by C. J. Box
He’d retrieved the skinning knives and bone saws he used on the Town Elk from the shed. Now all he needed was nerve.
After draining the glass, Keeley managed to lift Hank’s body up on the kitchen counter, so it straddled the two big stainless-steel sinks. He was surprised how light Hank actually was. All that gravitas he’d credited to Hank was a result of attitude, not bulk, he guessed.
Keeley slipped the boning knife out of the block and sharpened it on the steel, expertly whipping the edge into shape. The German steel sang on the sharpening stick, so Keeley almost didn’t hear the sound of the front door opening.
It had to be the wind, Keeley thought. Or one of those fucking ranch hands, wandering back up the road to complain about something. Whoever or whatever it was, he had to make sure no one entered the dining room . . .
As he flew through the doorway of the dining room, into the living room, he could see the front door hanging open and the rain splashing puddles outside. Keeley reached out to close the door when an arm gripped his throat in a hammerlock.
“You were about to ruin his face” was the last thing Keeley heard.
KEELEY ROLLED OVER on the floor and opened his eyes at four-thirty in the morning. Predawn light, muted by the storm, fused through the door and the front windows.
He was freezing. His cheek where his head had been turned was wet with both rainwater from the open front door and blood from the dining room.
He managed to sit back on his haunches. Everything hurt, including his brains. He stood, and the events of the night before came rushing back.
Hank’s body was gone.
Arlen had screwed him over.
The Scarlett family was even sicker than he’d originally thought.
But there was no going back now. No way to undo what he’d done, and what happened afterward.
Keeley formed a plan. It came easily, and the simplicity of it stunned him. There was a way to get back at Arlen and Joe Pickett in one fell swoop.
It was still raining.
26
JOE GOT UP EARLY ENOUGH TO CONSCIOUSLY AVOID running into Missy in her kitchen, made coffee, showered, and was pulling on his uniform shirt when Marybeth said, “Joe . . . should you be wearing that?”
He stopped, puzzled at what she meant for a moment, then remembered he had been fired. He had no right to wear the uniform anymore. But he didn’t feel that he was fired. He felt normal, or as normal as normal could get while they remained at the Longbrake Ranch and after his encounter with Nate Romanowski the night before.
“This is going to take awhile to get used to,” Joe said, stripping the shirt off and replacing it with a baggy University of Wyoming hooded sweatshirt.
He said, “What in the hell am I going to do today? Why in the hell didn’t I just sleep in or something?”
Marybeth didn’t have an answer to that.
AFTER RETURNING FROM Nate’s house the previous night in the rain, Joe and Marybeth had sat down with Sheridan and Lucy and told them he’d been fired.
Their questions were practical, if somewhat uncomprehending:
Lucy asked if it meant that she would no longer have to go to school.
Sorry, dear, Joe said. No such luck.
Sheridan asked if it meant they could get a new vehicle to replace the lousy old Game and Fish truck.
Maybe someday, Joe said. In the meantime, they’d have to settle for the van and maybe borrowing one of Bud Longbrake’s vehicles.
Lucy asked the toughest question of all: “Does this mean we’ll be safer? That we can move back to our old house now?”
Joe and Marybeth exchanged glances. Marybeth said, “We’re going to be staying here for a while, Lucy. Our old house doesn’t really belong to us. It never did. And as for being safer, I suppose so. Right, Joe?”
Joe said, “Yup.” But he had no idea. Whoever had been targeting them might stop now, but then again . . .
“I like our old house,” Lucy said, starting to cry and tear Joe’s heart out. “I’ll miss our old house . . .”
Sheridan studied Joe’s face for a long time, saying nothing. Joe wished she would stop. She understood better than he’d expected how devastating it was to him, how doing the thing he loved had been taken away. He doubted she thought much further than that yet. But he was somewhat reassured by the fact that her demeanor reflected concern for his feelings, not what it would mean for the family. Yet.
IN BED, JOE had told Marybeth about finding Nate. He watched her reaction carefully, and she knew he was doing exactly that.
“And how was he?” she asked.
“Naked as a jaybird,” Joe said.
“You know what I mean. Was he doing all right? Is he just passing through, or what?”
“We didn’t really discuss it. I suggested he put on some clothes and he did. I don’t know why he goes around naked all the time. He thanked me for keeping his birds fed. I told him there were a lot of people looking for him, starting with the FBI. Then I left.”
Marybeth wanted to ask a million questions, it was obvious, and Joe really didn’t want to answer any of them. He was tired, and beaten down. Nate was a subject he didn’t have any energy for. Plus, he was unemployed.
“I don’t understand men sometimes,” she said. “How could you see a friend you haven’t seen in half a year—a man you’ve been through hell with on more than one occasion—and just say hello and go home?”
Joe shrugged. “It was pretty easy.”
“Where has he been all of this time?”
“He didn’t say.”
Marybeth shook her head in disbelief.
“If you’re wondering if he asked about you, he didn’t,” Joe said, turning away from her in bed.
“That was cruel, Joe,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry I said that.”
Someday they would need to talk about what had happened while he was away in Jackson. But for reasons he couldn’t really grasp, he didn’t want to know. Marybeth seemed to want to explain. Nate had even acted as if he was looking for an opening. But Joe just wanted the entire thing to go away, and thought it had. But that was before Nate came back.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE it,” Lucy said at breakfast, lowering the telephone into the cradle. “They haven’t canceled school.”
Sheridan moaned. Both girls had convinced themselves over breakfast that the rain and flooding would mean that school would be canceled. But Lucy had called her friend Jenny, the daughter of the principal, and received the news.
Joe found himself hoping school would be closed as well. He wanted the girls around the ranch house. He couldn’t imagine spending the day not working, rambling around the place, ducking Missy.
“I’ll drive the girls out to the bus,” Joe said, pushing away from the table.
AS THEY DROVE to the state highway in one of Bud’s ranch pickups where the bus would pick them up, Sheridan asked Joe, “Are we going to be okay?”
“Yes, we are. Your mother has a great business going, and I’ll find something soon,” he said, not having a clue what it would be.
“It’s weird thinking we won’t be going back to our house. Can we at least go get our stuff?”
“Of course,” Joe said, feeling instantly terrible for putting her through this. “Of course we can.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Julie will be on the bus,” Sheridan said.
“Isn’t that okay?”
“Yeah. I just don’t feel the same way about her anymore,” she said. “I feel really guilty about that. I used to think she was so cool and now, well, I know she’s weird but it isn’t her fault.”
“Things change,” Joe said.
“I wish I could be more girly-girl,” Sheridan said. “I wish I could see Julie and squeal and pretend nothing was wrong, but I just can’t. Other girls can do that, but I can’t.”
Joe reached over and patted her on the leg. “You’re okay, Sherry,” he said, meaning it
.
“Look at the ducks,” Lucy said, pointing out the window at a body of water that had once been a pasture.
THE BUS ARRIVED at the same time Joe did. Because they were now living so far out of town, there was only one student on board—the first to be picked up. Julie Scarlett pressed her face to the window and waved at Sheridan as the girls climbed out into the mud and skipped through puddles toward the bus.
Joe waved at the driver and the driver waved back.
27
“I NEARLY DIDN’T MAKE IT THIS MORNING,” JULIE Scarlett told Sheridan and Lucy. “Uncle Arlen had to drive through a place where the river flooded the road and we nearly didn’t make it. Water came inside the truck . . . it was scary.”
The school bus had another five miles to go before picking anyone else up on their way to Saddlestring. The three girls were trying to have a conversation but it was hard to hear because huge wiper blades squeaked across the windows and standing water sluiced noisily under the carriage of the bus.
“I still don’t know why they’re having school,” Lucy said. “It’s stupid.”
“For once I agree with you,” the bus driver called back over his shoulder. “They should have given us all a day off.”
“Why don’t you call them and tell them we’re flooded out?” Lucy suggested coyly, and the driver laughed.
“What is this?” the driver said, and the bus began to slow down.
Sheridan walked up the aisle and stood behind the driver so she could see.
A yellow pickup truck blocked both lanes of the road, and the bus driver braked to a stop.
“What an idiot,” the driver said. “Maybe his motor quit or something. But I’m not sure I can get around him because of all of the water in the ditches.”
Sheridan watched as a man opened the door and came out of the truck. The man wore a floppy wet cowboy hat and was carrying a rifle.
Her heart leaped into her mouth.
“I know him,” she said, then called to Julie over her shoulder, “Julie, it’s Bill Monroe.”
Julie screwed up her face in puzzlement. “I wonder what he wants,” she said, getting out of her seat and walking up the aisle next to Sheridan.
Monroe was outside the accordion doors of the bus now, and he tapped on the glass with the muzzle of the rifle.
“You girls know him, then?” the driver asked cautiously, his hand resting on the handle to open the doors.
“He works for my dad,” Julie said. “But I’m not sure what he’s doing out here.”
“Well, if you know him . . .” the driver said, and pushed the door handle.
The smell of mud and rain came into the bus as Bill Monroe stepped inside. Sheridan gasped as he raised the rifle and pointed it at the face of the driver.
“This is where you get off,” Monroe said.
Beside her, Sheridan heard Julie scream.
A HALF-HOUR LATER, the phone rang at the Longbrake Ranch. Missy was having coffee with Marybeth and reading the Saddlestring Roundup. Marybeth was ready to go to work. Joe was in their bedroom, doing who knows what.
Missy answered, said, “Hi, honey,” then handed the phone to Marybeth. “It’s Sheridan.”
Marybeth frowned and took the phone. Sheridan had never called this early because she shouldn’t be at school yet. Maybe they had canceled school after all, Marybeth thought. Maybe Sheridan needed someone to meet them on the highway so they could come home.
“Hi, Mom,” she said.
Marybeth sensed something was wrong. Sheridan’s voice was tight and hard.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the bus. I need to ask you a question. Is it okay if Lucy and I go out to Julie’s house after school tonight?”
Marybeth paused. The scenario didn’t work for her. She asked Sheridan to repeat what she had said, and Sheridan did. But there was something wrong in the tone, Marybeth thought. There was something wrong, period. What were Julie and Sheridan cooking up? And why would they want to include Lucy in it?
“You know I don’t like it when you spring things like this on me,” Marybeth said. “What are you girls scheming?”
“Nothing,” Sheridan said. “We just want to hang out. There probably won’t be practice.”
“You want to hang out with your little sister?”
“Sure, she’s cool.”
“That’s a first,” Marybeth said. “Let me talk with her.”
“Just a minute.”
Marybeth could tell that Sheridan had covered the mouthpiece of the phone so she could discuss something that her mother couldn’t overhear. Marybeth sat forward in her chair, straining to hear. She could sense Missy looking at her now, picking up on her alarm.
“She can’t talk,” Sheridan said, coming back. “She has food in her mouth.”
“What?”
“She’s eating some of her lunch early,” Sheridan said. “You know how she always does that? Then she doesn’t have enough to eat at lunch and she has to mooch from either me or the other kids?”
“Sheridan,” Marybeth said, dropping her voice to a near-whisper, “Lucy has never done that. She brings most of her lunch home with her, and you know it. If only I could get Lucy to eat. Now what is going on? Where are you calling from?”
“The bus,” Sheridan said, too breezily. “On my cell phone.”
“On your cell phone,” Marybeth repeated back. “Your cell phone.”
“That’s why you got it for me,” Sheridan said, “for emergencies like this . . .”
Suddenly, the call was disconnected.
Marybeth felt as if she’d been hit with a hammer. Sheridan had been trying to tell her something, all right.
“Oh my God,” Marybeth said, standing, dropping the phone on the table and running out of the room while Missy called after her to ask her what was wrong.
“JOE!”
JOE WAS NOT in the bedroom, but in Bud’s cramped and cluttered home office. He had recalled his conversation the day before with Tony Portenson’s office, how he’d requested a fax be sent to him. But since he wasn’t at his house to see what had arrived, he had called again that morning and asked Portenson’s secretary to fax the information to Bud’s home office instead.
He stood near the fax machine, watching the paper roll out.
SHERIDAN SAT WITH Lucy on the bus. Julie was in the seat behind them. Bill Monroe had taken the phone and dropped it in his pocket and had returned to the driver’s seat, saying, “I hope you didn’t just do something there that will fuck us up.” His eyes were pulled back into thin slits and his jaw was set. He needed a shave and he needed to clean what looked like blood off his hands and shirt.
The bus shuddered as Monroe worked the gears and did a three-point turn and the bus almost foundered in the ditch. But he got the bus turned around, and it picked up speed, and Monroe clumsily raced through the gears with a grinding sound.
They were headed for the Thunderhead Ranch.
Sheridan held Lucy, who had buried her head into her chest, crying.
MARYBETH FOUND HIM in the office, holding up a sheet of paper.
“Joe,” Marybeth said frantically, “I think something has happened to the girls. Sheridan just called me and said she was on the bus, but I don’t know where she really is. Or Lucy, either. She said she was calling from her cell phone. Something is horribly wrong.”
The look he gave her froze her to her spot. He held up the sheet of paper and turned it to her. It was the mug shot faxed by Portenson’s office.
“This is J. W. Keeley,” Joe said. “He’s an ex-con who supposedly murdered a man in Wyoming and a couple of others down in Mississippi. The FBI is looking for him. But he has another name, Marybeth: Bill Monroe.”
Marybeth couldn’t get past the name Keeley.
The name of her foster daughter who had died tragically. This man had the same name? And was from the same place?
It all became horribly clear.
28
JOE JAM
MED THE MUG SHOT OF J. W. KEELEY INTO HIS back pocket and violently rubbed his face with his hands, trying to think of what to do next. Marybeth stood in the doorway of the office with her arms wrapped around herself, swaying a little, her eyes wide.
“Okay,” Joe said, forcing himself to be calm while his mind swirled with anger and fear of the worst kind. “I need to find the bus. A school bus can’t be hard to find.”
“Should I call the sheriff?” Marybeth asked.
“Yes, call him. Call the school too. Call the FBI in Cheyenne—the number’s right here on this sheet,” he said, handing her the remaining pages of the fax that outlined the allegations against J. W. Keeley. “My God . . .” he moaned.
“Joe, are you going to be all right? Does this man have our daughters?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he might. I’m going to go find him.”
“I can’t think of anything worse,” she said, tears bursting from her eyes, streaming down her face.
“Stay calm,” he said. “We’ve got to stay calm and think.” He paced the room. “If he took the bus into town, it’ll be easy to find. The sheriff can find it. Ask for Deputy Reed, he’s competent. But if the bus turned around, it would be headed back here or to the Thunderhead Ranch. Or to the mountains. I’d guess he’s going that way.”
Joe plunged into the closet and grabbed his belt and holster and buckled them on. Then he pulled out his shotgun.
“I’ve got my cell phone,” Joe said, clamping on his hat. “Call me and tell me what’s going on since I don’t have a radio. If you hear something—anything—call me right away.”
Marybeth breathed deeply, hugged herself tighter.
“The sheriff, the FBI, the school. Anybody else?” she asked.
Joe looked up. “Nate. Tell him I’ll be on Bighorn Road headed toward the mountains. If he can get there to meet me, I can use the help. If he isn’t there in fifteen minutes, I’ll leave him. I can’t wait for him to do his hair.”
