by C. J. Box
He pumped his brakes going down the incline and pulled in behind the red Peterbilt. The wind buffeted his pickup and the blowing snow stuck to the passenger window. Through the blizzard he could see a fireplug-shaped man hopping about in a black T-shirt clutching a cell phone. The man gesticulated wildly toward his truck. He apparently didn’t have a coat.
Joe left his truck running and pulled on his parka and climbed out. The wind nearly blew him across the highway on the ice, but he bent over to make himself a smaller target.
The driver had a five-day growth of beard and food stains on the front of his T-shirt. He chattered at Joe in an unfamiliar language, Russian or something Eastern European, and gestured toward his truck as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. The driver of the first truck was outside as well. He had a heavy red beard and he looked like he wanted a piece of the Eastern European.
Joe motioned for the red-bearded man—who also spoke a language unfamiliar to Joe—to go back to his vehicle, and for the Eastern European to climb back inside his cab to get out of the weather while he called for the Highway Patrol. A trooper who said he was eating breakfast at the Invasion Bar & Grill in Kaycee responded and said he was on his way.
“Anybody hurt?” the trooper asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Joe said. “Both the drivers are from somewhere else and I can’t communicate with them. It looks like they had some kind of altercation on the highway and they slid around until the wind blew them over.”
“Damn Russians, I’d bet. There’s more of them on the road all the time. They’re a pain in my ass,” the trooper said with disgust. “You’d think they’d know how to drive in the winter. Don’t they have winter over there, too?”
“Yup.”
“Where is the crash?”
While Joe cleared a roadside mileage marker of snow so he could report the location of the crash, another call came through on his phone. He squinted against the driving snow and saw it was from an unknown number.
He punched it up and shouted, “Joe Pickett.”
“What—are you standing outside?” The voice was familiar, but Joe couldn’t place it.
“Yes. The wind is blowing.”
“I can hear it. This is Michael Williams, but this isn’t an official call.”
Joe turned his back to the wind.
“Give me a minute,” he said. “I’m talking to the Highway Patrol and I’ll get right back to you.”
“Don’t take too long,” Williams said, obviously annoyed.
. . .
JOE PULLED HIS DOOR SHUT against the wind and punched up Michael Williams on his phone. He’d told the trooper he would stay at the crash location until he arrived from Kaycee and took over.
Every few minutes, the dark-haired Russian in the T-shirt poked his head up out of the window of his cab and looked around. He appeared to be shouting. The red-bearded Russian in the other truck shook his fist at the driver of the red Peterbilt every time he saw him.
“Sorry about the delay,” Joe said to Williams.
“That’s okay, but I don’t have long to talk to you. I’m calling from my personal cell phone and no one at DCI knows I’m making this call. You have to promise me it’ll stay that way.”
Joe agreed.
“I know who you are,” Williams said. “I’ve seen your name around and I know you did some work for Governor Rulon. I’m guessing Allen has asked you to do the same thing for him.”
Before Joe could respond, Williams said, “No need to confirm that. It just seems like something he would do.”
Joe didn’t confirm it.
“Whatever the circumstances, you’ve got a reputation for being a stand-up guy.”
“Thank you. Why did he take you guys off the case?” Joe asked. “It seemed to me from reading the file you were building a good foundation to go forward.”
“We were.” Then a long pause. “I will only tell you it had nothing to do with the KSL case.”
“Meaning the Kate Shelford-Longden case.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean when you say you were taken off the case for other reasons?”
“Look,” Williams said, “I really can’t get into why we were ordered off. I have two kids and another one on the way. I need this job and the bennies—especially medical insurance. You know how it is in the bureaucracy. If this call we’re having ever got back to my agency or the governor, I’d be toast. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Joe said. But he didn’t.
“I’m sure you have some questions about the investigation itself, so ask away. I’d like to see this case get cleared up one way or another, and if you can do it, I have no problem with that at all. The loose ends still nag me at night.”
“What loose ends?”
Williams said, “Keep in mind I only have a few minutes until my break is over and I need to head back.”
Joe nodded, even though Williams couldn’t see him do it.
“Okay,” Joe said. “There is plenty of good background in the report, but no conclusions or theories. Why is that?”
“You’ve got the redacted version,” Williams said. “My original report listed suspects for further questioning.”
“Who redacted—”
“I’m not going there. Do you have another question?”
“Yup,” Joe said while he dug his spiral notepad and a pen out of the console box. “What were the names of the people you wanted to question further?”
“I’ve got ’em right here,” Williams said. “The thing is, the Silver Creek Ranch really vets their people. They run background checks on everyone and they don’t hire any sketchy types. You and I both know that just because someone doesn’t have a record doesn’t mean they’re not capable of doing something wrong, but in this situation it didn’t make much sense to me that a ranch employee had anything to do with the disappearance. They’re just too busy and they all live with each other in housing right on the ranch. They’ve got a bunch of dormitory-like buildings there. Hell, they’re a hell of a lot nicer than the dorms I stayed in at college.
“Anyway, if someone followed Kate when she drove away and did something to her, one of the other employees would have noticed that the guy was gone. At least that’s the theory I was operating under.
“Plus,” he said, “there are two hundred and fifty employees at that ranch in the high season. It seemed like a waste of time and manpower to question them all. That’s not to say we might not have had to do it eventually, but at the time it seemed unlikely that an employee would be involved.”
“Gotcha,” Joe said.
“I mean, we had absolutely no leads to follow. Since the employees were clean, we thought, we looked at other people who might have been on the ranch while KSL was there, or other people who might have had it out for her. I was operating under the assumption that if someone grabbed her, it wasn’t random. She was one of the few unattached guests that week, and she’s attractive. The guy who grabbed her knew he’d have to get rid of the rental car she drove away in. So I operated under the theory that someone saw her there and made her a target. But I didn’t think it was an employee.”
Joe didn’t ask the obvious question, because Williams was on a roll.
The DCI agent said, “Have you ever been there?”
“Not yet, but I’ve been to a few dude ranches.”
“The Silver Creek Ranch is not another dude ranch,” Williams said with a chuckle. “It’s a world of its own. And it’s a very controlled environment. Think of it as a cruise ship instead of a ranch. You’ve got a couple hundred employees and eighty or ninety guests all staying together on the same property. People don’t just come and go, because the ranch is so big and it has so many activities going on that anything anybody might possibly want is right there.”
“I understand.” Joe declined to mention that Sheridan worked there. He thought it might take them on a tangent that would eat up the little time Williams
said he had left to talk.
Williams continued. “So what I started to zero in on were the few people who came to the ranch that week who were not employees or guests. People who might not be as clean.”
“Contractors,” Joe said.
“Bingo. I got a list from the front gate of all the people who checked in and out that week, then I ran background checks on them. It turns out I got some hits on a couple of the names. Do you have a way to write these down?”
“Yes.”
“Jack and Joshua Teubner,” Williams said. He was obviously reading from notes and he spelled the names. “They own a private fish hatchery outside of Saratoga.”
Joe was familiar with the facility.
“Father and son. They supply most of the guest ranches in the state and they operate into Colorado and Montana. Lots of private landowners use them to stock trout in their ponds, so they’re the type of people who move through places like the Silver Creek Ranch with no one really noticing.
“Jack, the old man, has a couple of B&E’s on his sheet and a DUI. Josh, his son, spent a year in Rawlins for stalking an old girlfriend.”
“Stalking,” Joe repeated.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. But I never got a chance to talk to either one of them.”
“Who else?” Joe asked.
“Ben and Brady Youngberg,” Williams said, and spelled their names as well. “They’re farriers from Laramie. Brothers. They come to the Silver Creek Ranch every couple of days in the summer to take care of the horses. And we’re talking, I don’t know, hundreds of horses. There’s a decent chance they saw Kate since she’s a rider. Probably a better chance the Youngbergs saw her than the Teubners.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Well, from what I heard by asking around, the Youngberg brothers are the best farriers in the state. It’s hard physical work, man. They spend the entire day bent over putting shoes on and taking shoes off. But these two are hound dogs. They work hard all day and party hard at night, wherever they are. Both have been charged with A&B—assault and battery—for bar fights. Brady spent a year in Rawlins for stomping some guy. They’re rough customers.”
Joe agreed.
“There’s one more,” Williams said. “And then I really have to go.”
“Shoot.”
“The ex-husband. Name’s Richard Cheetham. I guess he and KSL had a pretty bitter and public divorce over in England. I couldn’t really tie Richard to the case because I didn’t get a chance to pursue that angle. But maybe he hired someone to follow her and take her out between the ranch and Denver. It’s far-fetched, but you can never rule out the ex-husband, you know?”
“Right,” Joe said, recalling that he’d also written down the name on his legal pad.
Outside, the trooper Joe had talked to cruised slowly by the pickup and pulled in behind the red Peterbilt. Joe waved at him and the highway patrolman waved back.
“I really appreciate you calling me,” Joe said to Williams.
“Yeah, well.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“And I’m not kidding about you keeping this between us,” Williams said. “But I would like to know what you find out.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” Joe agreed.
“I don’t like the idea of someone grabbing women tourists in this state,” he said. “I’ve got daughters, you know?”
“Me too,” Joe said.
“So I hope you find the bastard and put him away, even if the governor figures out a way to take credit for it.”
Joe didn’t comment. But before Williams punched off, Joe said, “Hey—there’s one more thing I want to ask you.”
“Do it fast.”
“There was a game warden down in Saratoga named Steve Pollock. Did you ever run into him?”
At first, Joe thought he’d lost the connection. Finally, Williams said, “Yeah, I met him a couple of times.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to him?”
“I’m not going there,” Williams said with caution.
“So him leaving might be connected to the case?”
“I’m not saying that at all. He might be connected to why we were taken off, but not to this...” Williams stopped speaking and Joe strained to listen.
“Let’s just leave it here,” the DCI agent said. “I’ve already said too much. Gotta go.”
And this time, the connection went dead.
. . .
JOE SAT BACK and watched as the trooper emerged from his cruiser in a heavy parka. He waved his arms at both drivers to indicate they should stay in their vehicles. The two Eastern Europeans gesticulated wildly and pointed at each other, each attempting to pin the blame for the accident on the other one. The trooper shook his head, uninterested in the dispute.
Even though Williams had ruled out the likelihood that the disappearance of Kate was a random act, Joe looked at the drivers and wrote down the words Random stranger next to the other suspects.
It was a lonely highway from Saratoga toward Denver, after all. A tractor-trailer driver with no ties at all to the state or region could have happened on Kate driving alone. The trailers of the rigs on their sides in front of him were certainly large enough to hide Kate’s Jeep if they were empty or half-full.
He knew the possibility was a long shot, but so was everything else. He also knew that if a random predator had taken her he’d likely never find him.
Joe nodded at the trooper as he eased his pickup back onto the icy highway. The highway patrolman didn’t look to be in a very good mood.
His last glimpse of the first Russian driver—with his wild eyes, stained T-shirt, and blowing snow now stuck to the side of his face—made Joe think: That guy is capable of anything.
*
ONCE HE TURNED OFF the interstate highway in Casper, Joe had a choice of traveling south on State Highway 487 over the Shirley Basin to Medicine Bow or on Highway 220 through Alcova, Muddy Gap, and Rawlins. Either route would lead to Saratoga, and both were two-lane roads. He paused and checked his phone for the road conditions on the WYDOT website. Both routes were listed as “Wet, Slick in Spots with Dangerous Winds, and Blowing Snow—Advise No Light Trailers, Extreme Blow-Over Risk.”
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Both perilous. He chose 487 and within an hour he was high on the Shirley Mountains plateau where it seemed he was the only driver on the road and he got the feeling, like he always did when he was there, that he’d ventured on top of the world where the only inhabitants were pure white jackrabbits, pronghorn antelope, and the ghosts of winter drivers who’d slid off the highway.
The plateau was stark and there were no trees to cut the wind. Waves of blowing snow were forming small drifts across the road. He noted that the blades of the wind turbines that had been recently built on the flat were still. Joe knew that happened only in two conditions: when there was no wind at all or when the winds were so high that the speed of the turning blades would damage the equipment.
He recalled Chief of Staff Hanlon mentioning a massive new wind farm that was being built north of Saratoga and that the governor had a keen interest in the project.
*
JOE ATE A LATE LUNCH in the historic Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, the town where the classic Western novel had been set. He was the only customer in the restaurant and he went with the special: hot hamburger steak with mashed potatoes and brown gravy.
He left a twenty-dollar tip because the geriatric waitress called him “son” and she reminded him of a great-aunt he had once liked. Plus, he hoped the extra money would incentivize her to stay around on days when there were so few customers.
She thanked him for the tip while she rang him up. She said, “It’s because of a game warden that my husband went to prison.”
Before Joe could react, she winked and said, “It was the best day of my life.”
Outside, he circled his pickup in the lot before climbing back in.
Snow and i
ce were packed in the wheel wells from the drive and had built up until the mass was less than an inch from rubbing against the tread on the tires. He turned with his back to the truck and kicked at the ice with his boot heel until it broke away and fell to the gravel in blocky chunks.
*
THE WIND FINALLY died away midafternoon as Joe crossed I-80 at Walcott Junction and drove south on WYO 130 toward the town of Saratoga. The area had gotten plenty of snow, but it was hard to judge the depth because of the drifts. Icy waves of it shone in the sun and it was so deep in places that only the top wire and tips of the fence posts were visible. Someone had used an earth mover to push the snow into barricades along the roadside hilltops to slow loose snow from drifting across the asphalt.
Elk Mountain and the Snowy Range rose sun-kissed and blue and the mountains dominated the view from the driver’s-side window. The Sierra Madre range rose in front of him as well as out the passenger side.
He noted that the Upper North Platte River Valley, where Saratoga was located, was deceptively situated. The occupants of hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks using east-to-west I-80, where the terrain was high and windswept desert, would have no inkling that twenty-one miles to the south was a lush river valley with mountain peaks on three sides.
A herd of ninety elk were bedded down and sunning themselves on the top of a ridge to the east. Their forms blended in so well with the snow-and-sagebrush cover that he would have missed them if it weren’t for the glint of afternoon sun on the antlers of the bulls.
He slowed down to let two bald eagles rise up clumsily from a road-killed rabbit in the middle of the highway.
There were snow-packed dirt roads on either side of the highway leading either to distant ranches or river access on the North Platte. And not a single oncoming car.
*
SARATOGA, POPULATION 1,671 souls, and elevation 6,785 feet, appeared spread out in front of him after he topped a long rise. The town was choked with cottonwoods and he could see a wide ribbon of river through the middle of it. The air shimmered over the hot stack of a lumber mill on the western edge of the town.
