by C. J. Box
Joe could never get used to the relationship—or more accurately, the lack of a relationship—he had with Nate’s falcons. It was something Nate had once told him about, how different and unique it was with birds of prey compared to other creatures. The cold partnership between falconer and falcon was primal and unsentimental. Quite simply, the birds never warmed up to the falconer and certainly not to Joe. To anyone. Raptors weren’t like dogs, or horses, or even cats. They didn’t pretend to like humans, or show even a flicker of affection. They simply coexisted with people, using them to obtain food and shelter but never actually giving back anything but their own ability to hunt and kill. The falcon could fly away at any time and never come back. There was nothing a falconer could do to retrieve a bird. It was a relationship based on mutual self-interest and a kind of unfeeling trust.
After twenty minutes, Joe saw a dark speck dislodge from the gunmetal clouds. He stood and wiped the rain from his face and watched as the speck got larger. It was the peregrine, the ultimate killer. The red-tail appeared shortly thereafter.
The peregrine buzzed Joe twice before flaring and landing on the edge of the rise. The red-tail made two false landings, close enough to see the meat, then climbed back up into the sky and disappeared.
He looked at the peregrine closely. The bird wasn’t the least bit interested in the rabbits. And there was something else: the bird’s gullet was swelled to bursting and there were blood flecks and bits of white down on its breast. It had already eaten.
Joe squatted and looked into the falcon’s eyes, which were as impenetrable as shiny black stones.
“Who fed you?” Joe asked. “Or did you kill something yourself?” Then he thought about the red-tail. “Did you both make a kill?”
Something made him turn and look at the stone house that had stood empty for half a year.
Fresh lengths of pine boarded up two of the windows. The front door had been replaced. And half a row of new shingles were laid out on the roof.
Despite the drumming of the rain, Joe felt his heart whump in his chest.
He called out, “Nate, where are you?”
Then he saw him. Downstream, where he’d been hiding and watching in a thick stand of reeds. The reeds were dancing around him with falling rain. Nate rose from them, naked, holding his huge .454 Casull in his right fist. Joe didn’t even want to ask.
“Have you come to kill me?” Nate called out.
“No.”
“I deserve it.”
“I know you do.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Nate said.
They stared at each other for a minute. Nate was slick with rain and his white skin was mud streaked from hiding in the bog. His long blond hair stuck to the tops of his shoulders. His eyes bored into Joe.
Nate had once vowed to protect Joe’s family. Joe had promised to keep Nate’s birds fed. Despite everything that had happened, both had lived up to their obligations, something greater than mere friendship.
Joe said, “Why don’t you put on some clothes?”
25
J. W. KEELEY DIDN’T LIKE THE WAY HANK SCARLETT was talking to him. He didn’t like it at all.
The rest of Hank’s men had been dismissed from the dinner table—only he and Hank remained. The men had gone back to their bunkhouse a mile from Hank’s lodge. They had grumbled through a huge steak dinner about the rain, how it had knocked out their telephone service in the bunkhouse and how the lights kept going on and off. Especially annoying was the fact that the cable was out for television and they would miss the third game of the NBA playoffs. And the worst thing of all was the news that the river had jumped its banks and was flooding the roads to the highway. The men would be trapped on the ranch until the water receded, so they couldn’t even go to town to see the game. They had complained without quarter until Hank finally pushed away from the table, threw his napkin onto his plate as if spiking a football, and said in his loudest and most nasally voice, “Why don’t you boys just get the hell out of my house and go bitch somewhere else?”
That had shut them up, all right.
“Not you, Bill,” Hank had said. So Monroe sat back down at the table.
Because the electricity was out again, the dining room was lit by three hissing Coleman gas lanterns. The light played on Hank’s face, making the shadowed hollows under his cheekbones look skull-like and cavernous. The glass eyes on the head mounts of the game animals on the walls glowed with reflection.
That’s when Hank began to annoy him, chipping away with that damned high voice, each word dropping like a stone in a pond, plunk-plunk-plunk.
“You need to stay away from that game warden,” Hank said.
Keeley had told Hank and the boys the story over their thick steaks: how he’d dropped the buck right in front of the game warden, then watched the warden’s truck break down in an aborted hot pursuit. The boys had laughed. A couple of them had laughed so hard that Keeley considered spilling the beans on the other things he’d done to get under the warden’s skin. Luckily, he held his tongue, because that would have led to too many questions. Hank had appeared to be smiling, but now Keeley understood that it hadn’t been a smile at all. It was too damned tough to tell if Hank was smiling or not. That was just one of the things wrong with the man.
Keeley glared at Hank. “That’s my business,” he said in response. “It ain’t no concern of yours.”
“The hell it ain’t!” Hank snapped back. “I didn’t make you my foreman so you could draw the cops in here because of your fucking antics with the local game warden. Joe Pickett knows for sure you’re out here now, and I would guess he’s told the sheriff.”
Keeley gestured toward the ceiling at the sound of the rain thrumming the roof. “That sheriff couldn’t get out here right now even if he wanted to. Didn’t you just tell the boys the river’s over the road?”
Hank nodded. “Except for one little two-track on high ground down by Arlen’s place, my guess is there is no way in or out.”
“Where’s that?”
“About a mile downriver,” Hank said. “I’d guess that road is still dry. But if the river gets any higher, that one’ll be underwater too.”
Keeley filed away the information.
“What’s your problem with him, anyway?” Hank asked.
“Personal.”
“That’s what you always say,” Hank said. “But since what you do could bring the wrath of God down on my ass, you need to tell me just what it is between you two.”
“The wrath of God?” Keeley said, thinking, from what he had observed, that it was an odd way to describe Joe Pickett.
“Him and his buddy Nate Romanowski,” Hank said. “Didn’t I tell you about them?”
Keeley nodded.
“Why don’t you grab that bottle of bourbon from the kitchen?” Hank said. “I’d like a little after-dinner snort. You can join me.”
Keeley hesitated for a beat as he always did when Hank asked him to do something that was beneath him. He wasn’t the fucking kitchen help, after all. He was the new ranch foreman. But Keeley sighed, stood up, and felt around through the liquor cabinet until his hand closed around the thick neck of the half-gallon bottle of Maker’s Mark. A $65 bottle. Nice.
Hank poured two water glasses half full. He didn’t offer ice or water. Keeley sipped and closed his eyes, letting the good bourbon burn his tongue.
“This thing you’ve got with the game warden,” Hank said again, “it’s time you dropped it.”
“I ain’t dropping it,” Keeley said, maybe a little too quickly. Hank froze with his glass halfway to his lips and stared at him.
“What do you mean, you ‘ain’t dropping it’?”
“I told you.” Keeley shrugged. “It’s personal.”
Hank didn’t change his expression, but Keeley could see the blood drain out of Hank’s cheeks. That meant he was getting angry. Which usually meant someone would start hopping around, asking what Hank needed. Fuck that, Keele
y thought. Enough with Hank and his moods.
“Since you got here, you’ve been asking me questions about him,” Hank said. “You’ve been kind of subtle and clever about it, you know, not asking too much at once and not tipping yourself off to the other boys. But I observed it right out of the chute. You got me to talking about those Miller’s weasels, and what happened up there with the Sovereigns in that camp. You asked me where the game warden lived, how many kids he’s got, what his wife is like and where she works. Don’t think I haven’t noticed, Bill. You’re obsessed with the guy.”
Keeley said nothing. Hank was smarter than he thought.
“There was that Miller’s weasel stuck to Pickett’s front door,” Hank said. “Then what? The elk heads? I didn’t like that one very much. It reminded me of what those fuckin’ towelheads do over there in the Middle East, cutting off heads. Plus, I like elk. Now I hear somebody put a bullet through their picture window,” he said, his eyes on Keeley like two flat black lumps of charcoal. “I’d say that’s going too far. That’s too damned mean, considering there are children in the house. Made that family move, is what I hear.
“So my question is,” Hank said, leaning forward, “just what in the hell is wrong with you? Why do you hate Joe Pickett so much? I know if I hadn’t found you and stopped you that night outside the Stockman you would’ve beat him to death.”
“There ain’t nothing wrong with me,” Keeley said, resenting the implication. Feeling the rage start to surge in his chest and belly.
Joe Pickett was all he had left, Keeley thought. After five years in prison they raided his hunting camp and tried to find the bodies of that Atlanta couple, after Keeley was forced to run away. The only thing he still had of value was his hatred, and that was still white hot.
Damn, he hated to be judged by any man.
Then he realized what Hank was leading up to. He was going to fire him. That wouldn’t do. Not yet.
“People think I’m a hater,” Hank said, refilling his glass. “But I’m not. I’m just not. Not like you. I don’t even hate Arlen. He hates me, and my defense just looks to some like hate. No one has ever been as mean, as low, as my brother Arlen. There’s a hole where his feelings should be. I’ve always known that, because I saw it up close and personal when we were little boys. He puts up a damned good front, damned good. Hell, I admire him for it, the way he can prance around and shake hands and act like he gives a shit about people. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t care for anyone but Arlen. Arlen is his favorite subject, and his only subject. He hates me because I know him for what he truly is. Did I ever tell you about the time he cut the hamstring tendons on my dog? When I was six years old and he was ten? He denied it, but it was him. Damn, I loved that dog, and I had to shoot it.”
Keeley was speechless. He had never heard Hank talk so much before. Why was the man opening up this way? Didn’t Hank realize who he was talking to? That Keeley was much more like Arlen than Hank? That instead of invoking sympathy or a bond or a mutual understanding, Keeley listened simply so he could look for an opening where he could strike?
Hank wasn’t so smart after all, Keeley thought.
“Mother knew, but she wouldn’t admit it,” Hank said. “She didn’t want to think her oldest boy was a fucking sociopath—although that’s exactly what he is. She didn’t want the town to know, or anybody to know. That’s why she stayed down there at the ranch house, so she could keep an eye on him. And that’s why I think he got rid of her.”
Keeley poured himself more bourbon. This was getting rich.
“That’s why Mother had that will drawn up with Meade Davis giving me the ranch if something happened to her,” Hank said. “She told me about it but kept it a secret from Arlen. But then he broke into the law office and found out what the will really said.”
Hank looked up, and his eyes flashed with betrayal. “I shoulda’ fucking known that a lawyer like Meade Davis would change his story if he was offered enough money. That’s what Arlen did, that son-of-a-bitch. He got to Davis and either threatened him or sweetened the pot. Or both. Now Davis claims the ranch was supposed to go to Arlen after all.
“I can’t keep up with the guy. All I can do is fortify my bunker,” Hank said morosely, gesturing around his own house.
“He even convinced my daughter I was a bad man,” he said, his eyes getting suddenly misty. “That may be the worst thing he’s ever done.”
“At least you have a daughter,” Keeley said flatly.
Hank didn’t follow.
“I had a daughter once,” Keeley said. “Her name was April. My brother thought she was his, but she wasn’t. She was mine. April was the result of a little fling I had with my sister-in-law, Jeannie Keeley. My brother, Ote, never knew a damned thing about it.”
Hank’s face went slack. “Keeley . . .” he said. “The Picketts had a foster daughter named Keeley.”
“That’s right.”
“Ote Keeley was your brother? Jeannie was your sister-in-law? Jeannie, who died in that fire with April?”
“That’s right,” Keeley said, his teeth clenched.
“Jesus,” Hank said.
“Joe Pickett was responsible for the death of my brother, my sister-in-law, and my daughter,” Keeley hissed. “And he don’t even know why I’m here. I’m an avenging angel, here to take out the man who destroyed my family.”
Hank sat back. “Joe didn’t kill anyone,” he said. “You’re full of shit, Bill.”
Keeley felt his face get hot. “He was in the middle of everything. He was responsible.”
Hank shook his head. “I’ve been here a long time, Bill. I know this country, and I know what happened. Joe Pickett tried to save your daughter, if that’s who she was. He didn’t . . .”
“My name ain’t Bill.”
That stopped Hank.
“My real name is John Wayne Keeley.”
Hank stopped and swallowed. Keeley liked the look of confusion on Hank’s face.
“You know,” Keeley said, standing up and pacing, “when I first heard about what happened to April I was in prison. I went along for a year or so, not really thinking about it. Things that happen on the outside don’t seem real. Then one day I looked up and I realized I had no family. Nobody. No one was still alive to connect me to anyone else. My folks were dead, my brother, my sister-in-law, now my little daughter. I tried to forget all that when I started a guide service. But this fucking arrogant asshole client from Atlanta was there with his wife. They treated me like dirt, especially him. So I fucked her just to piss him off, and he walked in on us, and . . .”
Hank’s eyes were wide.
“You remember Wacey Hedeman?” Keeley asked, still pacing, although he now circled the table.
Hank nodded, following Keeley’s movement with his eyes.
“That was me.”
Keeley left out the cowboy. He would never tell anyone about it. That was his secret, like a sexual fantasy, the way that cowboy had tumbled off his horse after the shot.
He was behind Hank now, and the rancher would have had to turn completely around in his chair to keep his eyes on him. But before he could do that, Keeley snatched a dirty steak knife from the table with his right hand while he clamped Hank’s head against his chest with his left hand and he cut the rancher’s throat open from ear to ear.
Hank tried to spin away, but all he could manage was to stand and turn around, facing Keeley while his blood flowed down his shirt. Keeley used the opening to bury the knife into Hank Scarlett’s heart. It took three tries.
Hank looked perplexed for a moment before his legs turned to rubber and he fell to the floor. Keeley stood above Hank’s gurgling, jerking body, watching blood stream across the floor like the Twelve Sleep River jumping its banks outside.
THE LIGHTS FLICKERED on. Keeley had no idea how long it would last, but he used the opportunity to walk across the dining room and pick up the phone. He left bloody footprints on the Navaho rug.
There was a dial t
one, so Keeley punched in the numbers out of memory.
Arlen picked up.
Keeley said, “You owe me big-time now, Bubba . . .”
“Who is this?”
“You know who it is.”
“Bill? What are you talking about?”
“You know who it is. The problem is solved.”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Knock it off, Arlen. You know what we discussed. You said you’d make it worth my while in a big way if I helped you out with your problem. That night in your kitchen, remember? That’s what you said.”
“Who did you say is calling?”
Keeley held the phone away from his ear, trying to figure out what kind of man Arlen really was to suddenly play this dangerous game with him.
“Arlen, goddammit,” Keeley said, his voice cracking, “you know who this is and you damn well sure know what I’m talking about when I say your problem is solved . . .”
“Bill,” Arlen said, his voice flat, “you must be having a bad dream. We’ve never discussed anything of consequence I can think of . . .”
And then the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness except for the lanterns.
“I’VE BEEN BETRAYED,” Keeley told Hank’s lifeless body as he poured another half glass of bourbon. “You were right about him. He has no conscience, that brother of yours.”
Keeley sipped. The bourbon had long since stopped burning. Now it was just like drinking liquid warmth. The aroma of the alcohol drowned out the copperlike smell of fresh blood. That was a good thing.
Cut the body up, Keeley was thinking. Scatter the pieces all over the ranch. What the predators don’t eat, the river will wash away.
But he’d need more fortification before he could start that job, he thought. Keeley had butchered hundreds of animals over the years. He knew how to do it. But this would be his first man.
