by C. J. Box
The sun warmed the walls of the tent and as it did I could smell not only me but them. All five of them. I dressed—my clothes were balled up in the corner—and unzipped the flap and stepped outside where it was surprisingly cold. The campfire was going, curls of fragrant wood smoke corkscrewing through the branches of the pine trees, a pot of coffee brewing on my black grate. Three of them sat on stumps around the fire, staring into it as if looking for an explanation. They were unshaven; their faces told me nothing. They were blank faces, hungover faces. Maybe they were ashamed. But when they looked up and saw me, none of them said anything.
No one asked me if I wanted coffee. They weren’t going to talk about it. They were going to pretend nothing had happened.
That was the worst of all. That’s when the rage began. I was nothing to them. It was all about them, not me. This was apparently what they had expected when they hired me. The problem was, I felt the same way at that moment. I thought of their wives, their daughters, assumed they were having the same thoughts.
Randy Pope was there. He looked at me and then back toward the fire with a dismissive nod, as if I disgusted him. “If you say anything about this to anyone,” he said in words I can still hear clearly, “we’ll destroy you. You’ll end up as just another grease spot.”
That’s when I decided to find the sheriff and press charges.
AT THIS RANGE, Joe knew, a blast from his shotgun would practically cut her in half. But he couldn’t conceive of it—he didn’t want to fire. Hell, he admired her. He wanted her to turn or look behind her back up the hill so he could stand and shout at her to drop the rifle. As it was, with her finger tightening on the trigger, his sudden appearance could cause her to fire out of fear or reaction. And he thought, Would that be so bad?
“Please,” Randy Pope cried, “please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do,” she said.
“No. Please. You know what happened in that camp. None of us hurt you. Nobody forced you.”
She said, “Actually, I don’t remember very much about that night. It’s still in a fog of alcohol to me. But I do remember how you wouldn’t look at me, how you threatened me. And I remember going to jail. I remember what was said about me afterward.”
“It was years ago,” Pope said. “We’re all different now.”
She laughed bitterly. “I have one more poker chip. Then it will all be over. You know, I carried those five poker chips in my pocket for years as a reminder to me of what you did and what I was. But I’m not like that anymore, and killing you kills what I was back then. I want my dignity back, and you’re the last man in my way. I have a daughter now, you know. I don’t want her to know about me then, or about you. She deserves better than both of us.”
Pope moaned a long moan, and Joe felt the pain of it.
“I’ve fought through self-loathing before,” she said. “This is how I cut the head off that snake.”
Before pulling the trigger, Shenandoah took a second to glance over her shoulder in the direction where the shots had been fired, to make sure no one was on the ridge.
Which gave Joe the opportunity to shout, “Drop the rifle, Shenandoah! Drop it now! ”
He rose so she could see him behind the root pan. His shotgun was trained on her chest. She’d lowered the rifle when she turned and it stayed low.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Joe said. “Just let the rifle fall out of your hands and step back.”
She looked at Joe, surprised but not desperate. The look of single-minded determination was still on her face.
“This is over,” he said. “Please. You don’t want your daughter to be without her mother.”
He didn’t say, or her father.
Pope, for once, kept his mouth shut.
“I don’t want to go to prison,” she said softly.
“You may not have to,” Joe lied. “Lord knows you’ve got your reasons. Yours is a sympathetic case. This man assaulted you and then destroyed your reputation. Randy Pope will get what he deserves.”
She nodded as if acknowledging Joe’s words but discounting their meaning.
He hated himself.
“Just relax your hands, let the rifle drop.”
She did and it thumped onto the grass. Joe kept his shotgun on her as he walked around the root pan.
“Do you have any other weapons?” he asked.
She shook her head, then said, “I’ve got a skinning knife. I was going to cape him.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Joe said. “Now, ease out of your backpack and toss the knife aside.”
She slipped out of her pack and let it drop, then drew the knife from the sheath and tossed it a few feet away.
“Unlock me,” Pope said out of the side of his mouth as Joe passed the tree.
“Shut up,” Joe said. To Shenandoah, “Put your wrists together. You’re under arrest. I’ve got to take you in so we can sort this all out.”
He chose not to cuff her behind her back and humiliate her further. He slipped hard plastic Flex-Cuffs over her thin wrists and pulled them tight. She was small, almost delicate.
“I don’t want anyone to see me like this,” she said.
“Alisha doesn’t know, does she?”
“No.”
“You killed my friend Robey.”
“For that I’m eternally sorry,” she said, her eyes leaving Pope for a moment and softening. “That wasn’t meant to happen. It was an accident, and I’m so sorry.”
“Did Klamath kill Bill Gordon, or was that you?”
“It was Klamath. I’m very upset with my husband. I liked Bill very much.”
“Are you the Wolverine?”
She shook her head. “No. I think Bill was Wolverine. At least I always suspected he was leading Klamath on. I read the e-mail exchange and it inspired me.”
“Klamath is dead,” Joe said. “Those were the shots you heard. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, blinked. For a second the fire went out of her eyes.
“He was following you,” Joe said. “He ran into the sheriff’s men.”
“He knew it was me,” she said. “He never tried to stop me. I was accomplishing his goal while accomplishing mine.”
Joe couldn’t reply.
“I want Alisha to raise my daughter,” Shenandoah said.
“You don’t have to talk like that,” Joe said, feeling as if she’d kicked him in the gut. Her eyes were again fixed on Randy Pope.
She said, “Where is Nate?”
Joe chinned toward the granite ridge.
“Unlock me!” Pope shouted to Joe. “Get me out of here.”
Joe ignored him.
Shenandoah glared at Pope. “He was the worst of them all. He let his friends die. I need to finish this.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Joe,” Pope said. “This will ruin me if she talks, if she takes the stand. The girl was willing—more than willing. It happened years ago, the statute of limitations has passed. Why dredge it up again? Why let this woman bring it all back?”
It happened so quickly Joe could barely react. Like the point guard she once was, Shenandoah faked to her right, drawing Joe, then darted to her left under Joe’s outstretched hand. She ducked and snatched the knife from the grass at her feet and lunged at Pope.
Joe shouldered the shotgun, yelled, “Shenandoah, no! No!” but she sliced the blade cleanly through Pope’s throat at the same moment Joe fired, the buckshot hitting her full force in the neck and kicking her sideways. She landed in a heap like dropped wet laundry.
He was horrified by what he’d done.
JOE SAT on a downed log and watched Nate walk down the slope. He was numb. He didn’t feel like he was all there. His hands sat in his lap like dead crabs. They were bloody from turning Shenandoah over, hoping against hope she would somehow pull through, even though he was the instrument of her death. He wished she wasn’t gone because of his failed effort to save Randy Pope’s worthless life.
Her body looked so small in the grass, maybe because the life in her had been so outsized. Joe thought, Promise kept, Nancy.
But it didn’t make him feel any better.
AS NATE approached, Joe could see his friend take it all in—Pope’s slumped body still cuffed to the tree, every pint of his blood spilled down his shirtfront and pants and pooling darkly around his feet. Shenandoah’s broken body thrown to the side, the knife still in her hand.
Nate holstered the .454 as he got closer and dropped to his knees in front of her body. He took her lifeless hands in his, closed his eyes.
“I saw it happen,” Nate said. “There was nothing you could do.”
“Nate, I’m so sorry,” Joe said, his voice a croak.
“No words,” Nate said.
Joe couldn’t tell if Nate was asking him not to speak or if no words could express what he felt.
JOE STOOD up dully and changed the frequency on his radio to the mutual-aid channel, and as soon as he did he was awash in conversation from over the hill. He heard Sheriff McLanahan, Chris Urman, Deputy Reed, and others congratulating themselves over the shooting of Klamath Moore, the monster who’d killed the hunters. McLanahan was talking to dispatch, telling Wendy to contact the governor and tell him the state could be reopened for hunting.
“Sheriff,” Joe said, breaking in, “this is Joe Pickett. I’ve got the bodies of a couple more victims over the ridge.”
The chatter went silent.
“Come again?” McLanahan said.
NATE WALKED over to where Joe sat on the log and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“I feel so bad,” Joe said. “I mean, a woman. And not just any woman. Shenandoah.” He looked up. “Did you know it was her?”
“Not until the end,” Nate said, raising his eyebrows. “Justice was done—all around.”
“Here.” Joe handed Nate his keys.
Nate looked at him for an explanation.
“Take them and get out of here before the sheriff sees you.”
“I can’t.”
Joe shrugged. “Go. You don’t have that much time.”
“What about you?”
“I said I’d do what was right. The governor assumed I meant I’d bring you back.”
“Joe, I—”
“Git,” Joe said.
31
“BUY YOU A DRINK?”
Vern Dunnegan laughed, pulled the large woman with fire-engine-red hair on the next stool closer to him, said, “You bet. We’ll both have one.” And to the bartender: “Set ’em up, buddy.”
“Another Beam on the rocks?” the bartender said.
“Double Beam for me and my lady,” Vern said, “thanks to my benefactor here.”
His benefactor was tall, rawboned, with piercing, ice-blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair. He had not taken off his bulky parka. Snow from the late November storm outside had melted into drops on the fur trim of his hood. The drops reflected the neon beer signs at the windows. Outside the glass, thick flakes blew by horizontally, looking like sparks from a fire.
“You just get out?” the man asked, leaning on the bar with his hands clasped in front of him.
“Yes,” Vern said. “About four hours ago, in fact. This is my first stop. I plan to drink until drunk, eat until sated, and maybe later”— he squeezed the overweight redhead hard around her waist, nearly toppling her from her stool—“some sweet romance.”
“Romance,” she scoffed, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke toward the back bar. The smoke curled around the framed front page of the Casper Star-Tribune with the headline KILLER OF HUNTERS SHOT DEAD and a photo of smiling anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore.
“That’s in a lot of bars around the state,” the man said.
“As it should be,” Vern said. “Hunters are hunting again and the bad guy is dead. Or so I read.”
“You don’t believe it?”
Vern said, “Rumor is the story’s more complicated. But that’s just jailhouse talk. Why should I doubt the word of the governor who set me free even though he took his own sweet time doing it? He said it was Klamath Moore, so as far as I’m concerned, it was Klamath Moore.”
“May that son of a bitch roast in hell,” the redheaded woman said, toasting the photo with her fresh drink.
“Perhaps she’d excuse us for a minute?” the benefactor said.
“Why?” Vern asked.
“Why?” she echoed.
“Just a little business.”
“Do I know you?” Vern asked.
“No.”
“Honey,” Vern said, patting her on the butt, “give me just a minute, please.”
“Fine,” she said, sliding unsteadily off her stool. “I need to pee, anyway.”
“Your girlfriend?” the benefactor asked.
“Of course not, come on. But she’ll do for a Tuesday night in Rawlins, Wyoming.”
The man smiled. It was a cruel smile, Vern thought. Did he know this guy? Had he met him on the inside, or on the outside? Did he arrest him once for poaching, back in the day?
“So today is the first day of the rest of your life,” the man said.
“In a way.” Vern was starting to get a bad feeling about this. “Have we met?”
“I said no. But we have a mutual acquaintance.”
“Who might that be?”
“His name is Joe Pickett.”
The light went out of Vern’s eyes. “Oh.”
“He’s my friend, and he’s in a bad way right now. The world has fallen in on him. I’m confident he’ll be able to pull out of it, though. He’s got the support of his family. He’s not so sure about his boss.” The man paused until it became uncomfortable. “And someone who looks out for him.”
Vern felt the blood drain from his face. “I better be going.”
“Not yet.”
Vern felt something long and heavy like a pipe laid across his thigh. He looked down at the barrel of the biggest pistol he’d ever seen, the gaping muzzle an inch from his crotch.
“I was kind of hoping my freedom might last more than one night,” Vern said, swallowing bitterly.
Nate said, “A false hope, as it turns out. Here, hold out your hand.”
“What’s this? A poker chip?”
“Yup,” Nate said. “The last one. I found it on Shenandoah’s body. Hold onto it tight and think about it while we go outside for your last walk.”
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge research material used in this novel, including Tracking: Signs of Man, Signs of Hope, by David Diaz with V. L. McCann, and Wilderness Evasion, by Michael Chesbro.
Thanks to Wyoming game warden Mark Nelson, who provided invaluable information regarding tracking and investigative procedure, to Laurie Box and Ann Rittenberg, for reading the first drafts and offering better ideas, and to Don Hajicek, for www.cjbox.net.
A special tip of the black Stetson goes to the team of enthusiastic pros at Putnam and Berkley, including Ivan Held, Rachel Kahan, Michael Barson, and Thomas Colgan.
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C. J. Box
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