Below Zero jp-9

by C. J. Box

  Joe had called a few times and sent several e-mails to the governor asking when he could go back to Saddlestring. There had been no response. While Joe felt abandoned, he felt bad that his actions had damaged the governor.

  And the governor had enough problems of his own these days to concern himself with Joe’s plight. Although he was still the most popular politician in the state despite his mercurial nature and eccentricity, there had been a rumor of scandal about a relationship with Stella Ennis, the governor’s chief of staff. The governor denied the rumors angrily and Stella resigned, but it had been a second chink in his armor, and Rulon’s enemies—he had them on both sides of the aisle—saw an opening and moved in like wolves on a hamstrung bull moose. Soon, there were innuendos about his fast-and-loose use of state employees, including Joe, even financial questions about the pistol shooting range Rulon had installed behind the governor’s mansion to settle political disputes. Joe had no doubt—knowing the governor—that Rulon would emerge victorious. But in the meanwhile, he’d be embattled and distracted.

  And Joe would be in exile of sorts. He felt the familiar pang of moral guilt that had visited him more and more the last few years for some of the decisions he’d made and some of the things he’d done that had landed him here. Although he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have made the same decisions if he had the opportunity to make them again, the fact was he’d committed acts he was deeply ashamed of and would always be ashamed of. The last moments of J. W. Keeley and Randy Pope, when he’d acted against his nature and concluded that given the situations, the ends justified the means, would forever be with him. Joe’s friend Nate Romanowski, the fugitive falconer, had always maintained that often there was a difference between justice and the law, and Joe had always disagreed with the sentiment. He still did. But he’d crossed lines he never thought he’d cross, and he vowed not to do it again. Although he owned the transgressions he’d committed and they would never go away, he’d resolved that the only way to mitigate them was to stay on the straight and narrow, do good works, and not let his dark impulses assert themselves again.

  Being in exile could either push a man over the precipice or help a man sort things out, he’d concluded.

  DESPITE THE REMOTE LOCATION, his lack of familiarity with the new district, and pangs of loneliness, the assignment reminded him how much he loved being a game warden again, really being a game warden. It was what he was born to do. It’s what gave him joy, purpose, and a connection to the earth, the sky, God, and his environment. It made him whole. But he wished he could resume his career without the dark cloud that had followed him once the governor had chosen to make him his go-to guy. He wished he could return home every night to Marybeth, Sheridan, and Lucy, who’d remained in Saddlestring because of Marybeth’s business and the home they owned. Every day, he checked his e-mail and phone messages for word from the governor’s office in Cheyenne that he could return. So far, it hadn’t come.

  Life and work in his new district was isolated, slow, and incredibly dull.

  Until the Mad Archer arrived, anyway.

  By Joe’s count, the Mad Archer had killed four elk (two cows and two bulls whose antlers had been hacked off) and wounded three others he had to put down. He could only guess at the additional wounded who’d escaped into the timber and suffered and died alone. It was the same with the two deer and several pronghorn antelope off the highway between the towns of Dixon and Savery, all killed by arrows.

  Then there was the dog—a goofy Lab-corgi hybrid with a Lab body and a Lab I love everybody please throw me a stick disposition tacked on to the haughty arrogance of a corgi and a corgi’s four-inch stunted legs—who’d suddenly appeared on the doorstep of Joe’s game warden home. He fed him and let him sleep in the mudroom while he asked around town about his owner. Joe’s conclusion was he’d been dumped by a passing tourist or an energy worker who moved on to a new job. So when the dog was shot through the neck with an arrow outside an ancient cement-block bar once frequented by Butch Cassidy himself, Joe was enraged and convinced the Mad Archer was not only a local but a sick man who should be put down himself if he ever caught him.

  The dog—Joe named him “Tube”—was recovering at home after undergoing $3,500 worth of surgery. The money was their savings for a family vacation. Would the state reimburse him if he made the argument that Tube was evidence? He doubted it. What he didn’t doubt was that Sheridan and Lucy would grow as attached to the dog as he had. All Tube had going for him was his personality, Joe thought. He was good for nothing else. Was Tube worth the family vacation? That was a question he couldn’t answer.

  Of course, the best Joe could do within his powers if he caught the Mad Archer would be to charge him with multiple counts of wanton destruction—with fines up to $10,000 for each count—and possibly get the poacher’s vehicle and weapons confiscated. Joe was always frustrated at how little he could legally do to game violators. There was some compensation in the fact that citizens in Wyoming and the mountain west were generally as enraged as he was at indiscriminate cruelty against animals. If he caught the man and proved his guilt before a judge, he knew the citizens of Baggs would shun the man and turn him into a pariah, maybe even run him out of the state for good. Still, he’d rather send the criminal to prison.

  For the past month, Joe had poured his time and effort into catching the Mad Archer. He’d perched all night near hay meadows popular as elk and deer feeding spots. He’d haunted sporting goods shops asking about purchases of arrows and gone to gas stations asking about suspicious drivers who might have had bows in their pickups in the middle of summer. He’d acquired enough physical evidence to nail the Archer if he could ever catch him in the vicinity of a crime. There were the particular brand of arrows—Beman ICS Hunters tipped with Magnus 2-blade broadheads—partial fingerprints from the shaft of the arrows removed from an elk and Tube, a tire-track impression he’d cast in plaster at the scene of a deer killing, a sample of radiator fluid he’d gathered from a spill on the side of the road near the dead pronghorn, and some transmission fluid of particular viscosity he’d sent to the lab to determine any unique qualities. But he had no real leads on the Mad Archer himself, or even an anonymous tip with a name attached called into the 800-number poacher hotline.

  Many of his nightly conversations with Marybeth took place in the dark in the cab of his pickup, overseeing a moon-splashed hay meadow framed by the dark mountain horizon.

  JUDGING BY THE CALL from dispatch earlier, Joe immediately assumed the Mad Archer was at it again, and this time he’d claimed a bald eagle. Although bald eagles had finally been taken off the endangered species list the year before, it was still a crime to harm them. Plus, he liked eagles and it made him mad. So when the call came he checked the loads in the magazine of his Glock and chambered a round, moved his shotgun from behind the bench seat to the front, jammed his weathered gray Stetson on his head, and rushed up the canyon on the two-track, hoping the crime had taken place recently enough that there would be a chance of encountering the criminal in the vicinity. Since there was only one main road from the valley floor to the campground where the hikers had called in the wounded eagle, he thought he might have a chance.

  HE’D FOUND THE bald eagle as described. The hikers—who’d asked a seasonal forest service employee to call it in once the worker cleared the walled canyon—milled about helplessly while the big eagle stood between them and their Subaru with Colorado plates (an inordinate number of complaints were called in by people with Subarus and Colorado plates). The eagle had her wings outstretched an imposing seven and a half feet. Her talons gripped the soft dirt parking lot like a scoop shovel biting through asphalt. Her screech was shrill, chilling, ungodly, as if intended to scare pinecones out of the trees. Her eyes were as dark, intense, and piercing as hell itself, he thought. He couldn’t lock eyes with her more than a few seconds before breaking the gaze.

  There were three hikers, two men and a woman. College age, good equipment, scruffy half
-beards on the men, the woman a brunette with her hair tied in a ponytail. They told him they’d spent three nights and four days hiking the trails and high-country lakes near Bridger Peak in the Sierra Madres.

  The woman told Joe, “We’re tired, dirty, and hungry and we need to get out of here. We have a dinner reservation tonight in Steamboat Springs. At the rate we’re going, we’re going to be late.”

  “Oh dear,” Joe said.

  “I’m serious,” she said, miffed.

  “Did you see anyone in the area other than the forest service guy? Any other hikers or vehicles?”

  They all shook their heads no. Damn.

  The eagle was big, Joe noted, probably fifteen pounds. Females were larger than males. The yellow arrow shaft went cleanly through her right wing and was lodged half-in, half-out, the familiar razor-tipped broadhead winking in the sun. He guessed by looking at the way she held the wounded wing that tendons had been sliced so she couldn’t get lift. She’d probably been ambushed while on the ground, he thought, likely surprised while feeding on a fish or roadkill.

  As he stood there looking at the eagle with the hikers gathered behind him, admonishing him not to hurt the bird but to get her out of the way so they could get to their car, he felt a particular kind of bitterness he couldn’t give away to them. He knew he was probably looking at a dead bird.

  Although there were several rehabilitation centers for raptors and birds of prey, the more reputable of the two being near Sheridan and Boise, there had been a recent departmental memo saying both facilities were filled to capacity. They could take no more birds, no matter the circumstances. Damaged eagles, falcons, and hawks would have to be placed privately or destroyed. Since Joe was in exile of sorts and five hours away from the nearest facility anyway, he knew what the likely conclusion would be. But he didn’t dare tell the hikers. So on the spot, he came up with a scheme: tackle the eagle, bind her wings to her body with his spare sweatshirt, tape it tight, and transport her out of there. To where he would determine later.

  The hikers agreed to form a human shield to the side of the eagle and draw her attention (and vitriol) while Joe swooped in from behind her. It worked, except for the part where she slashed down with her hooked beak and ripped a gash the length of his forearm. Spurting blood and holding her wings tight to her body, he managed to slide the arrow out of her wing, slip the sweatshirt over her head, tie the sleeves together around her like a straitjacket, and finish the job with duct tape. Her screech seemed to reach down inside him and tug at primeval fears he didn’t even know he had, but he fought through them out of pure terror and eventually gained control of her thrashing body and sharp talons, wrapping the sweatshirt around her with a continuous strip of tape. Finally, as the hikers stepped away, he had her under control except for her screeching, and he picked her up and carried her to his truck. She was surprisingly light with her wings taped tightly to her side, and it reminded him of carrying one of his daughters as babies. It seemed a shame, he thought, to reduce this beautiful and regal creature to a shiny silver papoose. She seemed cowed and harmless—except for the talons, of course.

  He used bungee cords to lash her upright to the inside sidewall of his pickup bed. She looked like an insurgent caught in the act and awaiting interrogation, he thought. He avoided looking into her murderous eyes, which pierced him through the curtain of his peripheral vision.

  The hikers thanked him and left in time to make their dinner reservation. He watched their taillights recede down the gravel road through the dust kicked up from their tires that hung in clouds and slowly sifted back down to earth. Their problem was now his problem, and they could tell their friends they’d helped saved a bald eagle.

  Joe stood in the campground bloodied and breathing hard, unable to raise dispatch or get a cell signal because of the height of the canyon walls.

  While he bound his bleeding forearm with a compress and medical tape from the oft-used first-aid kit in his pickup, he looked at the eagle and asked, “What am I going to do with you?”

  JOE THOUGHT THERE might be enough room on the canyon-wall side of the pickup to get around the driverless pickup with the Oklahoma plates in the middle of the road, but he knew it would be close. The side mirrors of both trucks would likely hit each other if he tried to squeeze through.

  Sighing, he put his vehicle into park, got out, and bent both of his mirrors in on their hinges.

  “Hey!” he called. “Would you mind moving your truck?”

  His words echoed back over the tinkling of the river. Clouds of caddis flies smoked up the river. An aggressive trout smacked the surface of a pocket-water pool to get one.

  To be safe, he decided to bend the mirrors of the Dodge in as well so he could pass. It was never a good idea to touch another man’s vehicle, but he was sure the missing driver would understand.

  As he pushed the driver’s side mirror in, he glanced inside the cab and saw a half-empty twelve-pack of beer, binoculars, a pint of tequila, torn empty packages for AA batteries, and a quiver of Beman arrows between the bench seats.

  Joe backed away and instinctively rested his right hand on the butt of his .40 Glock semiauto. His senses sharpened, and he felt his heart beat faster. The rush of blood hurt the gash on his forearm, and dark red blood beaded on the side of the compress. He looked back inside the cab. No keys. He placed his palm on the hood of the truck. It was warm, as if the engine had been running just a moment before. Squatting, he looked underneath the pickup. Two drops of transmission fluid in the dirt and a pink bead of it poised to fall from a black rubber hose. A glance at the tires didn’t conclusively confirm the tread was the same as his plaster cast, but it was similar enough. And near the rear tires on both sides, in the loose grit of the road, were two sets of footprints headed down the road in the direction the Dodge had been coming.

  He stood.

  Flicking his eyes from the river to the canyon wall to the two-track behind the Dodge where the missing driver might walk up, he stepped backward until he was adjacent to the open driver’s window of his pickup. He reached in and plucked the mike from its cradle.

  “Dispatch, this is GF-fifty-four.”

  Static.

  “Dispatch, this is GF-fifty-four.”

  Nothing.

  “Can anyone hear me?”

  No. Still too deep in the canyon for a signal.

  Joe withdrew his cell phone from the breast pocket of his red uniform shirt. No bars.

  He guessed the scenario: The Mad Archer and his accomplice were coming up the two-track when they either saw or heard Joe’s pickup coming down the same road from the campground. Maybe the eagle screech alerted them. Since there was nowhere to turn around and driving the Dodge in reverse around the blind corners was impractical, they’d simply bailed out and run. Since it was approaching dusk, no doubt they hoped Joe would simply pass by their vehicle en route to town. When he passed, they’d come out from where they were hiding.

  He ran through his options. None were very good.

  Joe thought about the empty packages of AA batteries. And he smiled to himself.

  HE GAVE THEM fifteen minutes to show up. They didn’t, which didn’t surprise him. The shadows within the canyon grew long and dark and the breeze stilled and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The wounded eagle grew impatient and screamed. Every time she screeched, he flinched and the hair on the back of his neck bristled.

  He had the feeling he was being watched, but he couldn’t see who was watching him, or from where.

  He made a show of checking his wristwatch. Then, with the slumped shoulders of a man who’d just given up waiting, he climbed into his pickup with the pronghorn antelope decals on the door, gunned the engine, and drove slowly forward.

  He made it past the Dodge with six inches of clearance to spare, although heavy brush clawed the passenger door and scratched at the window. Back on the road, he turned his headlights on and drove slowly, looking carefully—but not too obviously—from side to
side for a flash of color or the dark form of a hidden man. The two-track rose to a crest, and once he dropped over the top, he could no longer see the Dodge in his rearview mirror. The river was less languid on the bottom of the hill, and rallied from its late-summer doldrums into a stretch of fast water that picked up in volume until, spent, it spilled over a small falls into a deep pool. When the rush of water overcame the sound of his motor, he let the pickup coast to a stop and he turned the lights out. There was a narrow meadow to his right—a break in the canyon wall—and he drove in it and did a three-point turn in the dark so he was pointed back the way he had come.

  Joe kept a small duffel bag of spare clothes in the lockbox in the bed of his pickup and he dug through it until he found a pair of socks.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, as he slipped one of the socks over the head of the eagle. He’d learned from his friend Nate, who was a master falconer, that raptors went into a state of quiet when their heads were covered by a falcon hood. He hoped the sock would serve the same purpose.