by C. J. Box
“No,” Joe said. “I was hoping I could be there to intervene. That’s the only reason I stayed with the EPA agent team. I wanted to be there when they found you so I could arrest you and keep you alive. Batista wanted blood.”
Butch glanced over sharply, as if he hadn’t considered that.
“The guy really wants to kill me, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does.”
“Do you know why?”
“Not yet. But you’ll be the first to know when I find out. And I will find out.”
A half-hour later, Butch nodded in the general direction of Saddlestring. “Are the people down there with me or against me?”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all happened so fast and the facts aren’t out yet. You haven’t had the opportunity to tell your side. But when you do, you’ll have some support, I think. Not when it comes to killing those agents, though. But no one in their right mind will think what Batista did to you is the right thing.”
Butch nodded to himself and didn’t turn his head to look at Joe. He seemed to be in turmoil, Joe thought.
Joe said, “Like I said, let’s handle this locally. Turn yourself in to Sheriff Reed and Dulcie Schalk. You won’t walk, but they’ll be fair.”
“And you’ll make sure of that?” Butch asked with skepticism.
“I’ll do my best,” Joe said, and bit his tongue. He didn’t want to say more.
“Okay, then,” Butch said. “Let’s do this right.”
“Thank you, Butch.”
Butch snorted, as if he really didn’t have a choice. Although he did.
Joe came right out with it: “Butch, did you kill those two EPA agents?”
Butch feigned shock at the question, then said, “Of course I did.”
“Were you alone at the time it happened?”
“Damn right.”
“They just showed up and got out of their car and you happened to have your.223 and you just blew them away?”
“That’s right.”
“Did either one of them threaten you, or draw a gun?”
Butch paused, as if recalling the moment. He said, “The first one, the younger one, never should have pulled his gun. He didn’t have a chance. I shot him first and he went down. The older one went for his weapon, and I got him before he could clear it. Hell, until that second, I didn’t know those bastards were armed.”
Joe felt his stomach clench. He wasn’t sure if it was the aftereffect of the morning, the lack of food, or what Butch had just confessed. Or all three.
Joe said, “So you’re saying you killed them without even knowing who they were?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Joe.”
“How do you feel about that?”
Butch hesitated, then said, “Just fine.”
“You know one of them had a family, like you and me?”
“How would I know that?”
“You wouldn’t, I guess,” Joe said. “But you should care.”
The bend of the river leading into the campground was in sight. For the first time that morning, he could hear the sounds of other people: motors racing, gravel crunching under tires, snatches of voices.
He didn’t have much time left.
Joe said, “So after it was done, after those two agents were down, then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you do next?”
“I fired up my tractor and buried them.”
Joe nodded. “Why right there on your lot? I mean, it seems so obvious.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Butch said. “It isn’t every day I kill two guys. I just wanted them out of my sight, you know? I couldn’t just leave them on the ground with holes in them.”
“Right. So then what? You took their car?”
“Yeah,” Butch said. “They left the keys in it when they got out. I drove it up Hazelton Road to a place where I knew I could dump it. I aimed it at the edge of the road and jumped out of the car and watched it go over. I was hacked off it didn’t go all the way down the canyon to the bottom, but it got hung up in some trees instead.”
“So that was you?”
“Of course,” Butch said.
Joe trudged along, his legs on fire from cuts and bruises, his burned hand, his head wounds from the fight with Pendergast, and his muscles aching.
“So clear this up for me,” Joe said. “You drove the EPA car off the road, but how did you get back to your lot?”
Butch started to answer, then set his mouth.
“I can’t figure that one out,” Joe said.
Butch shrugged but wouldn’t meet Joe’s eyes.
“And when you came out here, to Big Stream Ranch,” Joe said, “you had to have had a ride or I would have seen your truck on the side of the road. How else would you get here?”
Butch shrugged.
Joe pressed, “When we first saw each other a couple of days ago, you know what we talked about.”
“Yes.”
“So I’m starting to get it, I think,” Joe said. “You could have just shot me at that point and no one would know. I didn’t know what had happened, or that anyone was looking for you. But you let me ride away.”
Butch looked over and squinted as if he couldn’t believe Joe even contemplated the fact that he could have hurt him.
Joe said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about it, the things you said and what we talked about. So I want to run something by you. This isn’t an official interrogation, Butch. This is just you and me. But I need to know.”
Butch took a deep breath and trudged ahead. Joe looked hard at the man, and saw himself.
And that’s what it was.
Simple as that.
He almost didn’t need to float his darkest theory out loud. But he did, anyway.
“You know,” Butch said softly after confirming it, “when you think about all of this, it’s hard not to want to just throw up your hands and give up.”
Joe looked over, still partially stunned by what they’d discussed.
“These guys,” Butch said, “the EPA. They’re supposed to protect the environment, right? That’s why they exist.”
Joe didn’t respond.
Butch said, “They burned down the whole fucking mountain.”
Joe said gently, “I know.”
Butch barked a bitter laugh.
Joe said, “We’re close to the campground, Butch.”
They trudged around the bend of the river in the shallows and Joe noted the current had picked up slightly. The log bumped up against the back of his legs, as if it were a Labrador wanting to run again.
“We can float right through them,” Joe offered. “They may not even know we’re there. But that isn’t our deal.”
“A deal is a deal,” Butch said.
Since he’d confirmed Joe’s theory, Butch Roberson seemed to have deflated in height, power, and confidence. He seemed to Joe like a shell of his former self.
“I wasn’t kidding,” Joe said. “This was just between us.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to stick with your story?”
“Absolutely. And I trust you to keep it between us.”
Joe nodded.
“You’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you, Joe?” Butch asked.
Joe hesitated before saying, “Don’t ask me that.”
“You would. You’re a good man.”
Joe changed the subject.
“So do you want to float right through or pull over and give yourself up?”
Butch seemed overwhelmed that Joe had suddenly given him a choice. He said, “The second.”
Then, with resignation: “I can’t outrun them. There are too many of those guys.”
Joe hesitated a moment and said, “You might find allies who will help keep you out of their hands. I have a friend who has operated off the grid for years. I’m sure he’d give you some help.”
Butch nodded. “Yeah, I know there are people out there who
could help me, like Frank Zeller. But why get other folks in trouble? This is my problem, not theirs.”
“They may not think of it like that,” Joe said.
“My mind is made up. Don’t give me any more chances to change it.”
“Okay, then,” Joe said. “You’ll need to give me that pistol. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
Butch reached back and handed it over. Joe tossed it toward the bank.
The campground was bustling, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. Joe recognized vehicles, tents, communications vans, and personnel from the forward operating base on the Big Stream Ranch. They were establishing a new FOB, he reasoned, since the old one was being consumed by the fire. He assumed Batista had ordered the campground evacuated, and was establishing a new beachhead. Joe was impressed they’d been able to assemble and move so quickly. But he dreaded the fact that he was delivering Butch Roberson into the Lion’s Den.
As they nosed the front of the log into the muddy bank of the campground, the cacophony of voices and activity went silent. Dozens of federal men and women turned their faces toward Joe and Butch, and there were gasps and open mouths.
Someone said, “Jesus, there he is.”
Joe searched the crowd for Governor Rulon, but didn’t see him. His new director, Lisa Greene-Dempsey, was there, however. She looked shocked to see him, and her eyes blinked quickly behind her designer glasses. Joe thought he must look like quite a sight: wet and torn clothing, disheveled appearance, streams of blood pouring down his legs into his boots.
Heinz Underwood shouldered through the crowd. To Joe, he grinned and said, “You made it, you crazy bastard.” He pointed at Butch and said, “Arrest that man.”
Several agents Joe didn’t recognize started to advance. Beside him, Joe could feel Butch stiffen.
“No,” Joe said, stepping in front of Butch and placing his right hand on the grip of his Glock.
The agents halted and looked back at Underwood for further instructions.
“Where’s Batista?” Joe asked.
“He said he was called back to HQ,” Underwood said, with a twinkle in his eye. “He’s been gone an hour. He left in a hurry.”
Joe acknowledged the news with a curt nod. It fit.
Lisa Greene-Dempsey said, “Warden Pickett, you need to stand aside. You need to cooperate.”
“I’m through cooperating,” Joe said, his tone flat.
To Greene-Dempsey, Joe said, “Call Sheriff Reed and get him down here now. This man will surrender to him and him only. He’ll be in county lockup if you need to see him.”
Underwood said to Greene-Dempsey, “This is a federal matter. You’ll have to order your employee to turn over that man.”
“Warden Pickett-” she said without enthusiasm, but Joe cut her off.
He said, “I made Butch a deal. He agreed to turn himself in to the sheriff.”
Silence.
Joe meant it. His insides roiled, and he didn’t want to draw his weapon.
Greene-Dempsey stepped forward, and Joe said softly, “That includes you, too, I’m afraid. Just make the call.”
She stopped there and gasped for air. Then she raised her iPhone.
Before Joe climbed into the sheriff’s department handicap van behind Butch Roberson in handcuffs, he plucked his badge off his uniform shirt and placed it in Lisa Greene-Dempsey’s outstretched palm. She closed her fingers around it and shook her head sadly.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Yeah, I do,” Joe said. “This has all put such a bad taste in my mouth, I don’t think I’ll ever shake it.”
“You’re in bad shape,” she said. “You might feel different when this is all behind us.”
“Is the governor still around?” Joe asked.
“He’s somewhere in town,” she said.
“Did my horse survive?”
“Your horse?”
“I let him go.”
The director shrugged and shook her head. She didn’t know anything about Toby.
Joe grunted and climbed into the van and slid the door shut behind him.
“Mike,” Joe said to the sheriff, “can I borrow your phone? I need to call my wife.”
Sheriff Reed handed his phone over.
As the van cleared the campground, spewing a roll of dust, Joe looked through the back window. Lisa Greene-Dempsey was saying something to Underwood, shaking her head while she did, and still clutching his badge.
Behind them, massive columns of yellow smoke rolled into the sky from the mountains.
“Thank you for what you did back there,” Butch Roberson said.
Joe nodded.
“Ask Marybeth to tell Pam and Hannah I’m all right, okay?”
Joe and Roberson exchanged a long look of understanding.
“I will,” Joe said.
After he’d told Marybeth he was safe but injured and he might be in the hospital for a few days, and she expressed relief, she said, “Something really odd happened this morning. Did you get my message?”
“No, what happened?”
“Pam asked to use the computer so she could check her email, and I pointed her to it. I’d left it on from last night when I called you. But when she sat down at it, her face turned white as a sheet. The EPA site was still up on the screen with Batista’s photo and bio. .”
Joe felt something flutter in his stomach.
“. . and Pam pointed to the photo of him and said, ‘What is this asshole doing here? And why are they calling him Juan Julio Batista?’”
“Let me guess,” Joe said. “She knew him as John Pate.”
“And that’s where things start to connect.”
Joe noticed that as he spoke the name, Butch’s head had snapped up sharply.
ONE WEEK LATER
35
With Nate Romanowski in the passenger seat of the pickup, Joe turned from the interstate onto the state highway that led to the burning mountains. Joe wasn’t wearing his uniform anymore, which made him feel incomplete. Seven red shirts were in a pile in the corner of the bedroom, where he’d thrown them as if they were radioactive. Spare badges, name tags, his weapon and gear belt, and a dog-eared laminate of the Miranda warning had been tossed on top of the pile.
Joe glanced down. His personal Remington shotgun was muzzle-down on the bench seat between them. He’d loaded it with double-ought buckshot.
Nate was tall and angular, with piercing blue eyes and a hatchet nose, and a short blond ponytail since he’d grown his hair back from a year before. The leather strap of the shoulder holster that held his.500 Wyoming Express handgun stretched across a white T-shirt beneath his open pearl-button cowboy shirt.
As they climbed, Joe hit his headlights. Smoke was still heavy in the air, and he hadn’t seen the sun or blue sky for a week. It was as if someone had placed a lid over the valley to keep it from boiling over.
There were no living trees on either side of the road, just skeletons with crooked black limbs. The ground was scorched and there were places where it still smoked. The air was bitter and sharp, and Joe’s lungs ached from breathing it in.
“This reminds me of black-and-white footage from World War One,” Nate said. “It looks like a moonscape.”
Joe grunted.
“How big is the fire now?”
“Last I heard, it stretches a hundred miles to the north and sixty miles to the south. It moves about twenty to twenty-five miles a day depending on the wind.”
“Big,” Nate said.
“And getting bigger.”
The local news was dominated by fire reports and stories of cabins and ranches being burned down, communities evacuated, smoke jumpers killed or injured. People wore masks when they went outside, and public health authorities cautioned young parents to keep their children indoors. Most of the residents of the Saddlestring retirement home had been flown to other locations where they could breathe.
“Where did you say we were headed?” Nat
e asked.
“A subdivision called Aspen Highlands.”
“I hate cutesy names like that.”
Nate had simply shown up on their doorstep three nights before. He’d been sitting on the porch reading a book when Marybeth drove Joe home from the hospital after they’d treated and released him for all of his injuries. Joe had been injured many times before without three days of hospital care, and cynically figured he’d been stuck there to give affidavits and statements regarding Butch Roberson rather than for the severity of his wounds. Dave Farkus was in the next room and he was recovering well. Joe had overheard Farkus telling an attractive nurse how he’d escaped death by bullet, fire, and a whitewater river. How he planned to sell his story to Hollywood.
When Nate saw them drive up, he raised his head and smiled a goofy smile, for Nate.
Marybeth braked a little too hard for Joe and flew out of the van to hug the falconer. She didn’t even close her door.
Joe limped around the van and shut it, and turned to Nate and Marybeth. It was good to see Nate again, he thought.
Nate gestured toward the burning mountains and said, “Sorry. It looks like I’m too late.”
Nate said to Marybeth, “I leave for a year and look what happens. Your husband burns the entire place to the ground.”
“Actually,” Joe said, “you’re right on time.”
“You’ve got something for me to do?”
“Yup.”
“Now?”
“Give me a couple of days to sort it out,” Joe said.
Nate nodded. “Good. I hear Sheridan has a kestrel. I’d like to see it.”
Marybeth clapped her hands girlishly and said, “I know she’d love to show it to you, Nate.”
Joe had to slow down the pickup as a yellow roll of smoke blew across the road. As he peered into the gloom, he couldn’t see actual flames anywhere and he wondered what there was left to burn.
Nate said, “In the long run, the fire will be a good thing. New growth, aspen, all that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Joe said. “Like I haven’t heard that a thousand times in the last week.”
