The Disappeared

by C. J. Box

  “I remember one time there was a moose just walking right through their fence lines. That bull was dragging about a hundred yards of barbed wire behind him and didn’t even act like he knew it...”

  Williams shot out his hand so he could see his watch below his jacket sleeve. He said, “I’m sure it’s a good story, but I can’t stay long. My supervisor doesn’t want me working on Sundays and racking up overtime hours.”

  Pollock paused in midsentence and looked over, amused.

  “You’re kind of wrapped tight yourself,” he said to the DCI agent.

  “Look,” Williams said to Joe and Pollock. “I shouldn’t even be here. I can only stay as long as my normal lunch break and I can’t spend the whole time listening to elk and moose stories from a couple of game wardens.”

  “I’ll keep mine to myself,” Joe said.

  Williams lowered his voice and bent forward across the table. He obviously didn’t want to be overheard by the waitress or the bartender. “Pollock asked me to come here and meet you before he left the state. I agreed because there’s something going on over there and I thought maybe if the three of us traded notes, we could figure out what it is.”

  Joe wondered if Williams or Pollock knew of his own circumstances. Could the news of his firing be public knowledge in Cheyenne already?

  “I hope you found my notes helpful,” Williams said.

  “I did,” Joe said. “They saved me weeks of plowing the same ground. But somebody broke into my hotel room and took them.”

  Williams said, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Things like that happen over there. The whole time my team was investigating Kate’s disappearance, we had the feeling that we were being watched and observed. We reported everything we were doing to the Carbon County sheriff’s office and I think there’s a couple of leakers there. My guys said they saw strange trucks parked down the street in the morning when they went outside—things like that.”

  Joe recalled the same experience outside Pollock’s former home.

  Williams said, “When we didn’t get any immediate leads in and around the ranch, we did our job and expanded the search. We were methodical about it. But it seemed like the farther we got away from the immediate area, the more we were being monitored. And when we were pulled off the case, we puzzled over it for weeks. We asked ourselves: Who did we offend? Who wanted us gone?”

  Joe was interested in the answer. It didn’t come.

  “I know the governor is an impatient man,” Williams said. “To pull us out of there like that was humiliating. We’ve never worked for a governor so quick to piss inside his own tent. But I guess you know a little about that.”

  Joe felt his neck flush hot. “I do,” he said.

  “I heard the press conference this morning. It sounded familiar. If I were you, I’d keep my head on a swivel,” Williams advised.

  Joe concluded that his firing hadn’t been publicized yet and he was grateful.

  Joe turned to Pollock and arched his eyebrows.

  Pollock’s vague smile turned sour.

  “Well?” Joe asked. “Why did you quit the way you did?”

  *

  THE STORY WAS LONGER than it needed to be and Joe was aware of Williams fidgeting as it went on and on. Pollock gave the background: his wife, Lindy, left and took the kids because she said he worked too many hours and was distracted when he was home. Then the divorce. Then the state froze all salaries and he was looking at ending his career eventually without ever building a nest egg or owning any real assets like a home of his own. He felt trapped, and the bureaucracy was getting worse by the month.

  He didn’t get along with agency director Linda Greene-Dempsey, and the department had cut his district down from a three-horse district to a no-horse district. He could see the writing on the wall, he said.

  “They were putting the squeeze on me,” Pollock said. “Hoping I’d quit eventually. LGD isn’t comfortable with us old-school game wardens. She wants to replace us all with younger, greener versions. You know that, Joe.”

  Joe nodded, hoping Pollock would get to the point.

  “I was doing my job,” he said. “The Kate investigation was going on in the background. Then all of a sudden I got a visitor at my office.

  “His name is Ted Panos,” Pollock said. “Do either of you know him?”

  Joe said he didn’t. Williams said he thought he might have heard the name, but he couldn’t place it.

  “From what I understand, he works for Buckbrush,” Pollock said. “I really didn’t check him out at the time and the reason is he offered me a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to hit the bricks.”

  Joe sat back, stunned.

  “A hundred and seventy-five K is a hundred and seventy-five K more than I had in the bank,” Pollock said. “He couldn’t have timed it better, because I was sick and tired of life at the time. All I could think about was being on some beach in the sun instead of bucking snowdrifts every day. I said yes and he delivered it in three suitcases the next morning. I packed some clothes and that was about it: I was gone. It was an impulsive decision on my part, I know. But I’m still gone. I ain’t ever going back.”

  Joe was disgusted at Pollock’s decision to abandon his district like that, but he tried not to show it. He measured his words carefully. “What did he ask you to do for that kind of money?”

  “Nothing,” Pollock said. “Just leave.”

  “Just like that?”

  “It was an easy decision at the time,” Pollock said. “Tell me you wouldn’t do the same.”

  Joe tried not to think about his own circumstances at the moment and how he might be tempted to take a quick buyout for the sake of his family.

  “Did you take any of your files with you?”

  “No,” Pollock said. “I left all my official records in place for the next poor son of a bitch who takes over.”

  “Let me ask you,” Joe said, “did you keep a file on the Silver Creek Ranch?”

  “Sure.”

  “Some of the files are gone now,” Joe said. “Including that one.”

  “Really?”

  “I was in the old house and I went through your desk. There are missing files, including the ranch records. Also, the B files are missing.”

  Pollock sat back and rubbed his chin, trying to recall what was gone.

  Williams asked, “Was there a Buckbrush file?”

  Pollock nodded. “Of course there was.”

  “Not anymore,” Joe said.

  At that moment, his phone lit up and started to skitter across the table. It was Nate. Nate never called. But Joe couldn’t interrupt the conversation to take it and he let it go to voicemail.

  Pollock said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That Panos went back and took a bunch of stuff from my office after I left?”

  “There wasn’t anyone to stop him, was there?” Joe said.

  He withdrew his notebook and opened it to a fresh page. On the top line, he wrote the name Ted Panos. On the second line, he wrote Buckbrush.

  Joe noticed that Williams had gone silent since he’d asked Pollock his question. The man was recalling something.

  Williams said to Pollock, “Did you ever run across a guy named Gaylan Kessel?”

  “Sure,” Pollock said. He said it in a way that indicated he didn’t like him.

  “Who is Gaylan Kessel?” Joe asked.

  “The point man for Buckbrush Power,” Williams answered.

  “More like a security specialist of some kind,” Pollock said. “He bigfoots his way around the county like he owns the place. People suck up to him because of who he works for.”

  Williams placed his hand on Pollock’s arm to quiet him for a moment. “As we were casting our net wider on the Kate case, we got farther and farther away from Silver Creek Ranch. You know, we were thinking that maybe when she left, she took a wrong turn for some reason. That maybe she went north instead of south. As you know, the entire north is the Buckbrush Po
wer project.

  “We thought maybe—and we knew it was a stretch—she got lost and maybe ended up on the project. Or maybe she was taken somewhere else and her body dumped up there. So I made a request to interview the man in charge.”

  “Gaylan Kessel,” Joe said.

  Williams nodded. “He was a prick about it. He said he didn’t want anyone thinking her disappearance had anything to do with the project—that it was bad PR for the company. I told him I’d be discreet, but he said he was in charge of keeping Buckbrush’s public image safe. He said it was his job to make sure the company was seen in a positive light given their five-billion-dollar investment, and that us even associating a missing woman with the company was outrageous.”

  Joe wrote the name Gaylan Kessel on his page.

  “We never had the interview, because later that week the governor pulled the plug on the investigation,” Williams said.

  Joe asked, “Are you thinking your contact with Kessel and Buckbrush was the reason you were yanked?”

  “I never made the connection until now,” Williams said. “I’d kind of forgotten about it. But when Pollock said they paid him off, it just clicked.”

  Pollock winced at the phrase paid him off, Joe noted.

  Williams said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Panos worked for Kessel.”

  Joe turned to Pollock. He said, “Steve, you need to think. Why would they want you gone? Did someone call in a violation up on the project that you were planning to check out?”

  Pollock shook his head. “I honestly can’t think of anything like that. There was lots of grumbling about the size of the project and how the company was able to skirt around all the environmental impact studies because they represent clean energy and that’s what the feds want. And because the project is all on private property, I’d need permission from them to even go there. So I steered clear of that mess.”

  Joe nodded. “But there had to be something,” he said. “Something in another of the missing files. Something related to either Kate or Buckbrush—or both.”

  Pollock reached for his beer and Joe slid it away before he could grasp it.

  “Think,” he said. “Then drink.”

  Pollock sat back and closed his eyes. It went on for over a minute. Joe and Williams exchanged looks.

  Then Pollock’s eyes shot open. “You said there was no Silver Creek Ranch file in the S’s.”

  “Correct.”

  “Was there a file that said ‘Eagle Permits’?”

  “I don’t recall one,” Joe said. “I think I would have remembered, because I talked to a falconer the other day who was complaining that he can’t get the feds to grant him a permit to hunt with eagles.”

  Pollock slapped the table with his palm. He said, “That might be the connection.”

  Williams looked over, obviously puzzled.

  Pollock said to Joe, “I had a whole file of complaint letters from pissed-off falconers who aren’t allowed to use the eagle permits they’ve earned. They’ve got this big conspiracy theory about how the feds are granting take permits to wind energy companies, and even the governor’s office is looking the other way.”

  Joe said, “I’ve heard it.”

  He didn’t say he’d heard it from his friend Nate just the previous night.

  “What’s a take permit?” Williams asked.

  Joe said, “It allows wind energy companies to kill up to a certain number of golden and bald eagles legally without penalty.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true,” Pollock said. “There’s a company up by Glenrock, Wyoming, that killed over forty golden eagles last year and those are just the birds we know about. The falconers think the feds are denying them eagles to hunt with because so many birds are being slaughtered by wind turbines.”

  “I thought eagles were an endangered species?” Williams asked.

  “Not for renewable energy companies,” Pollock said. “Their take permits exempt them from the law. Those falconers who complained said the general public would go ballistic if they knew about all the dead eagles, and they’re probably right. But few people know, and our government makes sure the take permit program stays below the radar. The worst part of the program is that the companies are asked to self-report the eagle deaths. How many of them do you think are likely to do that once they’ve exceeded their take permit?”

  Joe said to Pollock, “Were you going to follow up on those complaints with Buckbrush?”

  “Eventually,” Pollock said. “I was waiting for the dead months in the winter between big-game seasons. When I had some time.”

  “That’s when Ted Panos came a-calling,” Joe said.

  “I guess so,” Pollock agreed.

  Joe said, “A hundred and seventy-five thousand is a lot less than millions of dollars in fines if Buckbrush got caught exceeding their take permit. And that doesn’t include the cost of massive bad publicity. It was a business decision.”

  Pollock closed his eyes. He said, “I came cheap.”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll see if I’m able to live with myself.”

  Joe eyed him with disdain. He was disappointed by Pollock, and Pollock knew it.

  To Williams, Joe said, “Kessel probably didn’t want you to go up there to his project because you might see something he didn’t want you to see.”

  “Dead eagles,” Williams said. “But what about Kate? Do you think it’s possible she went there?”

  Joe had no answer. He circled the name Gaylan Kessel on his pad so many times the ball point of his pen nearly cut through to the next page.

  Then the three men simply looked at one another for a few minutes, absorbed in the revelations and their own thoughts.

  As Williams got up, he put his hand on Joe’s shoulder.

  “I gotta go,” he said. “But be careful. It seems like if you get too close to Buckbrush like Steve and I did, something bad might happen to you.”

  Joe said, “It already has.”

  *

  JOE FELT A WEIGHT crushing down on him as he went outside toward his pickup. And he felt duplicitous.

  He hadn’t told the two men that he’d been fired by Hanlon, that he was there with them at the table under what could be deemed false pretenses. He’d had several opportunities to do so, but he hadn’t taken them.

  The fact was he was ashamed and embarrassed by being taken off the job. It was what defined him, as well as being a husband and a father. The news of his canning would get out. It would be a matter of days or even hours. He was operating on borrowed time, and he’d implicated both Williams and Pollock in his deception.

  The only answer was to try and end this thing before word got out.

  Joe decided to return Nate’s call once he got back on the road to Saratoga. But first he needed to think about what he’d learned.

  The governor’s two biggest campaign contributors, Missy and Buckbrush, had both gotten what they wanted.

  Things were falling into place and not in a good way.

  28

  SHERIDAN PICKETT WAS GETTING ANXIOUS.

  After spending Sunday morning chopping water holes in the ice and gathering the guest horses she’d ride and exercise later that day, she’d returned to Silver Creek Ranch to find that Lance Ramsey hadn’t shown up for work.

  She’d zipped up her coat against the cold and looked for signs of him with a rising sense of dread.

  His truck and snowmobile trailer weren’t in the lot in front of the indoor arena nor in the pull-through of the Activity Center. She couldn’t remember when he’d been so late to work before.

  There was no cell service where his cabin was located and no way to reach him. He’d told her he liked being off the grid for a few days at a time, that it gave him a sense of calm, and she’d not been able to convince him otherwise.

  As she checked for his truck at the employee housing units and the outdoor rodeo arena, unwelcome scenarios played out in her head.

  She thought:
<
br />   His snowmobile wouldn’t start this morning and it’s seven miles from the parking area.

  Or:

  He’s gotten his snowmobile or his truck stuck in the snow getting out from the cabin.

  Or worse:

  He’s gotten stuck on the way there two days ago and he is stranded.

  Or even worse:

  An avalanche swept through the little valley where the cabin is located and buried him beneath several tons of snow.

  Or maybe:

  He’s deathly ill and is trembling and feverish in his single bed with no way to call her for help. Sick in that same iron-framed bed where they...

  *

  SHERIDAN HAD STARTED the morning with anticipation. She couldn’t wait to tell him about the raid on the mountain and how she’d clocked the fleeing subject with the door of her dad’s truck.

  Or that her image from the back standing over the injured man had appeared in newspapers and on websites all over the world. She didn’t like the photo because it looked like she was threatening the poor man, but nonetheless it was her.

  Sheridan didn’t want General Manager Mark Gordon to know Lance hadn’t made it back from the weekend because she didn’t want him to get in trouble. But if he didn’t show up soon, she might have to. The ranch had a fleet of snowmobiles and she could use one of them to go up into the mountains and try to find him. Her dad was in Cheyenne and Nate was in Encampment, so she’d have to go by herself if it came to that.

  Plus, she missed Lance. She missed him more than she wanted to admit to herself. The ranch in the winter was a lonely and hollow place without his shy smile and his steady presence.

  *

  AFTER LOOKING EVERYWHERE she could think of, Sheridan finally went to the office. Gordon sat at his desk with his back to her, answering email on his computer.

  “Mark, have you heard anything from Lance? He hasn’t shown up today from his cabin and he’s usually back by now.”

  Gordon wheeled around, concerned. “He hasn’t let us know he was coming back late, if that’s what you mean.”