by Box, C. J.
Orlando had climbed so high that when he reached the top of the mountains, he could view the Sea of Cortez to the west and the state of Durango to the east. He’d eventually found an unoccupied, well-hidden cabin probably used by drug smugglers and he’d broken into it and stolen tools, clothing, binoculars, a tarp, and a bedroll. He’d been disappointed that there weren’t any weapons to take. Orlando didn’t stay long, though, because he knew that if the smugglers caught him, they would kill him as quickly and easily as the cops and federales would.
Orlando now thought of those months in the Sierra Madre Occidental as his real education. Living alone in the mountains taught him to be patient, resourceful, and tough. He learned how to catch rabbits with snares and he once dropped from a tree onto the back of a deer and slit its throat. Mountain lions stalked him at night, although none ever attacked. Regardless, he knew it was kill or be killed, and Orlando turned into an apex predator.
Once, while he was tracking a deer with a bow and arrow he’d made himself, he heard low talking and the footfalls of men in the bush. He flattened himself against the root pan of a downed pine tree when they got close. There were two of them: wiry, well-armed bounty hunters. Orlando never found out if they’d been sent by the police or the smugglers, and it didn’t matter. He shot an arrow through the temple of the first man, who’d dropped straight down and died before he hit the ground. While the second man bent over the first, trying to figure out what had happened, Orlando charged him from behind with his knife and sliced through both of his femoral arteries on the backs of his thighs, then retreated into the forest until the bounty hunter bled out. Before the second man died, he fired bullets wildly in the direction Orlando had run. Rounds smacked into tree trunks and cut down pine branches. Orlando waited him out while lying flat on his belly in the pine needle loam.
*
ALTHOUGH HE MOURNED his family and lamented the situation he was in, Orlando had been determined not only to survive but to come out the other side as a man to be feared. With the weapons and ammunition he’d taken from the two dead bounty hunters—a goat’s horn AK-47, a semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun, a 9mm pistol, and a .357 revolver—Orlando eventually hiked down from the mountains and slept for a few weeks in the burned-out home of his family in El Pozo while he plotted his revenge on the men who had wiped them out.
By the end of the year, by the time Orlando had turned twenty, he’d killed thirteen of the men who had ordered and participated in the raid. Seven of them died at the same time when the local police station exploded after a package bomb addressed to the chief of police was delivered.
The rest of them were killed one by one using the stealth, patience, and ruthlessness he’d learned in the mountains.
Orlando wasn’t garish or showy in his methodology. He didn’t humiliate his targets ahead of time or mutilate their bodies afterward. He didn’t hang the dead men for public display, or pin notes to their clothing to trumpet his revenge. He also varied his technique based on the target and the circumstances.
Two he shot point-blank in the face while they sat napping in their patrol car. A federale had his throat slit while sitting on a barstool at the local cantina. Another was garroted on his day off while he was bent over weeding his vegetable garden.
The local commander of the federales who served as liaison to the national army and who had likely approved the raid on the Panfile farm, was strangled to death in his bed by Orlando’s bare hands.
It wasn’t long before word spread about what had happened in and around El Pozo. Orlando had become a man to be feared. When the bosses of the cartel asked him to join them on an official level, Orlando shrugged and agreed. His enemies already considered him a member of the Sinaloans as it was.
He’d become known as El Puño, The Fist.
*
DESPITE HIS RAPID rise in the structure of the cartel, Orlando never succumbed to the temptations all around him. He didn’t drink alcohol or use the products they distributed, he wasn’t needlessly cruel, he didn’t lust for power, and he never cheated on his wife, whom he loved with all of his heart. During raids and operations, El Puño never panicked, never lost his cool, and never inflicted more damage or pain than absolutely necessary.
He preached to others that patience and strategy were more important than ruthlessness or bloodlust. He was never in a hurry as he surveilled and observed the habits of his targets. He almost always refused to go after the families of their enemies, although he knew there were plenty of thugs who would and did. Orlando was an apex predator with nothing to prove to anyone.
When he was promoted to the exalted position of head of security for the entire organization, he tried to teach those same virtues to the hundreds of soldiers they sent him for training and instruction. With just a few exceptions, he failed. The men they sent learned his techniques, but they were largely hotheaded, bloodthirsty, and sloppy. He couldn’t train that out of them.
There were a few exceptions. Pedro “Peter” Infante had been one of them. Infante had headed up the Wolf Pack of four assassins. Despite Infante’s skill and caution, his entire team had been wiped out. It was the first time that had happened within the organization.
And as far as Panfile was concerned, it would be the last time as well. He’d come north with three other handpicked men, but he’d left them at a cartel-affiliated motel property in Roswell, New Mexico. He’d told the men to wait there until they heard from him.
The three weren’t happy about being left behind, but they did as they were told. They wouldn’t be there when Panfile returned, he knew. They’d get bored waiting and go back home. The three men were well trained by him, and they were efficient and ruthless killers. But for this assignment, he knew he couldn’t fully trust them and he couldn’t afford any mistakes. Plus, this was personal.
It was personal because Orlando’s protégé, the best of them all and the most famous, had been Abriella Guzman.
Abriella, who’d been brutally murdered six months before, not far from where Orlando Panfile made his camp.
Abriella, his beautiful and charismatic student, who had been taken from the world by a gringo falconer who lived less than three miles away.
Abriella was the one protégé who could make him abandon his principles about not harming families because she’d been slaughtered before she could ever have one of her own.
*
AFTER HIS MEAL, Orlando washed his dishes in the small creek and propped them in a sagebrush to air-dry. Then he walked up the hill and dropped to his hands and knees to approach the spotting scope.
He’d inadvertently timed it just right. This was the period in the afternoon when the family went to town for grocery shopping or doctor’s visits. He watched as the falconer stood by while his wife buckled their baby into her car seat. Both adults climbed into the white van with lettering on its side, and they drove away.
Americans treated their babies like eggs, he thought. All five of his children had grown up happy and healthy without ever once being strapped into a car seat.
He waited until the car was out of sight and then another fifteen minutes to make sure they didn’t forget something and come back.
Orlando went to his den and fitted a curly black wig on his head and used adhesive to apply a thick beard to his face. He checked his appearance in a hand mirror and approved of what he saw.
Then, with a pistol in the back waistband of his trousers and a long, thin skinning knife up his sleeve, he began the long hike down the draw toward the falconer’s home.
THIRTEEN
BETWEEN WINCHESTER AND SADDLESTRING, JOE TOOK A ranch road exit off the highway and drove deep into the breaklands, a unique geological feature that existed between the Twelve Sleep River Valley and the Bighorn Mountains for several hundred square miles. The breaklands consisted of knife-like draws that ran in zigzags offset by flat-top buttes and two-track dirt roads that often went nowhere. Although it was very difficult terrain, deer and antelope hunters
ventured into it during the hunting seasons because the harsh landscape provided refuge to wily big-game animals. Plus, ranchers rarely grazed cattle there because they were too difficult to locate when it was time to round them up.
The destination he had in mind was the highest point in the area: a grassy plateau he often used as his perch. He’d parked there many times over the years and had used the high ground to set up his window-mounted spotting scope. On a clear day, and most days were clear, the view was incredible. From his perch he could see the smudge of Winchester to the northwest all the way to the outskirts of Saddlestring to the south and the tree-lined curves of the river that threaded through the floor of the valley.
Joe noted a couple of vehicles in the area by spoors of dust in the distance. They were likely road hunters who drove slowly and hoped they’d blunder into something. He didn’t mind it that hunters could see him up there watching them. It was a good reminder to them that he was on the job.
But Joe chose to drive to his perch for different reasons than checking on hunters. One was that because of the altitude and openness, his perch had excellent cell phone service. The other was that it delayed his arrival home, where Missy would be.
*
HE OPENED HIS NOTEBOOK and placed it next to him on the front seat. Daisy lifted her blocky Labrador head from the cushion to watch him before sighing and settling back to sleep with her snout between her paws.
Joe reviewed his notes from the previous thirty-six hours. There were plenty of items to follow up on, and he couldn’t assume that Sheriff Kapelow would beat him to it. As far as Joe was concerned, he was on his own in the investigation.
First, he confirmed with United Airlines at the Billings airport that Dennis Sun had, in fact, arrived the night before after a long international flight. The producer was well known among the employees of the airline because he was memorable and a frequent flier.
Then he placed a call to Sarah Vieth, the public relations liaison for the Department of Corrections at the Wyoming State Penitentiary for men in Rawlins. When she answered, it was obvious she was eating a late lunch at her desk at the same time.
“Hello, Joe Pickett,” she said. Her desk phone obviously had caller ID.
“Hello, Sarah. Is this a good time?”
“It’s always a good time for you,” she said while chewing something.
Vieth had worked in the administrative offices of ex-governor Rulon, and Joe knew her from there. When Rulon had been replaced by Colter Allen, Sarah had seen the writing on the wall and managed to be transferred to Rawlins before Allen’s inauguration. She was competent, generally cheerful, and she’d thrown herself into her new job.
Sarah Vieth was tall, thin, and fit. She was married to her partner, Vanessa, an artist who had moved with her to Rawlins. Vanessa created trout out of wire, and Marybeth had bought one for their living room.
“I’m wondering about the status of two of your guests at your establishment,” Joe said. “Specifically, Ron Connelly and Dallas Cates.”
While there were over seven hundred inmates at the state prison, Joe kept a mental inventory of nearly every man he’d helped put there. It wasn’t as many people as the average cop, sheriff, or prosecutor, because most game violations were misdemeanors, but those who were in Rawlins were the worst of the worst in Joe’s world. For that reason, he kept aware of when specific inmates were scheduled for parole hearings or when they were likely to be released back into the public. Ron Connelly and Dallas Cates were of special interest to him. Especially Dallas Cates.
“Is there a specific reason you’re asking?” Vieth said.
“Yup. You’ve probably heard that someone took a shot at Judge Hewitt up here and hit his wife instead. We’re tracking down the status and whereabouts of everyone who publicly threatened the judge with retaliation to see if we can place them here at the time. If nothing else, we can clear them off our list of suspects. Those two are on my list.”
“Well,” Vieth said, “neither has been released. If that were to happen, I’d make sure to give you a heads-up.”
“Thank you.”
“I did see your name when I reviewed their files,” she said.
“I hope they said nice things.”
“They didn’t,” Vieth said with a chuckle. “I make it a point to read the files on all of the high-level offenders—all the guys in C and E buildings. I want to know who we’ve got here and, believe me, we’ve got some bad dudes. I try to meet with all of them at one time or another. The prison psychologist and I tag-team it. We started with the white and orange shirts and we’re about halfway through the blue and red shirts in A and B pods.”
Joe knew from visiting the pen that inmates in blue and red were in the A and B pods and they were well behaved, generally harmless to others, and in for nonviolent crimes. The inmates confined to the C and E pods were a different matter and they wore orange or white clothes. Orange meant the prisoner was considered dangerous or unstable, and white meant death row.
“So, Ron Connelly, aka the Mad Archer . . .” she said. Joe could hear her tapping on a keyboard.
“You can finish your lunch first if you want,” Joe offered.
“That’s okay,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Vanessa packed me a salad, so I don’t mind pushing it aside.
“So Ron is an Okie, as you know. He was a rough guy and he had a whole list of write-ups the first year he was here. He was reprimanded for assault, stealing phone minutes from other inmates, and thievery. But in the last year he’s really straightened up. He claims he finally found God, and both the psychologist and I believe him. There’s a recommendation in his file that he be moved from C to B in the next few weeks.”
Joe said, “He used to like to kill and maim animals by shooting them full of arrows and leaving them to die.”
“Yeah, I know. But his sheet has been absolutely clean for a year and he’s organized a Bible-study group in C pod. He’s got a parole hearing scheduled for December, so maybe that’s what actually inspired him, but I think he’s sincere.”
“That’s interesting,” Joe said. “I hope you’re right. Is there anything in his record that would make you believe he still has it out for the judge? Or that he’s got people on the outside who would kill for him?”
“No,” Vieth said with clarity. “He’s kind of a loner. He doesn’t seem to have a network like that at all. His only friends on the inside are the guys in his Bible-study group. And he rarely gets visitors, so I don’t know who he’d conspire with to go after a judge.”
“He can make phone calls, though,” Joe said.
“Yes, and we monitor them. He talks to his mother in Tulsa every week or so, but he’s never had a conversation with her that we’ve flagged. It’s all very mundane.”
“What about social media?” Joe asked.
“Our policy is that blue and red shirts have limited access to the internet on a time-reserved basis. We have filters on what they can see and they’re not allowed to post anything. Ron’s still orange, so he doesn’t get access at all. I just don’t think Ron is your shooter, Joe.”
“What about Dallas?” Joe asked.
Vieth whistled, and said, “Here’s an example of two inmates going in opposite directions when it comes to behavior and rehabilitation. Dallas is a piece of work, as you know. He’s been moved from red to orange recently, and he’s cooling his heels in E pod because he assaulted a couple of guys. He stomped one of them bad enough, the guy had to be airlifted to a hospital in Denver.”
Joe felt a chill go through him. E pod was where the most dangerous inmates were sent. Dallas Cates was tough, violent, and a keen manipulator of other men. He’d surrounded himself with gullible hangers-on during his days as a rodeo star. If he’d recently become more unstable, that wasn’t good news for anyone.
“Dallas is one of the leaders of the WOODS,” Vieth said.
“What’s that?” Joe asked.
“Whites Only One Day Soon,” she
answered. “Our very own white power gang.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah, we’ve got ’em. We’ve also got the Hispanic La Familia, the black Brothers in Arms, and the Native American Warrior Chiefs. Believe me, we keep a really close eye on them. Dallas jumped a couple of the Warrior Chiefs. That’s what got him in trouble.
“Rodeo cowboys versus Indians,” Vieth said. “Welcome to the New Wild West.”
“Man,” Joe said. “I was hoping he’d see the light and come around.”
“He’s got plenty of time to think about it in isolation,” Vieth said. “You’d be surprised to see him now. You might not even recognize him with his shaved head and prison tats.
“I never want to completely give up on an inmate turning the corner,” Vieth said, “but I’d say Dallas Cates is as close to a no-hoper as you can get. He belongs here. He’s the kind of guy who reminds me why we have prisons. I fear the day that he gets out.”
“So do I,” Joe said.
“You should,” Vieth said darkly. “Your name is mentioned several times in his file. He vows that he’s going to come after you, the prosecutor, and the judge.”
Joe paused. He asked, “Do you think Dallas has connections on the outside who could pull a trigger on Judge Hewitt?”
“Impossible to say,” Vieth said with a heavy sigh. “The WOODS are a fairly new gang here. We don’t know how well established they are beyond the prison walls. But I suppose it’s possible you’ve got a member or two up in your county.”
“We’re looking for a team of two,” Joe said.
“That really complicates things, doesn’t it?” she asked rhetorically. “This thing happened with your judge was just a couple of days ago, right?”
“Yup.”
“Dallas has been in isolation for a month and a half. No visitors, no phone calls. He couldn’t have given the order recently, is what I’m saying. If he’s the guy behind the shooting he would have had to set it in motion back in August or September before he was confined to E pod.”
