Vicious Circle

by C. J. Box

  Joe shook his head and whistled.

  Marybeth said, “She once showed me a library card from the Natrona County Library in Casper just to spite me. She wanted me to know that she didn’t use my library.”

  “I think I’ll wander over to Winchester tomorrow and talk to a banker,” Joe said.

  “And I’ll get online and try to find out what I can,” Marybeth said. “Cora Lee did something between the time she left Bull and when she showed up here. She may have left a trail in cyberspace I can find. I wish we’d known she was involved before now.”

  —

  AS THEY DROVE UP Bighorn Road in the predawn, the eastern sky was a bright rose color: almost cartoonishly vibrant and electric with morning sun.

  Marybeth sat back and said, “Look at the sunrise, Joe. It looks like it did last summer when we had those forest fires.”

  They exchanged a quick look as they came to the same realization, and Joe stomped on the accelerator and left April in a spoor of dust.

  The pickup’s rear wheels fishtailed on the last turn up the mountain toward their home, but Joe kept the truck on the road.

  “Oh my God . . .” Marybeth gasped as she covered her mouth with her hands.

  Their house was engulfed by fire. Flames rolled angrily out from the open door and window frames of their home, and thick coils of black and tan smoke rose into the sky. Behind the house, the barn had burned to the ground. The roof had collapsed and all that was left was eight blackened support poles sticking up through the ashes.

  Joe said, “Stay here” as he slammed to a stop fifteen feet from the front picket fence, which was also aflame. Marybeth paid no attention to him and threw herself out of the truck as well.

  They stood in silence as the heat from the fire stung their flesh and they breathed in smoke and scorched air. Tears on Marybeth’s cheeks reflected orange from the fused sunlight and the fire itself.

  Rojo and Toby grazed on the hillside a quarter mile away, and Daisy came bounding down the road from a copse of trees as April pulled in. They’d escaped the fires somehow.

  Marybeth’s new gelding, Petey, and their dog Tube were missing.

  Joe seethed and recounted Marcus Hand’s words.

  “You’ll have to deal with him in other ways.”

  21

  Randall Luthi cried out and awoke suddenly when somebody kicked the sole of his wounded foot through the blankets of his bed. The pain was sharp, and when he opened his eyes, all he saw at first were stars.

  He fumbled under his bed until his hand found the grip of the 9mm and he brought it out and pointed it toward the source of his pain.

  “Goddamn you, Cross,” he hissed. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Do what?” Rory Cross said, half asleep from the other side of the room.

  Before Luthi could level the weapon, it was wrenched out of his hand.

  Dallas chuckled drily and said, “A little slow on the draw there, I’d say.”

  The stars in Luthi’s eyes dissipated and the unmistakable wide-shouldered build came into focus. Dallas spun the gun on his index finger through the trigger guard and handed it back upside down.

  “Good thing nobody with evil intent wanted to sneak up on you this morning,” Dallas said, “or you’d both be dead. I thought we talked about rotating sleep schedules so someone could keep a lookout. Didn’t we talk about that?”

  Luthi chinned toward Cross in the other single bed. “It was him. I took the first four hours last night.”

  Cross’s dull morning face twisted into a grimace as he glared at Luthi from across the room. His silence was an admission of guilt.

  “So what are you doing here, Dallas?” Cross asked.

  “He’s trying to change the subject,” Luthi accused.

  Dallas ignored him. He turned and sat down heavily at the foot of Luthi’s bed. Luthi quickly moved his injured foot so Dallas wouldn’t injure it further by sitting on it.

  “I told you boys,” Dallas said. “I wouldn’t be long in custody. I told you I’d be out. I’m free as a damned bird, thanks to Marcus Hand and a fuckup of massive proportions by Lester Spivak.”

  “He’s the one who planted the rifle in your truck?” Cross asked.

  “He was the one.” Dallas smiled.

  Luthi sat up and sniffed. “Why do you smell like smoke?” he asked Dallas.

  —

  LUTHI SCRAMBLED the last of their eggs in a half-inch of bacon grease while Dallas and Cross drank strong coffee at the crude table near the woodstove. Dallas had filled them in on the events since he’d been arrested, saying it had all gone better and smoother than he’d even hoped.

  “We were ten steps ahead of them the whole time,” he said. “Still are.”

  Dallas looked over the rim of his coffee cup and asked, “Did you guys take care of our problem?”

  Meaning Wanda Stacy.

  “Luthi wanted to bone her first,” Cross said. “I saved her from that horrible experience.”

  Dallas snorted a laugh and Luthi felt his ears get hot. Two weeks in a remote hunting cabin with Cross had been a miserable experience. Rather than getting along or simply staying out of each other’s way, they’d each come to hate the other guy. Luthi had thought several times of sneaking up behind Cross and putting a bullet in his brain. He assumed Cross had thought about doing the same thing to him, although it was hard to read the man. The only thing that had kept them there together was the imminent return of Dallas. That, and waiting for the phone to ring again.

  Now that Dallas had shown up, Luthi felt palpable relief.

  “So where’s the body?” Dallas asked. “Did you bury her deep like I told you?”

  “Just as good,” Cross said eagerly. Too eagerly, Luthi thought.

  Dallas got still. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “He threw her off a cliff,” Luthi said from where he stood with his back to them at the stove. “She landed in some big rocks we can’t even get to.”

  “I told you to bury her deep, Rory,” Dallas said.

  His voice was preternaturally calm, the way it got before he went off on someone. Luthi had seen that happen in Rawlins. A Mexican inmate said modern-day rodeo cowboys were pussies for wearing protective vests when they rode bulls. Dallas had calmly asked the Mexican to repeat what he’d just said. When the Mexican did, Dallas pummeled the man in a flurry of blows until he went down. Then he’d stomped the man’s head until blood came out of his nose and ears.

  The remarkable accomplishment afterward was when Dallas, who hadn’t even broken a sweat during the beat-down, convinced the CO that the Brothers on Block A had been responsible for the attack. He knew that the Mexican wouldn’t talk and the Brothers would deny it to no avail. That was the reality of incarceration.

  Now, Luthi turned slightly so he could see over his shoulder what would happen next.

  Rory Cross was six inches taller than Dallas and outweighed him by fifty pounds. Not that it mattered.

  Dallas jumped to his feet with the grace of a cat and his fists worked like pistons—one-two, one-two—so fast in Cross’s face that he didn’t have a chance to raise his arms to ward off the blows. The man went limp and his head rolled to the side and he fell off his chair and crashed to the floor.

  Luthi turned with the cast-iron skillet in his hand. Dallas stood over Cross and said, “If somebody finds that body, I’ll make sure to bury you deep.”

  But Dallas didn’t hit Cross again and he didn’t stomp him while he was down like he had the Mexican. Cross moaned and rolled over to his belly. Blood from his mouth and nose patterned the dirty floor beneath his chin.

  “Ready for some eggs, Rory?” Luthi asked, as if nothing had happened.

  Dallas looked up. His face, which had been a taut mask of rage as he stood over Cross, transformed into something softer, as i
f he were coming out of a trance. For a moment, Luthi imagined seeing that mask on Dallas as he lowered himself into the chute to mount a bareback bronc or a Brahma bull.

  Dallas said, “I’m hungry. In fact, I’m starved half to death.”

  He stepped over Cates and reclaimed his seat at the table. He squinted suspiciously at Luthi. “You’ve been chomping at the bit to tell me that about the girl, haven’t you?”

  “Since it happened,” Luthi said as he placed the skillet in the middle of the table.

  “You’re just as much at fault,” Dallas said. “I told you both to bury her so deep she’d never get found. Didn’t I tell you that?”

  Luthi held his ground and chinned toward Cross on the floor. “He did it on his own. Ask him. Hell, I couldn’t even keep up with him. Have you seen my foot?”

  “What happened?”

  “Mumblety-peg,” Luthi said as he scooped gray-looking eggs onto Dallas’s plate. “He lost.”

  “Looks like you lost,” Dallas said between voracious bites. “And it’s mumbley-peg, not mumblety-peg. Is that some kind of Texas horseshit?”

  Then: “Get up, Rory. You aren’t hurt so bad.”

  Cross grunted and reached up to steady himself on the chair as he pulled himself to his feet. Luthi enjoyed seeing the fat lip and rapidly closing right eye on Cross’s face.

  “Eat,” Dallas said. “We all need to keep up our strength, because we ain’t going to be here all that long. Not since Cora Lee got herself caught in Jackson.”

  Luthi was surprised. “The cops have her?”

  “That’s what I just said.” Dallas sighed, obviously annoyed. “Why is it that neither one of you seems to hear a goddamned word I say?”

  “Do they know about us?” Luthi asked.

  “Naw,” Dallas said. “They just got her last night. I knew she’d get herself into trouble. I was against having her be a part of this from the beginning. That’s why I never clued her in to the whole thing. Luckily, she just knew her part. Even if she talks, she won’t have much to say about us that could stick. The judge dismissed the charges, and I can’t be tried again for it.”

  Luthi was partly relieved, and he said so. Then: “What about us?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dallas said breezily. “There’s not one iota of evidence they can use anymore on any of us, and Cora Lee isn’t exactly a credible witness. You’re okay.”

  “The cops—do they know our names?” he asked Dallas.

  “Sort of. Not your real names, though. I told them I knew you guys only as Brutus and the Weasel.”

  “Shit,” Luthi whined. “I told you I hate that name.”

  Cross settled into his chair across the table and managed a bloody smile.

  “The Weasel,” he said as twin streams of blood ran from the edges of his mouth to his chin. “The Squealing Weasel.”

  “How would you like a fry pan hitting you in that mouth of yours?” Luthi asked Cross.

  “Boys, boys,” Dallas said. “You’re starting to make me think that cooping you two up together for so long was a mistake.”

  “You think?” Luthi asked heatedly.

  Cross dabbed at the blood on his lip. “He’s kind of high-strung, that’s for sure. Must be his feminine side coming out.”

  Luthi started to reach for the handle of the skillet, but Dallas shot his hand out and stopped him.

  “Boys,” he warned.

  —

  “ANY CALLS?” Dallas asked after Luthi had cleared away the breakfast dishes.

  Cross shook his head no.

  Apparently, Luthi thought, his mouth hurt so much he didn’t want to talk anymore. It was the best thing to have happened in days, maybe ever.

  “We may have to go rogue,” Dallas said, as much to himself, Luthi thought, as to the two of them. “I ain’t sitting around here with my thumb up my ass waiting for that phone to ring. Events are accelerating and we might have to end this thing on our own.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Luthi asked.

  Dallas smiled and said, “I’ve had a plan since the minute they sent me to Rawlins. In fact, I got it going just last night.”

  There was a high-pitched skree-skree sound outside the hunting cabin and Luthi and Cross both froze.

  “What the hell was that?” Luthi asked quietly. Cross’s eyes were raised to the ceiling.

  Dallas wasn’t concerned. He shook his head and said, “Haven’t either one of you heard a red-tailed hawk before?”

  —

  LATER, AFTER DALLAS HAD GONE outside to “get rid of some coffee,” Cross said, “Randall?”

  Luthi looked over. Cross was sitting heavily on his bed with his big hands resting on his knees.

  Cross said, “Just so you know, I don’t blame Dallas for pounding the shit out of me. I blame you.”

  “You should blame yourself,” Luthi said quietly.

  “When this is all over, you and me are going to have a reckoning.”

  “I look forward to it,” Luthi lied.

  “I’ll just bet you do.”

  22

  While he waited in the small lobby of the Bank of Winchester, Joe contemplated the large bronze out on the front lawn that could be seen through the windows. The artwork was of a full-sized grizzly bear with its rear left foot caught in a massive steel-jawed trap. The bear strained at the end of a taut rusty chain in a desperate attempt to pull free, and it looked over its humped shoulder with panic on its face.

  Joe ruefully empathized with the grizzly.

  The bronze had been out on the front lawn of the bank for as long as Joe had been in Twelve Sleep County, and it had always struck him as a violent, discordant, and totally symbolic image of the tiny mountain town twenty miles from Saddlestring. The main street of Winchester contained three bars, two restaurants, the bank, a tiny insurance agency, a farm and ranch implement dealership, a general store, and six empty storefronts that had long been boarded up.

  Winchester, like its residents—who were timber cutters, ranch hands, unemployed energy workers, and subsistence trappers—was raw and rough-hewn. It was a place where people who had no place to go ended up. They considered the residents of Saddlestring haughty.

  Joe got several suspicious looks from bank customers as they entered and did their business with one of the two tellers. A game warden in uniform was unwelcome in a town where elk poaching and above-the-legal-limit fishermen were common. He sat with his hat in his hands and nodded at locals he recognized from encountering them in the mountains. Most nodded back.

  “Sorry, Mr. Pickett, I understand you want to see me?” the president of the bank said to him as she opened the door to her office. “I was on the phone and it went much longer than necessary, as these things tend to do.”

  She extended her hand. “Ashlyn Raymer. I’m the president of the bank.”

  “Thank you. You can call me Joe,” he said.

  “And you can call me Ashlyn,” she said as she led him toward her office door.

  “Are you related to Kelsea Raymer?” he asked. “She’s the chief forensics analyst of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Center near Denver. I worked with her on a case a couple of years ago.”

  “I think she was related to my ex-husband,” Raymer said curtly as she skirted around her desk. “I never met her, and I really don’t talk to those people very much.”

  “Gotcha,” Joe said.

  Ashlyn Raymer was heavy and short with a carefully made-up attractive face and perfectly coiffed red hair. She’d been involved in a minor scandal when she’d been vice president of a savings and loan in Saddlestring involving accusations of embezzlement, but had avoided charges by claiming the missing sums were the fault of poorly trained employees and sloppy bookkeeping. She’d agreed to leave, and the S&L had agreed to sweep it under the rug if she made reparations
and signed a confidentiality agreement. Winchester was the natural landing pad for her, Joe thought. Winchester welcomed people who’d had trouble in Saddlestring, because they fit right in.

  —

  “I’M SORRY to hear about your house,” she said as she sat down and put on a pair of fashionably large-framed glasses. “Was it a total loss?”

  “Yup.”

  Although he’d managed his district for more than a decade, Joe was still amazed how fast word traveled throughout the county.

  “How is your family holding up?”

  “They’re staying with Dulcie Schalk until we can get things figured out,” he said. He noticed that Raymer flinched at the name of the county prosecutor. “We lost a horse and a family pet, so it’s a traumatic experience for everyone.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost any of my cats,” she said as she pointed toward framed photos of felines on the credenza behind her. “They’re my family.”

  Joe didn’t want to hear about her cats. He wasn’t in the mood. As he’d left that morning, Lucy was still crying about the loss of Tube, and April was glaring at him as if it were his fault their house had burned down with her few remaining possessions inside it.

  He still hadn’t wrapped his mind around the situation, and the only way he knew how to deal with it was to go to work the next morning. He needed forward momentum amid the loss of his house and the sick realization that his family was suddenly homeless. The phone message that he’d left for his agency director before she got to the office that morning was curt and perfunctory: “My house got torched last night.”

  He could only imagine her reaction, since the structure was owned by the department.

  Joe hoped his forward momentum wouldn’t be stopped short like the grizzly outside at the end of the chain.

  Although it was obvious to Joe what had happened the night before when he saw blackened fuel containers from his garage scattered throughout the ashes, Sheriff Reed had requested an arson investigator from the Division of Criminal Investigation in Cheyenne to investigate the wreckage and make a determination of its cause.