Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  Joe exhaled a small cloud of condensation. The morning had not yet warmed above freezing, and the sun hadn’t risen high enough to melt the scrim of frost on the pine tree boughs all around him or the frozen mat of grass. He loved the snap of a fall morning in the mountains.

  The stock trailer door moaned as he opened it, and he led both geldings, the older paint Toby and sprightly young sorrel Rojo, out of the trailer and around the side of it and tied their halters to the barred windows. He saddled Rojo and slid his shotgun into the right saddle scabbard and a scoped Winchester .270 into the left. The saddlebags were already packed with maps, permits, gear, and lunch, and he lashed them to the skirt of the saddle. Toby pawed the ground and blew through his nostrils impatiently, wanting to get going.

  “Soon,” Joe said to his wife’s horse. “Just chill.”

  Joe Pickett was in his mid-forties, lean, and of medium height and build. He wore a battered gray Stetson and faded Wranglers over lace-up outfitter boots. His service weapon that he rarely drew, a .40 Glock 23, was on his hip, along with handcuffs and a long cylinder of bear spray. A citation book jutted from his back pocket.

  With the hot engine block ticking behind him, Joe Pickett leaned against the grille of his unit and speed-dialed his daughter Sheridan, a freshman at the University of Wyoming. She’d been at school since late August.

  Her phone rang five times before she picked up.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Sleeping in on your birthday?”

  “No, Dad. I just got back to my room from the shower. I don’t have class until ten on Mondays.” Her voice was clear but she sounded tired, he thought. “Mom already called me, but I guess you know that.”

  He smiled. Since Sheridan had been born at 6:15 a.m. nineteen years before, Marybeth always woke up her daughter at exactly that time on her birthday. It used to mean opening her bedroom door and rousting her. Now it was an early-morning call. He pictured her in her dormitory room in Laramie with wet hair, speaking in a low tone so she wouldn’t wake her roommate.

  “You guys aren’t going to do that forever, are you?” Sheridan said softly but with a slight exasperated edge. “I mean, no one in their right mind is up at that hour here. Some people are just getting in.”

  Joe chuckled. “How are things going, kiddo? Are you settling in? Making some friends?”

  “Both, I guess,” she said. “The classes are the easy part. You know how that goes. I know a lot of kids here from high school, but everything’s different. I miss you guys …” she said, then caught herself.

  “It’s okay,” Joe said. “We miss you. I miss you.”

  “April doesn’t,” Sheridan said with a laugh. April was their sixteen-year-old foster daughter who had taken over Sheridan’s vacant room. Previously, she’d had to share it with fourteen-year-old Lucy. Marybeth, Joe’s wife, had discovered a bag of marijuana in April’s underwear drawer during the move. Battle lines had been drawn. April had been grounded and had one week left before she could go anywhere other than school, and they’d confiscated her cell phone. But having her at home all the time was no picnic for the rest of the family, either, because no one could darken a room like a sullen April. Lucy did her best to avoid April and all the drama by staying late at school for rehearsals and keeping her bedroom door closed at home.

  “I just know she’s wearing all my clothes and using all my stuff without asking,” Sheridan said. Joe thought about it and recalled April wearing one of Sheridan’s sweaters just the day before. “She’ll stretch everything out with her big … chest.”

  “No comment,” Joe said. Then: “What about friends?”

  “A couple,” Sheridan said. “One girl in particular named Nadia. We’ve got a couple of classes together and we started hanging out. She’s pretty cool.”

  “Where’s she from?”

  “Maryland somewhere. She says she really likes Wyoming.”

  “Wait to see what she says this winter,” Joe said. “There’s already some snow in the mountains here.” Then: “Hey—you’re coming home for Thanksgiving, right?”

  “At this point, yes,” Sheridan said with hesitation.

  Joe felt his ears get hot. “What do you mean, ‘At this point’?”

  “Nadia asked me if I wanted to go east with her. I’ve never been east before. I’d like to see D.C.”

  Joe tried to think of what to say.

  “Her parents will cover the ticket,” Sheridan said quickly.

  “It’s not that,” Joe said. “I think your mom and your sisters would like to see you. In fact, I know they would.”

  Silence.

  “You’re making me feel guilty,” she said.

  “That’s my job.”

  He heard Sheridan chuckle again. “It might be cool coming home without having Grandmother Missy around.”

  Joe nodded. Marybeth’s mother was supposedly on a world cruise, burning through some of the money she’d inherited from her former husband’s death. Joe had encouraged her never to come back.

  “Talk to your mother about Thanksgiving,” Joe said.

  “I will.”

  As they talked, Joe looked up to see a banged-up green Game and Fish pickup with state plates turning into the campground off Hazelton Road. His trainee had arrived. Joe waved at the pickup, and it turned into the pull-through and swung around the stock trailer.

  “Hey!” Joe shouted. “Watch those horses.”

  The driver hit the brakes with his front bumper just eighteen inches from Rojo’s hock, then reversed so he could park in back of the trailer. The trainee looked fresh-faced and humiliated already.

  “Where are you?” Sheridan asked.

  “Up in the mountains. Area thirty-three and thirty-four—Middle Fork and the Upper South Fork Twelve Sleep River areas. It’s time I get out and check all the elk-hunting camps up here. Unfortunately, the department assigned me a trainee to tag along. He looks to be about your age but dumb, based on how he drives.”

  Sheridan said, “You know, Dad, I miss going with you to do stuff like that.”

  The statement caught him by surprise. “You do?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I miss the mountains, and our horses. I even miss Nate, even though he sort of hung me out there as far as our training goes.”

  Sheridan had been an apprentice to the master falconer. At one point, she’d desperately wanted to fly her own falcon, but circumstances and Nate’s situation had prevented it.

  “Maybe someday,” Joe said, doubting there would be a someday. “Sheridan, I’ve got to go before this trainee does something stupid. But happy birthday, kid.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He closed the phone and dropped it into his vest pocket as the trainee appeared from around the horse trailer. He was short and stocky, with a thatch of brown hair with highlights in it. He had a square jaw and a nose that had been broken and a walk with an athletic spring in it. He seemed easygoing and eager to please, and he didn’t look much older than Sheridan. A good-looking kid, though, Joe thought.

  “Joe Pickett?” the trainee asked.

  Joe nodded.

  “I’m Luke Brueggemann. I’m your trainee. Sorry about nearly hitting your horses.”

  “You’d have had to answer to my wife if you had,” Joe said. “And believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

  Brueggemann nodded. He had a large duffel bag thrown over his shoulder. His red uniform shirt was fresh out of the box, as were his denims.

  “Can I say, sir,” Brueggemann said, “it’s a real thrill for me to meet you. I’ve heard about you over the years.”

  Joe took Brueggemann’s measure. He remembered being a trainee sixteen years before, when he was right out of college. His mentor had been a man named Vern Dunnegan, and it was in the days when game wardens often made their own law within their districts. He’d learned more from Dunnegan than he’d wanted to. But some of the legitimate skills and lessons from those years still stuck with him.

  “I hope it
was good,” Joe said.

  “Most of it,” Brueggemann said, grinning and looking away.

  “Are you from around here?”

  The trainee nodded. “I grew up in Sundance,” he said. Sundance was located in Wyoming’s Black Hills country, in the northeast section of the square state. “Then I worked with my uncle as a commercial fisherman in Alaska to get money for college. When I came back, I did my four in Laramie and graduated with a wildlife biology degree.”

  “Good for you,” Joe said.

  “Thank you.”

  “My daughter’s at UW now,” Joe said. “I was just talking to her.”

  “Go, Pokes,” Brueggemann said, nodding in recognition.

  “That’s Toby,” Joe said, gesturing toward the paint horse. “Do you know how to put on a saddle?”

  By his expression, Joe could tell Brueggemann had never been this close to a horse before.

  “Here’s what you need to know about horses: the front end bites and the back end kicks and the middle bucks you off,” Joe said. “Come on, I’ll show you. And after we get Toby saddled, you need to go through that big bag and figure out what you can tie behind the saddle, because that’s all the storage you’ll have.”

  WITH BOTH HORSES saddled and ready, Joe spread a topographical map across the hood of his Ford and pointed at the eleven outfitter camps they would try to inspect over the next two days. Brueggemann paid close attention, and stubbed a finger near one of the first camp locations.

  “Isn’t that a road that goes right to it?” he asked.

  Joe nodded.

  “Then why don’t we drive there?”

  Joe looked at him. “Are you nervous about the horses?”

  Brueggemann hesitated, but his answer was obvious: “A little.”

  “I understand,” Joe said. “Always be cautious around horses. As soon as you start to count on them, they’ll stab you in the back.”

  “Then why don’t we drive to the camps?” Brueggemann asked softly, not wanting to seem obstinate.

  Joe said, “We could drive right to most of them. But they’d hear us coming miles away. And even though most of these guys are good hunters, there are a couple I don’t want to know we’re out there. So instead of driving right up on them and giving them a chance to hide or stash illegal carcasses away where we can’t see them, I’d rather approach them in silence. That way we can circle the camps up in the timber from all sides before we decide to ride in.”

  Brueggemann sighed and nodded.

  “If someone’s doing something illegal, like too many elk or dead cow elk in an antler-only area, they’ll likely hang the carcasses within walking distance of the camp but out of sight from the road. It works better to know what the situation is before we talk to the hunters.”

  Joe continued, “I know most of these guys. Half of them are local, and three run guide operations, so they’ll have clients in the camps. Of the eleven camps, ten are familiar names. There’s only one new guy this year, and I want to find out who he is and what he’s up to.” He tapped his finger on Camp Five, which was four and a half miles away along the old logging road they’d soon be riding on.

  Joe’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He grimaced as he pulled it out and looked at the display. It read twelve sleep county sheriff’s office.

  “This is never good,” Joe mumbled out loud. Then: “Joe Pickett.”

  “Joe, this is Sheriff McLanahan.”

  Joe rolled his eyes. He and McLanahan had a long history, mostly bad.

  “Joe,” McLanahan said, “a fisherman down in the river in the middle of town just called me in a panic. He saw what he thought was an empty drift boat floating toward him in the current. When he looked inside, he found three dead bodies.”

  Joe felt his scalp crawl.

  “I need you to come in and take a look at these guys,” the sheriff said. “I think they’re friends of yours.”

  “Friends?”

  McLanahan hung up.

  Joe looked to Brueggemann. “Now you’ll learn how to unsaddle a horse and lead it into the trailer. We’ve got a hitch in our plans,” he said.

  3

  JOE LOCATED the sheriff, the boat, and the bodies in the garage adjacent to the old county building in Saddlestring. On the way into town he’d listened to the chatter over the radio. Word of the triple homicide was rocketing across the state. Although nearly every resident had several guns at home and many carried weapons in public, there were only fifteen to twenty murders a year in Wyoming. So three at once was big news, and Joe understood the magnitude, just as he was puzzled by McLanahan’s mention of the victims as his “friends.” He had a dark premonition that one of the bodies might belong to Nate Romanowski, although the idea of anyone actually getting to Nate seemed incomprehensible.

  As he entered town he was greeted with a new reelect our sheriff kyle mclanahan billboard. On it, the sheriff leaned out of his pickup window to offer a carrot to a horse. Joe shook his head.

  Sheriff Kyle McLanahan had it in for him, and their professional relationship had gotten worse in the past few months. McLanahan had made it clear to his deputies that they wouldn’t be chastised for making Joe’s life miserable. They did it in subtle ways, such as not responding to help requests and losing or delaying paperwork Joe filed. He’d gotten around it somewhat by working directly with County Attorney Dulcie Schalk and bypassing the sheriff’s department.

  As election day neared, McLanahan had spent a good deal more time than usual out of his office, meeting voters and playing up his persona of a western caricature. Joe had heard from a few residents that the sheriff cited him in particular as one of the biggest reasons why he’d been humiliated during the trial of Missy, Joe’s mother-in-law, who’d been accused of murdering her former husband. Up until the trial, McLanahan seemed to be cruising toward reelection. Not anymore.

  JOE PARKED next to a sheriff’s department SUV outside the garage. Three other departmental vehicles were lined up on the other side of the open garage door, as was an ambulance and Sheriff McLanahan’s pickup. Dulcie Schalk’s red Subaru wagon was also out front. Dulcie was also stinging from the outcome of the trial and was still cool to Joe, but he thought he sensed a warming. Dulcie was young, tough, professional, and one of Marybeth’s friends. Their mutual love of horses and riding was strong enough that the trial hadn’t derailed their friendship.

  Joe killed his motor and jumped out and took a deep breath before going inside.

  “Hey,” Luke Brueggemann called out. He’d parked behind Joe’s pickup. “Should I tag along, or what?”

  After all he’d been thinking and worrying about, Joe had forgotten about his trainee. Joe put his hands on his hips and thought about it.

  “Well?” Brueggemann asked, stopping short of reaching Joe.

  “Have you ever seen a dead body?” Joe asked.

  “Sure,” Brueggemann said, hitching up his pants.

  “You have?”

  The trainee looked above and to the right of Joe. “My grandma. At her funeral.”

  Joe smiled, despite the situation. “It’s up to you, Luke. I won’t force you, but I won’t keep you away.”

  With that, Joe turned and headed for the garage. No footsteps sounded behind him.

  “RON CONNELLY,” Joe said, as he fought to keep his stomach from churning, “He’s known as the Mad Archer. I arrested him twice. The other two are Stumpy and Paul Kelly. They have a shady outfitting business outside of Winchester. I’ve been trying to catch them poaching for years.”

  The sheriff had arranged to have all of the county vehicles moved out of the big garage to make space. The three victims were laid out next to one another on thick plastic sheeting on the concrete floor. When Joe first saw them, he was reminded of Old West photos of dead outlaws on display. All three were stiffened into the unnatural positions in which they’d been found.

  Joe asked, “Why didn’t you just pull their wallets to see who they were?”

  Before
McLanahan could answer, Dulcie Schalk said, “I told the sheriff not to touch the bodies again until the forensics people could get here.”

  McLanahan made a face, obviously displeased that Schalk had taken over.

  Joe looked around.

  The boat they’d arrived in was on the concrete next to the bodies. It smelled of blood. Joe imagined there were gallons of it congealing inside, but he didn’t look to confirm it. He did note that the Mad Archer’s compound bow and a Savage twelve-gauge pump shotgun with a synthetic stock had been tagged and placed on a tarp.

  “See?” Sheriff McLanahan said to Dulcie Schalk, who stood off to the side, holding her hand over her mouth in horror. “I told you he’d know ’em. They’re of his ilk.”

  Joe ignored the comment and spoke directly to Schalk. “Ron Connelly killed dozens of game animals with his bow and arrows over the years. Down in southern Wyoming where I was stationed for a while, he took potshots at cows and horses, too. I know he wounded an eagle once, and that time I caught him and threw him in the clink. But the penalties for poaching and injuring animals are so weak he didn’t spend much time in jail.

  “Our department has—I should say had—alerts out on him,” Joe said. “All the game wardens in the state kept a good eye out for this guy. He used to be a tweaker, but I’d heard he cleaned up his act. Apparently not well enough,” he said, nodding toward the body.

  “The Kellys are real backwoods types,” Joe said. “Paul Kelly and his wife, Pam, run a few cows and lease out their stud horse, but other than that they survive off welfare payments and some kind of disability pension Paul got from an accident he’d had when he worked for the county road crew. The disability didn’t stop him from running illegal guided hunts, though. Both Paul and Stumpy got the boot from the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association a few years ago because of client complaints and their general lack of ethics. One client claimed they dropped him off up in the Savage Run country and forgot to come back and pick him up so he had to walk out for two days. I’ve had my eye on them for years, but they’re pretty slippery.”