by Box, C. J.
They were missed.
*
MARYBETH WAS IN the act of pouring red wine into glasses for Liv and herself when Joe entered the dining room. His wife cradled baby Kestrel in her other arm while she did it. The baby was content.
The name Kestrel had been chosen, Nate had explained, because a kestrel was the smallest species of falcon but was also known for its tenacity and willfulness.
“You haven’t lost a step,” Joe said to Marybeth.
“Holding this baby makes me want one of our own,” she responded. When Joe froze, she said, “I mean a grandbaby.”
Liv said to Marybeth, “You can come over and hold her as much as you want, you know.”
“Maybe I will,” Marybeth said.
Nate raised a glass of Wyoming Whiskey to Joe, paused, and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Joe said back.
“Why don’t you get the grill started and then come back and tell us what’s going on with the shooting,” Marybeth said to Joe. She nodded toward a platter of raw elk steaks on the counter that had been brushed with olive oil and were already seasoned with salt and pepper.
Joe nodded his agreement while he held out a glass toward Nate, who splashed bourbon into it. Joe was exhausted from the long day and he cautioned himself about drinking too much alcohol. He’d need to be sharp in the morning.
“You look like you need it,” Nate said.
“Yup.”
Like the situation in their now-empty nest, the relationship between the Picketts and the Romanowskis had taken a decidedly unpredictable turn in the past year. Where once it had been Joe, Marybeth, and their young daughters with the violent and mysterious falconer hovering just out of the frame, now it was wildly different.
Nate was now the father of a little one, and Liv was a working mother who’d married later in life and had brought a wonderful baby girl into the world. Nate sometimes seemed to Joe to be like a samurai warrior who’d exchanged his sword and ancient code for a clip-on tie and a nine-to-five job selling women’s shoes.
But he was still Nate, and Joe was still Joe, and they’d shared too many experiences and tragedies together over the years to change that.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Nate said to Joe.
“You don’t have to.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
Joe saw something in the set of Nate’s mouth that concerned him. Something was eating at his friend.
“I’ll grab the platter and you grab the bottle and let’s go outside,” Joe said.
*
NATE STOOD IN silence surveying the trees, glimpses of the river through the brush, and the distant mountains while Joe sipped on his drink and waited for the coals to get hot. Joe was familiar with Nate’s long silences, and he was used to Nate observing things in a common landscape that Joe didn’t see. Nate regarded the terrain with the singular concentration of a falcon looking for a meal.
“You’ve got a beaver thinking of starting a dam right at the mouth of the channel that runs through your place,” Nate said. “I saw him swimming upstream along the bank with a test stick. You’ll have to keep your eye on him or he might build one next spring and flood your property.”
“A test stick?” Joe asked.
“That’s how they scout out a new location for future planning,” Nate said with mild derision. “I’m surprised you don’t know about that, being a game warden and all.”
Joe snorted. But he assumed Nate was correct. After all, Nate was the only person he’d ever known to sit naked in a tree for hours and study animal, fish, and bird behavior as if he were a charter member of the ecosystem.
“We’re just about there,” Joe said, nodding toward the coals in the grill. The secret to good elk steaks was to sear them on a very hot surface to lock in the juices since there was practically no fat in the meat.
“Are these from the cow elk you got last year?” Nate asked.
“Yup. Backstraps.”
“Nothing better.”
Joe looked up. “I assume you didn’t come by tonight to talk about beavers and backstraps.”
Nate nodded. He asked, “What’s Sheridan up to these days?”
The question came from out of the blue, even though Nate and Sheridan had history. Nate, in his role of master falconer, had long ago taken her on as his apprentice. The relationship had gone dormant after Sheridan went to college.
“I think she’s trying to decide,” Joe said. “Why?”
“Our business is growing. I need someone reliable to help out.”
“Are you asking me permission?” Joe asked. “As you know, Sheridan has a mind of her own. Maybe you should ask her.”
“Maybe I should,” Nate said. He turned back to studying the river.
Joe considered the possibility of Sheridan joining Yarak, Inc. He didn’t know what he thought about it. It would be good to have her around again and it was good Nate respected her falconry chops enough to consider her, but Joe had sometimes fantasized about his oldest daughter following in his footsteps. They’d even discussed it a few times when Sheridan accompanied him on ride-alongs when she was younger. She’d always liked being outdoors and “saving animals,” as she put it.
“Is that all?” Joe asked after several minutes. Having a conversation with his friend was filled with starts and stops.
“Do you remember Jeremiah Sandburg?” Nate asked.
“Yup. I wouldn’t mind never seeing him again.”
“He dropped by the house this morning in his new motor home,” Nate said.
“He was here?”
“And he had a warning for me.”
Nate told Joe about his conversation with the ex–FBI special agent. As he did, Joe felt a shiver up his back.
As he lay the steaks on the red-hot grill he said, “Is it just you they’re coming after? I was there, too, at the time.”
“I know that and you know that,” Nate said. “But they aren’t singing narcocorridos about Joe Pickett.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing for me,” Joe said. “But what are we going to do about it?”
“Keep our heads on a swivel,” Nate said. “It won’t be the first time someone has come after me. But it’s the first time I had a wife and a little angel to protect. It makes everything three times more complicated.”
Joe agreed as he flipped the steaks. They had perfect grill marks on them.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was worried,” Nate said.
Joe had never heard Nate utter anything like that. It shook him and he didn’t know how to respond.
“I know you’ve got a lot going on with the shooting and all,” Nate said. “But I may need some help. You may hear of someone coming into the area that I don’t. Or you may run into someone who could be working for the Sinaloans. I guess I’m asking you to keep your eyes open and ears turned on.”
“Of course I’ll do that,” Joe said. “Does Liv know?”
“Not yet.”
“You should tell her,” Joe said. “That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years. Don’t keep secrets. I’ll help you however I can, but Liv is smart and tough, she’s your best ally.”
“Better than you?” Nate asked. He seemed genuinely interested in the answer.
“Better than me,” Joe said. “Don’t get me wrong—I’ll do whatever I can, of course. You can count on me. But if it weren’t for Marybeth’s involvement over the years, I’d be washed-up, homeless, or dead. You’ve got to trust her with everything, Nate. She’s smart and clever and she’d do absolutely anything necessary to protect Kestrel.”
Nate thought it over while Joe moved the meat from the grill to the platter. Finally, he said, “I’m going to set up a range and teach her how to shoot.”
“That’s a good start.”
“If something happened to her or my little girl . . .”
“I know,” Joe said. “Believe me, I know.”
“This is hard sometimes,” Nate said.
; “It is, but it’s worth it.”
Nate did something he’d rarely ever done. He reached over and gripped Joe’s shoulder and squeezed it.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Joe said. “Don’t you have experience with military snipers in the field?”
Nate nodded that he did. Joe didn’t know the particulars and Nate hadn’t shared them, but he was aware his friend had been in hot spots all over the world with a team of special operators.
“Do you have some time to look over a location with me tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Great,” Joe said. “Let’s eat.”
*
JOE OUTLINED THE FACTS as he knew them about Sue Hewitt’s shooting at dinner, although Nate was much more interested in hearing about the bear attack. He found the circumstances as puzzling and discordant as Joe and Mike Martin had. So the conversation had been steered away from the local crime.
Not so Marybeth. She wanted details and he recapped his day from landing at the Saddlestring airport to climbing into bed.
“Do you have a prime suspect?” she asked him.
“No. There are people I want to talk to. And I want to figure out where the shot was fired. That’ll help us home in on the weapon itself.”
“What does our new sheriff think?” she asked.
Joe shook his head. “Either Kapelow is some kind of brilliant detective with his own special powers and a theory of his own, or he’s absolutely clueless and he’s mucking up the investigation before it can get started. I can’t decide which, but I’m leaning toward the latter.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” she said.
“Yeah—me too. Judge Hewitt will blow a gasket if we don’t find the shooter. Or he’ll decide to take matters into his own hands.”
Marybeth nodded in agreement. She said, “I heard this evening that Sue’s chances aren’t good. But she’s strong. I hope she pulls through.”
“I hope we find the guy,” Joe said. “And I think we have to find him fast. The longer it takes, the less chance we have, unless someone comes forward.”
*
JOE SAT UP in bed with the table light on until Marybeth finished scrubbing her face in the bathroom and emerged in her nightie and slippers. Even without makeup she looked fresh and beautiful, he thought. She’d been going for early-morning swims at the high school and her limbs were toned.
She slid in next to him with a novel about singing crawdads, but she hadn’t yet opened it.
“I’m surprised you’re still up after the day you’ve had,” she said to him. “Didn’t you say you were up at three-thirty?”
“Yup.”
“You need to get some rest.”
He sighed. “I’ve got so much on my plate right now I feel paralyzed.”
There was the grizzly bear attack in the Teton Wilderness, Sue Hewitt’s shooting, and now the possible revenge of the Sinaloa cartel on his friend Nate. He told Marybeth about Nate’s meeting with Jeremiah Sandburg, the ex–FBI special agent and the threat he’d gleefully warned Nate about.
Afterward, she said, “Liv said he was acting strangely after the motor home left.”
“Nate always acts strangely,” Joe said. “But that’s why.”
“Do you think the threat is legitimate?”
“Nate does.”
“I’ll put some feelers out in town,” she said. “If anyone suspicious shows up I’ll make sure you know about it.”
“That would be good,” Joe said. Because the library was the community center of sorts, Marybeth had access to people and information that would fly under law enforcement’s radar, he knew.
Locals operated and communicated in entirely different lanes than the law enforcement community. It wasn’t unusual, for example, to find out later that locals knew who the perpetrators of crimes were long before that perp’s name ever came up during the investigation. That was due to gossip, social media, and one-on-one interaction within the valley that cops weren’t involved in.
Sheriff Reed had made an effort to bridge the divide with locals by having coffee every morning with the city fathers at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant or simply rolling his chair down the sidewalks in town and making small talk with his constituents. Because of Joe’s job and the locals he encountered in the field, he was hooked into the blood, fins, and feathers crowd. But overall, Marybeth took the pulse of the entire community daily in and around the library.
Not only that, she said, she’d spend as much time as she could doing research on the deep web cartel sites she’d discovered and social media posts that might unwittingly give them a leg up on who might be coming and when.
“You’d think they’d stay off the internet,” she said. “But they don’t. They think because you can’t google them, they’re invisible, but if you know the specific IP addresses, you can access the cartel sites. People just can’t help themselves—they talk too much. Even criminals.”
Marybeth said she could monitor suspicious guests checking in at local hotels and motels as well.
“How?” Joe asked.
“It’s the month of our annual book sale,” she said. “We put collection boxes all over town for people to drop off used books. That includes the lobbies of all the accommodations, since visitors often leave books they’ve read or they want to be rid of. I usually assign that job to one of our library foundation volunteers, but this year I could do it myself. I can ask the front desk people if they have any interesting guests.”
Joe whistled. He was impressed with her, as always. Marybeth had a manner about her that made people want to talk to her. And if the cartel hit man had the same look and characteristics as the members of the Wolf Pack who had ventured to Twelve Sleep County six months before, they’d stand out among the tourists, hunters, and fly fishermen who stayed at the hotel properties.
“Now I won’t be able to sleep,” she lamented. “I’ll worry about Nate and Liv and especially Kestrel. That little girl of theirs took me back. I want another one around this house someday. Do you think it’ll be Sheridan, April, or Lucy first?”
“I try not think about that,” Joe said.
“Don’t you want to be Grandpa Joe?”
He moaned and rubbed his eyes. It was too much for him to think about right now. But he kind of liked the idea, now that he thought about it . . .
*
IT WAS THREE-THIRTY in the morning—again—when Joe awoke to Marybeth’s prodding him. He’d been sleeping hard and he was momentarily confused.
“Your phone,” she said.
He fumbled for it on the bed stand as it skittered along the surface. It took a few seconds for him to focus on the name on the screen.
DUANE PATTERSON
Joe punched him up and said, “This better be good.”
Patterson was out of breath as if he’d been running. He said, “It isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.”
“So what’s up?”
“I was driving home and someone took a shot at me in my car. Right through the windshield.”
“What?”
“They missed,” Patterson said. “But I’ve got glass in my hair and my eyes. I think my head is bleeding.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“Hell no,” Patterson said angrily. “It was too dark to see anything at all. But I’m so shaky I don’t think I can drive.”
“Where are you?” Joe asked, throwing the blankets aside and leaping up. The bedroom floor was cold on his bare feet.
Patterson said he was on Four Mile Road and Highway 78 in the borrow ditch on the side of the road.
“Stay where you are,” Joe said. “I’m on my way.”
“What if he’s still out there?”
“Stay low.”
“Hell, I’m on the floor of my car. If I got any lower, I’d be underneath it.”
“Did you call the sheriff?” Joe asked as he stepped into his Wranglers and reached for his uniform shirt in the closet.
“Why would I call him
?” Patterson said with heat borne of panic.
“I’ll let him know,” Joe said.
As he buttoned up, Marybeth asked from the dark, “Was that Duane? Is he okay?”
“Someone took a shot at him,” Joe said. “I’m going out there.”
“Please be careful.”
“Always am.”
“No, actually, you never are,” she said. “But now we know.”
Joe paused within the doorframe. “Now we know what?” he asked.
“That this is a courthouse thing,” she said. “Someone is going after the prosecutor and the judge. At least that narrows it down from all the other speculation out there. And it also means the shooter is still in the area.”
Joe agreed. “He’s missed his target twice now. I doubt he’ll miss again.”
PART TWO
In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betray’d by what is false within.
—George Meredith, “Love’s Grave”
EIGHT
EARLY THE SAME MORNING, CANDY CROSWELL STIRRED in bed when she heard a sound from down the hallway in the dark. She was on her side and she flattened the side of her down pillow to get a look at the clock that glowed dull blue across the room. Four-ten in the morning. She sighed and dropped her head back down.
He was as considerate as he could be when he came home so late. Tom never turned a light on when he came into the bedroom, and he didn’t talk. Often, he’d use one of the hall bathrooms to change out of his clothes so the rustling wouldn’t disturb her. Then he’d slip into the huge soft bed like an alligator entering the bayou—without a ripple.
She was a light sleeper, and she always woke up despite his efforts not to disturb her. But she didn’t hold it against him. He tried. She’d been with men who wouldn’t even think of being so considerate.
Some nights Tom wouldn’t come straight to bed. He’d tell her later that he was too wound up, that his shift had been stressful and chaotic, and that it took him an hour or so and a couple of strong drinks at his wet bar to relax. When she heard the clink of ice in a glass, she knew it had been one of those nights.
