Long Range

by Box, C. J.

  Then he tossed his drink in the gravel and went back inside.

  *

  “SHE’S LOST IT,” Marybeth said over omelets later. “My guard is always up when she’s around and I’ve learned always to be looking for her scheme or long con, but this time I have to admit that she got to me. She cares about Marcus in a way that’s almost human, and she’s willing to put herself out for him. That’s a very unfamiliar place for her to be. I almost feel sorry for her.”

  “Don’t go overboard,” Joe said. “She’s still Missy. You should have heard her goodbye speech to me.”

  “I’m afraid she’s getting feebleminded,” Marybeth continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “She’s falling for some kind of scam where some mystery person claims he can help cure Marcus’s cancer. It’s just crazy. If there was somebody around here making those kinds of claims, we’d know who they were.”

  Joe agreed with a grunt. When Marybeth was on a single-minded roll, he knew better than to interrupt.

  “There are times in my life when I’ve absolutely hated her,” Marybeth said. “I felt bad about it because you shouldn’t hate your own mother. But if it wasn’t hate, it was shame and disgust. And the way she’s treated our daughters! What kind of grandmother is like that?”

  Joe shrugged.

  “For the first time I can remember, I actually felt for her tonight,” she said. “My heart went out to her for being so fierce and determined. She thinks she can help Marcus beat this disease and she’s blind to any other possibility. Maybe for once she’s realizing she can’t scheme her way out of it.”

  “Sometimes real life just intrudes,” Joe said, repeating Missy’s own words.

  “Please, Joe. Don’t mock her when she’s down,” Marybeth said.

  “Sorry.” But he wasn’t sure he really was.

  “I’m going to spend some time figuring out who is scamming her and put a stop to it,” Marybeth said. “Whoever it is shouldn’t be taking advantage of desperate people, even if it is my horrible mother.

  “I’m going to text the girls,” Marybeth said, pushing her plate aside and reaching for her phone. “They need to know what’s going on. Plus, I really miss them.”

  “I do, too,” Joe said. This he absolutely meant.

  *

  JOE’S PHONE LIT UP at 5:00 a.m. and he rolled over in bed and squinted at the screen.

  “Who is it?” Marybeth asked.

  “Duane,” Joe said, instantly awake. He swung his feet out from under the covers and padded into the hallway.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Things are happening,” Patterson said in a rush of words. “The sheriff got a tip about the shooter. We have a suspect.”

  “How do you know about this?” Joe asked.

  Patterson sighed. “Judge Hewitt asked me to be in his chambers a half hour ago to meet with Kapelow and to approve a search warrant.”

  “Who is it?” Joe asked, furiously rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Do we know him?”

  Patterson paused a beat, then said, “I’m afraid so. And you’re not going to like it.”

  SIXTEEN

  NATE ROMANOWSKI SPUN A FALCONRY LURE THROUGH the predawn air in ever-growing circles by playing out a few feet of line with each rotation. The lure was made of a severed duck wing that he’d fashioned himself and weighted with lead shot clamped to the base of its primary feathers. It whistled through the still morning like a scythe.

  The sun was about to shoulder its way over the summit of the eastern mountains and the grass was wet with sequin-like sparkles of melting frost. In the distance, a bank of fog rose from the contours of the Twelve Sleep River.

  The activity with the lure was designed to attract the attention of a young peregrine falcon he’d released to the sky a few minutes before. The falcon had risen so quickly on the waves of a thermal current that it could barely be seen against the light pink belly of a cumulus cloud.

  As the lure extended into wider circles, Nate kept his eyes on the peregrine. The falcon was not only the fastest raptor in the natural world, capable of speeds over two hundred miles per hour, but its advanced binocular vision enabled it to literally see the individual feathers of the distant lure in mid-flight. The circling lure looked enough like flying wild prey to become a target.

  The exercise was one of the many preliminary steps to training a falcon to eventually join the Yarak, Inc. Air Force. The peregrine was learning quickly to come to the lure and Nate estimated it would take another few months before the bird connected with him in that special way that confirmed it was tuned in to his activities and movements on the ground. Once that happened, that almost mystical bond they formed between falcon and falconer, the peregrine could take its place with the older and more experienced birds. Either that, or it could simply fly away, never to be seen again. That sometimes happened as well.

  “Nate, you’ve got a call,” Liv shouted from the front porch of their house. “It’s Joe.”

  Nate glanced over to see her cradling Kestrel with Loren Jean Hill hovering next to her.

  “I’ll call him back,” Nate replied.

  “He says it’s urgent.”

  Nate frowned while he whipped the lure in a circle. Joe didn’t use words like “urgent” unless something was . . . urgent.

  “Okay,” Nate said. “I’ll be right there as soon as I can bring her in. He’ll understand.”

  There was no way to suspend the training and resume it later without running the risk of losing visual and elemental contact with the peregrine, so Nate vastly sped up the pace of the exercise. He continued to loop the lure around him, but he shortened the length of line with every rotation. The peregrine obviously tracked the change and that prompted it to tuck its wings and begin a harrowing dive toward Nate and the lure.

  In his peripheral vision, Nate saw Liv hand Kestrel off to Loren so the nanny could take the baby back into the warm house from the early fall chill of the morning. Liv stood huddled on the porch in her robe, watching him bring in the falcon.

  The peregrine dropped like a missile and closed the gap on the lure in seconds. Just before the falcon could smack the lure with its balled-up talons, Nate jerked the wing to him out of the path of the attack. The peregrine recovered quickly and shot its wings out to break the momentum of the dive. When it landed a few yards from Nate’s boots, he bent over it, slid a tooled leather hood over the head of the peregrine, and loosely wrapped jesses from the falcon’s talons around his gloved hand.

  He carried the falcon aloft on his fist as he walked over to Liv and reached for the phone. While he did, he was distracted by the fact that he would soon have more capable falcons than he could reasonably fly himself. He needed another falconer on staff he could trust as Yarak, Inc. grew. That Joe had called reminded him that he had the perfect apprentice in mind . . .

  “Nate,” Joe said, “I shouldn’t be calling, but I wanted to give you a heads-up . . .”

  As he listened to Joe, he heard the whine of oncoming engines from the direction of the state highway. So had Liv. He followed her line of sight and he turned to see three sheriff’s department SUVs speeding toward him on the gravel road. The lead vehicle had its lights flashing. The two vehicles behind it were close and partly obscured by the cloud of dust kicked up by the lead car.

  “I see them now,” Nate said before Joe could continue. “Three sheriff cars led by Barney Fife himself, I suspect. What’s this all about?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, I’m afraid. The sheriff thinks you were involved in the shootings,” Joe said.

  “What did you just say?” Nate asked. He could feel Liv’s searching eyes on the side of his face.

  Joe repeated it, followed by “I’m on my way out there now.”

  Nate didn’t hear it. Instead, he narrowed his eyes on the coming convoy. The aggressive approach by the sheriff’s department set him instantly on edge. How dare they raid his home where his wife and child lived?

  A fury rose in him
from a dark place that had been previously dormant. Usually, his ire was aimed at macho federal agents who threw their weight around because they knew they wouldn’t be held accountable for their actions. It had been months since he felt the internal surge of righteous anger that would inevitably lead to violence. A familiar coldness overtook him and his entire focus became two things: the threat and how to deal with it. In falconry terms, it was the first stage of yarak.

  He assessed the situation.

  His weapon lay coiled in a shoulder holster on a porch bench within easy reach. There was a bend in the road about a hundred yards from his house where, at the speed they were coming, all three units would line up like ducks in a shooting gallery. With his .454 and a rest to aim from, he knew he could take out the lead driver first and work his way back one by one.

  “Nate?” Joe said with a note of panic. “Nate, don’t do anything stupid. Just sit tight. You’ve got your wife and baby there . . .”

  At the same time, Nate felt Liv’s hand grip his arm. She was cautioning him to stay still and keep his anger in check.

  Without disconnecting the call, Nate handed the phone back to Liv and he turned to face the law enforcement vehicles as they roared into his yard.

  *

  “NATE ROMANOWSKI,” the sheriff called out as he emerged from his GMC with his hand gripped on his holstered weapon, “I need you to come down off of that porch right now for me. Keep your hands where I can see them and move slow and easy.”

  To Liv, the sheriff said, “Miss, please step away to the side.”

  The commands were singular in purpose, Nate thought. If Kapelow started firing his gun at Nate, he didn’t want to hit Liv as well.

  “Do as he says, babe,” Nate said.

  Liv stepped to the side and crossed her arms in front of her. She glared at Sheriff Kapelow with intensity.

  The two other vehicles pulled up on either side of Sheriff Kapelow’s rig and Deputies Woods and Steck got out and took positions behind their open driver’s-side doors. Woods had a Glock pistol drawn and Steck held a pump-action shotgun. Nate looked from one to the other and noted the pained expressions on their faces. It appeared to him they didn’t want to be there and they didn’t like what they’d been ordered to do. He noted that Woods kept his finger out of the trigger guard of his handgun and that Steck kept the shotgun muzzle pointed at the sky and he hadn’t racked a shell into the receiver.

  “I ordered you to come down off that porch,” Kapelow said. “I need you to do it now.” His fingers were white on the grip of his weapon and veins bulged in his neck and temple. His feet were set into a shooter’s stance and he was definitely prepared to draw and fire. Nate recognized the look in the man’s eye of equal parts fear and exhilaration. Kapelow wanted him to make a wrong move.

  “I’m coming down,” Nate said softly. “But this is stupid. You don’t need this show of force. You could have called me and I’d have come in to talk to you.”

  Kapelow said, “Come down the stairs and take three steps toward me. No more than three.”

  Nate sighed, but he did as he was told.

  “Now place your hands on your head and turn around.”

  “Sheriff, is this really necessary?” Liv asked from where she’d retreated on the end of the porch. Her voice was strained with anger. “We’re citizens and business owners in this county. He’s done nothing wrong. We’ve done nothing wrong. We have our baby in the house and if you start shooting—”

  “There’ll be no need for that if your husband will obey my commands,” Kapelow said without looking up at her. He ordered Deputy Woods to pat down Nate for weapons and cuff him.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Nate said through clenched teeth. “My weapon is in plain sight up on the porch. I don’t have one on me.” But he reached up and laced his fingers together on top of his hair. Then he turned around so his back was to the sheriff. He glanced up at Liv. She was furious. He loved to look at her when she was furious.

  “You have no right to be here,” Liv said to Kapelow, her eyes flashing. “You’re way out of line to come here and start giving orders like jackbooted thugs. This is America. This is Wyoming. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Please shut up or we’ll arrest you for interference and you’ll both come in,” Kapelow said to her, and Nate felt a red balloon of rage float over his eyes.

  Liv shouted to Steck and Woods, “Guys, you know us. We know you. Why are you helping this man?”

  “They work for me,” Kapelow said to Liv. “One more word from you and you’ll be detained along with your husband.” Then to Nate: “On your knees.”

  Nate briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, “No. I’ll cooperate with you, but I won’t get on my knees. And don’t threaten my wife again.” He said it calmly and coldly.

  “I can search him and cuff him while he’s standing up,” Woods said to Kapelow. “It’s okay. He’ll comply.”

  “I gave him an order,” Kapelow said. To Woods, he said, “I gave you one, too.”

  Woods demurred. “Boss . . .”

  Nate saw Liv’s eyes get big as she fixed on something taking place over his shoulder. Before she could call out to warn him or he could react, Nate was hit in the back of the neck by twin steel-needle probes followed by thousands of volts in an internal explosion of electrical current.

  His eyes involuntarily rolled back in his head and he felt his knees give way, but he somehow staggered to his left and stayed on his feet. Nate’s arms flopped lifelessly at his sides. His entire body surged with pain and his mouth filled with a metallic taste. He’d been tased before, but during special ops training he knew it was coming. This was much worse—and more debilitating—because he hadn’t anticipated it. He tried to regain his balance, when he was hit again in the small of his back and he lost all control of his muscles.

  Nate pitched forward like a severed tree and he fell face-first into the dirt. Spangles of red and orange burst in front of his eyes. His limbs twitched and he could hear gurgling sounds from his throat, but he couldn’t stop them. He also couldn’t raise his head or move his eyes.

  From above him through a painful fog, he heard Deputy Woods say, “Jesus, boss, you didn’t have to empty both barrels.”

  “I did when he wouldn’t go down,” Kapelow said defiantly. “We know what this man is capable of. I couldn’t risk it.”

  Nate heard the thump-thump-thump of footfalls as Liv ran down the porch stairs toward him.

  “Get back. Stay away from him,” Kapelow ordered her.

  Then a grunting exhalation of air as Woods scooped her up and held her in place.

  “He won’t forget this,” Liv cried. “I won’t forget this.”

  “Cuff him and get him up,” Kapelow said to Deputy Steck.

  Nate heard the handcuffs ratchet tight on his wrists but he couldn’t yet feel them. He couldn’t feel anything. Then he was rolled to his back and pushed into a sitting position. His head flopped forward and his eyes rested on a tangle of thin wires that were attached to the embedded probes in his neck and in the small of his back. The wires stretched from the probes through the air to a large squared-off black and yellow Taser the sheriff held in his left hand. Kapelow’s service pistol was drawn and in his right.

  “If you give me any more trouble,” Kapelow said to Nate while brandishing the Taser, “I’ll give you another jolt.”

  It wasn’t necessary. Nate lost consciousness and slumped over into the grass.

  *

  SOMEONE WAS SQUATTED down beside him when Nate opened his eyes a few minutes later. It took a moment for him to focus and realize the person next to him was Joe. Nate turned his head: he was sitting down with his wrists bound behind him and his back against the muddy front tire of Sheriff Kapelow’s SUV.

  “Where’s Liv and the baby?” Nate asked. His voice was a croak.

  “Inside,” Joe said. “They’re okay. Steck went in there to try and calm her down and to give h
er the search warrant for your property. As you can guess, Liv is not a happy woman right now.”

  “I’m glad you made it,” Nate said.

  “Me too, but it looks like I was a little late.”

  “I would say so,” Nate said. Then he groaned. “Every muscle in my body aches.”

  “You’ll recover soon enough, but it looks like you might have broken your nose when you went down. That’ll take longer.”

  That’s why his voice sounded unnatural, Nate realized. His nose was plugged with broken bone and cartilage and coagulated blood.

  Joe said, “He zapped you with a Taser X2, which has two sets of probes.”

  “I’m aware of that. Are the probes out of me?”

  “I removed them. He fired both sets into you. That’s fifty thousand volts per shot. What did you do to provoke him?”

  “I wouldn’t go down on my knees. He shot me when my back was turned.”

  Joe whistled and shook his head. “That’s not exactly procedure.”

  “No shit. Do you know what this is all about?”

  Joe nodded. “A little, but the sheriff deliberately kept me in the dark. I guess he was afraid I’d tip you off.”

  “You did.”

  “And I’d do it again,” Joe said. He watched as Deputy Steck emerged from Nate’s house and walked across the yard to join his colleagues. Steck shook his head as if he were in the process of denying to himself he was there.

  “So take these handcuffs off of me,” Nate said to Joe.

  “I can’t, Nate. I already asked Kapelow and he said no.”

  “Why do you listen to him?” Nate asked.

  “Unfortunately, he’s in command of the scene.”

  “What are they doing over there in my mews?” Nate asked as he chinned toward his falcon enclosure.

  Sheriff Kapelow directed Deputies Steck and Woods to search within the structure. They were looking under the eaves and peering between the floorboards of the shack. The hooded falcons inside were upset with the activity and several screeched.