Below Zero jp-9

by C. J. Box

  “Count it now.”

  “Robert . . .”

  “Count it now!”

  “Don’t grab at it, for Christ’s sake. Just concentrate on your driving. Robert!”

  And she felt the car careen off the pavement and into a ditch, heard the furious scratches of brush from the undercarriage, saw the rolls of yellow dust blossom in clouds from both sides of the car. She closed her eyes as the car turned and hit something big and solid, felt the vehicle leave the ground, hit on its side in an explosion of dirt and shattered glass, begin to roll . . .

  23

  Bear Lodge Mountains

  JOE SAW THE HELICOPTER WINK IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE right side of Devils Tower as it bore down on the ranch in the foothills of the Bear Lodge Mountains. The mountains themselves had an entirely different look than Joe’s Bighorns or the Sierra Madres he’d been in recently. Rather than vertical and severe with dirty glaciers sleeping the summer away in fissures, the Bear Lodges looked sedentary and relaxed, sleeping old dogs covered with a carpet of blue/black pine. The aircraft was miles away, a flyspeck on a massive blue screen, still far enough that the sound of rotors couldn’t be heard. He knew Coon and Portenson were inside because he’d heard the chatter on the radio. Apparently, the preliminary investigation into the shooting had gone well enough to release them to the ranch call. Crook County sheriff’s deputies were also en route. Joe guessed that all of them would converge at once on the location of the distress call.

  They were on State Highway 14, north of Devils Tower Junction, looking for the ranch access that would take them east toward the mountains and the ranch headquarters. Dispatch had been quiet; whoever had placed the initial 911 call had dropped off the line and had never come back. Calls to the ranch house had gone unanswered, which didn’t bode well.

  Joe thought, One for me, one for the dead psycho, and one for more bodies outside.

  Sheridan sat in the middle of bench seat clutching her cell phone, staring at it as if willing it to ring. Nate hung out the open passenger window, squinting at the sky with his blond ponytail undulating in the wind. He reminded Joe of Maxine, his old Labrador, who liked to stick her head out the window and let the wind flap her ears.

  “See that chopper?” Nate said, pulling his head inside the cab.

  “Yup.”

  “You had better let me off up here for a while. I don’t think it would help anyone concerned if Portenson sees me.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Why not?” Sheridan asked.

  “Because I’m on the run,” Nate said, matter-of-fact.

  “On the run?” she asked. “Like from the law?”

  He nodded, said, “Thanks to your dad I’m not in jail right now.”

  Joe felt Sheridan’s eyes on him, hoping for an explanation.

  “Dad, I thought you put people in jail.”

  “I do.”

  “But . . .”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Are you going to tell it to me?”

  “Not now.”

  “Nate?”

  “Me either,” Nate said, taking Joe’s cue.

  “There’s a stand of trees up ahead on the right,” Nate said, changing the direction of the conversation. “Maybe I can hang out over there and wait for you.”

  It was an old homestead. On the high desert that led toward the foothills, the only trees were those once planted by settlers trying to make a go of it. In nearly every case, they’d failed—overwhelmed by poor soil, harsh weather, isolation, and market conditions. All that remained of their efforts were rare stands of trees, usually cottonwoods, that had been put in for shade and to provide a windbreak.

  The highway was a straight shot across the stunted high-country sage. Traffic was practically nonexistent except for a single pickup ahead in Joe’s lane. The vehicle crept along with its right wheels on the shoulder.

  “Let me pass this guy and get up ahead out of his view,” Joe said, “then I’ll drop you off.”

  As he approached the slow vehicle—a late-model blue Dodge pickup with out-of-state plates and no passengers—and swung into the passing lane, Joe felt a rush of recognition. The Oklahoma plates—reading “Native America”—confirmed it.

  The driver, Ron Connelly, looked over casually at first to see who was passing him as Joe shot by. Their eyes locked and Joe saw Connelly’s nostrils flare as he recognized Joe as well. Connelly slammed on his brakes and Joe shot by him on the highway. But Connelly’s face lingered as an afterimage and Joe was sure it was him.

  Joe said, “Hang on—it’s the Mad Archer!”

  Nate said, “The mad what?”

  “Brace yourselves,” Joe said, flinging his right arm out to help protect Sheridan from flying forward as he hit the brakes.

  Joe cursed himself for being careless and alerting Connelly, who’d been moving down the highway much too slowly and too far over on the shoulder with no apparent car problems or flashing emergency lights. He’d been cruising the road with all the characteristics of a road hunter—scanning the terrain out the passenger window for game animals to shoot illegally from the comfort of a public road. And since most wildlife became acclimated to the singing of traffic on the rural highway, they no longer followed their instincts for caution. Over the years, wildlife had learned not to look up unless a vehicle stopped. Unscrupulous road hunters like Connelly took advantage of the new paradigm and jumped out firing.

  “Is he the one who shot Tube with an arrow?” Sheridan asked as Joe came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the highway.

  “That’s him,” he said, throwing the transmission into reverse. To Nate: “He’s the same one who shot your eagle.”

  “Let’s get him,” Sheridan said through gritted teeth.

  Nate said, “Proceed.”

  Connelly had decided to run and was in the process of turning back the way he’d come, his back tires churning up fountains of dirt in the borrow pit, his front tires on the pavement. His pickup was bigger and newer, and Joe knew that on the open road Connelly could outrace him. He had to stop Connelly before he could get going.

  Rather than turn around and give chase, Joe floored it in reverse. He was filled with sudden anger at Connelly, at Stenko and Robert, the choices he’d made that consumed him with guilt, at everything. Getting the Mad Archer would be another one in his good works column.

  “Joe,” Nate said calmly as the motor revved, “are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Brace yourself,” Joe said to Sheridan and Nate.

  Joe used the rear bumper and tailgate of his pickup to T-bone Connelly’s pickup on the passenger side as Connelly tried to make his turn. The impact knocked the Dodge six feet sidewise, and Joe saw Connelly’s hat fly off and his arms wave in the air. The collision wasn’t as severe in the Game and Fish pickup because they’d been accelerating straight backward, had braced themselves for the collision, and were cushioned by the seat.

  “Got him!” Sheridan cried, raising a triumphant fist in the air.

  “Not yet,” Joe cautioned, swinging the pickup off the road into the ditch and aiming his grille at the Dodge.

  Joe threw the transmission into park and launched himself out the door. He could see Connelly on the passenger side in his pickup instead of behind the wheel due to the impact on his passenger door, which had thrown him across the cab. Connelly sat stunned, shaking his head from side to side. Blood streamed down his face and into his mouth from a cut in his forehead.

  Joe wanted to get to Connelly and subdue him before the Mad Archer tried to resist or run again. He was halfway there, his boots thumping on the asphalt, when Connelly looked up and saw Joe running in his direction. Connelly dove for the wheel and used it to pull himself back into the driver’s seat. He righted himself and started fumbling for the gearshift.

  The engine growled and the blue Dodge lurched forward. Connelly cackled and maniacally turned the wheel away from Joe, who pulled up and reached for his Glock as the bumper of Connell
y’s pickup grazed his thigh as it turned. “Later!” He laughed to Joe through a mouthful of bloody teeth.

  The deep-throated concussions of Nate’s .454 Casull coughed out once, twice, and seemed to briefly suck the air out of the morning. The blue Dodge bucked as if it had hit a set of hidden ditches head-on. The engine went silent and the truck rolled lazily forward off the road. The front tires bit into loose sand and it lurched to a stop. As intended, both slugs had penetrated the engine block. Green radiator fluid pooled on the dirt and plumes of it hissed and rose in the air, coating the windows of the Dodge.

  Gun drawn, Joe ran to the driver’s side of the pickup from the back. He yelled, “Thanks, Nate!”

  “My pleasure,” Nate said, standing wide-legged on the other side of the road, still holding his revolver in a two-handed grip. “I like killing cars.”

  Connelly opened his door cautiously. He looked at Joe coming at him. He turned his head to see Nate and his .454 in a cloud of green steam that made him look like an apparition from the Gates of Hell. Connelly was half in, half out of the cab. Joe could see only one of Connelly’s hands, the one holding the handle of the door.

  “Let me see ’em both,” Joe said, raising the Glock and sighting down the barrel as he approached. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire. Nate was not far out of his line of fire through the windshield, and ricochets could threaten Sheridan.

  Connelly hadn’t moved in or out an inch. He seemed to be weighing his options. Was his other hand gripping a gun?

  “I said, show me your hands and climb out slowly,” Joe said. “You’re under arrest for skipping bond in Carbon County.”

  Connelly smiled slightly, said, “Don’t you think this is excessive force? Since when is it okay for a damned game warden to injure a man and total his pickup for missing a hearing for a misdemeanor?”

  Joe said, “Ever since you shot a dog with an arrow. Now shut up, get out, and get down on the ground.”

  Nate emerged from the steam and aimed his .454 at the side of Connelly’s head. “Let me shoot him and tear his ears off, Joe. You know, for my collection.”

  Joe stifled a smile and watched as Connelly leaped out of his pickup empty-handed and eagerly threw himself face down into the sand.

  As Joe snapped handcuffs on Connelly’s wrists, Connelly said, “How in the hell did you find me all the way up here?”

  Joe said, “Just good police work,” and winked at Sheridan, who had watched the arrest openmouthed.

  WITH RON CONNELLY cuffed to the front strut of his dead pickup on the side of the highway, Joe called in the arrest to central dispatch. In the days since the Mad Archer had vacated Baggs, he’d obtained a new compound bow and a set of broadhead arrows, as well as a Ruger Ranch Rifle and a stainless-steel .45 semiauto. In the glove box were cartridges, a bloody knife still covered with deer hair, and plastic vials of crystal meth. Tim Curley, the game warden out of Sundance, heard the call and broke in.

  “Joe, how the hell are you?”

  “Fine,” Joe said, remembering Curley as a big man with dark eyes, impressive jowls, and a gunfighter mustache. “Can you come get this guy?”

  “This is the one they call the Mad Archer?”

  “Yup.”

  “I thought I heard you already caught him and threw him in the pokey.”

  “I did. But that was last week. You know how it goes sometimes.”

  “What—a sympathetic judge who let him out on bond?”

  “Tim, we’re on the radio.”

  “Oh, yeah. Hey—you gonna stick around? It’s been a while since we got caught up. I want to hear your version of what happened to Randy Pope.”

  “Nope,” Joe said in answer to both questions. “I’ll send you all the paperwork on Connelly later. You’ll need to send a tow truck to the scene.”

  “Don’t tell me you wrecked another departmental vehicle?” Curley laughed. Joe was infamous for holding the record for the destruction of departmental vehicles. No one else was close.

  “Not mine, this time.” But as he said it, he stepped away from the cab and gauged the damage he’d caused to the back of his pickup. Both taillights were smashed. The back bumper was curled under the frame. His trailer hitch was flattened to the side and his tailgate hung open and out like the tongue of a dead animal. “Not enough that I need a tow truck, anyway,” he said.

  “What’s going on? What are you doing in my district? Last I heard you were sentenced to Baggs.”

  Joe said, “I don’t have time to explain right now. This arrest cost us ten minutes. I have to go, sorry.”

  Curley said, “Does this have something to do with that ranch deal that’s been all over the radio this morning?”

  Joe said, “I’ll need to catch up with you later, Tim.”

  Sheridan and Nate were already in the cab, and Joe swung himself in, hung up the mike, and gunned it.

  “That was a good one,” Joe said to Nate and Sheridan as if they’d been privy to his earlier ruminations. He nodded at the view of Ron Connelly slumped against his pickup in his rearview mirror. “That was worth the time it took to get that guy back into jail where he belongs. Yup, that makes me feel real good. That’s one on the plus side, by golly.”

  Nate chuckled as he replaced the two spent cartridges in his five-shot revolver with fresh rounds the size of lipsticks.

  Sheridan glared at Nate. “Your collection?”

  Nate winked at her.

  In the distance, they could see the helicopter begin its descent.

  “There’s the ranch,” Nate said, gesturing toward the cottonwoods marking the abandoned homestead. “You can let me off here. I’ll stay out of Tim Curley’s way and watch for you when you come back out.”

  Joe said, “Do you finally have a cell phone so I can call you?”

  Nate curled his upper lip. Nate hated cell phones. He once told Joe satellite phones were a necessity but cell phones made him feel that he was always on call.

  “Here,” Joe said. “Take mine. I’ll let you know when we’re coming.”

  Nate took it as if Joe was offering him a bar of feces. It was Sheridan’s turn to wink.

  24

  Bear Lodge Mountains

  THE RANCH YARD WAS A HIVE OF ACTIVITY; SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT SUVs were parked at jaunty angles near the main house with their doors wide open, an ambulance driver was arguing with deputies to clear the way so he could back his vehicle in, and the FBI helicopter sat in a back pasture like a giant insect on a break. Joe drove his pickup to the other side of the yard near a Quonset hut filled with farm equipment.

  “I want you to stay here,” he told Sheridan.

  “What about April?”

  “Believe me,” Joe said, “if April’s in there, I’ll come running.” Thinking, Unless she’s in bad shape.

  “Why don’t you get your mother on the phone?” he said. “Let her know what’s going on and that we’re both okay. I’m sure she’s going crazy.”

  “I’m sure she is.”

  TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES stopped Joe from entering the house, saying they were under orders to keep everyone out. Joe asked who to talk to and one of the deputies said the FBI was in charge and both agents were inside. “When one of them comes out,” the deputy said, “you can talk to him.”

  Joe considered rushing them, but they were both bigger as well as filled with the official hubris that always resulted when there was a multiple homicide in a single-digit crime rate county. Their blood was running hot with purpose. He knew better than to try and get through them.

  Instead, he circled the house hoping he could see inside. If he saw April, he decided, he was going in even if he had to fight his way inside. He walked on the lawn around the left side of the house and saw a side door with another deputy stationed at it. Joe waved and kept walking, looking in every window and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He walked the length of the back of the house and around the side. He was noting a broken window to what looked like the kitchen when the tip
of his boot ticked something metallic. He stopped and looked down. Spent cartridges from a handgun blinked in the sun. He counted eight before he stopped counting, then stepped back and away so he wouldn’t crush them into the ground. From the location of the spent shells, he could imagine a gunman standing just outside the kitchen and firing inside. It bolstered his theory when he noted there was no broken glass under the window in the flowerbed—the glass had been blown inside the house. He wanted to show the FBI agents what he’d found.

  Coon was exiting the front door of the ranch house, struggling with the removal of a pair of latex gloves. As Joe approached, Coon held up a gloved hand made a sick yellow by the latex covering and said, “I’d suggest you stay where you are. Agent Portenson just gave the order to seal up the crime scene as soon as we get more photos of the victims taken out of there.”

  “Who are the victims?” Joe asked, feeling his chest constrict.

  Coon said, “An adult male DOA in the kitchen. Another adult male in critical condition. The EMTs are loading him on a gurney as we speak.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Coon frowned. “Should there be?”

  “The nine-one-one call mentioned bodies outside. Is there a girl in there?”

  “No.”

  “Can I look?”

  “I said . . .”

  “Stay the hell out,” Portenson interrupted, appearing behind Coon. He was red-faced. “Why are you always around, anyway?”

  Joe sighed in frustration. “Can you at least describe the scene to me? What’s your best guess what happened in there?”

  Portenson rolled his eyes and shouldered past Coon toward the helicopter, making it clear he didn’t have time to waste with Joe. Over his shoulder, he said, “I want Stenko. I want his head on a platter.”

  When Portenson was out of earshot, Coon said, “He is not a happy man.”

  “He never has been. What’s going on?”

  Coon said. “Tony is in big trouble because of that incident earlier today. Our bosses don’t like that kind of thing anymore because it attracts the wrong kind of attention in the press and in Washington. We’re supposed to be counterterrorism these days except for the occasional slam-dunk mob arrest. And when we screw up like we did this morning, the shit rolls downhill.”