Trophy Hunt

by C. J. Box

  The breaklands seemed empty of hunters, and before Joe moved to patrol a different area, he scanned the channels on his radio. While he usually listened to the channel reserved for the Game and Fish Departments in Wyoming, which was shared by brand inspectors and state park employees, he liked to check out what was going on in other areas of law enforcement. He listened to a highway patrol officer flirt with the dispatcher 200 miles away from his lonely location south of Jeffrey City, and a local Saddlestring police department request officers to check out a domestic disturbance. Joe had noted more domestic disturbance calls with the influx of CBM workers.

  When he switched to the mutual aid channel, used by all agencies to communicate with each other in crises or emergencies, he found it crackling with traffic.

  He recognized the first voice as that of Sheriff O. R. “Bud” Barnum, the longtime sheriff of Twelve Sleep County.

  “Come again on that one?” Barnum said to someone. Even hearing his voice set Joe on edge. Over the years, Joe had come to despise Barnum. The feeling went both ways.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” someone answered, and Joe recognized the voice as that of Barnum’s top deputy, Kyle McLanahan. “We’ve got a dozen dead cows on the Hawkins Ranch. It looks like they’ve been . . . well, operated on.”

  “What do you mean, operated on?” Barnum asked.

  “Jeez, it’s hard to describe,” McLanahan said. “Half their faces are gone. And, uh, their peckers are missing, it looks like.”

  Joe felt a jolt of familiarity.

  “Their peckers?” Barnum sounded angry.

  “Well, if they had peckers,” McLanahan reported. “If they was females, then their female parts have been cut out.”

  More trophies, Joe thought. He reached down and started his pickup. The Hawkins Ranch was an hour away on bad roads.

  4

  IN THE TOWN OF SADDLESTRING, behind a battered desk that came with the building, Marybeth Pickett shot her arm out and looked at her wristwatch. She had twenty minutes to finish up and print out the cash-flow spreadsheet she had been working on for Logue Country Realty, meet with the Logues, gather up her computer and files, and pick up her children from school. This is what it was like now, she thought. Her life was on the clock.

  She had spent the morning meeting with the office manager of Barrett’s Pharmacy going over accounts receivable, then at Sandvick Taxidermy working with the owner to establish a new billing system. Once they wrapped up, Marybeth asked the taxidermist, Matt Sandvick, if he had ever seen an animal brought in with the kind of wounds Joe had found on the dead moose the day before.

  “Yup, I have,” Sandvick had answered, his eyes widening behind thick lenses.

  “Where?”

  “On that show that used to be on. The X-Files.” And Sandvick laughed.

  After a quick lunch with her friend Marie Logue, co-owner of Logue Country Realty, Marybeth set up her portable office in a shabby back room at the real estate office and worked under a bare bulb. A small metal electric heater rattled to life whenever the temperature dropped below 60 degrees, and blew out dust-smelling heat through bent orange coils.

  Of her three accounts, Marybeth preferred working with the Logues, although the account also presented the most challenges. While Marybeth did her best to straighten out the Byzantine finances of the business they had bought into, there was no doubt that the company and the Logues were in trouble. Despite this, she had come to like and admire them and wanted to do what she could to help them make the company survive, including undercharging for her time. She knew they couldn’t afford her full rate just yet.

  But if Sheridan and Lucy were to progress to college, as they should, it would take two full-time incomes. Joe’s salary was barely enough to live on, considering Sheridan’s basketball, volleyball, speech and debate interests, and Lucy’s piano, dance, and Young Writers’ Club. The real estate license would potentially create the cushion they needed for their family. When it came to college for the girls, they would be considered a low-income family, a designation that affected Marybeth deeply. She tried not to blame Joe, because he loved what he did and was good at it. But it didn’t pay the bills.

  Cam and Marie Logue bought what was then called Ranch Country Realty from its previous owner, a longtime local institution named Wild Bill Dubois. The purchase included the storefront on Main Street sandwiched between the Stockman’s Bar and Big Suds Laundromat. With their seven-year-old daughter, Jessica, they had moved from Rapid City the previous winter and leased one of the oldest Victorian homes in town with the goal of restoring it while they lived there. They changed the name of the business to Logue Country Realty and sincerely did their best to establish themselves in the small community. They joined the Presbyterian church, the chamber of commerce, the realty association, the PTO, and gave to the high school activities groups and the United Way. In a sleepy town like Saddlestring, where the population trend until recently was a net loss, the arrival of the energetic, optimistic Logues was a welcome deviation from the norm. Or so Marybeth thought, despite knowing that there would be the usual bitter clucking from the old-timers and third-generation types. These were the longtime residents of Twelve Sleep County who referred to Mayor Ty Stockton—who had arrived with his parents from Massachusetts as a toddler—as “that guy from Boston.”

  Marybeth’s younger daughter, Lucy, and Jessica Logue became fast friends on the first day of school and were joined by a third girl, named Hailey Bond, to round out the trio. Lucy was much more social than her older sister, Sheridan, and the three quickly formed a new ruling triumvirate of the first grade. Lucy and Jessica schemed to have their parents meet each other during school orientation, and Marybeth and Marie struck it off immediately. Marie told her later, over coffee, that she saw in the Picketts a young, growing, struggling family much like their own. Marybeth agreed, welcoming Marie’s vitality and friendship and the fact that they were new to the area and had no preconceptions. They had discussed how similar they were; they had both gone to college the same year with goals of becoming professionals (Marybeth aimed for a law degree and Marie wanted an MBA in public administration). Marie had met Cam, and Marybeth had met Joe, and neither woman had applied for graduate school.

  When Cam and Marie Logue approached Marybeth about looking into the accounts they had just bought, Marybeth agreed, even though Wild Bill Dubois had been known for comingling his funds and cooking his books. What she had found was even worse than she had anticipated. The Logues had bought a business that was a rat’s nest of bad deals, expired contracts, and unfiled documents. When she told them what she found, they stared back at her in white-faced horror.

  But instead of giving up or suing Wild Bill, who had quietly moved to Yuma, they decided to make the best of it. With their backs against the wall, they made the decision to work hard and turn their business around. Cam became even more prominent, calling on property owners throughout the county, reminding them that he was there if they needed to buy or sell, trying to win their trust.

  His hard work had paid off recently in the listing of the Timberline Ranch by the squabbling Overstreet sisters. If Cam were able to sell it, even at the drastically reduced price it was likely to get, his commission would turn the company around.

  So, when Cam Logue stuck his face in Marybeth’s office, beaming a high-wattage smile she had never seen before, and asked if she could meet with him and Marie to hear some good news, Marybeth grinned and pushed back in her chair.

  Ladies,” Cam Logue announced once he had closed the door to his office, “we’ve got a secret client interested in the Timberline Ranch!”

  Marie, who was petite, dark-haired, and attractive in an open-faced way, clapped her hands together. Her eyes shone. Marybeth was very happy for her.

  “So who is it?” asked Marie.

  Cam laughed. “I just said it was a secret client, Marie.”

  “I know, I know . . .”

  Marybeth asked, “How serious i
s he?”

  Cam turned to her. Cam was handsome, with light, wavy hair and sharp, blue eyes. He was ambitious in a way that seemed to encourage others to root for him. At least it worked for Marybeth. Her impression of him was that he was straightforward and entrepreneurial, if a little combative. He wanted to succeed not only for his business and his family, but also to prove something. Marie had told Marybeth that Cam had grown up as the youngest on a ranch outside of Saddlestring. She said that Cam’s parents had doted on Cam’s older brother, Eric, literally mortgaging the ranch in order to pay for Eric’s medical school so he could become a surgeon. The Logue ranch was absorbed by the Overstreet sisters’ Timberline Ranch, and his parents bought a small place in western South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge Reservation. When cattle prices bottomed out, there was no money left over for Cam, who went to Black Hills State (where he met Marie) and later into real estate. Cam’s return to Saddlestring was a homecoming of sorts.

  Yet if Cam recognized the irony of now selling the property he had grown up on, he didn’t indicate it to Marybeth.

  “He’s serious,” he said, “but he’s doing due diligence. He’s no dummy.”

  “Due diligence?” Marie asked.

  Cam nodded. “He knows all about those CBM wells, and all of the water they discharge. Even though he knows he won’t have the mineral rights, he wants to get that water tested to make sure it’s okay when it flows down the river. He’s afraid if something is wrong with the water the enviros or the downstream users might sue him as the landowner.”

  “That’s smart,” Marybeth said.

  “He’s a pretty smart guy.”

  Marie sat down in Cam’s desk chair. “What if there’s something wrong with the water?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the water, Marie,” Cam said, as if speaking to a child. “The water’s fine. It’s been tested before they sunk all of those wells, and it’s fine. It’s as sweet as honey.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “Marie,” Cam’s reaction was sharp, “it’s complicated. All of the testing that’s been done has been piecemeal, before each new set of wells. By different companies at different times in the last couple of years. Our buyer wants water collected from all of those different well sites and tested again to make sure they’re okay. To make sure, I don’t know, that they haven’t hit any bad water since they tested the first time, I guess. But you don’t need to worry about it. The water’s going to be just fine.”

  Marybeth thought Cam was a little more prickly than necessary. But she had never seen him this excited before.

  “Our . . . difficulties may be over soon,” Marie said as much to herself as to Cam or Marybeth. Cam beamed at her, then turned his full-force grin on Marybeth. As suddenly as a lightbulb going out, Cam’s face fell into a mask of seriousness.

  “But we need to keep this absolutely quiet,” he said gravely. “It’s got to be kept in the strictest professional confidence.”

  Marybeth nodded. The sale of property of this magnitude would electrify the valley, she knew. Other realtors would try to poach the secret buyer and try to get him to look at other ranches that might have more appeal or fewer wells. Property owners on the fence about selling may suddenly decide to try the market.

  “It’ll be hard to keep this a secret,” Marie grinned. “But we can do it.”

  “Marybeth?” Cam asked.

  “I’ll tell my husband,” she said, meeting their eyes. “We don’t keep secrets from each other. But it will go no further than that.”

  When neither of the Logues spoke, Marybeth felt compelled to explain. “He tells me things that go on in his job that need to be kept confidential, and I do that. I’ve never breached Joe’s confidence, and he wouldn’t breach mine. Besides,” she said, “he doesn’t talk much as it is.”

  Marie snorted a laugh and turned in her chair to Cam. “You remember meeting Joe, don’t you? At that back-to-school night? I think the only thing he said all evening when Marybeth introduced us was ‘Pleasure.’ That’s it. One word in three hours.”

  “Okay then,” Cam said, clapping his hands once as if to dispel the hint of suspicion that had entered the room.

  Marybeth glanced at her watch.

  “Oh my goodness, I’ve got to go. The girls are out of school.”

  Marie said, “Feel free to have Lucy come over to our house with Jessica. Hailey Bond is already coming. Those three have a great time together.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll bring Lucy home later. Around five or five-thirty, right?”

  Marybeth nodded, and left them both in their giddy state.

  As she left the office, pulling on her jacket, she noticed a man sitting in the reception area reading a magazine from the stack on the side table. He was lanky and in his sixties, with round, steel-framed glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you need to see somebody?” Marie worked as the receptionist as well as the office manager, and she had obviously not been available.

  The man looked up. He wore heavy boots, faded jeans, and a khaki work shirt. On his lap was a thick manila file. He had an experienced and kindly manner.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Logue, but don’t worry, I didn’t have an appointment.”

  Marie overheard the conversation and entered the room.

  “I’ll let him know you’re here,” Marie said. She was bursting with cheerfulness, Marybeth thought, and for good reason.

  Lucy Pickett and Jessica Logue were waiting at the pickup spot with Sheridan when Marybeth arrived. The playground was empty except for a few students on the swings. Marybeth felt guilty for being late.

  Marybeth swung her minivan to the curb and the three girls piled in. Lucy and Jessica tossed their backpacks on the floor and immediately started telling Marybeth about their day in overlapping bursts, while Sheridan settled into the backseat alone and rolled her eyes. Lucy and Jessica were inseparable in a way that Sheridan never had been with another girl. Lucy and Jessica loved to dress up, do each other’s hair, talk on the telephone, and play together. They even looked alike, as much like sisters as Lucy and Sheridan did.

  “Jessica, your mom suggested you and Lucy play at your house this afternoon instead of ours,” Marybeth said, pulling out into the road. “She’ll bring Lucy home later.”

  “I hope dropping them off won’t take too long,” Sheridan interjected from the back. “I’ve got a falconry lesson in a little while.”

  Marybeth nodded, again feeling guilty that she was late. Sheridan had been learning falconry from Nate Romanowski, a loner and Joe’s friend. He lived in a cabin on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River.

  “It’ll just take a minute,” Marybeth said. “I’m sorry I’m running late.”

  “You seem to be running late a lot these days,” Sheridan said under her breath but loud enough that Marybeth heard her. Both Lucy and Jessica immediately stopped talking and waited for what they hoped would be an argument.

  “Please don’t use that tone with me, Sheridan,” Marybeth said evenly, locking eyes with Sheridan in the rearview mirror. “We can discuss this later.”

  Sheridan broke the gaze and shrugged. Marybeth noticed that Lucy and Jessica had huddled together and shrunk out of view, no doubt trying not to giggle.

  The Logue home was one of Saddlestring’s fading treasures; a classic Victorian, one of the original homes built at the edge of town near the river by an 1890s cattle baron. The faded house was hard to see behind the mature cottonwoods that towered around it. In addition to the old, magnificent house there was wooded acreage and a few outbuildings, including a carriage house. The house had sat vacant for fifteen years, in disrepair, until the Logues bought it last winter. Marie had walked Marybeth through the place recently, apologizing endlessly for its condition. Only two rooms had been modernized so far, the kitchen and a bathroom. The rest looked as it had in the mid-1980s, when the longtime county clerk of Twelve Sleep County died there in his seventy-eight
h year. The rumor was that the county clerk used to store records in the house and the buildings and charge the county for rent.

  Maybe now, Marybeth thought as she watched Lucy and Jessica skip away, Cam and Marie would have the means to accelerate the remodeling on the great old house.

  “Mom?” Sheridan said from the backseat. “She’s getting bigger. You don’t have to wait until she gets in the house before we leave.”

  “I’m just not used to this yet Sheridan,” Marybeth said. “You two have so many things going on these days. I struggle with letting you go.”

  “Mom, my falconry lesson?”

  As Marybeth pulled away and turned left on Centennial Street toward Bighorn Road, her phone chirped. It was Joe, telling her about the call he had overheard concerning mutilated cows. He told her he would likely be late for dinner.

  Dinner, Marybeth thought, the guilt rushing back. She had forgotten to plan dinner.

  5

  THE HAWKINS RANCH was a checkerboard of private land and state and federal leases spread across the lee side of the foothills, and Joe had to cross through seven barbed-wire fence gates to get to it. Most of the ranch was blanketed with tall sagebrush and scrub oak, buffalo grass and biscuit root, except for several large fingers of heavy timber that reached down from the mountains through saddle-slope draws.

  Joe pulled into the ranch yard, a packed-gravel courtyard surrounded by structures. The Hawkins place was an old-line working outfit, unlike many of the hobby ranches that were taking over the state. The largest buildings in the yard were vast metal Quonset huts that served as vehicle sheds, barns, and equipment storage. A maze of wooden-slat corrals bordered the small, white-framed ranch house. There were no adornments of any kind anywhere; nothing to suggest anything other than what the place was—the business center for a large-scale beef-and-hay operation.

  Joe turned toward the small house and saw Mrs. Hawkins step out on an unpainted porch and gesture sternly to the mountains. There was no need to stop and visit, Joe thought, and he drove through the middle of the ranch yard until his wheels fell into the long-established ruts of a dirt road that pointed straight toward the timber five miles away. Ahead of him in the ruts were the fresh tread tracks of several vehicles.