Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  “No ID?” Joe asked.

  “That’s what they said. We don’t have a lot more information on it yet, but they’re investigating. You know the Feds—they don’t share information. They just collect it and make their case and keep us in the dark pretty much.”

  “Do they think the body was Gordon Romanowski?”

  “No,” Reed said. “That they’re sure about. But they said it looks like Gordon and his family—a second wife and two little girls—have split the scene. No one can locate them.”

  Joe’s head spun. He’d checked the falconry website that morning and there had been no new entries.

  “I got the impression there were some other unexplained things going on down there in Colorado Springs,” Reed said. “They wouldn’t tell us what was going on, but maybe there were other bodies found. I don’t know.”

  “Man oh man,” Joe said, and whistled.

  “So because of this mess we’ve got,” Reed said, leaning forward on the rail so he could get closer to Joe, “McLanahan is personally leading the Whiteplume investigation, so he assigned me as lead investigator on the triple homicides. He called the mayor and the editor of the newspaper last night to let them know. He hung me out to dry and set me up to fail. It was a good move on his part, I’ll give that to him. This way, when the election comes around, the voters will have a choice of the racist incumbent who has been there for a while and the incompetent deputy who can’t solve a triple homicide. It evens the playing field, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yup.”

  “I need to ask you something,” Reed said, his voice dropping. “I know we’re friends, but I’ve got a job to do.”

  Here it comes, Joe thought.

  “I know you’re close with Romanowski,” Reed said. “So I’ve got to ask you if you’ve been in contact with him the last couple of days. In any way.”

  Joe looked up. “I talked to him a couple of nights ago.”

  Reed’s face hardened.

  “He told me he didn’t commit murder,” Joe said. “I believe him.”

  “You knew we wanted to talk with him,” Reed said.

  Joe nodded. “And there wasn’t—and isn’t—an arrest warrant. I could have asked him to voluntarily show up at your office for questioning, but he wouldn’t have done it.”

  Reed said softly, “I appreciate you being straight with me.”

  Joe looked away again.

  “Now I’ve got to ask you if you’ve been in contact with him in any form the last couple of days.”

  Joe said, “I haven’t.”

  “But you’ll let me know, right? Now that our department and the Feds are wanting to talk to him?”

  “The Feds have been wanting to talk to him for years,” Joe said. “That’s nothing new.”

  “But a dead body in his father’s house is.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how we can reach him?”

  “Don’t ask me that.”

  Reed reacted as if slapped. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” Joe said. “So don’t ask me questions like that. Nate’s my friend. It’s possible he may reach out to me. I won’t betray him unless you can look me in the eye and say you know he’s done something bad.”

  “It’s sure looking that way, isn’t it?” Reed asked. “The guy isn’t exactly stepping up to clear his name. And now this thing with his dad.”

  “I honestly don’t know anything about that,” Joe said. “It does worry me, though.”

  “That’s nice. You know, Joe, there are a few people who wonder about you. They wonder that when it comes to Nate Romanowski it’s a little questionable whose side you’re on.”

  “Gee,” Joe said. “Who would those people be?”

  Reed blew air out through his nose in a long sigh. “Jesus, Joe,” he said. “You’ve got to help me out here. Or I’ll start to wonder.”

  Joe thought about it. His stomach was in knots. Reed was an honest cop and a friend as well. He might just be the next sheriff. Withholding information didn’t seem right.

  Finally, Joe said, “Go out and talk to Pam Kelly. Sweat her if you have to.”

  Reed looked up. “Did you interview her? Does she know something?”

  “Go find out,” Joe said. He reached out for Reed’s empty cup and started for the house.

  “Joe,” Reed said behind him.

  Joe stopped.

  “Tread lightly here,” Reed said. “Don’t get too tangled up in this. It isn’t your case. If it starts to seem like you’re playing games with us, well …”

  “I know,” Joe said, and walked through the backyard to his house. While he was inside rinsing the cups, he heard the deputy’s vehicle start up and drive away.

  MARYBETH LOOKED in on him in his office as he booted up his computer.

  “If you’re trying to find John Nemecek, don’t waste your time,” she said.

  He turned in his chair and raised his eyebrows. She stood there dressed only in flesh-colored panties and a matching bra.

  “Good thing I didn’t invite Mike Reed in here for coffee,” he said, looking her over. “He might have been kind of distracted. I might have been kind of distracted.”

  “How about you look me in the eye,” she commanded. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for down there.”

  He did so, reluctantly.

  She said, “Unless you somehow got the name wrong, he doesn’t exist,” she said. “Nothing. Nada. He’s never been born.”

  “I didn’t get the name wrong,” Joe said.

  “Then he’s got some pretty powerful capabilities,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Lucy and April were out of earshot, “because no one can simply not exist on the Internet. It’s impossible. It takes some real juice to scrub a name off every search engine. The fact that he doesn’t exist at all in cyberspace says we’re dealing with someone with clout.”

  “Interesting,” Joe said. “But I wasn’t actually going to look for him.”

  “Leave that to me,” she said. “When I get to work I’m going to access the networks I’m not supposed to know about. I’ll find him.”

  “Call me when you do,” Joe said.

  She agreed with a wink. When she left the room to try and hurry up their girls, he opened the falconry site.

  No new entries.

  16

  LUKE BRUEGGEMANN tried not to show his obvious relief when Joe Pickett arrived at the hotel in his pickup without the horse trailer. Brueggemann tossed a small duffel bag of gear, clothing, and lunch into the bed of the vehicle and climbed in.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Joe said, adjusting the volume down on the universal access channel of the radio. “It’s been another busy morning.”

  “No problem,” Brueggemann said, buckling in. “What’s going on? Aren’t we going up to check on those elk camps?”

  “Not today.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Joe chinned toward the radio. “Haven’t you been listening in? I thought you did that.”

  Brueggemann’s face flushed red. “Girlfriend problems,” he said. “I’ve been on my phone all morning with my girl in Laramie.”

  “Does she go to the university?” Joe asked, pulling out of the parking lot onto the street.

  “Fifth-year senior. She kind of misses me, I guess. But she doesn’t have to make it so hard on me because I’m not there, you know? She’s used to being in contact with me twenty-four/seven.”

  Joe grunted. He didn’t know, but he really wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the details. His mind was racing from what he’d heard from Deputy Reed that morning.

  Brueggemann got the message that Joe didn’t want to hear about his personal life. He said, “So what’d I miss out on?”

  “A guy from the reservation is missing,” Joe said, nodding toward the radio. “A well-known guy named Bad Bob Whiteplume. I know
him a little, but I knew his sister very well.”

  “You mean like he was kidnapped?”

  “No. Missing.”

  “Doesn’t that kind of thing happen all the time?” his trainee asked.

  When Joe shot him a look, Brueggemann flushed again and said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. Sorry. I just meant I’ve heard those folks tend to come and go more than … others.”

  “You sound like the sheriff’s department. Did you learn that growing up in Sundance?” Joe asked.

  “You know what I mean,” Brueggemann stuttered.

  Joe said, “It’s an odd deal. There’s all kinds on the res, just like there’s all kinds here in town. His sister, Alisha, was one of the best people I’ve ever met, God rest her soul.”

  “She died?”

  “Not that long ago,” Joe said. “It was an accident. The guys who killed her were after someone else and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “This missing-persons case,” Brueggemann said. “What does it have to do with us?”

  Joe cruised down Main Street, nodding hello to the few shoppers out on the sidewalk. “In normal circumstances, nothing,” he said. “But if you’ll recall, we had a triple homicide here a few days ago. Sheriff McLanahan has his hands full with that, and he’s apparently not getting anywhere finding the killer. He’s got FBI and DCI people here bumping into each other, and the voters are getting pretty antsy. And in the middle of all that, this doctor sets up camp and starts demanding a full-scale investigation to locate Bad Bob.”

  Brueggemann shook his head, confused.

  “If you haven’t noticed,” Joe said, “we don’t have a lot of law enforcement bodies around this county. When something major happens, everybody gets pressed into the effort. Highway patrol, local cops, brand inspectors. And game wardens.”

  The trainee grinned. “So we’re gonna be part of the investigation?”

  “Bet they didn’t tell you this part in game warden school,” Joe said.

  “There isn’t any game warden school,” Brueggemann said.

  “I know.”

  IT TOOK forty minutes to get to Bad Bob’s Native American Outlet. On the way there, Brueggemann peppered Joe with questions about cases, investigative methods, Game and Fish violators, and landowner relations in Twelve Sleep County. They were the kinds of questions Joe had once asked of his mentor, Vern Dunnegan, when he’d been a trainee. While Vern loved to talk and tell long stories about the characters in the district, Joe kept his answers short and clipped. He didn’t have the paternalistic contempt for the locals Vern had.

  While they drove, Joe noticed Brueggemann had his phone out and was furiously tapping keys. When his trainee saw Joe look with disapproval, he said as explanation: “Texting my girl.”

  “Ah,” Joe said. “Maybe you can tell her you’re working. We’re at work.”

  “I’ll do that,” Brueggemann said, his face flushed from being caught. After he pressed send, he slipped the phone back into his uniform pocket.

  “You remind me of my daughters with your texting,” Joe said, realizing how old he sounded. And realizing how young Brueggemann was.

  As they turned off the highway toward the reservation, there was a late-model black pickup off to the south in the middle of a sagebrush-covered swale. Joe instinctively pulled off the gravel road, put his truck into park, and raised his binoculars. After a full minute, he lowered them to the bench seat and pulled back on the road.

  “Hunters?” Brueggemann asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Are we going to check them out?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “I know ’em,” Joe said. “The biology teacher at the high school and his son. They’ve got deer licenses and habitat stamps. I talked to them a few days ago, and I know they’re clean and legal. This is a general deer area, so they’re not trespassing. And they haven’t shot any game.”

  Brueggemann shook his head. “How do you know they haven’t?”

  “Clean truck,” Joe said. “No blood on it.”

  “Oh,” Brueggemann said, obviously not entirely convinced.

  “Like every newbie,” Joe said, “you want to roust somebody. I used to be like that. Most of these folks are solid citizens. They’re meat hunters out to fill their freezers. Most of them have been hunting for years, sometimes for generations. They pay our salaries, and the money from licenses goes to habitat management and conservation. Even the majority of the violators are just a little stupid about rules and regulations or trying to feed their families. Times are tough. Some of these men feel bad about being unemployed. They’d rather take their chances with the game warden than stand in line for government cheese. So I don’t roust ’em just to roust ’em.”

  “That’s a question I have,” Brueggemann said. “What do you do when you catch someone red-handed with a poached deer and you know he was going to take it home to his family?”

  “Are you asking if I ever use discretion?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Joe thought about how he should answer the question. Then: “Yeah, I do. But I never let them off entirely if they broke the law. I’ll give the guy a ticket for the poached deer, but I might look past other violations he committed at the same time. You can really build on the charges in just about every situation, and you’d be correct. Or you can make a point that one time and go a little easy on the guy. It’s different, though, if the violator is after a trophy or doesn’t have a starving family at home. In that situation, I lower the boom on ’em.”

  Brueggemann smiled. “I heard you once issued the governor a ticket for fishing without a license. Is that just an urban legend, or what?”

  Joe said, “Nope.”

  “You really did that?”

  “Of all people, he should have known better.”

  “I can’t believe they let you keep your job.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” his trainee said. “I think I’d have given the guy a warning or looked the other way. I mean, who cares if he pays a hundred-dollar fine? It wouldn’t mean anything in the end, anyway, and maybe I’d have a friend in high places.”

  Joe looked over at Brueggemann for as long as he could before turning back to his driving. “Really?” Joe asked. “I think I should have lost my job if I didn’t give him a ticket.”

  His trainee’s silence became uncomfortable. Finally, Brueggemann said, “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking when I said that.”

  “No,” Joe said, “you weren’t. I’ve got a job to do out here, and I do it.” After a moment: “I know this will come across as old-school, but I hope you approach this job the right way. It’s easy to be cynical. That’s the way a lot of young people think about the world. I know that because I’ve got three kids of my own and I see glimpses of it from them at times. But I really do believe there’s nothing wrong with doing your best and doing the right thing. Just because you have a badge and a gun doesn’t mean you’re any better than these folks. If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t have a job.

  “I screw up sometimes,” he said, “but I’d rather screw up trying to do the right thing than looking the other way. And what good does it do you if your friend in high places knows firsthand that you’ll compromise your oath? Tell me that?”

  “Jeez,” Brueggemann said, looking away. “You don’t need to get so hot about it. I said I was sorry.”

  A FEW MILES LATER, after minutes of silent tension, Brueggemann said, “I don’t want to get you all riled up again, but there’s something I’m curious about.”

  “What’s that?” Joe said, tight-lipped. He was surprised at himself for getting angry so quickly, and he knew exactly why it had happened. He was also surprised that the reason for his outburst was the next thing to come out of Brueggemann’s mouth.

  “This Nate Romanowski guy, the one the sheriff asked you about. Do you know him pretty well?”

  “Well enough, I guess.”

/>   “How? I mean, from what I heard yesterday at the garage, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d want to hang out with. He seems like the kind of guy you’d want to arrest.”

  Joe knew he was boxed in. He said, “I’m not going to talk about it right now.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “I’m just curious,” his trainee said.

  “You can stay curious for a while,” Joe said so sharply that Brueggemann flinched.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, after he’d cooled down, Joe said, “It’s not just you I find so annoying. I’m trying to work some things out in my own mind right now.”

  “I’m glad it’s not just me,” his trainee said, in a way that made Joe grin.

  Joe nodded toward a low-slung building that emerged from the cottonwoods on the right. Two sheriff’s department vehicles were parked out front. “We’re here.”

  SHERIFF KYLE McLANAHAN looked distressed. Deputy Sollis stood next to him, his face a mask of deep feigned sympathy for his boss. Both looked up as Joe parked his truck and got out. Neither looked excited to see him.

  “We’re in the middle of an investigation here,” Sollis called out.

  “Looks like it,” Joe said, strolling up. Luke Brueggemann was a few feet behind Joe, hanging back. “Looks like you’ve got a lot going on by the way you’re standing around with purpose next to gas pumps.”

  McLanahan said, “Unless you’ve got something you can tell us to help out, I’d suggest you move on down the road, Game Warden.”

  “Deputy Reed filled me in on what was going on this morning,” Joe said. “I know you’re shorthanded until the state boys and the Feds show up.”

  “He did, huh?” Sollis asked, as if Joe and Mike Reed’s conversation was proof of some kind of collusion.

  Joe said, “Yup. You guys have a lot on your plate right now, and there’s two of us available.”

  The sheriff snorted a response.

  Joe ignored him and looked around. There was very little that stood out about the scene, Joe thought. The convenience store was still, the we’re closed sign propped in the window. Bad Bob’s blue Dodge pickup was parked on the side of the building where it always was, meaning he hadn’t driven it away. Two battered Dumpsters had been turned over behind the building and the contents inside scattered across the dirt. The concrete pad housing the gas pumps was dusty but not stained with blood.