Below Zero jp-9

by C. J. Box

  But she’d mentioned black hills. The Black Hills were in western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. She might know the Black Hills because she claimed to have been there in Keystone. Was there a Savage, South Dakota? He searched his bookshelves for a U.S. atlas and was following the tip of his finger through the cities, towns, and locations of the state to find a Savage. No luck: he’d need to do an Internet search.

  His phone burred in his pocket and it startled him. He glanced at his watch: past one A.M. He retrieved his phone and looked at the display. It was the number of the FBI office in Cheyenne. He thought, “Ah . . .”

  “So you got the warrant,” Joe said, opening the phone. “That was quick.”

  Coon said, “We had to interrupt Judge Johnson’s dinner to get it. That didn’t make him very happy, as you might guess.”

  “You said it would be tomorrow.”

  “I thought about it, Joe. I thought we couldn’t risk missing your daughter getting a new call tonight and we were right, weren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, do you want to know where it came from?”

  “What do you think?”

  “First, give me the gist of the exchange.”

  Joe nodded. Coon had him.

  Joe said, “The caller said they were sitting in a car outside a bar somewhere while Stenko and Robert were inside. We couldn’t get a description of the vehicle. The only place names we could get were ‘black hills’ and ‘Savage.’ I’ve been looking over the map and I can’t find any Savage. Oh—and it had been a very bad day. Robert allegedly hurt someone in a store.”

  Joe left out the part about the sister on purpose because he saw no way of not revealing April’s identity if he went down that road.

  “A store?” Coon asked. “What kind of store? And where was this?”

  “We don’t know. A drugstore. The text said a drugstore.”

  Coon paused. Joe knew the conversation was being taped. What he didn’t know was how much Coon and the FBI knew. There was no doubt they were withholding information as well.

  “Joe,” Coon said, “the cell phone tower that got the ping is located between Pine Tree Junction and Gillette, Wyoming. On State Highway Fifty.”

  Joe brushed the atlas aside and stared at the Wyoming map. Savageton was seventeen miles north of Pine Tree Junction and thirty-five miles south of Gillette. The middle of nowhere. Was it even a town at all? Or was it like so many place names on the Wyoming map—a location?

  But every location in Wyoming had a bar.

  Bingo.

  He scanned the map. There were several south-to-north roads that could have been used from Aspen into Wyoming and on to Savageton in the northeast corner of the square state. There was WYO 789 through Baggs to I-80, WYO 130 or 230 through Saratoga to I-80, WYO 230 to Laramie. There were at least four other highways that could have been used to get to Savageton. If they were headed for the Black Hills, Stenko, Robert, and April would likely drive north through Gillette. From there, they would hop on I-90 East.

  Joe’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the map. If one were headed toward the Black Hills from Gillette, I-90 was, for twenty-five miles, the only road east. At Moorcroft, other options appeared on both sides of the interstate. But for twenty-six miles, I-90 looked like a thin wrist that led to an extended hand with routes for each finger. And throughout the Black Hills, there was a spider’s web network of rural roads.

  So if Stenko was to be located, it would be either on that I-90 stretch or before he got to Gillette on Highway 50 north of Savageton.

  Marybeth came into his office looking puzzled. She’d heard him talking. He mouthed “FBI” and jabbed at Savageton on the map. Marybeth understood immediately, nodded, and turned in the threshold, said, “Sheridan . . .”

  On the other end of the line, Joe heard a voice in the background he recognized as Coon’s boss, Tony Portenson. Portenson said, “Savageton!”

  “We think we’ve found it,” Coon told Joe.

  “So Portenson is there?”

  “Of course. He’s my supervisor.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Look,” Coon said, “I know you two have history. But Agent Portenson is willing to look the other way right now. To quote him, Stenko is a bigger prize than you are a pain in the ass.”

  Joe smiled. He wondered how long it would take Portenson and Coon to coordinate a roadblock at the logical pinch point on I-90 with the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Then they’d order up their helicopter from the Cheyenne airport. He guessed it would take several hours at least to get the roadblock set up because there simply weren’t enough troopers available to handle it themselves, which meant local sheriff and police departments would be asked to provide men and vehicles. And it would take a while to roust the chopper pilots and get clearances in order to fly north. It would be unlikely Coon, Portenson, and team would take off before dawn. That gave Joe a five- to eight-hour window.

  The drive from Saddlestring to Savageton would be less than two. He could beat them there.

  “What else?” Coon asked. Joe couldn’t tell if Portenson was prompting him but he assumed so. “There has to be something else you can tell me. A twenty-minute text exchange and all you got was Savage, black hills, and Robert doing something bad in a drugstore?”

  Joe felt his neck get hot. He didn’t want to get into the sister thing. But then he asked, “Twenty minutes? What do you mean twenty minutes?”

  “I told you, Joe,” Coon said. “We have the ability to register the location of the phone from when it’s turned on to when it’s turned off. I have the printout right here in front of me, so don’t hold anything back.”

  Joe said, “Hold on,” and dropped his cell on the desk. He met Sheridan in the hallway. She had her duffel bag over her shoulder, ready to go. Marybeth was behind her looking concerned. Joe asked to borrow her phone and he took it back to his office.

  “You’re wrong,” Joe said to Coon after opening Sheridan’s phone and scrolling back through the exchange. “The first text came at 12:12 A.M. The last one came at 12:21 A.M. That’s just nine minutes.”

  Nine long minutes of frustration while the two girls tapped out short messages to one another, sent and received, answered. So much could have been accomplished if April had allowed them to talk . . .

  “I see what I see, Joe,” Coon said. Joe could hear paper rustling.

  Then: “Oh, now I get it.”

  “What?”

  “We were both right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The phone was turned on for twenty minutes. But it looks like the first ten were to someplace else.”

  “Where?”

  Joe heard muffled voices. Coon had obviously covered the mouthpiece. Portenson and who knows how many other agents were having a heated discussion.

  Joe paced. Marybeth and Sheridan stood outside his office, looking at him cautiously.

  Finally, Coon came back on. “We aren’t at liberty to say right now.”

  Joe stopped. He wished he could reach through the phone and grab Coon by the throat.

  “We suspect you’re withholding information,” Coon said, speaking as if he were being coached what to say. “If we’re going to be partners in this investigation, you’ve got to come clean. Like who it is you think is sending the texts. When we feel you’ve come clean, we’ll do the same. Up until this moment, you’ve had the upper hand. But you forget, Joe. We are the upper hand.”

  It was as if Portenson had his hand up the back of Coon’s shirt, using him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Joe decided it wasn’t worth it to reveal April. And while it was killing him to know whom she’d called before texting Sheridan, it might not be vital.

  Joe said, “I guess I’ll see you there.”

  “Where?” Coon said.

  Joe snorted, “Chuck, you’re a good guy, but you’re not yet a good liar,” and hung up.

  He turned to Sheridan. “Ready?”

  Sheridan nod
ded. Her face was deadly serious, but her eyes sparkled.

  AS JOE EASED OUT of the driveway in his pickup, he looked at his house. Marybeth was in the front picture window with Lucy, who looked stricken. Through the window, Joe could see her mouth, She’s my sister, too . . . and it was like a knife through his heart.

  Joe and Sheridan waved, and Sheridan hid her face from him while she cried.

  17

  Savageton

  THE FULL MOON IN THE CLOUDLESS SKY CAST THE PRAIRIE grass ghostly white/blue and threw impenetrable black shadows into the hollows of the hills and draws as Joe and Sheridan drove east on I-90 and crossed the Powder River. The river in the fall was no more than an exhausted stream marking time until winter came and put it out of its misery. Despite that, mule deer huddled on its banks and ancient cottonwoods sucked at the thin stream of water in order to provide the only shade and cover for miles.

  Joe knew of a two-track ranch access road with an unlocked gate that would allow them to cut the corner of their journey and eventually intersect with Highway 50 and Savageton, although the likelihood of finding April still there seemed remote at best.

  Although it was an interstate highway, there was no traffic at two-fifteen in the morning. Big semi-rigs were parked at pullouts with running lights on, and as they roared east, the twinkle of working oil and gas rigs dotted the prairie. This was the western frontier of the Powder River Basin. Under the thin crust of dirt were underground mountains of coal, rivers of oil and natural gas, seams of uranium. A bald eagle nearly as big as the one he’d delivered to Nate fed on a road-killed pronghorn antelope on the shoulder of the highway, and the bird barely looked up as the pickup sizzled by.

  Sheridan was wide awake and filled with manic energy that no doubt came from both fear and exhilaration. The moonlight kissed her cheeks, and Joe was glad she was with him as well as concerned that she was. Her cell phone was in her lap.

  “Do you have a signal?” he asked.

  “Three bars,” she said.

  “Good. Let me know if we start to get out of range. We can’t afford to miss a call or a text.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do this,” she said. “I mean, go on an investigation with you.”

  Joe said, “I know. But you’ll have to be careful. You’ll really have to listen to me. This isn’t a game.”

  “I know that.”

  He nodded in the dark. She was miffed at him for stating the obvious, and he wondered why he’d felt the need to do so.

  He kept the radio tuned to SALECS, which stood for State Assisted Law Enforcement Communication System, and listened as Coon and the FBI talked with the highway patrol. The HP had units in Gillette, Wright, Moorcroft, and Sundance, and all were rolling toward the checkpoint they’d agreed upon near Rozet, east of Gillette. The local police departments in Gillette, Moorcroft, and Hulett were sending officers as well. The operation was going smoothly, although the HP was obviously annoyed they didn’t know what kind of vehicle they were looking for or who would be in it.

  “Two male subjects and possibly more,” Coon had said in response, giving a description for David Stenson, aka Stenko. Robert was described as Stenko’s son, but Coon said there was no physical description yet. He said they thought they’d have a photo of him within the hour and they would e-mail it for distribution. Joe was intrigued. Where did they find a photo of Robert so quickly in the middle of the night? Did Robert have priors as well? If so, Marybeth had not found any arrests on her Internet search.

  As he usually did in anticipation of a confrontation, Joe did a mental inventory of his gear in addition to his weapons. On his belt was pepper spray, handcuffs, spare Glock magazines, and his Leatherman tool. He was a poor pistol shot so he’d rely on the shotgun if he ran into Stenko and Robert. But he prayed it wouldn’t come to that with Sheridan and possibly April present.

  Joe maintained radio silence, but he was urged to grab the mike and tell the officers they should be looking for two adult males and one teenage female. But he couldn’t risk it. Not yet. As always, he doubted himself and fought against a compulsion to tell them what he knew. If Stenko, Robert, and April slipped through the checkpoint because the HP wasn’t looking for a girl with them, the guilt would eat him alive. Not only that, he could be brought up on charges for withholding information. But if local cops, buzzed on coffee and adrenaline—or the Highway Patrol or the FBI—overreacted as they had six years before and April was injured or killed, he’d never forgive himself. He didn’t realize he’d just moaned aloud until Sheridan asked him what was wrong.

  “Nothing,” he said. He slowed and eased to the right of the highway because he didn’t want to shoot past the shortcut road.

  “You can tell me,” Sheridan said. “Is it that you want to tell them to look for April?”

  Joe grunted.

  “We can’t,” she said, shaking her head in a gesture that could have been Marybeth’s. “Not yet. Not until I get a chance to see if it’s really her. We can’t let her down again.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want her to think I snitched on her, too.”

  “Gotcha,” Joe said, turning off the pavement toward a sagging wire gate. Sheridan climbed out, opened it, and closed it again after Joe pulled through. He used the opportunity to dig his shotgun out from behind the seat, check the loads, and prop it, muzzle down, between the seats. He watched Sheridan skip toward the pickup through a roll of dust turned incendiary by his brake lights.

  The two-track cut through the knee-high dry grass, and the uneven surface of the ranch road rattled everything that wasn’t secured in the cab of the pickup. Instinctively, Sheridan reached up and grasped the loop handle above the door and braced her other hand against the dashboard to steady herself.

  “Do we have to listen to that?” Sheridan asked, gesturing to the radio. There was lots of chatter as law enforcement assembled on I-90.

  “Yes.”

  “We can’t listen to music?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got a question,” she said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Do you think that the day you stop listening to new music is the day you decide you’re on the path to old age? Like you’ve given up on new stuff and you resign yourself to music you’ve already heard? Like you’re through discovering and all you want to do is rummage through your old things?”

  Joe jerked the steering wheel to the left to avoid a rabbit in the right track that refused to move. He said, “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  Sheridan said, “I think I’m right. That’s why I’m never going to listen to old music. I’m only going to listen to what’s new on the radio.”

  “You might change your mind when you get older,” Joe said. “Don’t you think you’ll miss the songs you’re familiar with?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the new songs will be better.”

  “It’s possible. But don’t you find that certain songs remind you of certain things in your life? That when you hear a specific song it takes you back to when you were listening to it?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “But then I’d be thinking backward and not forward. I’d be on the way to geezerhood.”

  “Like me,” Joe said.

  “Like you and Mom.”

  He smiled in the dark.

  “I mean, Mom listens to that old stuff when she’s in the car. People like Simon and Garfunkel, the Police, Loggins and Messina. I’m not saying it’s all bad but it is old. Pretty sad, huh?”

  “Not really,” Joe said.

  “Do you still have those CDs I made for you of new music?”

  “Somewhere,” Joe confessed. They might be in the console or glove box, he wasn’t sure. Wherever they were, he hadn’t listened to them recently. “Sorry,” he said.

  “See, you’re the same way.”

  “I guess so.”

  She paused, then said what was obviously heavy on her mind. “What if it’s April who’s pulling the
trigger?”

  “What?”

  “What if she’s so messed up she’s turned into some kind of teenage killer? Think about it. She has a lot to be messed up about. She might be a no-hoper.”

  “Sheridan, jeez . . .”

  “She used to be pretty mean,” Sheridan said. “When she first came to live with us, I was kind of scared of her, but I never let her know that. It wasn’t until the end that she kind of opened up. Don’t you remember how mean she could be?”

  Joe remembered. But they’d chalked it up to her transient childhood and to the presence of her on-again, off-again mother, Jeannie Keeley. April’s hardness was a tactic against getting hurt or betrayed, they’d decided. April tested them early on with outbursts and rudeness, but Marybeth said she was simply probing to see where the boundaries were. Once April found out there were limits and rules in the family, she visibly softened and relaxed. April, Joe thought, was like a horse. She needed to know what was expected of her and where she fit in the herd. Once she knew both she was all right.

  Sheridan said, “April scared her teachers, she told me that. Every kid wants to be feared by adults. And the truth is a lot of adults fear us. You can see it in their eyes. It gives us power, you know? We’re like vampires. We feed off adults being scared of us. I could see April being pushed into hurting somebody.”

  He said, “Sheridan, let’s not speculate too much until we have some kind of evidence, okay?”

  Which didn’t stop her. She said, “What if we find her and she’s so messed up we know she’ll kill again? What do we do then?”

  “Stop it,” he said. “We don’t know if she’s done anything wrong in the first place.”

  Sheridan nodded, apparently thinking that over. She said, “No matter what, I miss her,” she said. “Toward the end there, I was really starting to like her and I thought it was cool how she looked up to me. She must still feel that way or she never would have started texting me.