by C. J. Box
Brenda had received a chair that responded to her thoughts and commands, as well as one that contained the means to communicate to the outside world. The only reason she didn’t stay more in touch with her son and the others, he guessed, was that Brenda had convinced someone—or paid him or her off—to remove the phone, dial it for her, and hold it up to her face so she could issue orders. That someone wasn’t on the floor of the East Wing every day.
He said to the camera, “You said a local certified nurse visits Brenda every two weeks or so. I wouldn’t be surprised if those visits corresponded with all of the outbound calls made on this phone.”
Behind him, Brenda cursed as she thrashed her head back and forth.
“Yup,” Joe said.
To the CO, Joe said, “If you can find a normal wheelchair, I’ll help you get her into it.” He gestured toward the tongue-controlled chair. “This one will be out of commission for a while, which is good, because it nearly killed me.”
—
WHILE THE CO RETRIEVED a wheelchair from the infirmary Joe squatted down next to Brenda.
Her eyes raked over his face like razors. There was spittle on the corners of her mouth and a string of mucus from her nose to the floor.
“You won’t be needing this,” he said as he gently removed her headset. She arched her neck to make its removal as difficult as possible.
Then he fished a bandanna out of his jeans pocket and wiped her mouth and nose clean. She tried to turn her head away from him, but she couldn’t wrench away far enough that he couldn’t reach her. Her skin was soft and it was covered with a thin layer of downy hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He felt no sense of triumph or satisfaction. What he felt was sadness as deep as he’d ever experienced before.
—
“DID YOU GET ALL THAT?” Joe asked Warden Gray wearily when he entered the video room.
“We got it all,” the IT guy said.
“My God,” Gray said, “that was . . . incredible. Are you okay?”
Joe winced and said, “Bruises is all, I think.”
“It happened so fast,” Gray said with wonder. “She could have killed you before the CO had time to respond.”
“And she would have tried.”
Gray stood up and put her hands on Joe’s shoulders. “You were magnificent,” she said.
Joe smiled bitterly. “I beat up a seventy-three-year-old quadriplegic and took her phone. I’ve had better days.”
—
AFTER INSTRUCTING THE IT GUY to download the call records from the iPhone and email them to Dulcie Schalk’s office, Joe said, “I need to keep this phone a while longer. You’ve got all the data off it.”
Gray started to object, but she thought better of it.
“I suppose we can look the other way,” she said. “I need to meet a man for dinner.”
“Happy anniversary.”
“Thank you. I hope this brings you some peace.”
“We’re getting closer,” he said.
—
HE NEARLY CRIED OUT from the pain and abrasions on his legs and shoulder when he climbed into his pickup. First stop before leaving Lusk, he decided, was to buy a jumbo container of ibuprofen for the ride back to the Bighorns.
He’d glanced at the iPhone call records as they were being sent digitally to Dulcie’s office. Most of the numbers were unfamiliar, but they were similar to one another with the same 862 area code from where the phones had been imported. He assumed the calls had been made to prepaid burners purchased at the same time and distributed to Dallas, his thugs, and Cora Lee. The calls with a Winchester prefix would likely correspond to the burners purchased by Ashlyn Raymer and David Gilbertson.
The lone number not associated with the burners had an area code of 272: eastern Pennsylvania. Joe knew the number belonged to Deputy Lester Spivak, because he had it stored in his own phone. Spivak had never had it changed when he took the job in Twelve Sleep County.
With the outgoing call record from Brenda’s phone and the financial records obtained from the Bank of Winchester by subpoena, there would no doubt be a pattern of calls to Raymer, followed by withdrawals from Brenda’s account, Joe thought. Other calls from Brenda would connect to a timeline that included the attacks on Joy Bannon and April, Sheridan’s sighting of Cora Lee, Dallas’s meet-up with Weasel and Brutus, and Spivak’s deliberate botching of the arrest of Dallas on the highway.
Dulcie would have new evidence to charge Dallas, his thugs, and even Brenda if she chose. Spivak’s botching of the original case would be an afterthought. Dulcie could redeem her reputation in front of Judge Hewitt and a jury.
The open circle would close. But that would come later.
His first call was to Nate.
There was no answer.
27
Rather than drive his pickup the last two miles up the mountain to the Cateses’ hunting lodge and risk being heard or seen, Joe pulled off the two-track and nosed his vehicle into a stand of willows. He shut off the headlights and turned the motor off. The adrenaline that had surged through him from his fight with Brenda and the discoveries they’d made had finally worn off and he was beyond bone-tired. Only the pain of his wounds kept him awake.
That, and finding Nate.
He loaded his shotgun with seven rounds of double-ought buckshot and filled a daypack with gear: satellite phone, radio, spotting scope, zip-tie cuffs, a camera with a zoom lens, water, rope, flashlight, a first-aid kit, and other gear. He winced as he shouldered the pack on his back. That blow to his shoulder hurt the most of all.
After putting his keys under the driver’s-side floor mat, he gently shut the door and walked away. The night sky was clear and the stars creamy. The temperature had dropped to the mid-forties and the wind was still.
—
HE PARALLELED the two-track up the incline, but stayed in the massive aspen grove that stretched from the foothills, where he’d parked, to the tree line on the summit itself. Most of the yellow leaves had dropped from the branches but were not yet crispy to walk on. His boots upturned mulch on the forest floor and it smelled dank and musky. The dead carpet of yellow leaves seemed to soak up the starlight and he could see his boots.
Joe tried not to spend too much time inside his own head as he climbed. Instead of contemplating how he’d feel if Nate had been hurt or killed fulfilling Joe’s request to keep Dallas and his thugs under surveillance, he tried to focus on what he saw, what he heard, and what he smelled.
He had a pretty good idea that he recalled seeing the “cool old cedar” tree Nate had referenced earlier in their phone call. It was not only the highest tree on that area of the mountain, but it afforded the best view inside the rock enclosure where the cabin was located.
On his return across the state, he’d filled in Marybeth and told her what he needed to do. She urged him to wait, although she was just as worried about Nate. Then he called Sheriff Reed and told him where Dallas and his two men were located. Reed had just returned to Saddlestring with the body of Wanda Stacy, and he cursed Joe for keeping him in the dark so long about where Dallas was holed up.
“We can’t charge him again for Farkus,” Reed said.
“With this new evidence, you can,” Joe said. “And you can add Wanda Stacy. I’m thinking that if we grab those two thugs Brutus and Weasel alive, they’ll turn on Dallas in a heartbeat to save themselves. You and Dulcie will have plenty of charges to add to the list—including arson and causing the death of my poor horse and dog.”
Reed said he’d call up his deputies and meet Joe on the two-track that led to the cabin. He told Joe to wait for them to arrive before proceeding to the hunting camp.
Joe said, “I’ll meet you there,” and disconnected the call while Reed yelled at him to stick tight.
—
HE FE
LT MORE THAN SAW that the hunting cabin was less than a quarter mile in front of him. Maybe it was the whiff of wood smoke from the cookstove, or the general hush in the air because the birds and animals had established a perimeter—he wasn’t sure.
But he slowed down and thumbed the safety off his shotgun. He made deliberate steps forward on the forest floor—heel first, then a slow rock forward to the ball of his foot—to avoid snapping a dry twig.
He found the massive cedar by noting the absence of stars directly above him where the top of the tree reached into the sky.
“Nate?” he whispered.
No response. But he smelled something metallic in the air.
Joe slid out of his pack and dug inside it to locate his headlamp. The lens could be choked down from bright to dim, and he dimmed it to the minimum before turning it on.
He held it up close to the trunk of the cedar and saw the blood.
There was a thin spray of it from the gnarled root up across the bark. It looked as if a housepainter had flicked his brush at a wall. It looked arterial, and Joe felt his toes curl.
“Nate?”
No response.
He twisted the lens of the lamp for more light and saw distinctive drag marks on the ground from the tree that went to his right. The twin grooves looked like they’d been made by the heels of boots.
Joe left the pack on the ground and, as silently as he could, followed the tracks. He had to push through a dense caragana bush as well as hundreds of knee-high aspen shooters pushing up from the earth.
After ten minutes, he heard what he thought was a moan.
“Nate?”
There was a distinctive grunt, then another moan. It was the moan of a man.
He shouldered the shotgun and moved from tree to tree. The sound got louder.
Via the starlight that filtered down through the skeletal aspen branches, he saw the dark form of a body in the leaves ahead.
“Uhnnn. Help me.” The voice was pained and unrecognizable.
“Nate,” Joe said as he rushed forward and bent over the form. He reached up and turned the headlamp to full to find Lester Spivak’s bloody face. Spivak clamped his eyes shut against the beam and grimaced.
The man was on his back with his hands tightly clamped on the sides of his head in a Hear no evil gesture. Next to him on the leaves were a pair of disembodied human ears. They had not been surgically removed.
Joe hissed, “Nate.”
The brush rustled and Nate Romanowski pushed through. He looked unhurt, but his hands were covered with dried blood.
“He’s dirty,” Nate said.
“I know, but did you have to rip his ears off?”
“That was his choice,” Nate said.
Joe looked down at Spivak, who once again cringed from the full beam of light in his face. The blood on his skin was crusty.
“I don’t think he’ll bleed out,” Joe said.
“No great loss if he does.”
“I need my first-aid kit to bandage him up. I left it with my pack by the cedar tree.”
“Really?” Nate asked, incredulous.
“Really.”
He shrugged and went to retrieve it.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Joe said to Spivak.
Spivak moaned.
When Nate returned, he handed Joe the kit and said, “He was going to march me into the hunting camp and show me off like his bitch,” Nate said. “We couldn’t have that, could we?”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Joe said to Nate. “I got worried when you wouldn’t answer your phone.”
“Couldn’t risk it,” Nate said. “I knew you’d show up eventually.”
Joe found a couple of thick pads and a roll of gauze and said to Spivak, “Take your hands away.”
While Joe wound the gauze around Spivak’s head, Nate said, “He was dirtier than you thought. It was Spivak who convinced Dallas and his monkeys to go after Dave Farkus and Wanda Stacy. Seems he was worried they might have overheard his name spoken that night in the bar and he was afraid they’d tell someone and blow his cover.”
Joe paused and glared at Spivak. “Is that true?”
Spivak moaned again.
“Why would he tell me that if it wasn’t true?” Nate asked. “That was just after ear number two came off and I told him I’d stick my fingers up his nose and rip it off next. So it was a two-ear confession. Those are the best kind, you know. The most reliable.”
“What did he tell you after you took off the first?” Joe asked.
“He told me to go to hell.”
Joe finished the wrap. He wasn’t as gentle as he could have been.
He said, “I’ll cuff him and we can deal with him later. Are Dallas and his pals still at the cabin?”
“Last I looked, they were sitting outside playing cards by lantern light.”
Joe stood and said, “Thanks for keeping your eye on them. I appreciate it. But I wish you wouldn’t do that with the ears.”
“It’s been a long time,” Nate said. “I kinda missed it.”
“I’ve got a plan for what comes next,” Joe said.
“Does it involve blowing Dallas’s head clean off his body?”
“I hope not.”
“Tell it to me anyway, I guess.”
—
JOE WAITED at the base of the cedar tree for Nate to climb as high as he could. After Nate was in position with his .454 Casull aimed at the three men in the hunting camp, Joe tapped the tree to indicate he was leaving.
He could smell both wood smoke and cigar smoke in the air as he neared the clogged opening of the enclave. Joe didn’t know if Nate could see him in the starlight, but he guessed he could. His heart raced as he got close enough that he could hear someone—not Dallas—shout, “I got you this time, you son of a bitch” with finality as he apparently slapped his cards down and laughed.
Joe hugged the granite wall and sidestepped along it to the left. The wall was between him and the men inside the opening and the rock was still warm from the sun that day but cooling fast. It had the texture of sandpaper and it hurt his bare hands and knees when he found a fold in it and crawled up. He did so slowly and only after double-checking each grip and foothold. He knew if he made a sound, he’d be in trouble.
—
THERE THEY WERE, just as Nate had described them. Dallas, Brutus, and Weasel sat at an old picnic table playing cards under the cold blue light of a lantern. A half-full whiskey bottle reflected the orange of the lantern mantle. Dallas had a cigar clamped in his teeth and the cherry glowed red.
From his angle on top of the ridge, Joe could see only their upper bodies. Two of the men had their backs to him. Dallas faced him.
He was seventy-five yards from the picnic table. It was too far for an effective shotgun blast, but not so far that he couldn’t pepper them all if necessary. Nate wouldn’t have that problem.
Joe raised his binoculars and focused them in. There was a cell phone next to the whiskey bottle. Dallas and his thugs were using stick matches as poker chips, and Dallas looked like he was winning.
He held Brenda’s iPhone next to his body to shield the lit screen and tried to guess which number from her call list would correspond with the burner on the picnic table. He scrolled down the list to the very first call made more than a month and a half before. He guessed that Brenda would have called her son first to launch her scheme. So he tapped that number.
It took longer than he thought it would, but the burner phone lit up on the picnic table and all three men froze. One of them—Joe assumed it was Weasel, based on his profile—said, “It’s her.”
Dallas lowered his hand of cards and opened the phone and said, “Mother.”
“Not quite,” Joe responded.
He watched as Dallas jerked the phone away from hi
s face and double-checked the number on the screen. Then: “Who is this?”
“This is Joe Pickett, and I need you to listen to me. Right now there’s a bullet the size of a nickel aimed right between your eyes. If you stand up or make any sudden movement, that’ll be the last thing you’ll ever do.
“You burned down my house and killed my dog and my wife’s new horse. So just give me an excuse to pull the trigger, Dallas, and I’ll happily oblige.”
Dallas was still for a moment. Then he combed the darkness, trying to pinpoint Joe’s location. His eyes narrowed as he homed in on the cedar tree that towered over the hunting camp.
“That’s right,” Joe said.
“What’s going on?” Weasel asked with mild panic.
“Shut up,” Brutus warned him.
Joe said, “Tell your stooges to stay put.”
He watched through the binoculars as Dallas murmured something to them. Both men turned and started scanning the darkness as Dallas had done.
“This is Brenda’s phone,” Joe said. “I got it from her chair. Spivak’s been arrested, Cora Lee is in jail, and Brenda is back in isolation without her chair or her phone. We know about Wanda Stacy and Dave Farkus. We know everything. Sheriff Reed is on his way. It’s your choice how you want this to end.”
“It ain’t ever going to end,” Dallas said. But he didn’t reach for a weapon and he didn’t stand up.
Joe said, “Tell Brutus and Weasel to put their hands on top of their heads where I can see them.”
Dallas waited a long ten seconds, then relayed the order.
At first, both men simply stared at him.
Dallas said, “Do it, goddamn it,” loud enough that Joe could hear him through the phone as well as through the air.
Reluctantly, both men complied.
“Tell them to stand up slowly and walk over to the campfire and get on their bellies.”
Dallas repeated it. Weasel stood, followed by Brutus. They stepped over the picnic bench stools and limped toward the dying fire.
Then Weasel stopped and turned. “It was Rory who killed that girl,” he shouted. “I didn’t have a damned thing to do with it.”
