Free Fire

by C. J. Box

  Nedny forged on, “What are you? Forty?”

  “Almost.”

  “So you’ve always lived in state-owned houses, huh? Paid for by the state?”

  Joe sighed and looked up. “I’m a game warden, Ed. The game and fish department provided housing.”

  “I remember you used to live out on the Bighorn Road,” Nedny said. “Nice little place, if I remember. Phil Kiner lives there now. Since he’s the new game warden for the county, what do you do?”

  Joe wondered how long Nedny had been waiting to ask these questions since they’d bought the home and moved in. Probably from the first day. But until now, Nedny hadn’t had the opportunity to corner Joe and ask.

  “I still work for the department,” Joe said. “I fill in wherever they need me.”

  “I heard,” Nedny said, raising his eyebrows man-to-man, “that you work directly for the governor now. Like you’re some kind of special agent or something.”

  “At times,” Joe said.

  “Interesting. Our governor is a fascinating man. What’s he like in person? Is he really crazy like some people say?”

  Joe was immensely grateful when he heard the front door of his house slam shut and saw Marybeth come out into the front yard and look up. She was wearing her weekend sweats and her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. She took in the scene: Ed Nedny up on the ladder next to Joe.

  “Joe, you’ve got a call from dispatch,” she said. “They said it was an emergency.”

  “Tell them it’s your day off,” Nedny counseled, “tell ’em you’ve got gutters to clean out and a fence to fix.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ed?”

  “We all would,” Nedny answered, “the whole block.”

  “You’ll have to climb down so I can take that call,” Joe said. “I don’t think that ladder will hold both of us.”

  Nedny sighed with frustration and started down. Joe followed.

  “My spatula, Joe?” she asked, shaking her head at him.

  “I told him I had a tool for that,” Ed called over his shoulder as he trudged toward his house.

  “I’M NOT USED to people so close that they can watch and comment on everything we do,” Joe said to Marybeth as he entered the house.

  “Did you forget about my mother on the ranch?” she asked, smiling bitterly.

  “Of course not,” Joe said, taking the phone from her, “but what’s that saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?”

  The house was larger than the state-owned home they’d lived in for six years, and nicer but with less character than the log home they’d temporarily occupied on the Longbrake Ranch for a year. Big kitchen, nice backyard, three bedrooms, partially finished basement with a home office, two-car garage filled with Joe’s boat, snowmobile, and still-unpacked boxes stacked up to the rafters. It had been three months since they bought the house but they still weren’t fully moved in.

  Ten-year-old Lucy was sprawled in a blanket on the living room floor watching Saturday morning cartoons. She had quickly mastered the intricacies of the remote control and the satellite television setup and reveled in living for the first time, as she put it, “in civilization.” Sheridan was, Joe guessed, back in bed.

  Marybeth looked on with concern as he said into the telephone, “Joe Pickett.”

  The dispatcher in Cheyenne said, “Please hold for the governor’s office.”

  Joe felt a thrill race down his back at the words.

  There was a click and a pop and he could hear Governor Spencer Rulon talking to someone else in his office over the speaker phone, caught in midsentence, “. . . we’ve got to get ahead of this one and frame and define it before those bastards in the Eastern press define it for us . . .”

  “I’ve got Mr. Pickett on the line, sir,” the dispatcher said.

  “Joe!” the governor said, “how in the hell are you?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “And how is the lovely Mrs. Pickett?”

  Joe looked up at his wife, who was pouring two cups of coffee to bring one to Joe.

  “Still lovely,” Joe said.

  “Did you hear the news?”

  “What news?”

  “Another hunter got shot this morning,” Rulon said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “This one is in your neck of the woods. I just got the report ten minutes ago. The victim’s hunting buddies found him and called it in. It sounds bad, Joe. It really sounds bad.”

  If the governor was correct, this was the third shooting of a big game hunter in Wyoming thus far this fall, Joe knew. The first was still being investigated as a accident, but the second “hunting accident” the week before raised alarms. A third would be disastrous.

  “I don’t know all the details yet,” Rulon said, “but I want you all over it for obvious reasons. You need to mount up and get up there and find out what happened. Call when you’ve got the full story.”

  “Who’s in charge?” Joe asked, looking up as his day of homeowner chores went away in front of his eyes.

  “Your sheriff there,” Rulon said, “McLanahan.”

  “Oh,” Joe said.

  “I know, I know,” the governor said, “he’s a doofus. But he’s your sheriff, not mine. Go with him and make sure he doesn’t foul up the scene. I’ve ordered DCI and Randy Pope to get up there in the state plane by noon.”

  “Why Pope?” Joe asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Rulon said, “if this is another murder of a hunter we’ve got a full-blown economic crisis on our hands. Not to mention another Klamath Moore press conference.”

  Klamath Moore was the leader and spokesman for a national antihunting organization who appeared regularly on cable news and was the first to be interviewed whenever a story about hunting and wildlife arose. He had recently turned his attention to the State of Wyoming, and particularly Governor Spencer Rulon, whom he called “Governor Bambi Killer.” Rulon had responded by saying if Moore came to Wyoming, he’d challenge him to a duel with pistols and knives. The statement was seized upon by commentators making “Red State/Blue State” arguments during the election year, even though Rulon was a Democrat. In Wyoming the controversy increased Rulon’s popularity within the state among certain sectors while fueling talk in others that the governor was becoming more unhinged.

  “Why me?” Joe asked.

  The governor snorted. Whoever was in the room with him—it sounded like a woman—laughed. Something about her laugh sounded familiar to Joe, and not in a good way. He shot a glance toward Marybeth, who looked back warily.

  “Why you?” Rulon said, “What in the hell else do you have to do today?”

  Joe reached back and patted the list in his pocket. “Chores,” he said.

  “I want fresh eyes on the crime scene,” Rulon said. “You’ve got experience in this kind of thing. Maybe you can see something McLanahan or DCI can’t see. These are your people, these hunter types. Right?”

  Before Joe could answer, he heard the woman in the governor’s office say, “Right.”

  Joe thought he recognized the voice, which sent a chill through him. “Stella?”

  “Hi, Joe,” she said.

  At the name Stella, Marybeth locked on Joe’s face in a death stare.

  “I was going to introduce you to my new chief of staff,” the governor said, “but I guess you two know each other.”

  “We do,” Stella Ennis purred.

  “Joe, are you there?” Rulon asked.

  “Barely,” Joe said.

  WHILE JOE CHANGED into his red uniform shirt with the pronghorn antelope Game and Fish Department patch on the shoulder and clipped on his badge that read J. PICKETT, GAME WARDEN above his breast pocket, Marybeth entered the bedroom and said, “Stella Ennis?”

  The name brought back a flood of memories. He’d met her in Jackson Hole on temporary assignment three years before. She was the wife of a prominent and homicidal developer who was still awaiting trial. She’d “bef
riended” the previous Jackson game warden and complicated his life. She tried to do the same with Joe, and he’d been attracted to her. It was a time in his life—and Marybeth’s life—where they seemed on the verge of separation. They’d persevered. Now they owned their first home.

  “The governor introduced her as his new chief of staff,” Joe said.

  “How is that possible? she asked, “Wasn’t her husband convicted of trying to kill her?”

  Joe shook his head. “Marcus Hand was his lawyer and he convinced the jury it was an accident and she was still alive somewhere. Turns out he was right. The Teton County D.A. plea-bargained the rest of the charges and Don Ennis paid some fines and moved to Florida”

  “How did she wind up in the governor’s office?”

  “I have no idea,” Joe said, “She’s resourceful.”

  “This state is too small sometimes,” she said.

  “Yup.”

  Marybeth approached Joe and pulled him into her with her hands behind his neck, so their faces were inches apart. “Stay away from her, Joe. You know what happened last time.”

  “Nothing,” Joe said, flushing.

  “Yes, but,” she said.

  “Honey . . .”

  “She’s a very good-looking woman. I’ve seen pictures of her. She’s beautiful and very dangerous. But so am I.”

  He smiled, “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Besides, it sounds like I’ll be too busy dealing with Sheriff McLanahan and Randy Pope. I’m not looking forward to that.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Marybeth said. “But I do trust you.”

  “You should.”

  “Plus, Sheridan and Lucy would kill you if you ever did anything untoward.”

  “That I’m sure of,” Joe said.

  “So what’s going on? Another hunter?”

  “Apparently,” Joe said. “I don’t know much yet, but the governor’s worried.”

  “Any idea how long you’ll be gone this time?”

  “I should be back tonight.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean on this case.”

  He buckled on his holster with the .40 Glock, pepper spray, and handcuffs, and reached for the brim of his Stetson that was crown-down on the dresser.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We don’t even know for sure if it’s foul play. Everyone’s jumpy because of those other hunters who got shot earlier. No one wants to imagine the someone is hunting hunters, but everyone is thinking that.”

  She nodded. She didn’t need to tell him there were parent-teacher conferences later in the week at Lucy’s junior high and Sheridan’s high school. Or about the party they’d been invited to with members of their church. Or about the fact that she wanted him home while she battled with her own mother and needed his support.

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said.

  She walked him to the door. Lucy was still watching television and didn’t look at him. She simply said, “Gone again?”

  Joe stopped, hurt. Marybeth pushed him gently out the door into the front yard.

  “We’ll be here when you get home,” she said. Then: “It looks like there’s someone who would like to go with you.”

  He turned, hoping Sheridan would be on the porch pulling on her jacket. But it was Maxine, his old Labrador who had turned white four years before and was now half-blind, half-deaf, and fully flatulent.

  “Come on, girl,” Joe said.

  Maxine clattered stiff-legged down the sidewalk, her tail snapping side-to-side like her old self. Joe had to lift her back end into the cab.

  “I am curious how she ended up on the governor’s staff,” Marybeth said. “I’ll have to do a little snooping.”

  Joe kissed her. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about her. I need to go.”

  “I understand,” she said, “but Ed Nedny is going to be real upset with you.”