Trophy Hunt

by C. J. Box

  “. . . have trouble letting go,” Sheridan finished for her.

  Marybeth backed out of the driveway and onto the road and started back through town toward the Bighorn Road.

  13

  THERE’S SOMETHING OUTSIDE I’ve got to show you that will scare the pants off Hailey Bond,” Jessica Logue told Lucy Pickett as they entered the house.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “Of course it’s not okay, Lucy.”

  They smiled at each other.

  Because Jessica’s parents weren’t yet home from work, Jessica and Lucy dropped their backpacks in the living room and went straight through the house toward the back door. Lucy heard the sound of a television from the darkened family room, and as they passed by she saw the blue glow from the screen.

  “Jessica, honey,” someone called.

  “Hi, Grandma,” Jessica said but didn’t slow her stride.

  “Come in here so we can see you. Who is your friend?”

  Jessica stopped abruptly, then turned to Lucy and rolled her eyes. She led Lucy into the dark room.

  It took a moment for Lucy’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. When she could see, she could make out two people in the gloom. They were lit softly by the light of the television, which reflected in two pairs of old-fashioned, metal-framed eyeglasses.

  “Lucy, this is Grandma and Grandpa Logue.”

  “Hi,” Lucy said. Jessica’s grandparents were small, thin people. Her grandmother wore an oversized sweatshirt with a heart embroidered across the front of it. Her hair was dull gray and cropped close. Jessica’s grandfather looked like something out of an old movie about farmers: flannel shirt buttoned to his chin, wide suspenders, baggy, stained trousers, and heavy work shoes. They were watching a talk show about bad families.

  Lucy saw that Jessica’s grandmother had a pile of knitting on her lap, and could see the glint from the metal knitting needles. How could she even see what she was doing?

  “Why don’t you have the lights on?” Lucy asked.

  “Why waste electricity?” Jessica’s grandmother asked back.

  “We don’t waste electricity in our family,” Jessica’s grandfather said with a high twang. “Don’t waste water, either.”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say to that.

  “We’re going to play,” Jessica said, and Lucy was grateful to her changing the subject.

  “You be careful,” Jessica’s grandmother cautioned. “Stay close to the house. Nice to meet you, little girl.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” Lucy said.

  Outside, Jessica widened her eyes and gestured “follow me.” They were in the heavy trees behind the house. It was cool and still, and the curled cottonwood leaves crunched beneath their feet. Lucy was glad to be outside, away from Jessica’s grandparents.

  Lucy thought how old Jessica’s grandparents seemed to be, especially compared to Grandmother Missy, who was now out on that ranch. Grandmother Missy seemed years younger. Lucy sometimes wished she was more like a real grandmother, but Jessica’s grandparents took being old a little too far, she thought.

  They were a long way from the house.

  “Jessica . . .”

  “I know. We’ll take a look at it and get right back to the house before my mom and dad get home.”

  Lucy nodded. What, she wondered, was “it”? She was frightened, but a little thrilled. She reached between the buttons of her jacket with the palm of her hand, to see if she could feel her heart beating. She could.

  “Now, whatever you do, don’t look up . . .” Jessica whispered. Both girls laughed, and it broke the tension for a moment. “Don’t look up” had become a comic mantra at school ever since the news of the mutilations had come out. Sixth-graders, some from Sheridan’s class, said it to scare the little kids on the playground. When the kids did look up, usually with a fleeting, half-terrified glance, the sixth-graders would lunge forward and either tickle the youngsters or push them backward over a coconspirator who was on their hands and knees behind them.

  The funniest thing to have happened so far though was when two boys in their class had started selling foil-covered baseball caps for seven dollars apiece. One of the boys had stolen the caps from his father’s collection, and the other had borrowed a large roll of aluminum foil from his own mother.

  “Why get mutilated?” They cried out like carnival barkers. “Protect yourself with these babies . . . only seven dollars each or two for twelve dollars. . . .”

  How much farther?” Lucy asked. They must be near the edge of the property, she thought. They had never been this far from the house before.

  “It’s right up here,” Jessica said. “Man, wait until the next time Hailey comes over. We’ll ditch her right here. It’ll serve her right for always trying to scare us.”

  Nervous, but giggling, they ducked under a low-hanging branch and pushed through tall, dried brush. Lucy froze when she saw the dark building in front of her. She looked it over. It wasn’t as large as she initially thought it was. In fact, it was more of a shack. It was old, unpainted, with one window that still had glass in it. The other front windows were boarded up. There was a sagging porch with missing slats where yellowed grass had grown through and died. The roof was uneven, and an old, tin chimney was black with age.

  “Wow,” Lucy said. “When did you find this?”

  “Yesterday,” Jessica said.

  Lucy looked over at her friend. Jessica smiled and raised her eyebrows expectantly. Lucy wasn’t sure she liked this, even a bit.

  “You want to look inside?” Jessica asked.

  “Maybe we should go back now.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”

  Lucy folded her arms across her coat. “I’m not going inside of that place.”

  Jessica looked disappointed, but not as disappointed as she could have looked. This made Lucy feel a little better, knowing that Jessica was scared too.

  “How about if we just look in the window?” Jessica said.

  Lucy weighed the idea. Her first impulse was to go back to the house. But she didn’t want to show she was afraid and give Jessica something to tease her about later.

  Lucy quickly nodded yes. She chose not to speak, because she was worried her voice would betray her fright.

  The two girls walked tentatively to the shack. Lucy could see that the window would be too high to look in without standing on her tiptoes. Jessica was an inch or two taller, maybe tall enough that she could see into the window without extra effort. Lucy wished it wasn’t overcast, and thought that everything might feel different if the sun was out.

  They approached the window silently. The bottom sill was gray and warped, and Lucy reached up and closed her fingers around it to help her stretch higher. Lucy strained, balanced on the toes of her shoes, and pulled herself up so her nose touched the top of the sill.

  There was just enough light inside the building that they could see.

  They both suddenly gasped.

  What terrified them wasn’t the pile of dirty bedding, or the opened food cans and cartons, or the pile of books on the floor. It was the sound of rustling from somewhere in the shadows out of view, and the thump of a footfall as if something was trying to get away.

  They ran back to the house, screaming all the way.

  14

  AFTER THE TASK-FORCE MEETING, Joe Pickett drove his pickup through the breaklands into the foothills of the mountains. He pulled off the road, on a steep overlook to eat his lunch—a salami sandwich, and an apple—while surveying the vast valley below. The day was cloudless and cool, the eastern horizon limitless. Below him, several miles away, was a small camp of three vehicles and a pop-up camper near the brushy crux of small streams. He glassed the camp through his spotting scope recognizing a group of antelope hunters he had checked a few days before. They had asked him if he thought they were in danger from the sky. He didn’t know how to answer the question then, and he still didn’t.

  Desp
ite the new task force, Joe still had a job to do. Pronghorn antelope season was open, as was archery season for elk in the high country. Deer season would open in two weeks, and for a short, furiously busy time, all of the big game seasons would be open simultaneously. Joe hoped that the task force would have reached some conclusions by then, or his absence in the field would be noted. Most hunters were dutiful, but the criminal element—the lowlifes who would try to take too many animals or leave the wounded in search of a bigger trophy—would keep close track of his comings and goings.

  Portenson’s presence, and threat that he was going to look deeper into Joe and Nate’s roles in the federal-land manager’s death last winter wormed through his thoughts. When he saw his reflection in the rearview mirror, he saw a man with a tense, worried scowl.

  Joe got out of his pickup and sat down on the tailgate, flipping open his notebook to his notes from the meeting.

  CULTS

  DISTURBED INDIVIDUALS

  GOVERNMENT AGENTS

  GRIZZLY BEAR

  ARABS (stupid)

  UNKNOWN VIRUS

  ALIENS

  BIRDS (FBI theory)

  Tuff Montegue / Twelve Sleep County / Contusions mutilation / Grizzly breakfast / Oxindole?

  Stuart Tanner / Park County (50 miles away) / No predation / 911 call / Oxindole?

  Cleve Garrett / Paranormal guy / Riverside RV Park

  Portenson / Happened before in the 1970s / BIRDS???

  He reviewed the theories and shook his head. If there were cults of any kind in the area, they operated in complete and total anonymity, because he hadn’t heard anything about them. Obviously, from the lack of reaction at the table, no one else had either.

  In his mind, he classified “Government Agents,” “Unknown Virus,” “Aliens,” and “Birds” into the “most improbable” category. It was conceivable that the government might conduct secret experiments on animals with new weapons, but only in a weird X-Files kind of way. How did the deaths of Tuff Montegue and Stuart Tanner fit in? He didn’t believe the government was murdering and skinning old cowboys to test new weapons.

  He conceded that it was remotely possible that a virus of some kind killed the animals and humans, although it made no sense to him that the virus could operate externally as well and cause the kinds of mutilation he had seen.

  “Aliens” were a possibility he refused to seriously acknowledge. The word itself produced an instinctive inner scoff. Was he being closed-minded, he wondered, or was he scared to examine the possibilities? He didn’t know the answer to that question, but thought that it was likely a combination of both. And, he reasoned, if the cause of the murders and mutilations were alien beings, then there wasn’t going to be much the task force, or anybody else, could do about it.

  Birds?

  “Birds?” He said aloud. “How idiotic is that?”

  Joe wanted to toss aside the “Grizzly Bear” theory as well but couldn’t. The fact was that a bear had been present at both the bull moose and Tuff Montegue locations. Joe had seen the tracks in the meadow, and determined that the bear dragged the moose into the trees. The savage wounds on Montegue’s torso, aside from the mutilations, were undoubtedly caused by a bear. But had it appeared the bear had shown up only after they were dead. The grizzly had happened by and checked out two bodies already on the ground, Joe thought, choosing not to sample the moose but having no objections to feeding on the old cowboy.

  Joe also couldn’t discount the bear theory because bears were his responsibility. Because once the grizzly had left its federally protected enclave in Yellowstone, it was now the responsibility of the Game and Fish Department. With responsibility came liability, and if it turned out that the bear was the cause of the crimes, Joe’s agency would be blamed. If so, blame would cascade downhill, pooling around Joe Pickett’s boots.

  If the radio collar on the bear hadn’t malfunctioned, the bear biologists tracking it could either clear—or implicate—the bear. As it was, they had no better idea of the bear’s location than Joe did.

  “Disturbed Individuals” merited more consideration, he thought. He drew a star next to it. The likelihood of a nut—or nuts—with cutting tools was the most likely prospect of all, he thought. Perhaps the bad guy had been practicing on animals for months or years without suspicion. He had started, maybe, with small animals or pets, and perfected his technique. Then he moved up the food chain; an antelope or deer for starters, then a single cow or horse. Without the atmosphere of suspicion that now existed, the lone deaths of single animals would not have aroused any notice. A mutilated carcass that wasn’t found immediately—predation or not—wouldn’t appear all that different from a natural death if the discovery was a month or so afterward. Maybe, Joe thought, this had been going on for years in the area. How many animal bodies had he seen himself over the years on the sides of highways, in ditches, in the landfill? Hundreds, he thought.

  But then, for some reason, the animals weren’t enough, so the killer moved on to human beings. Not just one, either. He went after two people in one night in a bloody explosion of . . . something.

  Both men were killed in isolated locations accessible by either private dirt roads, in Montegue’s case, or remote county roads, in Stuart Tanner’s case. Joe wondered how long it would take to drive from one crime location to the other, and guessed an hour and a half without stopping. Which meant, if this theory played out, that the killer was local and knew his way around.

  What kind of person is capable of this? Joe wondered, trying to picture a face or eyes. Neither came.

  Joe’s mind spun with questions.

  Was this the same person who had mutilated cattle in the 1970s? If so, why had the killer stopped for over thirty years before beginning again? Had the killer, in the meanwhile, contented himself with the death and mutilation of wildlife, like the bull moose Joe found, or perhaps the cattle mutilations in Montana?

  And whoever it was, why had the killer chosen to escalate the horrors to a new level? Since Joe and the task force had virtually no leads of any kind—despite what Barnum might tell the public—what was to stop this person?

  Joe looked up and stared out at the breaklands. The dull headache that had started behind his left ear an hour ago had become a full-fledged skull-pounder. The more he thought about the killings, the worse it got.

  This is a job for somebody a hell of a lot smarter than I am, he thought.

  The sun was still two hours from dropping behind the mountains, but the sagebrush flats and red arroyos were beginning to light up. Pockets of cottonwoods and aspen pulsed with fall color. He loved this time of the evening on the high plains, when it seemed like the dying sun infused the landscape with every last pulse of color and drama before withdrawing the favor.

  He shoved his notebook into his pocket, climbed into the cab of his truck, and drove farther up the mountain into the trees, peering out from behind his headache.

  Joe cruised slowly, with his windows open. As it darkened, he had switched on the sneak lights under his front bumper, illuminating only the road surface directly in front of him. With his headlights off, he was almost invisible to a hunter or another vehicle until he was practically on top of them.

  A half mile from the turnoff to Hazelton Road, in the low light of timber dusk, two camouflaged hunters stepped out of the trees onto the road.

  When the hunters saw him, he could tell from their body language that he had surprised them. They consulted with each other, heads bent together, as he approached them. He waved, eased the pickup to a stop, clamped his Stetson on, and swung out of the truck. Before he closed his door, he reached in and turned his headlights on full, bathing the hunters in white light. It was a tactic he had learned over countless similar stops; approaching armed men on foot with his headlights behind him.

  Joe quickly sized up the men as elk hunters out for the archery season. Their faces were painted in green and black, as were the backs of their hands. Each carried high-tech compound
bows with extra arrows attached by side quivers. Their eyes, in the headlights, blinked out from their face paint.

  “Are you doing any good?” Joe asked pleasantly, although he’d noted that neither was spotted with blood from a kill.

  “It’s too damned warm up here,” the taller hunter said. “It’s too dry for any stealthy movement.”

  His voice sounded familiar to Joe, although Joe couldn’t place it.

  “See anything?”

  “Cow and a calf this morning,” the shorter hunter said. “I missed her, damn it.”

  The shorter hunter’s quiver was missing an arrow, Joe noticed.

  “Couldn’t find your arrow, I see.”

  The shorter hunter shook his head. “Nope.”

  “I hope you didn’t wound her,” Joe said. Although archery hunting was certainly more sporting to the prey than rifle season, too many inexperienced or overexcited hunters often wounded game animals and then lost track of them. He had seen too many crippled elk, deer, and antelope in the field with errant arrows stuck in them.

  The shorter hunter started to speak.

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “. . . He missed her clean,” the taller one interrupted, annoyance in his voice. “He just fucking missed her, all right?”

  Joe was now close enough to see their faces and to recognize the taller hunter through his face paint.

  “You again,” Joe said to Jeff O’Bannon, the belligerent fisherman he had met before on Crazy Woman Creek with his daughters. “I hope you’ve learned how to release a fish since then.”

  O’Bannon’s eyes flashed. Joe thought they looked bigger behind the face paint.

  “What’s this about?” the shorter hunter asked O’Bannon.

  “Never mind, Pete,” O’Bannon said through clenched teeth.

  “Can I please see your licenses and conservation stamps?” Joe asked, still polite.

  “You’ve already seen my stamp,” O’Bannon said.