by C. J. Box
“There’s a couple of snoops down here we need to take care of,” Kessel said. “It’s high priority and it might get a little hairy.”
Panos sat back and waited for the warm bath to wash through him once again. Obviously, Kessel had obtained some new information about these “snoops.”
He hoped he had enough medication to last through whatever came next.
*
BACK IN THE HOSPITAL, the emergency nurse approached Maggie White at the desk and sighed, “She’s gone.”
White shook her head. “I’ll call the tech.”
The technical administrator was in charge of securing the room until the morning shift arrived. The body would remain there until the next of kin was notified and the body moved downstairs into the morgue.
The nurse said, “Make sure you note that someone forgot to change the patient’s name on the whiteboard after we moved Schmidt to the second floor this afternoon.”
“I’ll do that,” White said as she checked the patient roster on her monitor. “So it was Mrs. Alvarez who passed?”
“Yes. Pneumonia in a woman that age...”
She thought about telling the nurse about Phil with Pfizer, but didn’t. He’d only been there for a minute and he was gone.
25
SHERIFF NEAL LEANED BACK HEAVILY IN HIS CHAIR AND TOSSED A folded copy of the Rawlins Daily Times across his desk toward Joe and Nate.
Joe didn’t open it. He could see the photo of Neal clutching the blow-up sex doll that had first appeared in the Daily Dispatch. It was on the front page.
“We all look like a bunch of damn fools,” Neal said. “I look like the biggest fool of all.”
Joe said, “Yup.”
“You don’t have to agree with me. It’s gonna be a long nine months until the election.”
Nate shifted next to Joe. He was eager to get going. They’d both given their statements and Nate didn’t want to spend another minute in the Carbon County sheriff’s department office than he had to. Nate, Joe knew, was uncomfortable in these kinds of surroundings.
“What about Les McKnight?” Joe asked.
“He’s got a busted nose and cheekbone and a concussion,” Neal said. “Your daughter clocked him a good one. The hospital said he’ll have to stay there a few days before they can release him. Word is he’s taking calls from lawyers looking to sue the department. You and especially your daughter will probably be safe, though. They’ll go after the deep pockets.
“We’re gonna bargain with him,” Neal said. “After all, he did take a couple of shots at us. We might be able to get the suit dropped in exchange for making the attempted assault charges go away.”
Joe winced. The negotiations would be messy and he hoped he could stay out of them. After all, McKnight could claim quite credibly that he was defending his home at night from attackers who’d not identified themselves. And owning a doll wasn’t probable cause for an all-out raid.
“I didn’t go to morning coffee today,” Neal said. “I thought I might end up saying something I’d later regret.”
After a beat, he said, “What a mess.”
“Yup.”
“Trouble does seem to follow you around, doesn’t it?” Neal asked Joe.
“Seems to.”
Joe turned his head. Neal’s office was on the second floor of the county building and his window overlooked a brick building across the street. In a scene that looked like something out of the Depression, a line of men stood outside in the cold waiting to go inside. They shuffled their feet and clouds of condensation rose from their mouths. Blue-collar workers, Joe thought. He noted heavy boots, Carhartt coats, and insulated overalls.
“What’s going on over there?” he asked.
“Hiring for Buckbrush,” Neal said. “The company leased out that empty building a month ago as their headquarters for hiring. We’ve had guys show up from all over the country trying to get on with that outfit.”
Joe heard Nate snort with derision but ignored him.
“Construction jobs are hard to come by,” Neal said. “Some of those guys were laid off for a couple of years. It’s gonna be a real good thing for the county, that wind farm. Good for the tax base while they build it. After that, the workforce will be fairly small. But we’ll deal with that a few years down the road. We’re used to boom-and-bust cycles around here.”
“Are there any new leads on Kate’s disappearance?” Joe asked. “I mean, good ones?”
“I think I’m out of the Kate business for a while,” Neal said with a heavy sigh. “Maybe you should be, too.”
*
NATE STAYED IN JOE’S PICKUP with the heater running, in front of the Carbon County hospital.
Inside, the front desk confirmed to Joe that Joshua Teubner had been admitted the day before for an accidental gunshot wound to the shoulder. His prognosis was good.
As he walked back to his truck, Joe realized that in the last two days, at least three people had been sent to the hospital building behind him: Joshua Teubner, Les McKnight, and the older woman from Saratoga who’d slid off the ice on the road. At this rate, he thought, the hospital would be full and Saratoga empty within a short time.
Trouble does seem to follow you around, doesn’t it?
. . .
HIS PHONE BURRED as he climbed into the cab. It was another unknown number.
Joe punched it up. The connection was filled with static.
“Is this Joe Pickett?”
“It is.”
“This is Jeb Pryor.”
It took Joe a few seconds to recall the man. “Yes?”
“I’m the owner of the Encampment lumber mill. We met the other night at the Wolf.”
“Gotcha. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. I think you’ll have an idea what to do about it.”
“What is it?”
Pryor started to speak when Joe’s phone chirped and the call dropped. Cell service was as unreliable in Carbon County as it was in Twelve Sleep County. Joe lowered the phone to his lap.
“Is Josh Teubner in there?” Nate asked, glaring at the hospital.
“Yup.”
“Want me to go talk with him and get his phone?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe he’ll recall a little more about that conversation he overheard if he’s got a clear head for once.”
“Nate...”
The phone lit up again with UNKNOWN NUMBER.
“Mr. Pryor?” Joe said.
The line was clear this time. So clear, he could hear someone breathing.
“Joe?” It was a familiar voice.
“Yes.”
“Steve Pollock. I hear you’ve been asking about me.”
Pollock spoke softly, as if he didn’t want anyone near him to overhear.
“Where are you, Steve?”
“I’m in Cheyenne, but I’m on my way to Arizona. I find that I can’t stand this cold and wind anymore now that I don’t have to be out in it.”
Joe had the feeling that Pollock was making the call with reluctance. And that he might disconnect at any second.
“Steve, I think you know I’m in Saratoga. What happened over here?”
“Shit. Shit happened.”
Pollock sounded resigned and morose.
“Would you like to talk about it?” Joe asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll come to you.”
Pollock laughed a bitter laugh. “Yeah, there’s no way I’m coming back over there.”
“I’ll come to you in Cheyenne. How long are you going to be there?”
Pollock hesitated so long, Joe looked at his phone to make sure they were still live. They were.
“I’m leaving early tomorrow,” Pollock said. “I don’t plan to be back.”
“I’ll meet you this afternoon.”
“Man, I don’t know if this is such a good idea after all.”
“One conversation,” Joe said. “Gam
e warden to game warden. It’ll just be between us. No one at headquarters needs to know we talked.”
After another long pause, Pollock said, “I can trust you, can’t I, Joe?”
“Yup.”
“Alf’s Pub on Nineteenth. I’ll be at a booth in the back. Leave your recorder in your truck and don’t bring anybody else, okay?”
Joe agreed and Pollock killed the call.
“Going to Cheyenne?” Nate asked.
He nodded.
“Bad things happen there.”
Joe didn’t want to start an argument. He knew Nate’s experiences in Cheyenne—his confinement to an off-the-books federal lockup facility for nearly a year—were much different from his own encounters at the state capital.
Nate said, “While you’re gone, I’ll circle back on a few things and keep my eye on Sheridan.”
“Are the few things Kate-related or conspiracy theory–related?” Joe asked.
“Maybe both,” Nate said. “Drop me at the Wolf so I can get out and switch over to my outfit. Yours is too cold inside with this crappy door.”
Joe agreed. Then: “Nate, we really don’t want another interrogation that results in another local going to that hospital, if you know what I mean.”
Nate grunted.
*
JOE TOLD HIM about the call he’d received from Jeb Pryor.
“You could save me some time if you went and talked to him. Maybe find out what he was calling about and why he thinks I’d be interested in what he has to say. Give me a call after and we’ll figure out our next move.”
“I’ll do it. I’ve got some business that direction anyway.”
Joe nodded. He said, “I can’t really ask you to do this in any official capacity, because I’m not sure I even have an official capacity anymore. What I do know is I don’t have much time left to pretend I do.”
“I’m taking my fish,” Nate said, after turning in his seat to confirm it was still in the back of the pickup.
“If you have to,” Joe said.
*
AFTER CHECKING THE WYDOT APP on his phone to find out that I-80 East between Elk Mountain and Laramie was once again closed due to high winds and blowing snow, Joe turned south toward Highway 230 to Laramie and beyond that to Cheyenne. It was the only remaining west-to-east route that was still open.
No interstate highway was closed as much as I-80 through southern Wyoming. The locals still complained that the feds should never have built it where they did, and there were still postcards available along the route that read: I survived the Snow-Chi-Min Trail.
Two-thirty was a lonely two-lane highway with narrow shoulders surrounded on both sides by endless white punctuated by distant ranch buildings. Blowing snow had glazed the blacktop shiny with ice and he slowed down and guided his pickup from milepost to milepost on the far-right side of the lane, where there were a few dry patches. Several times, he stopped dead while the ground blizzards smoked across the road and he waited for them to clear up so he could see. As he drove, he was careful not to clip the posts with his exterior mirrors.
Oncoming traffic consisted of three vehicles total. The drivers looked over at him furtively as they passed, then resumed their concentration.
The route wound up into the heavy timber of the Medicine Bow Forest and dipped into northern Colorado before re-crossing the Wyoming border. Thick lodgepole pine trees slowed down the blowing snow from drifting across the highway, although acres of beetle-killed timber did little to help. He saw a herd of brown and beige elk with ice crystals imbedded in their thick fur trudging single file along the borrow pit with their heads down as if on a forced march to slaughter. In one mountain meadow, he saw the forlorn heads of sage grouse poking just above the surface of the snowpack as if looking around for relief from the weather.
Snowmobilers raced around on groomed and ungroomed trails near WyColo Lodge and he eyed them warily to make sure none of them darted out onto the road in front of him.
Wind whistled inside the cab because of the damaged door, and his heater, even on full, couldn’t compete with the cold. He turned on the radio to distract himself from the fact that his fingers and toes were getting numb.
He caught the middle of the hourly newscast from KOWB out of Laramie.
“... In the case of missing British public relations executive Kate Shelford-Longden, Governor Allen said in a rare Sunday-morning press conference this morning that the state would be redoubling its investigation after purging the effort of what he referred to as ‘incompetent state employees’...”
He quickly turned it off.
. . .
ON GOOD ROADS, it took a little more than two hours to drive from Saratoga and Cheyenne. Joe was approaching hour three as he finally rolled through snow-blasted Laramie. He hoped Pollock’s resolve would hold until he could get to Alf’s Pub in Cheyenne.
The snippet he’d heard on the radio from the governor’s press conference had planted a dark seed of defeat in Joe’s belly. Despite what Pollock might tell him—if he was there at all—Joe doubted it would get him any closer to unraveling Kate’s disappearance.
He felt very alone on the highway and in his own head. Although he still had his badge, pickup, and uniform shirt, he wasn’t sure he was even acting in an official capacity anymore. His end as a game warden and state employee was approaching fast. They’d cut off his state gasoline credit card and delete his email account. Rent would stop being paid on his temporary housing in Saddlestring.
Joe would be adrift and he’d be dragging his family along for the ride.
His mother-in-law, Missy, had finally exacted her revenge, and she’d done it in a sophisticated way from the comfort of her Jackson Hole compound and likely using her most recent husband’s fortune. And she’d done it in a way that provided her cover.
Joe knew he could probably never prove that she was behind his sacking, unless Governor Allen admitted to the quid pro quo, which was highly unlikely. Allen took no responsibility for his bad choices and decisions. He admitted to nothing and never apologized. If something bad happened, it was because of the actions of others and their lack of loyalty to him.
There was a lot of that going on these days, Joe thought.
Missy’s involvement in sending Joe into a no-win situation made a perverse kind of sense to him only because he knew where her motivations lay. With Joe unemployed and adrift, she thought Marybeth might have to turn back to her for financial assistance and possibly even housing. Library directors in small towns didn’t make much money, and mortgages and college tuition didn’t pay for themselves.
Plus, he thought, Missy could claim that she’d been right about Joe all along. In the end, he couldn’t provide for his family.
Marybeth was too smart to fall for that and she was tougher than Missy ever gave her credit for.
Still, though...
*
HE NEVER SHOULD have agreed to be Allen’s range rider, he thought, even though he hadn’t seen it as a choice at the time. Allen was not Rulon and never would be. Rulon had always maintained plausible deniability when sending Joe out on an assignment, in case he screwed it up, but Rulon never threw him under the bus when things went pear-shaped.
Rulon’s motivations had come from a lofty place, even if they were sometimes misguided. Politicians like Allen, with a fake biography and a recent pasted-on ideology, came from a different place altogether.
Joe was conflicted. He no longer wanted to be on Allen’s team even if he hadn’t been fired, but at the same time he couldn’t simply walk away from Kate’s disappearance without knowing what had happened to her.
Kate Shelford-Longden was a real person made up of flesh and blood. What if she were Marybeth or one of his own daughters?
. . .
JOE PARKED HIS PICKUP at the back side of Alf’s Pub and Package Liquor so it couldn’t be seen from the street. Green Game and Fish pickups were easily identifiable, especially in the capital city where the headquarters
was located. He didn’t want Director LGD or any of her toadies seeing the vehicle parked in the lot of a bar in the middle of the afternoon and stopping to roust him.
He paused after entering, and the door wheezed closed behind him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright white ocean of snow outside to the darkness of the bar.
Neon beer signs, television monitors, a longhorn bull skull above the bar all emerged from the gloom.
And there in the back, seated behind a small table in a brown faux-leather chair, was Steve Pollock. Pollock was out of uniform and wearing a thick University of Wyoming hoodie and jeans. Next to him was a wide-shouldered man in a jacket and tie. He looked nervous.
Joe walked up and tipped the brim of his hat to them.
“I thought it was just going to be us,” Joe said to Pollock.
“Joe, meet Michael Williams of DCI.”
Joe shook his hand and sat down.
Pollock said, “We thought we’d all have plenty to talk about, since the three of us have all been disappeared by the governor.”
26
ON HIS WAY SOUTH FROM SARATOGA TO THE ENCAMPMENT LUMBER mill, Nate took a once-familiar turnoff from the highway. It was a ranch access road a mile past the frozen North Platte River. He noted there was already a set of tire tracks in the snow ahead of him.
Dr. Kurt and Laura Bucholz had sheltered him two years before when he’d been hiding out from federal charges. The ranchers had allowed him and Liv Brannon to hide out in a small log cabin near the river and stay off the grid. They’d allowed it even though the two of them were patriotic and law-abiding people who could have been arrested for harboring a fugitive.
The feds had eventually located him on the ranch and they’d offered him a devil’s bargain: work with them on a secret mission in Wyoming’s Red Desert or be prosecuted. Additionally, the agents had threatened Liv and the Bucholz couple with arrest. He’d jumped at the deal because he didn’t have a choice. But he’d never really said good-bye to the ranch couple or properly thanked them for all they’d done for him and Liv.
When he made the turn through the stark river cottonwoods, he didn’t expect to find the ranch house empty and all the vehicles and ranch equipment gone, including the stock trailers. Or the single new-model company pickup backed up to the front door of the ranch house with a pile of clothing, furniture, and artwork in the back. He recognized the possessions as having belonged to the Bucholzes.
