Trophy Hunt

by C. J. Box

  Approaching the scene, Joe noted that two identical GMC Blazers belonging to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department, and a light-blue Ford pickup, were parked nose-to-tail on the two-track where the scrub thinned and the pine trees began. To the right of the vehicles were three figures in the middle of what appeared to be a glacial-boulder field.

  As Joe closed in, the front of his pickup bucked suddenly and a cascade of maps fell from a clip on the sunshade. Maxine lost her footing on the dashboard and scrambled back to her place on the seat, looking at him for an explanation.

  “Rock,” he said. “Didn’t see it.”

  The figures turned out to be Deputy Kyle McLanahan, Sheriff Barnum, and a visibly upset Don Hawkins. What Joe had thought were boulders strewn across the ground were actually carcasses of cattle, at least a dozen of them. The sour-sweet smell of death filtered into the cab of the pickup through the vents, and Maxine sat up ramrod straight, her brow wrinkled with concern.

  Even from this distance, Joe could see that Barnum was glaring at him. The old man’s eyes bored across the brush and through the windshield of the pickup. McLanahan stood to the side of Barnum with a 35-mm camera hanging from his hand, looking from Barnum to Joe’s pickup and back to Barnum. Don Hawkins wore a bandanna over his face and paced among the dead cows.

  “Stay, girl,” Joe told Maxine as he parked to the side of the Sheriff’s Department vehicles and swung out of his pickup. He fitted his gray Stetson on his head and skirted the Blazers. The smell of the cows was not as ripe as the smell of the moose had been, and he was grateful for that.

  “Who called you out here?” Barnum asked. His deep-set eyes were cold, bordered by blue folds of loose skin. He lowered a cigarette from his lips and jetted twin streams of smoke from his nostrils.

  “Heard it on the mutual-aid band.”

  “This look like a Game and Fish matter to you?”

  “I’m not sure what it looks like yet, Sheriff,” Joe said, walking among the carcasses, “but I found something similar done to a bull moose on Crazy Woman Creek.”

  It had been months since Joe had seen Barnum, and that had been fine with Joe. He despised Barnum, knowing the sheriff was as corrupt as he was legendary. There were rumors that Sheriff Barnum was in his last term of office, that he would retire within the next year. The electorate that had supported him for twenty-eight years seemed to be turning on him for the first time. The local weekly newspaper, the Saddlestring Roundup had run a series of editorials in the spring saying outright that it was time for Barnum to go.

  Deputy McLanahan said, “Your moose have his pecker cut off?”

  Joe turned his head to McLanahan. This guy was just as bad, Joe thought, if not worse. Although the deputy wasn’t as smart or calculating as Barnum, he made up for it with his cruelty. He was a loose cannon, and he liked to pull the trigger.

  “Yup,” Joe said, dropping to his haunches to examine a heifer. “Something took off most of his face, as well as his genitals and musk glands from the back legs.”

  “I ain’t never seen nothing like this,” Don Hawkins said, bending over one of the dead cows. “These cows are worth six, seven hundred bucks each. Something or somebody owes me nine thousand bucks, goddamit.”

  The reason the smell was not as bad, Joe realized, was that the cattle had been dead for at least two weeks. Although still somewhat bloated, the bodies had begun to deflate and collapse in on themselves in fleshy folds. The wounds looked similar to the bull moose’s, with some differences. Skin had been removed from most of the heads in precise patches. One heifer’s head had been completely denuded of hide, which made it look like a turkey buzzard with its thin neck and red head. In some cases, tongues and eyes had been removed, and oval patches were missing from shoulders. On the females, their bags had been removed. Half of the cows had missing rectums, showing large dark holes between their flanks.

  Joe felt a distinct chill as he walked from body to body. This was like the moose, times twelve. It also meant that whatever had been doing this had been in action for at least two weeks.

  “The blood’s drained right out of ’em,” Hawkins said, shaking his head. “This is crazy.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Joe asked, looking up at the rancher.

  “Look at ’em,” Hawkins cried, holding his hands palms-out. “You see any blood anywhere? How in the hell can you cut up a damned cow like that and not have any blood on the ground? Do you know how much blood there is in a cow?”

  “Nope, I don’t,” Joe said.

  “I don’t know either,” Hawkins said, flustered. “A shitload for sure.”

  McLanahan said, “No matter how much there is in a cow, there’s none of it on the ground. It’s like the blood got sucked right out of them.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Barnum growled, turning his back to McLanahan. “Don’t start saying things like that.”

  “So what did it?”

  “How in the hell should I know?”

  “Maybe some kind of predator?” McLanahan asked. “A bear or a mountain lion or something?”

  “There is a bear,” Joe said. “A big grizzly. I saw his tracks this morning. But I can’t believe a bear could do this.”

  “That’s all I need,” Barnum said, his voice rising, “a bunch of mutilated cattle and a goddamned grizzly bear on the loose.”

  “Not to mention space aliens sucking the blood out of domestic animals in the middle of ranch country,” McLanahan said dramatically. “It’s happened before, you know.”

  “Stop that!” Barnum spat. “I mean it.”

  Joe battled a smile and addressed Don Hawkins.

  “When did you find these cattle?”

  Hawkins was slow to answer, and when he did, it was with hesitation. McLanahan’s speculating had rattled him.

  “My guy Juan found ’em a-horseback this morning. He called me at the ranch house on his radio.”

  “Have you been missing these cattle?”

  Hawkins nodded. “We moved most of our herd up to Montana where they have some grass. The drought here forced us to move our cows this fall. We knew we had stragglers in the timber, and Juan’s been looking for them and herding them down.”

  “Did you see anything unusual? Hear anything?”

  Something washed across Hawkins’s face. Joe waited. He could tell that Hawkins seemed a little embarrassed about something.

  “This is stupid,” Hawkins said. “Juan told me a few days ago he was getting dizzy when he rode up here. He thought it was the elevation or something. I thought it was laziness. It’s easier to look for cows on flat ground than in the timber, so I figured he was angling for easier work.”

  Joe didn’t say that he thought he knew the feeling.

  “Dizzy?” McLanahan asked. “Like dizzy how?”

  “I don’t know,” Hawkins said, rolling his eyes. “He’s always complaining about something.”

  “Anything else?” Joe asked. “Maybe a couple of weeks ago?”

  Hawkins shook his head. “We were delivering cattle north to Montana. We weren’t even around.”

  “In all your years, have you ever seen cattle that looked like this?” Joe asked.

  “Nope,” Hawkins said, his eyes widening. “I once seen a badger make a den in the belly of a dead cow, but I never seen nothing like this.”

  Joe said, “Have you heard anything from your neighbors? Have they called about missing cattle?”

  Hawkins rubbed his stubbled chin, then gestured north with his hat rim. “That’s Bud Longbrake’s place, and I haven’t heard anything from Bud in a while. We both have a couple of cricks running through that we share in common, and our cows get mixed up in the bottoms sometimes. But like I said, he hasn’t called me about anything.”

  Joe felt a twinge at the mention of Bud Longbrake. Marybeth’s mother, Missy, had already moved to his ranch and their wedding was looming.

  Hawkins turned his head to the south. “That’s the Timberline Ranch t
hat way,” he said, and a grin broke across his face. “Do you know the Overstreet sisters?”

  McLanahan snorted from ten feet away and shook his head.

  “I know of them.”

  “When they aren’t scratching each other’s eyes out or in court suing each other over something, they’re accusing me or rustlers of making off with some of their cows,” Hawkins said. “I bet the sheriff’s been out here ten times over the years because one of those crazy Overstreet broads called and said they had cattle missing.”

  “At least ten,” Barnum sighed. “Never found anything, and the sisters can’t produce records of any missing stock.”

  The Timberline Ranch was the one for sale, Joe recalled. No wonder, he thought, if they couldn’t keep track of their cattle.

  “So whatever they say is less than . . . credible,” Hawkins said.

  “If anybody saw a flying saucer up here it would have been them,” McLanahan said. “I’ll guarantee you that.”

  “Shut up, please, Kyle,” Barnum said.

  As Joe listened to the exchange, another question came to him. “Were there any vehicle tracks up here before the sheriff arrived?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  “What are you saying, that we messed up the crime scene?” Barnum asked.

  “Not saying that at all.”

  Even McLanahan glanced over his shoulder at Barnum.

  “Well, you better not be,” Barnum said defensively. “This is my investigation and no one has requested you here.”

  “The wounds are similar to my moose,” Joe said. “It’s likely the same thing. No predation, either, even though all that beef has just been sitting out here in plain sight.”

  “That bothers me,” Hawkins said, shaking his head. “There’s just something real wrong with that. We should have knowed those cows were up here. There should have been big flocks of birds feeding on them. That’s how we usually find dead cows. And not one of these cattle has been fed on, or scattered.”

  Joe had received calls from Don Hawkins the previous spring about mountain lions that had killed several calves. Joe had looked for the cats and not found them. When the calls stopped, he knew that Hawkins had found them. Nevertheless, the ranch was prime habitat for lions, coyotes, and black bears.

  “Just like my moose,” Joe said. “Nothing will eat the meat. It makes you wonder why.”

  “Tell you what,” Barnum said as he lit a cigarette and exhaled a blue cloud of smoke, “you worry about your moose and I’ll worry about Mr. Hawkins’s cows.”

  “You’ve got jurisdiction,” said Joe.

  “You are correct.”

  “So I guess you’re planning to talk with Juan then, as well as Bud Longbrake and the Overstreet sisters?”

  “I know how to do my job, Pickett.”

  Not that you’ve always done it before, Joe thought but didn’t say. But he knew Barnum was practically reading his thoughts.

  “I sent tissue samples of the moose to the lab in Laramie,” Joe said, not mentioning where else he had sent them. “I asked that they expedite the analysis. When there are some results I’ll share them with you. You were going to get these cattle tested, weren’t you?”

  Barnum’s eyes narrowed and he didn’t answer.

  “Who is that?” McLanahan said, pointing down the road at an approaching vehicle.

  They waited, watching, as an older pickup bucked and heaved up the washed-out road. Joe recognized her first. He had met her the winter before but couldn’t recall her name.

  “Reporter,” Joe said. “Works for the Saddlestring Roundup. She must have been listening in on the scanner.”

  “Damn it,” Barnum said, his face darkening. “I do not want this in the newspaper.”

  “Too late,” McLanahan said.

  “How in the hell are we going to explain this?” Barnum asked the sky.

  Joe wondered the same thing.

  6

  WE’RE SUPPOSED TO STAY in my room,” Jessica Logue told Lucy Pickett and Hailey Bond. “My dad says we need to stay out of those old buildings out back. He says they’re unsafe for us to play in.”

  Lucy and Hailey protested. One of the things the girls loved was exploring the old outbuildings in the thick trees behind the house. It was spooky back there, and dark.

  “Can’t we play hide-and-seek?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s what my dad said,” Jessica shrugged. “He said he’s afraid the buildings might collapse when we’re playing in them and he says he doesn’t have enough insurance if we get hurt.”

  “Oooh,” Hailey said, widening her eyes. “Maybe the roofs will fall in and crush us. And there will be blood and guts all over, like those gophers that get squished on the highway . . .”

  “Stop it, Hailey,” Jessica said. Hailey, who was dark-haired with big brown eyes, liked to talk about gore. She also liked scaring people. Lucy and Jessica had made her promise to stop hiding in the worst places out back and refusing to answer their calls. Several times, Lucy and Jessica were on the verge of panic when Hailey would suddenly jump out from a pile of lumber or from behind the door of an ancient shed and shout, “Now you die!”

  “There’s stuff we can do in here,” Jessica said, trying to make the best of it.

  Yes there is, Lucy thought. Jessica had the best collection of cool old clothes she had ever seen. Both Lucy and Jessica loved to play dress-up in the old clothes, and loved applying makeup from an old makeup case Jessica’s mom had given her. Hailey sighed, but went along. Hailey, like Lucy’s older sister, Sheridan, seemed to think that the girl things Lucy and Jessica liked were boring. She would rather play hide-and-seek in the woods and scare the other girls. Just like something Sheridan would do.

  The box of old clothes was wonderful, and the three girls plowed through it. There were formal ball gowns, high-heeled shoes, tiaras (Jessica’s mom had once won the Miss Sunflower beauty contest as a girl in South Dakota), boas, bathrobes, and some men’s clothes.

  Hailey unfolded a dark green set of surgeon’s scrubs with the name LOGUE stenciled over the breast pocket.

  “Are these your dad’s?” she asked.

  “My uncle is a doctor,” Jessica said. “They used to be his.”

  “Is he still a doctor?”

  “I think so,” Jessica said.

  “Hey, this one’s pretty!” Lucy squealed, pulling a long, maroon velvet gown from the box. She felt the material and liked the lushness of it. And she liked the white fur trim of the collar. “This would look good on me with those shoes,” she said, pointing at a pair of spike heels.

  “I want to go outside,” Hailey said, pouting. “Do you think you could ask your dad?”

  “He’s not home yet,” Jessica said, fishing a small black hat with a net out of the bundle and putting it on. “I’ll ask him when he gets home, though.”

  The three girls stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the mirror over Jessica’s dresser, their faces inches from the glass while they applied their makeup. They were dressed up; Hailey in the surgeon’s scrubs, Jessica in a white satin dress with fake pearls, Lucy in the velvet dress and spike heels and the Miss Sunflower sash hung across her chest.

  Despite their giggling, they could hear an argument coming from downstairs, from the living room at the foot of the stairs.

  “What are they fighting about?” Hailey whispered, leaning into mirror to apply the blush to her cheeks.

  Jessica shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to ask your dad if we can go outside?”

  “When we’re done. Lucy, you look beautiful.”

  Lucy kissed at herself in the mirror, and the other girls laughed. Her lips were bright red with lipstick, and her eyelids were covered in blue shadow.

  “Will your mom get mad if I wear her Miss Sunflower banner?”

  “I don’t think so. And it’s called a sash.”

  Lucy was disconcerted by the loud voices from downstairs. It wasn’t like her parents never had an a
rgument—they certainly did. There were times at dinner when she knew there had been a disagreement, by the silence, the lack of small talk, or the extra helping of politeness when one of them asked for the salt. But she hardly even heard them raise their voices to each other, even behind closed doors. Their arguments, whenever they occurred, happened someplace else or when no one else was home. Hearing the voices from downstairs, she thought it was better to argue away from the children.

  They stood at Jessica’s upstairs window, looking, Lucy thought, like pretty hot young women. They had applied perfume—overdone it, actually—and the smell was overpowering. They were watching as two dark, late-model sedans pulled up the driveway and stopped near the front porch.

  “Who are those people?” Hailey asked, as both cars stopped and the driver-side doors opened. Two older women emerged from their separate vehicles. Each woman was tall, angular, and wearing a print dress that was out-of-date as well as out of season, Lucy thought. The women looked similar but different. Like sisters, maybe.

  “I think their name is Overcast,” Jessica said. “Something like that.”

  “Are they sisters?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So they’re not married to anyone?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Look how they pretend the other one isn’t there,” Hailey said. “Isn’t that weird?”

  Lucy had noticed. The two women had emerged from their cars, shut the doors, and proceeded to the front door without even acknowledging each other. They were now out of sight below, under the roof of the portico.

  “Overstreet,” Jessica said. “Now I remember their names. They own a ranch or something.”

  “Both of them?” Lucy asked. “Without husbands?”

  “I think so,” Jessica said. “I met them a couple of times but I don’t like them.”

  “Why not?” Lucy asked.

  Jessica shuddered. “They’re just icky. And they smell bad.”