Breaking Point jp-13

by C. J. Box

  “It’s not such a sweet deal on the state level,” Joe said.

  “And it shouldn’t be,” Underwood said. “You people are jokes to most of us, out here getting your hands dirty for next to nothing. No offense.”

  “Of course not,” Joe said, gritting his teeth. “So what you’re doing here-shoving aside the local sheriff and doing this paramilitary operation-that doesn’t bother you?”

  Underwood said, “No, why should it? I’m doing my job. If I wasn’t here, somebody else would be. I’ve got nothing personal against the sheriff or that Roberson schmuck. He’s a killer, after all. I’ll get bonus pay for this since we’re way over forty hours this week, and if I’m lucky I’ll get ever so slightly injured so I can take some time off and get disability. I just don’t want to get killed, because I’ve got a vacation planned to Hawaii with the babe from Evergreen in November. Getting killed would really ruin my plans, so I’ll make sure I come out of this okay.”

  Joe quickly changed tacks so he wouldn’t feel compelled to knock Underwood off his horse. He almost smiled when he thought how Nate Romanowski would have likely reacted to Underwood’s little speech. If Nate heard it, Joe thought, Underwood would be without an ear or even his head.

  Joe said, “If they’re not sending a helicopter, what are they doing to find Butch Roberson? Another drone?”

  “My lips are sealed,” Underwood said, but smirked to confirm Joe’s speculation.

  “Why so heavy-handed?” Joe asked.

  “I’m not the boss.”

  Joe felt his neck get hot. Underwood was playing with him.

  “So if it’s not you, and it’s obviously not,” Joe said, “who is driving this operation in such a frantic way?”

  “Guess.”

  “Julio Batista,” Joe said. “But why?”

  Underwood scanned the trees on each side and the horizon in front of them, as if to see if there were agency spies lurking who might overhear him. Joe expected another nonanswer answer, but Underwood said, “The man has a bug up his ass. Actually, quite a few bugs. He’s vindictive as hell, and he really loves his power. Before him, I was used to military guys. They can be assholes, too, but there’s usually a sense of duty and tradition that keeps the really petty stuff out. This guy is different. It’s like he’s lived his entire life keeping a list of anyone who dissed him or disrespected him. He uses his position to get even. I’ve helped him do that, which is why I am where I am today.”

  “What do you mean?” Joe asked.

  “I’ll give you one example of many,” Underwood said, keeping his voice low so his agents couldn’t overhear. “When Batista got named director of Region Eight, his salary went up into the mid-six figures, so he wanted a new house in a ritzy neighborhood because he figured he deserved it. So he bought a McMansion in a gated horsey development named Summit Highlands out of Denver. Two-million-dollar home with five acres, or something like that. After he moved in, he hired a contractor to outfit the roof with solar panels. You know, to set an example of how people should exist. He’s big into that stuff-a true believer. Plus, he knows how to get tax credits and rebates for solar. That’s what the agency does, after all.”

  Underwood grinned bitterly. “But Summit Highlands has a homeowners’ association and the bylaws say a house can’t be modified externally unless a majority of the owners agree. Apparently, those folks thought the solar panels were an eyesore. Batista fought them but couldn’t get the votes. He became obsessed with beating them.

  “He called me into his office one day and asked about my background and wondered if I’d be interested in helping him out. He thought I looked intimidating, I guess.”

  “Imagine that,” Joe said, deadpan. “Go on.”

  “I got the message,” Underwood said. “So over the next several weeks I visited every one of the board members of the homeowners’ association. I asked them about the fertilizer they used on their lawns and on the golf course, and where the runoff flowed. I asked them how many lawn mowers and leaf blowers were being used and what the decibel level was. I mentioned possible violations of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, all innocent-like, and I took a lot of notes. See, the dirty little secret is, our agency oversees three things: air, water, and the earth itself. Think about it. That’s a pretty damned big area to cover, and it gives us a lot of options. I never threatened anyone or initiated any action, but they were smart folks and connected A to B.

  “Next homeowners’ association meeting, the solar panels for Juan Julio Batista got approved by two votes. After that, I got bumped up to chief of the special agents.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” Joe asked.

  “Because the son of a bitch has gone too far this time. He told me a few minutes ago he used my name with some defense guys I used to work with to get something in motion.”

  “What’s he done?” Joe asked, feeling a shiver roll down his back.

  “You’ll see,” Underwood said. Joe noticed a vein in Underwood’s temple throbbing as he spoke. He was angry.

  “Here’s another little tidbit,” Underwood said, leaning toward Joe and lowering his voice, “and if you ever repeat it to anybody I’ll figure out a way to make your life as crappy as we did that Roberson guy’s. Do you want to know my boss’s name before he changed it?”

  “He changed it?”

  “John Pate,” Underwood said, and laughed. “He grew up as a boring little white dude from Illinois named John Owen Pate. But after he left college, he changed it. His parents were whiter than white, but when they divorced, when he was in college, his mother married a dude named Batista. John Pate became Juan Julio Batista because he wanted to be more exotic, you know? He wanted a name that would stand out and get him noticed in the system those years. He’s naturally dark-haired and dark-eyed, so it worked out for him. And he took advantage of policies to promote people of color.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Underwood chuckled. “I’m an investigator, Game Warden. I investigated. I’ve got photocopies of his high school yearbook when he was John Pate, and I found his parents’ divorce record and his mother’s marriage announcement to Sergio Batista when John was twenty-one. He changed his name the year he left college. Isn’t that a kick in the pants?”

  “So he lied to get the job,” Joe said.

  “Nobody checks those things,” Underwood said. “You tick a box on your employment application and you get moved to a special pile. And even if it was exposed, I doubt he’d be thrown out.”

  “Because he’s good at his job,” Joe said.

  “That’s right. As we like to say in the agency, personnel is policy. Batista can get things done.”

  “But not immediately,” Joe countered. “Not unless someone with real political juice knew how to turn that aircraft carrier around.”

  “So we’re back to that, huh?” Underwood said, his face darkening. “Didn’t you hear me when I said I didn’t give a shit?”

  “But I do,” Joe said.

  Underwood sighed and said, “I don’t know who put him up to it. He didn’t involve me in this one.”

  “Interesting. Is it possible he initiated the action himself?”

  “Don’t know and don’t care,” Underwood said. “I doubt it, though. Batista is a political animal. He’s after big fish and headlines. Why would he waste his time on a couple of small-town losers?”

  “That’s what I want to figure out,” Joe said.

  Joe held his tongue and his outrage in check while they surveyed the treeless and tumbled scree that led to the summit ahead of them. Despite the season, there were still dirty strips of snow packed into broken shale where the sun couldn’t melt them. It was nearly full dark, and the glow from the last of the sun over the top of the mountain made their side dark, confusing, and unfocused. The stars hadn’t yet taken over the night sky enough to light up the slope.

  Joe proposed a switchback route that zigged right, then left around a sharp outcropping, th
en right again across a flat snowfield.

  “We can’t just go straight up and over?” Underwood asked.

  “Not unless you want to cut up your horses’ legs,” Joe said. “Plus, your guys aren’t real riders. It’s always best to take the easiest route and let the horse pick his way.”

  “So be it,” Underwood declared, and turned his horse to gather his team.

  Joe stayed. He turned up the collar of his Filson vest against a slight icy breeze. When Underwood’s back had faded out of sight into the gloom below, Joe reached up and unzipped the vest and reached into the breast pocket of his uniform shirt.

  And clicked off the digital micro-recorder he’d left in his pocket from that morning when he encountered Bryce Pendergast.

  23

  The log lean-to was so old and well hidden it would have been hard to see if Butch Roberson hadn’t known exactly where it was. The lean-to’s roof was furry with lichen and moss that blended in perfectly in the forest, and it was set in a huge stand of thick trees that was cool and dark.

  Farkus shuffled forward and was surprised there was an orange plastic cooler with a white lid set inside. After seeing nothing most of the day that wasn’t rock, trees, or brush, the modernity of the cooler was like finding a highway cone in the middle of the desert. Next to the cooler was a bulging burlap sack that had been tied off with a leather string.

  He stopped and shook his head. Who put it there, and how did Butch know it would be waiting?

  Behind him, Butch said, “I trust you gentlemen will help me with dinner, because we’re just about to lose our light. Farkus, you gather some wood and kindling. Sheriff, you dig a nice fire pit inside that lean-to and get the fire going.”

  Then, with obvious anticipation, Butch said, “I’ll cook our dinner.”

  He stepped through them and threw off the lid. Farkus was stunned to see what was inside the cooler. Huge, thick triangles of white butcher paper, potatoes, onions, Gatorade, and the unmistakable grinning tops of a six-pack of Coors beer. All of it nestled in ice.

  “We’ve died and gone to heaven,” Farkus said.

  “It helps to have friends.” Butch grinned, propping his rifle inside the corner of the lean-to.

  The small fire licked their faces with orange light. Farkus moaned and sat back, his belly so full it was hard to the touch. Like Butch and McLanahan, he’d eaten his entire sixteen-ounce T-bone steak, a scoop of fried potatoes and onions, and washed it down with two cans of beer. Butch had doled out the food in shared portions, even though he’d been out in the wilderness longer and was probably starved, Farkus thought.

  While Butch was preparing the meal, he’d balled up the wrapping paper from the steaks and tossed it toward the fire. One of the balls missed and rolled toward Farkus’s foot, and he surreptitiously scooped it up and jammed it in his front jeans pocket, where it was now. He thought at the time that maybe he could write something on it and leave it for the Feds to find. But after he hid it away in his pocket, he realized he didn’t have a pen or pencil with him.

  The sky was full dark but creamy with stars. The temperature had dropped to the mid-fifties, Farkus guessed, cold enough to make it feel uncomfortable away from the small fire inside the lean-to. Although two beers for Farkus was usually not anything more than a nice start, he felt a pleasant buzz because he was both bone-tired and dehydrated.

  After they ate, he watched as Butch strapped a headlamp on from his pack and rooted through the burlap bag. He produced blankets, freeze-dried food packets, a small aluminum coffee pot and a plastic bag of coffee, binoculars, several boxes of.223 cartridges, an old Colt.45 revolver and ammunition, fleece vests, duct tape, wire and rope, and a water filter purification pump. And a fifth of Evan Williams.

  “All good stuff,” Butch seemed to say to himself. “All practical stuff we can use.”

  He jammed the pistol into the back of his pants and retied the bag closed. As he did, he glanced at Farkus as if to say, You’ll be carrying this.

  Farkus moaned, and Butch grinned in response.

  “We could lighten that load if you opened the bourbon,” Farkus suggested.

  “Nice try,” Butch said.

  “So,” McLanahan asked, “who is the coconspirator?”

  Butch ignored him.

  “Aren’t you going to get those blankets out?” McLanahan asked Butch a few minutes later, after Butch had rejoined them around the fire.

  “No.”

  “We’re gonna freeze.”

  “You’ll be fine, it’s August,” Butch said, not looking over at the ex-sheriff. He seemed mesmerized by the fire, Farkus thought, or thinking deep thoughts. Licks of flame reflected from his eyes.

  “We’re not stopping here,” Butch said, staring into the fire. “We need to keep moving. We’re still too close to where that drone went down and I made the call.”

  Farkus groaned again. He hoped Butch would reconsider and let them sleep for a while. And he wished there was more beer in the cooler.

  Instead Butch said, “We’ll stay here a few more minutes and let that big dinner settle. Then we’re getting up and moving south again.”

  When he’d been with Roberson hunting, Farkus remembered something Butch had said about the mountains to the south. That they could only go so far before they’d get cut off by a wicked canyon Farkus had heard about but never seen. The Middle Fork of the Twelve Sleep River had created a geological wonder with knife-sharp walls, a terrifying distance from the rim to the narrow canyon floor, and virtually no breaks or cracks through the rocks for a crossing. The canyon was so steep and narrow that sunlight rarely shone on the stream in the bottom.

  “If I remember right,” McLanahan said, “that’s where Savage Run is.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t get it,” McLanahan said, shaking his head. “Why would we cut off our escape route?”

  “A band of Cheyenne Indians crossed it once with women and children because the Pawnee had them trapped,” Butch said. “So did Joe Pickett. He told me about it once, and I think I know where he crossed. I figure we can do the same.”

  Farkus and McLanahan exchanged tortured looks.

  After a few minutes where the only sounds were a light breeze in the treetops and the muffled popping of the fire, Butch suddenly looked up and glared at McLanahan. The ferocity in his face jolted Farkus out of his own trance. Farkus was terrified of the prospect of trying to cross Savage Run Canyon.

  Butch said to McLanahan, “You know what they did, but you still came after me. What an asshole you are.”

  McLanahan looked away and spoke toward the fire instead of to Butch. “It isn’t about you, Butch. It never was.”

  “Bullshit. And you brought along some great long-distance shooter so you wouldn’t even have to look me in the eye before you blew my guts all over the mountain.”

  McLanahan started to speak, but for once thought better of it.

  “You know what they did,” Butch said again. “They came up here and tried to destroy me and my family. I’d like to think that the ex-sheriff might be sympathetic. I’d like to think the whole damned town would gather around one of their own. But instead, you got your guns and recruited two rubes and came after me like I was some kind of outlaw.”

  Farkus didn’t mind being called a rube, because even he thought of himself as one.

  “Butch,” McLanahan said, almost pleading, “you are an outlaw.”

  Butch said, “You never gave a crap about what happened to me or my family.”

  “I don’t know all the details,” McLanahan said. “All I know is you’re wanted for a double homicide.”

  “You didn’t bother to find out the details,” Butch said. “You did it for the money and the glory.”

  “The world’s a cruel place, especially these days.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Butch Roberson said. Then softly, “It doesn’t have to be.”

  As they painfully gathered up, Butch ordered Farkus to mak
e sure the fire was doused. He could use the ice water that remained in the cooler, Butch said.

  Farkus carried the cooler over and the water sloshed inside. He sat it at his feet and withdrew the useless ball of butcher paper from his pocket. With his back to Butch and McLanahan, he unwrapped it and looked at the markings from the light of the flames.

  T-BONE STEAKS

  NOT FOR SALE

  BIG STREAM RANCH AND CATTLE CO.

  He put the paper into the fire, where it was quickly engulfed.

  The fire hissed and steamed a pungent cloud when Farkus dumped the cooler on it. As he stirred the dying embers into black viscous soup with a stick, he knew who Butch Roberson’s friend was.

  24

  Marybeth Pickett lay fully clothed on her bed with the lights off and her door shut in their bedroom. The sheer curtains undulated slowly on both sides of the open window with a breeze that had changed from warm to cool in the last hour. Coyotes were yipping in the distance, piercing the silence. Their sound was forlorn and high-pitched, and it reminded her of babies shrieking. She stared at the light fixture straight overhead, vowing to take it down soon and clean the dead miller moths out of it. She felt extremely vulnerable and alone.

  She’d done all right through dinner, she thought, maintaining a cheerful veneer. She never mentioned the Saddlestring Hotel debacle to the girls and wasn’t sure they’d really understood the details of it anyway-how much it had meant to her.

  As she always did, she did a quick mental survey of where each member of her family was at that moment. It was something she did several times a day, and didn’t know if she’d ever be able to break the habit. Lucy and Hannah Roberson were downstairs, watching television. Hannah had asked, once again, if she could stay over. Sheridan was still out with her friends but would be due home soon. April was in her room, sulking, no doubt texting all her new cowboy friends since she’d become so popular with them. And Joe was out there somewhere in the mountains, helping to lead a manhunt for a family friend.