Vicious Circle

by C. J. Box

  “Fine idea,” Hewitt hissed.

  14

  At the same time on the eastern face of the Bighorn Mountains, Nate Romanowski yelled, “Rope!” as he tossed a thick coil of it into the air in front of him. The rope fell out of sight. He’d shouted the warning even though he knew there wasn’t a living soul in sight this far from the road, but his training from special ops died hard.

  He double-checked the carabiners on the anchor he’d fashioned around the trunks of two ancient spruce trees, then looped the rope through the braking belay device on his climbing belt, grasped the line with his right hand near his hip, and backed over the edge of the cliff.

  Nate was not only an outlaw falconer with a covert operations background whose life had been intertwined with the Pickett family for more than a decade, he was also half-owner of Yarak, Inc., a falconry services firm that desperately needed more birds to keep up with demand. He needed to feed the pipeline of falcons-in-training for when they’d be deployed.

  That was why he was rappelling down a sheer granite cliff with a falconry bag slung over his shoulder. Inside the bag were five Dho-Gazza-style falcon traps of his own design, anchors and climbing bolts to hold the traps in place, and live pigeons immobilized by a wrap of athletic tape to keep them still to serve as bait.

  The traps were rolled-up three-foot squares of thirty-pound Dacron fishing line knotted into airy loops. When unfurled and stretched out tight between anchor rods or bolts—with a live flapping pigeon hung by a string in front of it—the trap would entice peregrine falcons to enter it and become entangled in the line.

  He knew there was a good population of native peregrines in the area, and he’d seen the whitewash of their excrement on the surface of the cliff face. He’d trapped several of them there before to hunt with. He needed at least three young birds to round out what he referred to as his “air force.”

  Weighting down the bag was his holstered .454 Casull five-shot revolver from Freedom Arms.

  Just in case.

  —

  SINCE ALL FEDERAL CHARGES had been dropped against him as a result of a mission he’d undertaken in the Red Desert of Wyoming on behalf of a shadowy federal agency the year before, Nate and his lover and co-owner Liv Brannon had launched Yarak, Inc. in full. They’d both been surprised how fast the enterprise had taken off.

  Yarak was all about nuisance-bird abatement, meaning Nate and his birds were hired to scare away pests. Nothing put the fear of God into starlings, pigeons, seagulls, or other problem birds like a falcon screaming through the sky.

  Prey species—whether problem birds, game birds, snakes, or rodents of various sizes—were born knowing that the distant silhouette of a falcon against the sky meant lethal trouble for them. The threat was imprinted into their DNA.

  Often, the victim wouldn’t know they’d been targeted until they were hit. A peregrine falcon on the wing could descend from the clouds at more than two hundred miles per hour, and it was the fastest creature in nature. So when Yarak, Inc. arrived and put their birds in the sky, problem species wisely cleared out.

  They’d been hired by farmers and winegrowers as far away as Oregon and California to keep nuisance birds from eating their crops prior to harvest. Golf courses hired them to scare off wild geese. Refineries and owners of transfer stations paid Yarak to chase away birds that nested in sensitive equipment. A large amusement park in Denver had hired them to prevent pigeons from pooping on their customers.

  Nate’s air force consisted of two Harris’s hawks, four prairie falcons, and seven peregrines—along with three contract part-time falconers.

  Liv handled accounting, back-office administration, and marketing while Nate oversaw all the work in the field. Unfortunately, he realized, Liv was such a good marketer and their services were in such demand that he was being run ragged. Thus, he needed more birds.

  —

  GOING STRAIGHT and working hard had its rewards, he’d found. For the first time in years, he could make phone calls on unsecured lines, fly on airplanes, and not worry about being viewed by closed-circuit cameras mounted on every building. And he was doing professionally what he’d always done personally: partnering with the greatest creatures alive to train, fly, and hunt.

  But the transition had its downside. Nate traveled constantly and his cell phone was always turned on and within reach. Instead of living in outdoor mews, the falcons were transported from place to place in a retrofitted panel van that reeked of high-nitrogen bird excrement. He didn’t like sleeping in strange beds. He hadn’t talked to his friend Joe Pickett in months, or mentored Joe’s daughter Sheridan, his apprentice in falconry. He barely talked to Liv about anything but business and the next job.

  He wanted to be with her, wanted to listen to that smoked-honey Louisiana accent and let it wash over him. Instead, she was always on the other end of a cell phone call.

  Most of all, he’d lost solitude and a vital, unhurried connection with the natural world around him. He could feel it slipping away from him as he spent day after day at work. Where he’d once been in tune with the sun and stars, the winds, the wildlife, and the rivers—he was now back in the world and back on the grid.

  He missed sitting naked on a tree branch watching the river flow beneath his feet. He missed sitting quietly by a spring waiting for pronghorns and other big-game animals to come to him and audition for his next meal.

  And most of all, Nate missed the freedom of killing people who were better off dead.

  He’d gone from human abatement to bird abatement. But at least he was no longer destined for federal prison.

  —

  FIFTEEN FEET from the lip of the cliff, and before he unwound his first trap, Nate did a lazy free spin around to take in the valley below him.

  It was a cool, cloudless day and he could see for miles. Buckbrush in the folds of the foothills was already turning bright crimson. Pockets of aspen in the midst of the dark pine forest were lighting up yellow. Distant mountain peaks were already snowcapped on the horizon.

  It was magnificent country, as vast as it was heartless. And so different from the manicured golf courses and wine country he so often worked now.

  Satiated, he spun around lazily and used his boot toe against the granite to stop the revolution. He got to the work at hand. Nate assembled the frame, stretched the fishing-line trap tight, and anchored it to the rock wall at an angle. He reached down and retrieved a bound pigeon and tied one end of a leather jess to its foot and the other end to the frame of the trap. Then he stripped the tape from the bait bird with his teeth and let it go. The pigeon flapped madly but couldn’t fly away. Its movement and activity would attract raptors miles away in the sky.

  When he was done, he thanked the pigeon for giving up its life, and he moved on to the next trap location thirty feet down and fifteen feet to the right on the cliff face.

  Dho-Gazza traps were highly effective and held the trapped falcons tight. They were so effective, in fact, that he’d made a commitment to check them every six hours. He didn’t want a trapped falcon to become injured when trying to free itself from the fishing line snares, or starve to death waiting for the falconer to come back.

  If he ever let that happen, Nate knew, he’d have let down not only the falcon but himself. And he’d have to think long and hard about whether keeping Yarak, Inc. going at such a blistering pace was even worth it.

  —

  AFTER THE THIRD TRAP was set and he’d ranged as far to the left on the sheer rock wall as his ropes would allow, Nate sensed movement far below him and he looked over his shoulder.

  Wildlife in general, he’d learned, seemed to react the same way to a man hanging on ropes above them as they did to a drift boat on the river: oblivious. While they were keenly aware of any potential threat on the ground, their wiring short-circuited when it came to looking up. While he was rappelling down a cliff fa
ce, he was practically a raptor himself.

  More than once, he’d descended into the middle of a herd of elk sleeping in the timber or once practically on the back of a somnambulant bull moose.

  This time, though, it was a half-dozen large ravens. They were strutting around on the rocks below him, crowding one another, pecking at each other as if annoyed, and all keenly interested in something lodged below them between two car-sized boulders.

  Nate had an irrational hatred of ravens. He hated them as much as he loved falcons. He’d tried to explain his vehemence toward them to Liv once and she’d concluded that he must have had a terrifying experience with them in his youth or in a past life. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he did know that ravens gathered where there was carrion to feed on.

  He rappelled closer to them. He got so close that he could clearly see their blue-black feathers, their pointed matte-black beaks, and their tiny demon eyes.

  “Get out of here,” he growled.

  Not until his boots hit the top of the boulder did the ravens take off. They didn’t go far. They rose as a single entity and lit on another big rock about fifteen feet away.

  He glared at them and thought about reaching into his falconry bag for his revolver. Nate was fast and accurate with the weapon. He knew he could probably take out three of them in explosions of blood and black feathers before the others could fly away.

  That’s when he noticed that one of the birds had a long strip of bloody cloth in its beak. Another had a red strip of flesh.

  He shrugged out of his climbing harness and let it drop to the top of the boulder with a jangle from the loose carabiners. Then he sank to his knees and peered down into the shadow between the adjacent boulders.

  The body of a woman.

  She was broken—her arms and legs at unnatural angles. The soft flesh of her arms, thighs, and face had been stripped away. There was a musky stench. The body had obviously been there for a number of days.

  As his eyes adjusted, he could see the noose that had eaten into the skin of her neck, and the clean-cut end of the rope that had fallen and coiled around her.

  This was no climbing accident.

  He sat back on his haunches and, unlike the ravens or other wildlife, he looked up. There was a shelf of rock three-quarters of the way up the rock face, and what looked like a grassy slide to it from the top. He’d considered putting his last trap there, but he didn’t have enough spare rope to get over that far.

  Then he heard snatches of conversation in the wind from far above. From his position, he couldn’t see up and over the edge of the rock face to see who it was. Not unless one of them bent forward and peered down over the edge of the cliff.

  Nate reached into his bag and his fingers closed around the grip of his weapon.

  “She’s down there in them rocks,” a deep male voice said.

  “Where?” Higher, twangier, Southern.

  “Down in them rocks. There’s no way she walked away from—” and the breeze took the rest of the sentence away.

  “I’m just sayin’ I woulda liked to’ve had a go at her first. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  A laugh.

  “Come on, look over the edge,” Nate whispered as he thumbed back the hammer and pointed his gun straight up. If one of them exposed himself, well, that would be that.

  As he waited, Nate felt like the old Nate. He didn’t second-guess himself. He was sure from what he’d seen below him and what he’d heard above him that these two had been responsible for murdering her.

  Then . . . nothing. They just stopped talking and went away.

  He waited a full five minutes before he lowered his weapon. By then, his arms were trembling.

  Nate sat back on the boulder and shook his head. Why couldn’t one of them have just looked down?

  —

  HE GATHERED UP HIS GEAR and eyed the ravens. They were just waiting for him to leave so they could go back to stripping the carcass. He wished he had something he could cover the body with, but he didn’t.

  Nate noted the location. He didn’t need a GPS to know exactly where he was.

  The sun was elongating into an oblong shape before it dropped behind the western mountains. It was a two-hour hike to where he’d parked his Jeep, and another hour until he could get a cell phone signal and call his friend Joe Pickett.

  This time, he thought, trouble had found him.

  That poor woman. He wondered why they’d done it to her. But whatever it was, it didn’t matter. They’d need to pay for it, whoever they were.

  He was back in the world and back on the grid. But it was almost as if he’d never left.

  15

  Joe drove home cautiously that night, more inebriated than he wanted to be—or should have been. He kept a close eye on the road ahead and in his mirrors for town cops or deputies. Given what had happened in Judge Hewitt’s courtroom that day, he wasn’t sure what kind of mood the locals would be in or if he’d be able to talk his way out of a traffic violation or DUI charge, which could be a career killer.

  At least Dulcie, whom he’d left still cursing in the Stockman’s Bar, was close enough to her house to get home quickly. But at the rate she’d been drinking—round after round of scotch on the rocks while challenging Joe to keep up with her—she’d likely have to walk, although stagger was more like it. He’d ordered only club soda after his second bourbon and water on an empty stomach, but he could feel the effects.

  Joe was angry at himself for staying so long at the bar with her. Part of the reason was his own anger and frustration, and another part was she seemed too unstable for him to leave her there by herself.

  He’d finally excused himself after she promised to go home. He offered to walk her there, but she got offended and said she could take care of herself and showed him the 9mm in her handbag. He relented.

  On his way out of town, he stopped at the Burg-O-Pardner for a double cheeseburger to go for dinner. Daisy stared at the greasy bag on the truck seat as if to bore holes into it with her eyes. Twin strings of drool hung from her mouth to the floorboards. He’d neglected to feed her earlier.

  “Oh, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll open a can of soup at home.”

  Daisy devoured the meal in three quick bites and shed the bag to the floorboards with a shake of her head.

  Joe saw a pattern of green stars in the dark to the left side of the road and instinctively hit the brakes to let a herd of five mule deer—their eyes reflecting green in his headlights—cross the road in front of him. The sudden stop nearly threw Daisy off the seat.

  “Sorry,” he said to her.

  Be more careful, he said to himself.

  In his bourbon-fueled state, he noted that the herd consisted of a buck, a doe, two yearlings, and a fawn. Just like his own family.

  And just as vulnerable.

  —

  DULCIE HAD BEEN beside herself in the Stockman’s. He’d never seen her like that and he didn’t ever want to see her that way again. Her fury had built in Judge Hewitt’s chambers as she was dressed down for bringing such a sloppy and questionable case, and it grew when Undersheriff Spivak tried to defend himself.

  “He did it,” Spivak cried. “We all know he did it. All I did was try to make it a stronger case.”

  Joe believed him, although he, like Dulcie and the judge, wanted to strangle him. He recalled how adamant Spivak had been on their way up to the crime scene about finally nailing Dallas. He’d all but telegraphed his intentions, if Joe had been sharp enough at the time to pick up on it.

  He’d obviously ridden into the mountains with casings from the .223 in one pocket and spent rounds from the same gun in the other—just in case. When Spivak said he’d “take care of the body,” and sent both Steck and Joe away, he had the opportunity to plant the slugs. No wonder, Joe thought, the coroner had observed they were �
�shallow.”

  But Spivak surprised Joe with his lack of remorse, even when a stricken Sheriff Reed arrived and asked for his badge and gun and told him he was suspended, pending charges against him. Spivak really believed he’d done the right thing, that he “risked his own neck to help put away a douche bag who threatened the entire community.”

  It was a look into Spivak’s soul Joe wished he’d never seen. The lack of accountability was staggering. Joe had noted similar traits in criminals and violators he’d encountered, but rarely, if ever, in a fellow law enforcement officer. He suspected that the absence of virtue was a growing trend in the nation as a whole, and one he didn’t understand or embrace.

  “You of all people have to understand,” Spivak had pled to Joe. “You of all people know what kind of person we’re dealing with. He did it. He’s guilty as hell. We know he killed Farkus. And if I’d let him stay out on the street, other people would have gotten hurt.”

  “And now they will,” Joe said.

  Spivak looked back gape-mouthed, not comprehending what Joe had said.

  —

  “I JUST FUCKING WONDER how many other cases he ‘helped’ with,” Dulcie had said to Joe at the bar. She was talking so loudly and gesticulating with her hands as to scare other customers away. When she’d used the word “helped,” she made air quotes.

  Joe noticed that Buck Timberman was eyeing them both closely. It was the look he got before he called the cops to intervene.

  “Do you realize how many convictions he’s been a part of? How many times he’s testified in criminal trials?” she asked Joe. “Now all of those criminals I’ve put away will be racing each other to file appeals. He’s tainted everything we’ve done for the last few years—every case. He’s dragged me and all of us into the mud with him.”

  Joe nodded and sipped his drink.

  “Two more,” Dulcie said to Timberman, who slowly shuffled for the bottles of bourbon and scotch behind him. Joe waved him off the bourbon and gestured for another club soda.