’ ranch kids tryin’ to make a name for themselves and not step on each other doin’ it. Dallas wasn’t like that.”

  “How so?” Joe asked.

  “I already said too much, sir. The Lord frowns on gossips.”

  And with that, Evan Lucey turned and went out through the gate.

  —

  CODY MCCOY SCORED a 92 and won the bull-riding competition. Governor Rulon, Joe guessed, would be beside himself. Rob Tassel got bucked off in two seconds. Joe wasn’t sure he’d be in the mood to talk about Dallas Cates.

  He noticed as the bull riders filed into the ready area that what Lucey had told him seemed accurate. It was almost impossible to discern who had won and who had lost by the way the riders chided each other and encouraged each other at the same time. Only when a couple of them clapped a cowboy on the back and said, “Good ride,” did he know which one was Cody McCoy.

  Joe gave them a few minutes to unwrap tape, change clothes, and pack up before he said, “Which one of you is Rob Tassel?”

  A cowboy looked up from where he sat near his gear bag in the corner. He was dark, short, and compact. He had a scar on his cheek and warm brown eyes.

  “That’d be me,” Tassel said.

  Joe squatted down next to Tassel. “Tough go out there.”

  Tassel shrugged. He said, “I rode that bull at Mesquite and got an eighty-nine. I thought I knowed him, but this time he zigged when he should have zagged.”

  “Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

  “No, sir,” Tassel said.

  Joe wasn’t used to being called “sir” twice in ten minutes. He introduced himself and dug out a business card.

  Tassel read it. “Wyoming game warden? I don’t know why you want to talk to me. I ain’t never hunted there, and the one time I fished some beaver ponds outside Cheyenne, all I caught was a sucker.”

  “I’m doing some follow-up on a guy I’ve been told you know. Dallas Cates.”

  Tassel had the same reaction as Lucey, except more pronounced.

  “I got nothin’ to say about that guy.”

  “What is it about him?” Joe asked. “When I mention his name, people clam up.”

  “Is he a friend of yours or something?” Tassel asked.

  “Nope. He went out with my daughter and I never liked it one bit.”

  “April Pickett?” Tassel asked, reading Joe’s name badge again and finally putting two and two together. “April is your daughter?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, man,” Tassel said, looking around as if he were hoping someone would throw him a lifeline. “Oh, man.”

  “What?” Joe asked.

  Tassel leaned closer to Joe. He said, “April’s a sweetheart. I couldn’t figure out why she hung around that guy.”

  Joe waited for more.

  Tassel said, “I used to travel with him. We roomed together for a while on the road.”

  He paused and said, “He ain’t like all these other guys.”

  “In what way?”

  “Dallas,” Tassel said, “he’s just different. I ain’t sayin’ he’s the devil, and he’s a hell of a bull rider, but he ain’t one of the guys, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t,” Joe said.

  Tassel nodded his hat brim at the other cowboys in the ready area. He kept his voice down.

  “All these guys you see around here will lend each other a hand. They’ll see your draw and say, ‘That bull spins left and crow-hops right out of the chute.’ Dallas never done that. He couldn’t care less. If he’d rode a particular bull before, he’d tell a cowboy who drew him lies about what that bull would do. That’s so Dallas would keep the high score. We all learned we can’t trust him. He’s in this game just for himself. He’s one selfish dude. Maybe that’s how he stays focused and wins all the time, I don’t know. I just know nobody else acts like that. We all try to get along, you know?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Dallas earned more money than any of us,” Tassel said. “But he’d always be the first guy to leave the table at a restaurant and stick everyone else with the check. Or he’d say he’d split a hotel room with you and never pay it back.

  “We’re all like a football team, you know? Lots of camaraderie, if that’s the right word. We watch out for one another and step in if a guy’s going to get himself in trouble. It’s easy on the road to take the wrong path. But Dallas, he’s like the crazy egotistical wide receiver who’s only in it for himself, you know? He’s always bein’ the big shot. Like he is better than anyone else and he makes sure you know it. And he is better. He’s an incredible athlete. But he don’t need to rub our noses in it, you know?

  “That poor April,” Tassel continued. “She didn’t know Dallas ha
d a girl or two in every town. He’d ask me to keep her busy so he could sneak off with every buckle bunny he could find. She is a nice girl, you know? You raised her right. I tried to tell her once what Dallas was like, but she didn’t want to hear it. He had her buffaloed, you know?”

  Joe felt the anger rising in his chest.

  He said, “Do you know if they broke up before Dallas got injured?”

  Tassel looked surprised. He said, “Not that I know of.” Then: “Hell, if that had happened, I would have gone after April in a heartbeat . . .”

  He caught himself and flushed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t say that to her dad.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Joe said, “but I’d be a lot more comfortable with you around than I ever was with Dallas.”

  “Still, sorry.”

  “One more thing,” Joe said. “Do you know if they left Houston together after Dallas got injured?”

  Tassel thought about it. He said, “I guess I don’t know for sure. I sort of assumed they did, since all of a sudden they were both gone, but I didn’t see them leave together or nothin’.”

  “Would anyone know for sure?” Joe asked.

  Tassel shook his head. “I doubt it. Dallas did his own thing, like I said. I was his only friend, and that’s just because I’m stupid. He’s the kind of guy who would just leave without sayin’ nothin’ to anyone.”

  Joe said, “Dallas told me that April broke up with him and played the field, trying to make him jealous.”

  “That no-good son of a bitch,” Tassel said. He looked up at Joe with fire in his eyes. “Believe me, Mr. Pickett, that never happened.”

  “I believe you,” Joe said, trying to keep his anger off his face. “Did he ever put his hands on her?”

  “I never seen it,” Tassel said. “But I wouldn’t put it past him. I do remember she was wearing big old sunglasses for a week or so up at Calgary. She wouldn’t take ’em off, even indoors. But I never seen him hit her.”

  “But you wouldn’t put it past him?” Joe said.

  “I wouldn’t put nothin’ past Dallas Cates.”

  Joe thanked Tassel and wished him the best of luck at the next rodeo.

  As he turned to leave, Tassel said, “Mr. Pickett?”

  Joe turned.

  “You ain’t gonna tell Dallas we talked, are you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to be on the wrong side of that guy. Or his family.”

  Joe paused. “What about his family?”

  “I met ’em a couple of times when they came to see Dallas ride. They ain’t exactly a fun bunch, and that mom of his . . .”

  “What?”

  Tassel shook his head. “She’s just scary, man. She don’t want anybody to beat Dallas in nothin’. She’d say things to other bull riders like ‘You better let Dallas win or I’ll send my boys after you.’ Things like that.”

  “Did you ever hear her say that?” Joe asked.

  “Hell, she said it to me in Cheyenne,” Tassel said, shaking his head. “She’s got a thing about Dallas that ain’t healthy.”

  That night, in his hotel room in downtown Denver, a few blocks from the federal forensics lab, after sending Governor Rulon his condolences regarding Cody McCoy’s ninety-two-point ride, he called Marybeth and told her what he’d learned about Brenda and Dallas Cates at the rodeo.

  “It sounds like he was talking about Ma Barker,” she said.

  “She scares men who ride sixteen-hundred-pound bulls,” Joe said. “That’s not nothing.”

  21

  At the same time, four hundred miles to the north of Denver, Liv Brannan heard the screen door slam at the main house and she stepped away from the rock she’d been working on in the wall of the root cellar.

  She’d been at it all day. The tips of her fingers on both hands were raw and bleeding from digging around the rock, and she’d resorted to working by covering her hands with her shirt and wearing only her bra. She’d tried to pry one of the rusty shelf braces out of the wall, but didn’t have the leverage or the strength to get any out. She was finally able to bend and break a cross brace away from the angle iron early in the afternoon. When it finally came free, it was such an emotional victory that she stood and looked at the tongue depressor–sized piece of metal in her hand and cried.

  Digging with the cross brace had doubled her progress around the rock. It was still stuck fast, but she guessed she was halfway there. The rock was oval and large, approximately the size of a football. If the hidden end was as round and even as the exposed side, she thought, she’d be able to lift it and it would cause serious damage. If she could ever get it out. And if she wasn’t caught in the act of trying to remove it.

  There had been no food deliveries during the day and they hadn’t removed the waste bucket. The stench of urine hung in the dead space. The Cateses had either forgotten about her or were punishing her for what had happened with Bull the night before. Or they were simply gone. She’d guessed the latter.

  Finally, midday, she had heard the sound of the Suburban entering the compound and the voices of Eldon and Brenda. They didn’t look in on her.

  An hour later, Liv had heard the main house screen door open and slam shut so hard it sounded like a gunshot.

  Bull said, “Where in the hell are you going, Cora Lee?”

  “Way the hell away from you!”

  “You ain’t takin’ the truck.”

  “Fine, you son of a bitch—I’ll walk.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m walkin’. See me walkin’ away?”

  There was a pause.

  Then, in the distance, Cora Lee shouted: “I’m still walkin’!”

  The door slammed shut again. Then a third time. A moment later, Brenda said, “Bull, go get her and bring her back.”

  Bull said, “Maybe I ought to let her go. It serves her right to have to walk twelve miles to town. Maybe she’ll lose some weight.”

  Someone laughed. It was a new voice Liv hadn’t heard before. A younger male.

  “Hell, I ain’t gonna go get her. I just got new shocks on my truck and I don’t want the suspension screwed up. Maybe you could take the front-end loader and bring her back in the bucket.”

  “Dallas, you’re no help,” Brenda responded. She sounded annoyed but patient. Then: “Bull, go get her and bring her back. We can’t have her tellin’ her story all over town. If it gets out why she’s mad, we’ve got big trouble.”

  Liv thought, Dallas. The special son.

  Dallas said, “Maybe you should just run her over and be done with it.”

  “Dallas, please,” Brenda said.

  “Shit, I’ll go get her,” Bull whined.

  His truck fired up a few minutes later, and Liv could hear the gravel popping under the tires as he left the compound.

  He returned a half hour later, presumably with Cora Lee in the passenger seat.

  —

  NOW, THOUGH, Liv heard two sets of footfalls.

  She slid the thin cross brace into her jeans and pulled her shirt over her head and put it on. She hid her battered hands behind her back, out of sight, and looked up as the cellar doors opened.

  It was night. The beam of a flashlight hit her in the face and temporarily blinded her.

  “There she is,” Brenda said to someone next to her.

  Liv couldn’t see who it was, just a form that blocked out the stars. He was wearing a cowboy hat.

  Dallas said, “Not my type.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Brenda said.

  “Maybe if you cleaned her up,” he said, as if talking himself out of his first impression.

  “Hey, how you doin’ down there?” Dallas asked Liv.

  “How do you think?” Liv said back.

  “Better than me,” Dallas said. “I got busted
ribs and a dislocated shoulder. That ain’t no fun, either.”

  Liv didn’t reply.

  “Luckily, I’m gettin’ better by the hour,” Dallas said. “By the end of the week, I’ll be wrestling grizzly bears again. By the way, do you know who I am?”

  “You’re a rodeo star,” Liv said.

  “Damn, she knows,” Dallas said, sounding impressed.

  “She heard it from me,” Brenda said. “She’s from down south somewhere. She doesn’t know rodeo.”

  “We got cowboys from down there,” Dallas said. “I bet she knows some of ’em. Honey, do you know Piney Porter? Or Benny LeBeau? I’ve rodeoed with both of them.”

  “I don’t know them,” Liv confessed. Then, for some reason, she started to cry. She didn’t know why.

  “Are you hungry?” Brenda asked.

  “Yes,” she sniffed.

  “Then I guess I better feed you. Sorry about breakfast and lunch. We had to go visit our oldest son down in Rawlins. I told Cora Lee to make you something, but I guess she forgot. Once she gets a mad on, it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I think the next time she decides she’s gonna walk away, I’ll let her.”

  Liv welcomed the bucket as it lowered. She snatched it down quickly so Brenda wouldn’t see her damaged hands.

  “We got chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans. Sorry there isn’t that much gravy. Dallas ate like a horse, on account he’s feeling better.”

  “Thank you,” Liv said. She was starving, and she sat down on her mattress and removed the Tupperware containers one by one. Liv dug into the chicken-fried steak and spooned out the mashed potatoes and gravy. Her eyes closed as she ate, and she moaned. The food was delicious.

  As she spooned gravy over the rest of the steak and potatoes, dirt sifted down from the opening and sprinkled her dinner.