Trophy Hunt

by C. J. Box

  “We aren’t anywhere now,” Portenson said.

  “No, we aren’t. But if we change the focus of the investigation, we might find something out.”

  Portenson shook his head as if dispelling a bad thought.

  “Look, Portenson, I know you’re not a bad guy,” Joe said. “I know what you did last winter, how you tried to stop the massacre. You blame me for putting you in that position, but you did the right thing. You can do it again.”

  “Oh, just shut up,” Portenson said.

  Joe grinned. “I can count on you, can’t I?”

  “Why do you even care?”

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t want this kind of thing happening in my mountains, or my district. Not around my family. They’ve gone through enough in the last few years without worrying about something like this.”

  Portenson looked genuinely sympathetic. Then something changed in his face.

  “I still think you and that Nate Romanowski maniac are guilty of something. I’ll find that out one of these days, and I’ll bust you both. Then I’ll get out of this hellhole I’m in.”

  Joe nodded. “That’s fine. But right now, we’ve got killers out here who are just about as scary as anything I can think of. You know that.”

  Portenson lit another cigarette, then tossed it away angrily after one drag. “I’m hoping the whole thing just goes the fuck away,” he said. “There haven’t been any incidents in a few days, not since that stupid horse got his face ripped off. I just hope the whole thing goes away.”

  “Maybe it will,” Joe said, thinking again of Cleve Garrett’s theory. “Or maybe just part of it will. If that happens, we’ve still got the other part to figure out.”

  Barnum leaned on the horn, even though Portenson was just feet away from his vehicle.

  “What an asshole,” Portenson said.

  “That’s just the half of it,” Joe said back.

  25

  LOT C-17 AT THE RIVERSIDE RESORT and RV Park was empty.

  “Damn it,” Joe said, thumping the steering wheel of his pickup with the heel of his hand. He looked over to Maxine, remembered that he had left her home to sleep today, then looked back at the vacated lot.

  He wondered when they’d left. How long had the Airstream been gone?

  A sick feeling welled up in Joe’s stomach. He hoped that Deena was all right. He felt responsible for her, since she had reached out to him even in her pathetic way. If he had acted sooner, had come over to see Deena the morning after the first message, could he have averted something? Had Cleve Garrett discovered their correspondence and hurt her? Or had he simply moved his operation to some other place?

  He found Jimbo behind his trailer, raking leaves in his postage-stamp backyard.

  “Jimbo, when did Cleve Garrett pull out?” Joe asked the resort manager.

  Jimbo froze, then slowly looked up. “What do you mean?”

  Joe was confused for a moment. “Don’t you know that he’s gone? I just came from there. The lot is empty.”

  Jimbo let the rake fall into the pile of leaves he had made. “Well, what do you know,” he said. “He musta’ left during the night. He was all paid up, so he doesn’t owe me anything. But he at least could have said good-bye so I’d have known I have another space to rent.”

  “Didn’t you hear him go?” Joe asked, incredulous.

  Jimbo pointed at his own head. “I don’t hear nothing without my hearing aids anymore. I take ’em out to sleep, so I guess he left after I went to bed.”

  “When was that?”

  Jimbo pondered the question. “Let’s see, I watched the news, read a little. You ever read Harry Potter?”

  Joe had, but he didn’t want to discuss it.

  “I’m hooked,” Jimbo said. “I’m on the third one now. I never thought I’d care a good goddamn about a little Brit orphan, but . . .”

  “Jimbo, what time?”

  Jimbo’s face lost enthusiasm, and he thought for a moment. “Must have been after 11:30 or so. I think that’s when I packed it in.”

  Deena’s last e-mail to Joe had been sent at 11:15, Joe remembered. In it, she hadn’t said they were leaving. Maybe she hadn’t known yet, he thought, the sick feeling coming back. Maybe Cleve read Joe’s response over Deena’s shoulder, and decided then that they needed to go immediately.

  But what difference did it make what time they left? Joe thought. What was significant was the fact that they were gone, and that they felt a need to leave in the middle of the night.

  Why?

  As he crossed the Twelve Sleep County line into Park County, Joe called Hersig and told him that Cleve Garrett was gone and mentioned Deena’s e-mail.

  “I think we should put out an APB,” Joe said. “Locating their truck and that big Airstream shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  Hersig hesitated.

  “What?” Joe asked.

  “We don’t have any grounds to stop him,” Hersig said. “A man has a right to move his trailer from place to place, Joe.”

  “What about Deena?”

  “What about her? Can you honestly make a case that you think she’s in danger? Or threatened? From what you told me she hasn’t ever indicated that she’s in trouble. It doesn’t sound like we have anything to go on at all here, Joe.”

  Joe held the phone away from his ear and looked at it, scowling at Hersig. Then he pulled it back. “They left right after she sent me an e-mail, like I said. She was going to tell me something this morning that she thought was important. I’m telling you, Cleve Garrett is dirty in some way. Why else would he hightail it out of town so quickly when just the other day he was begging me to get him on the task force? I think he’s going to hurt her, if he hasn’t already.”

  “Aw, Joe . . .”

  “Damn it, Robey, if we find her body somewhere I hope you remember this conversation.”

  Hersig sighed, “Okay, I’ll call the highway patrol. But if he’s located, we need more than what you’ve given me to search the trailer or arrest the guy. If she’s with him and looks okay we’ll have to cut him loose with our apologies.”

  Joe hoped that if Garrett was stopped the man would give something away that would invite inquiry. At least Joe would know if Deena was with him, and if she was unharmed.

  Maybe Barnum had a point, Joe thought, as he slowed his pickup to enter Cody. Maybe Joe didn’t know what he was doing.

  Park County sheriff Dan Harvey had agreed to meet with Joe in his office to go over the case file of Stuart Tanner’s death. Harvey seemed younger and more at ease than he had been during the task-force meeting, Joe thought. Maybe he was just more comfortable on his own turf. The sheriff offered coffee, and Joe accepted. They sat in the sheriff’s office, which was larger and much neater than Barnum’s rathole, Joe observed. There were even books on the bookshelves.

  “I asked Deputy Cook to sit in with us, Joe. He received the callout and was the first officer on the scene.”

  Joe nodded to Cook, who nodded back. Joe thought the deputy seemed capable and serious.

  “Anything happening in Twelve Sleep County?” Harvey asked, as a receptionist delivered three Styrofoam cups of see-through coffee.

  “Need anything in it?” she asked Joe.

  Maybe some coffee beans, Joe thought, but declined her offer.

  “Has Robey been in contact with you?” Joe asked.

  “Every afternoon.”

  “Then you know that we haven’t made any progress. That paranormal guy Cleve Garrett has disappeared, though. We’re looking for him. But nothing of significance has happened yet.”

  Harvey shrugged. “This is a bad case. I just wish it would go away somehow. There’s just no real evidence anywhere.”

  Cook nodded in agreement. “The only good thing about it is that there haven’t been any more murders or mutilations in Park County.”

  “We found a horse,” Joe said, grimacing a little.

  “I heard. You were there, right?”

  Joe no
dded.

  “You heard that the FBI said there was no toxicology on Mr. Tanner, right?” Harvey said. “Nothing unusual, I mean. He died from a blow to the head, and he would have died from severe exposure anyway. His mutilation occurred postmortem.”

  Cook said, “Basically, there’s nothing we’ve found that we haven’t already given to Robey Hersig,” an edge of jurisdictional integrity creeping into his voice. “So frankly, I’m not sure why you’re here.”

  “I’m just going over things again,” Joe said. “Maybe I’m spinning my wheels. I’m not accusing you guys of withholding anything.”

  “That’s good,” the sheriff said, sipping his coffee and exchanging a glance with Cook. “Because we’re not. Besides, practically everything happened in Twelve Sleep County. Our guy is dead just because the aliens or whatever couldn’t see the county line.”

  Cook laughed at the sheriff’s joke, and Joe smiled.

  “So who called it in?” Joe asked.

  Cook opened his file with a copy of the 911 log. “The call came in at 4:32 A.M. from an unknown male. The caller didn’t identify himself, but he reported a body within sight of county road 212. Dispatch took down the information and called me at home because I’d just gotten off of my shift. Katherine, the night dispatcher, said it was hard to understand the caller, and she had to ask him to repeat himself a couple of times. Bad connection, I guess.”

  Joe was silent for a moment, considering the situation, turning the details over in his head. “Deputy Cook, you said the body was found within sight of the road, but was it parallel to the road, or somewhere on a turn?”

  Cook sat back, not sure where this was headed. “It was parallel to the road, in the trees. We found the body in a clearing.”

  “You found it pretty easily, then?”

  “Yup. The directions from the call-in were good. He told us it was 6.8 miles on the country road from the highway. It was exactly 6.8 miles, all right.”

  “So you drove 6.8 miles and then what? Shone your spotlight out to the side?” Joe asked.

  Cook bobbed his head. “I picked up the body right where it was supposed to be.”

  “So,” Joe asked, rubbing his jaw, “if you hadn’t known the exact location of the body, could you have seen it from the road?”

  Cook snorted, “In the daylight, hell yes. It was plainly visible from the road.”

  “But it wasn’t daylight,” Joe said, perking up. “It was night. Would your headlights have picked up the body if you were driving down that road?”

  Cook hesitated, then: “No. There’s no way I could have seen it off to the side like that in the dark.”

  Sheriff Harvey slowly sat up, and leaned forward on his desk. “Shit,” he said. “So how did the guy who called it in see the body? How did he know it was there?”

  Joe said, “Yup.”

  “I never thought of that,” Cook confessed. “Damn it all. The coroner said Tanner was killed between 10 P.M. and 2 A.M. which means the guy either saw it happen, or he fucking did it.”

  “Do you keep a tape of the calls?” Joe asked. His question betrayed his growing excitement.

  Harvey’s cheeks flushed. “We do, but the machine wasn’t working that day. I’m sorry about that.”

  “The call came in at 4:30 A.M., right? Don’t you think it’s kind of odd that someone was driving around out there at that time of night?” Joe asked.

  Harvey shook his head. “Not really. We know that there’s been some drug activity on that road, some meth buys. It’s also a road pretty popular with the high school crowd. They go out there to drink and jump each other’s bones. My guess is that somebody like that called it in.”

  “So it was from a cell phone?”

  “We assume so.”

  “Does your dispatcher have Caller ID?”

  Harvey’s eyebrows shot up. “You know, we honestly didn’t think of that. We’ve got it but we never really pursued it because we didn’t put much emphasis on the caller himself. Didn’t seem important. The dispatcher said the guy was really hard to understand, and she kept having to ask him to repeat himself. It was like he was drunk or drugged, she said.”

  “I’ll check the record,” Cook said, standing up. “Be right back.”

  “Seems like a good guy,” Joe said after Cook had left.

  “He is,” Harvey said, sipping his coffee. “I think he’s a little miffed that he didn’t have an answer for you.”

  “I’ll tell him not to worry.”

  While they waited, Joe told Harvey about his encounter with Cleve Garrett and Deena, as well as the crop circles that weren’t crop circles. Joe explained that he was currently operating under the theory that the murders and mutilations in Twelve Sleep and Park County were connected, with the exception of Tuff Montegue’s death, which didn’t fit the pattern. Harvey maintained a steady smile, and nodded from time to time. He was noncommittal overall and Joe suspected that Harvey would rather have the murder that was part of the pattern instead of the exception to it. That way, there would be no special expectations placed on him or his department. When Joe told Harvey about Maxine turning white, Harvey seemed genuinely shocked.

  “Cows are one thing,” Harvey said. “But you don’t fuck with a man’s dog.”

  “Damned right,” Joe said.

  Deputy Cook returned in a few minutes holding a printout. He closed the door behind him and sat down heavily in his chair.

  “I don’t know if this is helpful or not,” he said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me anyway.”

  “You’ve got a number?” Harvey asked impatiently.

  “Yup. But it’s not a local number like I thought it would be. The area code is 910.” He looked to Joe and Harvey to see if they recognized it. Both men shook their heads.

  “Nine-one-oh,” Cook repeated. “I looked it up. The cell phone is from Fayetteville, North Carolina.”

  “What?” Harvey said, his voice high-pitched. “We’ve got a guy from North Carolina driving around in the mountains at 4:30 A.M.?”

  Joe tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t. He wrote the number down in his notebook.

  “Maybe he’s one of those CBM guys,” Cook said. “They’re from all over. Is there natural gas in North Carolina? Or a company headquarters there?”

  Harvey shrugged. “Arden, you need to follow up on this.”

  “I’ll get on it right now,” Cook said. He asked Harvey if he could use two of the other deputies so they could work faster. Harvey agreed.

  After Cook left, Harvey turned to Joe and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe we’ve actually got something here.”

  “It’s a start anyway. Will you call me when you’ve got a name?” Joe said, handing Harvey his card. “I’ll fill Robey in on what we’ve got so far.”

  “Which really, when you think of it, isn’t very damned much,” Harvey said. “But at least I’ve got my guys running around all excited, instead of sitting there reading the Pro Rodeo News.”

  Joe stood, shook hands, and opened the door. Before he left, he remembered one of the questions he meant to ask when he arrived.

  “You said Stuart Tanner owned an outfit called Tanner Engineering?”

  Harvey nodded. “Right, based out of Texas, but his family’s had a cabin up here for years, and he liked to stay there when his company was working in the area.”

  “Do you know what Tanner Engineering was working on? Specifically?”

  While Harvey shuffled through the file, Joe recalled something from the day before. Tuff Montegue’s brother had said Tuff worked for “Turner Engineering.” Could it have been Tanner Engineering? Joe felt a twinge.

  Harvey looked up after going through the file. “We don’t have anything on what he was doing here,” he said. “You know, I feel kind of stupid that we haven’t really pursued this angle. To be honest, we’ve been sort of waiting for something to break in Twelve Sleep County.”

  That sounds about right, Joe thought.

  “I’ve go
t to think about this,” Harvey said, as much to himself as to Joe. “If some bad guy killed and mutilated Stuart Tanner, did he also do all of the livestock? And the moose? And the cowboy? It doesn’t seem possible to me.”

  Joe didn’t know what to say. But his mind was spinning.

  Back in his pickup heading for Saddlestring, Joe called Marybeth at Logue Country Realty. “Are things okay today?” he asked. “Fine,” she said, sounding more cheerful than he would have anticipated. “Except Marie is sick again. I haven’t seen her in three days. I’m starting to get a little worried about her, Joe. I asked Cam how she was doing, and he said he thought she’d be back in later this week.”

  “So you talked with Cam, huh?” he asked, feeling a surge of anger.

  “Of course I talked with him,” Marybeth said, admonishing Joe. “He’s my boss. Nothing was said about our conversation yesterday, and I think he’s a little ashamed of the whole thing. I’m not worried, Joe.”

  “You’ll call me if something happens again, right?”

  “Of course. But I can handle myself. I’m a big girl, and I’m smarter than hell.”

  “That you are,” Joe said although he still felt like smashing his fist into Cam’s face.

  “But that’s not the only reason why you’re calling, is it?” she teased.

  Man, she knew him well, he thought. “I was wondering if you would have any time to do some research. It can probably be done on the Internet and with a couple of calls.”

  “Is something happening, Joe?” She sounded intrigued.

  “Maybe. But I’m not sure yet.”

  “I can grab some time over lunch,” she said. “What do you need?”

  “Do you have a pencil?”

  It was late afternoon when the town of Saddlestring came into view. From the distance on the highway, it looked insignificant beneath the slumping shoulders of the Bighorn Mountains. Joe could see a few buildings poking out of young trees, the Twelve Sleep River as it serpentined through the valley and through the middle of town, and four shining ribbons of highway that intersected within the tree-choked community.

  He had tried to let his mind work during the drive back, to process what he had learned in Cody. He tried to think of what they might be overlooking that was sitting there right in front of them.