Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, “What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had a chance?” We have to hear that question from them, now.
– AL GORE, An Inconvenient Truth
Hole in the Wall, Wyoming
HOLE IN THE WALL CANYON WAS ON PRIVATE RANCH LAND west of Kaycee. It was an abrupt and harrowing scalpel slice through the heart of the high country sagebrush steppe rising toward the Bighorn Mountains. The single rough two-track passed by a ramshackle log home in a stand of cottonwood trees outside the town limits occupied by Large Merle, a bearded giant who was outside splitting wood when Joe approached in his Game and Fish truck. Hearing the vehicle, Merle stood up his entire seven feet and rested the ax on his shoulder and squinted. His bearing was pure intimidation, as was the lever action Winchester leaning against a tree but within Merle’s reach. Out of habit Joe did a quick mental inventory of his weapons:.40 Glock on his hip,.308 carbine in the gun rack, 12-gauge Remington Wing-master behind the seat.
Merle recognized him and nodded, and Joe waved back. To get to the Hole in the Wall, it was necessary to get Merle’s nod. A hooded prairie falcon sat on a stump near Merle, a perfectly still sentinel Joe might have missed if it weren’t for the rustling of feathers from the breeze.
Joe was always taken when he neared the canyon, not by what he could see but what he couldn’t. From the road he couldn’t discern the lip of the canyon or its far rim, but he could sense a void in the rolling landscape itself. That’s where the canyon was. It couldn’t be seen from the highway, the road he was on, or even from the other side in the foothills except for a jagged dark line in the prairie. To get there, one had to travel across the wide-open treeless plain for miles under the big sky, not a tree in sight. As he drove through the sagebrush and knee-high cheater grass, a heavy-winged squadron of sage grouse lifted off on both sides of him with the rhythmic thumping of miniature overweight helicopters. In the distance, a herd of pronghorn antelope were grazing, three dozen auburn bodies splashed with strategic patches of white that made them nearly invisible on the prairie among scattered drifts of snow in the winter and spring. It was impossible to sneak up on Hole in the Wall, which was why it was the dedicated haunt of old west outlaw gangs, most famously Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Joe thought how odd it was that two days before he’d been in Baggs, where the old-timers swore that Butch lived among them into old age under an assumed name, and now he was at the place where Butch, Sundance, and the rest of his gang hid out between bank and train robberies with scores of other infamous Western outlaws.
Recently added to the list was Nate Romanowski.
THE TRAIL FROM the rim of the canyon was narrow, strewn with loose baseball-sized rocks, a sharp declination that switchbacked down. Joe carried the eagle in his arms like a baby, trying not to squeeze too hard when he misstepped on loose shale, lost his balance, and sat down hard with a thump that jarred his spine.
He stood up gingerly and dusted himself off, picked up the bird, and continued. It was usually at this depth into the canyon when he felt eyes on him and knew he wasn’t alone.
Tough junipers rose on either side of the trail, and in the windless still air of the canyon they smelled sharp and musky. The Hole in the Wall, because of its vertical walls and the angry stream that coursed through the floor of it and kicked up waves of moisture, was a lush green oasis in the middle of high country desert. The bottom was thick with pines, ash, and ferns, and there were birds, including bluebirds and cardinals, and reptiles he’d rarely seen in the mountain west.
At a sharp switchback shadowed by a canopy of intermarried branches from a family of aspen, whose turning leaves were weeks behind those on the surface, Joe stopped, paused, and wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt. He studied the trail immediately in front of him until he saw it-the glint of the trip wire. He carefully stepped over it in an exaggerated movement. There was no way, he knew, he would have seen it if he hadn’t known it was there. He had no idea what the wire connected to-bells? someone’s toe?-but he didn’t want to find out.
The unique feature of the canyon itself, and why outlaws loved it, was the naturally eroded caves in the opposite wall, their open mouths mostly hidden by brush. But from inside the caves looking out, the trail was in plain sight, a zigzag scar on the face of the canyon. In the daylight, no one could enter the canyon on the trail unobserved. And at night, there were the trip wires.
The roar of the stream increased in volume as he climbed down, and he could feel spray on his face and hands. There was a path through two-story boulders to the hissing whitewater, a crude footbridge, and the trail up the other side between the trunks of two massive ponderosa pine trees. Two hundred feet up the path, Nate Romanowski sat on a stump with his arms crossed in front of him, smirking.
“I watched you the whole time,” Nate said. “That fall was kind of comical.”
“I did it for your amusement,” Joe said.
“Was Large Merle up there watching the road?”
“Yes, he was.”
“And what did you bring me?”
“A bald eagle.”
“Ah, that’s what I thought.”
Nate Romanowski was tall, lean, with intense ice-blue eyes, a hawk nose, and long ropy muscles. He was wearing a gray flannel henley shirt and a shoulder holster for his scoped.454 Casull revolver, the second most powerful handgun in the world. As always, Joe felt the sense of calm Nate projected, a calm that could erupt into brutal violence swiftly and naturally, the way a soaring raptor would suddenly collapse its wings and drop to kill its prey in an explosion of blood and snapped bones. After Joe had cleared Nate on trumped-up murder charges years before, Nate had vowed to help protect Joe’s family. Their relationship had taken several odd and unsettling turns, but it held, and Nate was a man of his word.
“You remembered the trip wire this time,” Nate said. “That’s good, because I armed it with a shotgun.”
Joe shook his head. “Now you tell me.”
“Watch it on the way out, too.”
“I will. Do you have room for this bird?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“A guy shot it with an arrow.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed. “Is the guy still alive?”
“I arrested him.”
Nate mock spit into dirt beside his boots to show Joe what he thought of that.
JOE FOLLOWED NATE up the trail and through a thick greasy stand of caragana. The mouth of Nate’s cave was obscured from the outside by curtains of military camouflage netting, and Nate pushed it aside so Joe could enter. Because the netting was translucent, the depths of the cave were lit in an otherworldly olive green glow, similar to what one saw through night vision goggles. It took a moment for Joe’s eyes to adjust.
“Here,” Nate said, “let me see that bird.”
Joe was grateful to hand the eagle over.
“You want your sweatshirt back?” Nate asked, pulling a wicked-looking eight-inch knife from a sheath on his belt and slicing through the duct tape.
“Yup.”
“You want the sock back?”
“You can keep it.”
“What would I want your sock for?” Nate asked.
Joe shrugged.
Nate talked to the eagle, telling it she was a pretty bird, a beautiful bird, that everything was going to be just fine now. Slowly, Nate removed the sock from her head and stared into her brilliant yellow eyes. The eagle opened her beak to screech, but Nate said, “None of that, none of that,” and the eagle kept silent.
Joe was amazed, said, “How did you do that?”
Nate didn’t respond. He was running his hands over the eagle, talking to her, acclimating her to his touch, keeping her calm.
“How do you know she’s a she, for that matter?”
“I always know,” Nate said. “I could tell when you were carrying her.”
Joe didn’t pursue it. He watched as Nate slipped the sweatshirt off the eagle, tossing it into a heap near Joe’s feet, and continued running his hands over the bird, smoothing her feathers, pausing to feel the scarred-over entrance and exit wounds. From a bulging pocket in his cargo pants, Nate fished out leather jesses that he tied to her talons and a large tooled leather hood that he slipped over her head. He carried her to a heavy stoop made of branches with the bark still on and tied the jesses to the structure. Like a vintner slipping plastic webbing over wine bottles to keep them from clinking together in the sack, Nate gently fitted a sleeve of tight mesh over her body from her shoulders to her talons.
To Joe, he said, “She’s going to be all right, I think. You did a good job binding her up like that so the broken bones could start to knit. We’ll see in a few weeks if she can fly. This mesh sleeve will keep her from flapping her wings and breaking the bones again. Whether she can fly again will depend on how much other damage there is. I can’t fix severed tendons.”
“And if she can’t fly?”
Nate used his index finger to simulate cutting his throat. “An eagle that can’t fly is a deposed king: humiliated and useless to anybody or anything.”
AS NATE BREWED cowboy coffee in an open pot on a Coleman stove, Joe took in the cave. It was as he remembered. Gasoline-powered generator, satellite Internet, bookshelves filled with battered tomes on falconry, volumes on warfare and world history, newer books on American Indian culture and spirituality. A table and ancient four-poster bed had been left by outlaws. Near the entrance of the cave were stacks of scarred military footlockers containing clothes, equipment, food, explosives. In an alcove near the cave entrance a skinned pronghorn antelope carcass hung from a hook, the backstraps and most of a hind-quarter sliced away. Nate followed Joe’s gaze and waggled his eyebrows.
Joe said, “At least you could have pretended you weren’t poaching.”
Nate said, “My life is an open book. You just don’t want to read it.”
Joe thought, He’s right.
Nate handed Joe a cup of coffee, and Joe told Nate about the text messages. Nate had been there backing up Joe at the Sovereign camp that winter afternoon. As Joe talked, Nate’s expression never changed.
Nate said, “I’ve always wondered about that day. I was pinning down the feds, as you know, but in my peripheral vision I saw maybe a dozen snowmobiles take off into the trees. A couple of them had two or three people on them, and I remember one in particular that had some small people clinging to it.”
Joe paused. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I never really thought about it,” Nate said, shrugging. “You told me you saw April in the first trailer that burned down. I knew they had kids in that camp besides her, so why would I assume she was one of them on that snowmobile?”
Joe conceded, took a sip.
“Now that I think about it,” Nate said, letting the sentence drift away.
“Yeah.”
“You feel guilty,” Nate said. “You’ve always felt guilty. That’s why you were crazy with rage and almost killed that FBI agent who fired the shot. It wasn’t about him-it was about you.”
Joe stared into his coffee cup, studied the film of oil on the top of the liquid. “What’s your point?”
Nate said, “It isn’t April out there. But you want it to be. You want to apologize and make things right. That’s how you are, Joe. You’re a good man.”
“Shut up, Nate,” Joe said wearily.
“I was there. You wanted to trust the system and the government. You wanted to believe the authorities would do the right thing. You never thought they’d fire and torch the Sovereign compound with all those people in it. You didn’t realize then that the scariest thing on earth is a bureaucrat with a gun.”
“Enough.”
“HOW’S ALICIA DOING with the new baby?” Joe asked after a long while. They’d both been silent, each with their own thoughts about that afternoon in the campground.
Alicia Whiteplume was Nate’s woman, a schoolteacher on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and the mention of her name produced a goofy, sloppy grin from Nate. Joe was still not used to seeing Nate’s face light up.
“Still smitten, I see,” Joe said.
“With both of them. I just don’t see them enough, you know?”
“Believe me, I know.”
“I hate having to hide out, Joe. I’m never turning myself in, but I hate hiding out. I’m starting to consider my options.”
“You mean moving?” Joe didn’t blame him, but Nate was a part of him now and he’d saved Joe’s life more than once. And he was Sheridan’s master falconer.
“Either that,” Nate said, lowering his voice, speaking in his breathy Clint Eastwood cadence, “or taking out every damn one of them who is after me.”
Joe groaned. “Nate, you forget I’m a peace officer who took an oath. I take that oath seriously. You just can’t say things like that around me.”
Nate smiled. “Sorry, I forgot.” Then: “I’ve no plans yet. I won’t just vanish.”
“Good.”
“Because it sounds like you might need me on this one.”
Joe nodded.
“You want me to come with you now?”
“No, not yet. I’m going to be working closely with the people who want to throw you back into jail. You don’t want to be around. I don’t want you around.”
“But you’ll let me know if you need help.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yup. What’s the best way the contact you? When I need your help, I might be too far away to come down and get you in this canyon.”
Nate dug into his cargo pants and pulled out a satellite phone.
“You get a signal all the way down here?”
Nate shook his head. “Of course not. I don’t even think the eyes in the sky can see down into this place. But twice a day I hike up the trail to the top to check for messages. And if for some reason I don’t respond right away, call Large Merle and he’ll let me know.
“Just send a text,” Nate said. “You know how to do that, right?”
AS JOE PARTED the camo netting to leave, Nate said, “I never really thanked you for what you did for me last year, Joe. I bet your life has been hard since then.”
Joe said, “If I trip over that wire on the way out and the shotgun goes off and I never find April, I’m really going to be pissed at you.”
Craig, Colorado
THREE HUNDRED MILES FROM HOLE IN THE WALL CANYON, hours after Joe cleared the rim and hiked toward his pickup to drive to Cheyenne, she leaned against the stall of the gas station bathroom in Craig, Colorado, and listened to Stenko retching horribly in the men’s next door. The sounds were awful, and she was frightened.
It had already been a long day. Stenko had awakened her deep into the night and hurried her out of the hotel in Aspen into the SUV. Robert was already inside the car. He was anxious, jittery, super-charged, thumping a rapid-fire beat with his hands on the dashboard like a drummer. “Go man go,” Robert said to Stenko, “Go-go-go-go-go…”
They drove north until dawn came pink and glorious, through still-sleeping Glenwood Springs and Rifle. Robert was still jazzed and had been talking incessantly about the need to change vehicles and tactics, but she tuned him out and went back to sleep. At a convenience store in Meeker, Robert pointed out a local Chevy Suburban parked and running while the driver was inside getting coffee. Stenko pulled to the side of the building while Robert got out, duck-walked to the Suburban, and drove it away. Stenko followed, cursing under his breath. A half hour out of town, when the terrain emptied of homes and buildings, Robert took a beat-up old dirt road and they bounced along it for what seemed like forever. Finally, the Suburban brake lights flashed and Stenko slowed to a stop.
Stenko addressed her by looking in the rearview mirror. “April, you’ll need to gather up all your things and take them to the Suburban. We’re making a change.
“This isn’t a hybrid, son,” Stenko said as he climbed into Robert’s car.
“I know,” Robert grumbled. “These people out here give us no green options, but you’ll just have to make it up on the other side.”
The morning was cool and smelled of dust and sagebrush. After climbing into the far back seat of the Suburban, she watched with fascination as Robert sprayed lighter fluid on the seats of Stenko’s SUV and tossed in a match. With the new Suburban, they pushed the burning vehicle over a cliff into a deep arroyo. The crash on the bottom was fantastic.
Their only other stop before arriving in Craig was at a roadside rest area, where Robert stole the plates off a car and replaced them with the plates from the Suburban.
SHE WAS STARING VACANTLY out the window when a cell phone burred and for a moment she thought it was hers, thought she’d been betrayed. Had she forgotten to turn the ringer off?
But Robert didn’t even turn around. To Stenko, he said, “Are you going to get that?”
“I forgot I even had it,” Stenko said, slapping absently at his shirt pockets, then finally digging it out of his trousers. He looked at it for a moment, said, “One of my friends in blue…” and opened it up.
Stenko said very little, prompting the caller to continue with several “uh-huhs.” Then he closed the phone and tossed it on the seat next to him.
“Who was it?” Robert asked.
“Like I said, one of my friends in blue.”
“What’s up?”
“Leo’s wife called the station. She doesn’t know where he is and she wants him found. She thinks he’s taken up with a chippie and relocated to Wyoming.”
Robert said, “Wyoming? What the hell’s in Wyoming?”
Stenko said, “My ranch.”
Robert did a dry spit take and the car weaved until he jerked it back into his lane. “You own a ranch?”
“I think I do, anyway. The more I think about how things went down with Leo, the more I become convinced I own a ranch.” Stenko sat up in the seat and smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “That damned Leo. He always wanted to be a cowboy-he told me that once. Here’s this little mousy guy who grew up on the South Side getting his lunch money stolen from him every day on the way to school, but he secretly wants to be a cowpoke. It used to crack me up.”
Robert said, “You’re drifting.”
“No, I’m not,” Stenko said. “I know where Leo is with all my money. He’s on my ranch, the son-of-a-bitch.” To her, he said, “Sorry for the language.”
She shrugged, totally confused.
Robert shook his head, muttering, “A ranch. You own a ranch. What else do you own?”
Stenko said, “A lot.”
SHE’D BEEN SLEEPING SOUNDLY in the roomy back seat when she was awakened by Robert shouting, “Dad? Dad, what’s wrong?”
AND SHE COULD HEAR Robert now, through the wall. Something about Stenko’s morphine. “Then take more!” Robert yelled. “Take as much as you need to!”
She’d gotten a glimpse at Stenko as he staggered into the bathroom. He’d looked back at her. His face was white, his eyes rimmed red. His mouth was twisted in pain, but he still managed to smile at her and gesture with his hand that he’d be right back. The way he bent forward as he walked made her think it was his stomach that was hurting him.
The bathroom she was in was filthy, with grime on the floor, an overflowing trash can, and the strong ammonia smell of urine from the stall. She imagined the men’s was just as dirty, and she felt sorry for Stenko, who sounded like he was probably clutching the toilet, knees on the floor.
She heard Robert say harshly, “For Christ’s sake, Dad. Hang in there already. We’ve got too much to do here.”
And she thought: What if he dies right there? What would Robert do with her? She thought about the look on his face that morning in the car, his wild eyes, the way he beat that drum solo on the dashboard. It was either that or long hours of pouting and sarcasm. Plus the way he sometimes leered at her, his eyes pausing on her breasts. She didn’t want to be alone with Robert.
She fished the TracFone out of her jeans. She hadn’t turned it on since the night before, when she’d made contact. It seemed like forever before the phone grabbed a signal, showed strong bars.
She typed:
Sherry, r u there?
Cheyenne
JOE HIT THE NORTHERN OUTSKIRTS OF CHEYENNE MID-AFTERNOON. He was traveling south on I-25 when he saw the first of many concentric circles of massive new homes. He also saw more grazing horses than had likely ever been there when the capital city was the hub of the Union Pacific and home to dozens of wealthy ranchers in the 1880s and 1890s, when the west was new.
He was running late. Too much time in the Hole in the Wall.
Special Agent Chuck Coon was getting up to leave and was obviously ticked off when Joe walked into The Albany downtown. The place was old and dark, with private booths. The building was in the shadow of the restored Union Pacific depot. Between the lunch and dinner crowds, The Albany was devoted to serious drinkers and none of them even turned around and looked at Joe as he said, “Sorry I’m late, Chuck, please sit back down.”
Coon had stripped off his tie and loosened his collar, but Joe thought there was no one with a shred of intelligence in the bar who wouldn’t look at him and say, “FBI.” Coon had close-cropped brown hair, small features, and a boyish, alert face that didn’t wear his impatience well.
Joe slid into the booth across from Coon.
“I can’t spend much time,” Coon said, looking nervously around the bar before sitting back down. “I told the secretary I had a podiatrist appointment. I don’t know why I said that. There’s nothing wrong with my feet.”
“I won’t waste your time then,” Joe said. “Here’s the number.” He slipped a page from his notebook across the table with the number of April’s cell phone.
Coon didn’t pick it up. “I told you, Joe. I can’t seek a tap unless we get approval to open up an investigation. I’m sorry you had to drive so far to hear that in person.”
Joe nodded but forged on. “I’ve got other business this afternoon, but since I’m here at least you can answer some questions though, right? So I know more about this?” He tapped the notebook page.
Coon sighed, shot out his wrist, and looked at his watch.
“I’ll be quick,” Joe said. “First, tell me if it’s possible to pinpoint the location of a cell phone user. I mean, assuming you’ve got the court order and everything’s aboveboard.”
“The short answer is yes,” Coon said. “The long answer is what screws us up all the time.”
“Meaning?”
“When a cell phone is turned on, it has to reach out and grab a signal before you can make a call. When it connects with a cell tower, it’s referred to as a ping. The telephone providers can key on a specific number and they can pinpoint the location of the phone based on which cell tower got the ping.”
“Great,” Joe said, smiling.
“There is also a GPS feature in a lot of the newer phones. Most people don’t even know their phone is also a GPS device. We’re waiting for someone to come up with software that blocks the signal, but so far no one’s come up with an easy system. So we’ve got two ways to track down where a call comes from, the ping and the GPS if the phone has one.”
“Even better,” Joe said.
Coon looked around the bar again to see if anyone was listening to him. Satisfied, he leaned toward Joe. “The technology we’ve got is really good, but there are some real drawbacks out here in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the cell towers are ten miles or more apart from each other. The mountains play havoc on the tower sight lines, for instance. It isn’t like a city, where there are towers everywhere. So even though we might pick up the ping we’ve been waiting for, we often can’t narrow the actual location of the phone down much more than a ten- or fifteen-mile radius of the tower. That’s twenty or thirty square miles-a big area, Joe.”
“What if the suspect is in a car?” Joe asked. “Can you track his movements by which cell towers get pinged along a highway?”
“Yes.” Coon demonstrated by running his index finger along the table as if the Formica were a map. He flicked his finger every couple of inches, going, “Ping, ping, ping, ping, all the way to Denver.”
“Let me ask you another question,” Joe said. “If you were given a printout of a text thread and all the specifics of the exchange, could you go to the phone company and trace where each phone was at the time?”
Coon frowned. “It’s possible, but it doesn’t always work. Like I told you, the companies only keep text messages on their servers a short time. Once the texts are trashed, they’re trashed.”
The way Coon said it made Joe suspicious. Joe said, “Okay, that’s the official FBI spin. But you can’t tell me that if you really wanted to, if someone involved in counterterrorism, say, wanted to track down both parties even weeks after the conversation that they couldn’t do it?”
Coon looked away. “I have no comment on that.”
“Which tells me what I need to know,” Joe said.
“I’ve got to get going, Joe. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”
Joe said, “So the key is for the target to keep their cell phone on, even if they’re not making calls all the time. If the phone is on, it’s making these pings out there.”
Coon sighed, “Right.”
“What if the phone is only turned on to call or text, and then is turned off again?”
“That makes things real hard,” Coon said. “It means we’ve got to be on top of it when that cell phone is turned on to track it immediately, as it’s being used. Once it gets turned off, we lose any ability to know where it’s going.”
“What about the GPS feature?”
“Same thing. If the phone is off, the GPS is off.”
“Hmmm,” Joe said, rubbing his chin. He had a feeling April didn’t keep her phone on because of how she’d warned Sheridan not to call. If April didn’t want anyone to know she was in contact, she wouldn’t risk an errant ring or even a wrong number that would tip them off. So it made sense she’d power it up only when she wanted to communicate.
“Who are you trying to find?” Coon asked.
Joe evaded the question. “How long does it take to get a subpoena if you’ve got probable cause?”
“Minutes, in some cases. As I mentioned, Judge Johnson is right down the hall.”
“Wow-it’s never that quick out in the real world.”
“Who are you trying to find?” Coon asked again.
Before Joe could think of another way to avoid the question, his cell phone burred. He fumbled, found it in his breast pocket. Sheridan.
“Excuse me,” Joe said to Coon, “It’s my daughter.”
“I’m out of here,” Coon said, reaching for his jacket.
Joe held up his hand for Coon to wait, but Coon shook him off.
Sheridan said, “April texted me again.”
Joe grabbed Coon’s wrist. “Please, just a minute.”
Coon conceded with a sigh.
To Sheridan, Joe said: “How long did you text back and forth?”
“Not long. Not more than a minute. She was in a big hurry. I think she’s scared, Dad.”
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She asked how I was.”
“Did you get a chance to ask her any of the questions I left you?”
“Only one.”
“Did she answer?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
“Okay. When I asked her ‘Who is Robert?’ she said, ‘Stenko’s son.’ ”
Joe grabbed the notebook sheet with April’s number on it and uncapped his pen. “How is that spelled?”
“S-T-E-N-K-O.”
Joe wrote it down. “Nothing else? No first name or anything?”
“That’s all. Then she texted, ‘Gotta go, later,’ and that was all. I sent her a couple more messages but she didn’t reply. I think she turned her phone off.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Good job. Keep your phone on and call me if she gets back in contact.”
“I will, Dad. Love you.”
“Love you.”
Joe snapped his phone shut. Coon hadn’t left. In fact, Coon stood transfixed, staring at Joe.
“You’re shitting me, right?” Coon said.
“What?”
“Stenko. You wrote down Stenko. Is that a joke?”
“No joke,” Joe said.
“Stenko called your daughter?”
Joe could see in Coon’s eyes that the name made bells ring. He didn’t know which ones, of course, but it gave him the excuse to do an end-around, to keep April’s name out of it.
“He didn’t call,” Joe said. “He sent a text.”
“Is this Stenko from Chicago?”
Joe nodded.
“Do you have any idea who he is?”
“Nope.”
“We do,” Coon said, sitting back down.
JOE’S HEAD WAS STILL SPINNING when he went to see the governor. He bounded up the capitol steps and opened the heavy door just as the guard on the other side prepared to lock it.
“We close at five,” the guard said.
“I’m here to see the governor,” Joe said.
“Is he expecting you?”
“He told me to drop by any time I was in Cheyenne.”
The guard laughed. “He tells everyone that.”
“Really,” Joe said. “It’s urgent. If you don’t believe me, go into his office and tell his receptionist Joe Pickett is here to see the governor. If he turns me away, I promise to go quietly.”
The guard looked Joe over, noted the Game and Fish shirt, the J. PICKETT badge.
“You’re really him, aren’t you?” the guard said. “Wait here, Mr. Pickett.”
For the first time in his life, Joe felt mildly famous. It was similar to a headache.
GOVERNOR SPENCER RULON was on the telephone. He cringed a greeting and waved Joe into a deep red leather chair. Joe removed his hat, put it crown-down in his lap, and waited.
Rulon was a big man in every way, with a round face like a hubcap, an untamed shock of silver-flecked brown hair, and eyes like brown laser pointers when he fixed them on a person or an object. He had the liquid grace big men had, and his movements were impatient, swift, and energetic. If the recent scandal allegations had affected him physically, Joe couldn’t see it.
The last time Joe had been in the governor’s office, Stella Ennis, Rulon’s chief of staff, had been there along with the head of the state DCI. Tony Portenson of the FBI had also been present, and Rulon had successfully browbeaten him into releasing Nate Romanowski on Joe’s request. That had not gone well.
Rulon was in the last year of his first term and he was running again. What should have been a walkover had turned into a race, primarily due to the Stella Ennis and Nate Romanowski scandals. His natural enemies were flush with newfound excitement and confidence, like journeymen boxers who had been beaten round after round but somehow landed a lucky punch that sent the champ reeling.
His opponent was Forrest Niffin, a Central Wyoming rancher with a handlebar mustache, who was mounted on a white horse in all of his campaign posters. Despite his rustic image, the challenger was a multimillionaire who had recently moved to Wyoming from upstate New York, where he’d founded a fashion empire. Oddly, Rulon had a framed photo of the challenger on his bookshelf behind his head.
Despite Rulon’s eccentric and mercurial ways, like challenging the senate majority leader to a shooting contest to decide a bill or sending Joe on assignments “without portfolio” to maintain deniability, Joe knew that the governor had saved him and pulled him out of the bureaucratic netherworld. He owed him his job and his family’s welfare.
“I understand,” the governor said into the phone, “but if you permit one more well before your lawyers and my lawyers have a sit-down, I’m gonna sue your ass. That’s right. And I’m going to call a press conference out in some scenic spot in the mountains to announce the suit so every photo has that pristine view behind me.”
Joe could hear the caller say, “You’re out of your mind.”
Rulon nodded and waggled his eyebrows at Joe while he said into the phone, “That’s pretty much the conclusion around here.”
Smiling wolfishly, Rulon hit the speaker button on his phone and leaned back in his chair.
“You can’t threaten me,” the caller said. Joe thought the voice was vaguely familiar.
“I just did.”
“Look, can’t we discuss this more reasonably?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Rulon said, grasping the phone set with both hands, pleading into it. “That’s what I proposed.”
Joe could hear the man sighing on the other end. “Okay. I’ll have our legal guys call your people tomorrow.”
“Lovely. Good-bye, Mr. Secretary.”
Rulon punched off. Joe felt his scalp twitch.
“The secretary of the interior?” Joe asked.
Rulon nodded. In the west, the secretary of the interior was more important than whoever the president might be. And Rulon had just threatened to “sue his ass.”
“Empty suit,” Rulon declared.
Joe was confused. Did the governor mean the threatened legal action or the secretary himself?
“Both,” Rulon said, reading Joe’s face. “Now what is the occasion of your extremely rare visit to the very heart of the beast?”
Joe knew Rulon didn’t like formalities or rhetoric, and Joe wasn’t adept at either one anyway: “I want a leave of absence to pursue a case on my own. I might be in Wyoming, but I might also need to cross state lines. And this is the thing: I might need to call on you or the DCI for help at some point.”
Rulon leveled his gaze. “You know how much trouble you got me in letting Romanowski go?”
“Yes,” Joe said. “I want to thank you for sticking your neck out for me last year. I know you didn’t have to do that. I’m sorry about the heat you’ve taken.”
Rulon said, “Goes with the territory. I’ll survive. What can they do? Take my birthday away from me?” He gestured behind him at the photograph. “The people of Wyoming are smart. They’ll flirt with that knucklehead Niffin at first, but they’ll come to their senses.”
“I hope so,” Joe said.
“Besides, the Romanowski thing was peanuts compared to what Niffin’s operatives are saying about me and Stella Ennis.” Rulon probed Joe’s face, making him uncomfortable. Joe had known Stella two years before she showed up as the governor’s chief of staff. He knew what kind of power she had over men. He doubted Mrs. Rulon would be so understanding.
Rulon said, “Nothing happened. And the stuff they’re saying-that’s not how we do politics in Wyoming.”
Joe nodded.
“It could have. Hell, it should have. But it didn’t.”
“Okay.”
“She left on her own accord.”
“Okay,” Joe said, squirming. He wasn’t sure why Rulon felt the need to confess to him.
“Back to your request,” Rulon said. “What’s it concerning?”
Joe swallowed. “It’s a family thing. I’d rather not say.”
Rulon smiled slightly and shook his head, his eyes never leaving Joe. “You ask me things no one else would ask me,” he said.
Joe nodded.
“Good thing I trust you,” the governor said, standing up quickly. He was around the desk before Joe could react.
Rulon placed his hand on Joe’s shoulder like a proud father. “Go, son. Do what you need to do.”
“Thank you, sir,” Joe said, taken aback.
“Do the right thing.”
Joe said, “That’s what you told me last time, and I let Nate escape.”
Rulon chuckled. “I’ll advise your new director that you’ll be out of pocket for a while but that you’re still on the payroll.”
“Thank you.”
“But Joe,” Rulon said, leaning forward so he was nose to nose with him, “if this thing, whatever it is, blows up-we did not discuss it here, did we?”
“No.”
“And you can’t expect me to bail you out again.”
“I wouldn’t even ask.”
“So we’re clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rulon said, “I can tell from your eyes this is important to you. Go with God, but keep me out of it.”
NORTH OF CHUGWATER ON I-25, JOE REMEMBERED HE HAD muted his cell while he met with the governor, and he checked it. Two messages-neither from Sheridan or Marybeth. He retrieved the earlier call because he recognized the Baggs prefix. It was the weary voice of Baggs deputy Rich Brokaw, saying Ron Connelly had been released on his own recognizance by the county judge and that Connelly had apparently skipped town. His neighbors reported seeing Connelly packing up his belongings into his pickup truck the night before. Brokaw had checked out the house-empty, garbage everywhere, holes punched in the drywall. The sheriff’s office had issued an APB on Connelly, but so far there had been no credible sightings. Brokaw apologized for the way things turned out and said he’d keep Joe informed. Joe snorted angrily. Connelly didn’t seem the type to have seen the error of his ways and split town to turn over a new leaf. He seemed the type, to Joe, to escalate into something worse. Men who thought nothing of killing or injuring animals for their pleasure were capable of anything. Connelly was like that; Joe could sense it. What was the judge thinking?
Joe made a mental note to be on the lookout for Connelly’s 4x4 with the Oklahoma plates. There weren’t that many roads in Wyoming, and stranger things had happened.
The second call was from an unknown number that turned out to be Special Agent Chuck Coon’s personal cell phone. “Joe, I looked up what we have on Stenko. You need to call me back as soon as you can. Call this number, not the office number.”
Joe pulled off the highway within sight of Glendo Reservoir. The lake was still and glassy, mirroring the vibrant fuchsia streaks of dusk, and he could see the small twinkling lights of trolling fishing boats working near shore, trying to pick up walleyes.
He caught Coon at dinner with his family, and Joe offered to call later but Coon said, “Hold on.” Joe could hear Coon tell his wife he’d be back in a minute, and a little boy say, “Where’s Daddy going?” The little boy’s voice made something inside him twang in a familiar way.
“Okay,” Coon said in a moment, “I’m in the other room now.”
“I’m on the highway headed north. There’s a pretty sunset.”
Coon ignored him. “Hey, I looked up Stenko, aka David Stenson of Chicago. I was right-we’re interested in him.”
“If his name is Stenson, why does he go by Stenko?”
“They do that,” Coon said.
Joe said, “Oh. Who does that?”
“Chicago mobsters.”
Joe took a breath and held it. The escalation from deviant game violators to… Chicago mobsters… made him suddenly light-headed. He said, “What do you mean you’re interested in him?”
Joe could picture Coon hunching over with his back toward the doorway so he could speak softly and not alarm his son. “Look, Joe, I can’t just give you everything without getting something back. Like how is it a game warden in Wyoming is suddenly asking me questions about tracking down a cell phone involving some guy named Stenko? I mean, how do we get there from here?”
Joe felt a shiver run up his back. Coon’s tone betrayed his intense interest, as did the fact that he’d left Joe his private number and asked him to call after hours. So who was this Stenko? And how was it April could be with him?
Said Joe, “I’m not going to let you take over this investigation.”
“What?” Coon sounded hurt, but it was a put-on, Joe thought.
“I know how the FBI operates,” Joe said. “You move in. You take over. And most of the time I have to admit it’s helpful because you guys have all the electronics, manpower, federal prosecutors, and heavy artillery. Hell, I can’t even keep a poacher behind bars. But in this particular circumstance, I can’t let you guys swoop in.”
Coon said, “Look, Joe, I don’t know what’s going on, but you came to me. You threw out the bait and I took it. This can’t be one way-me giving information to you. Whatever it is you’re into, you need me. You’re one guy in a red shirt in a state pickup. How in the hell are you ever going to track down Stenko?”
Joe thought, You’re right. But he said, “I don’t care about Stenko.”
There was a long beat of silence. “Then what is this about?”
“I care about someone who might be with him,” Joe said, hoping it wasn’t too much information. “And the last time the feds showed up in a situation involving this particular person, really bad things happened. I can’t let it happen again. Simple as that.”
“I’m confused,” Coon said. But he said it in a distracted way. In the background, Joe could hear Coon tapping away at a keyboard. Probably trying to find out what Joe was alluding to.
Joe said, “This is personal.”
“If it involves Stenko, it’s not personal, Joe. It’s obstructing a federal investigation, and we could come down on you like a ton of bricks. Believe me, Portenson would love to do that. And it’s the reason I’m not involving him at this stage. I’m doing you a favor, Joe, can’t you get that?”
Joe believed him. Chicago mobsters? A federal investigation?
“Look, why can’t we trade information?” Coon said. “You give me a little, I’ll give you a little. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we can help each other out.”
Joe watched a fishing boat do a slow circle in a bay out on the lake. “You start,” he said.
Coon sighed. More tapping. Then: “Stenko’s well known to our Chicago office. He’s one of those guys who’s flown under the radar for years because he’s smart and careful, but his name just kept coming up over and over again in the background. We’re talking real estate schemes, the Chicago political machine, downtown redevelopment, fast-food franchises, waste management contracts. There are allegations that he’s been the mover and shaker behind quite a few Indian casinos as well, but it was hard to figure out if he was doing anything illegal. Finally, seven months ago the federal prosecutor had enough on him to convene a grand jury that indicted Stenko on twenty-four counts, including fraud, bribery, money laundering, extortion-the laundry list of white-collar crimes. No doubt the guy’s intimately connected to most of the stuff that goes on in Chicago, but he wasn’t flamboyant or stupid like a lot of those guys. He made it a point not to get photos of himself with politicians and movie stars, for example. We had a hell of a time getting a valid photo and had to resort to DMV records. He was able to keep himself at arm’s length from most of the hijinks and transactions because he had a really sharp accountant fronting his operations. I should say, he had a sharp accountant named Leo Dyekman. And the Talich Brothers.”
Joe said, “Uh-huh,” as if he knew whom Coon was talking about.
Coon said, “The Talich Brothers are ruthless leg-breakers of the highest order. Three of them: Corey, Chase, and Nathanial. Born a year apart: boom-boom-boom. One black-haired, one blond, one redhead, all built like cage-match wrestlers. They’re famous in Chicago, from what I understand.”
“Okay.”
“So anyway,” Coon said, getting into it, “after years of investigations and two trials that ended when lone jurors held out-call it the Chicago way-Stenko finally goes down. We arrest him in his real estate office with news crews covering it. Stenko gets thrown in the pokey and everything in his office is seized. But when our guys go to sweep up Leo the accountant and the Talich Brothers, they’re nowhere to be found. They’ve flown the coop-disappeared. And so have the computers and financial records we were after to prove Stenko was worth millions. But we forge on, hoping to flip Stenko himself, hoping he’ll turn on Leo and his crew who left him high and dry or the higher-ups in the Chicago scene. But Stenko lawyers up and gets his wife to sell $5 million in real estate to pay his bond.”
Joe was trying to keep up with Coon, trying to figure out where in all this April came in. If at all.
“So Stenko’s out of jail and he misses a preliminary hearing because he suddenly claims he’s sick. He claims he’s dying, in fact. He gets a doctor to tell the judge Stenko’s got liver and bladder cancer at the same time-which I guess is a death sentence. There’s nothing the doctors can do when somebody has advanced forms of both and the end comes real fast. We don’t believe Stenko’s doc, and we ask the court that Stenko be evaluated by an independent expert. But Stenko doesn’t make the appointment. This is two weeks ago or so.”
Joe nodded, the time frame fitting.
“So Stenko is missing,” Coon said. “He didn’t even pack up. His wife claims she has no idea where he went-he didn’t come home, hasn’t called. We’ve got all the phones tapped, so we’d know. He vanished off the face of the earth. All we’ve got is an unsubstantiated rumor to follow up on-”
Coon cut himself off, probably realizing-as Joe did-he’d revealed more than he wanted to.
“Your turn,” Coon said.
Joe sucked in air, trying to locate the words. Finally, “This is all news to me. Like I said, I don’t really care about Stenko.”
“Who do you care about, Joe?”
“Like I said, someone who may be with him. Maybe on the run with him.”
Coon tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice, but he didn’t succeed. “Someone with a cell phone? Someone who called you?”
“Actually, the text was sent to my daughter.”
“Who is this person?”
“I won’t say. I told you that.”
“Where did the text come from?”
Joe hesitated. He needed to know what the rumor was. “Supposedly Aspen.”
“Colorado?”
“Yup. That’s what… the caller… claimed.”
Alarm bells went off in his head. He almost said she.
“Male or female?”
“Whoever sent the text.”
“Christ,” Coon said. “I’m disappointed, Joe. I gave you a lot. You haven’t given me anything I didn’t know already.”
“That’s true,” Joe said, his mind spinning, trying to figure out what to give without endangering April. But if she was somehow mixed up with this Stenko and these Talich Brothers? Maybe the best thing to do was to spill everything, let the FBI do what the FBI did best?
It didn’t feel right yet. He said, “Okay, but understand that this is speculation at this point, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Go ahead.”
“You should check out murders that were committed in the last two weeks. I don’t have the exact dates in front of me, but all involve small-caliber handguns-probably the same weapon. As far as I can tell, no suspects have been arrested, suggesting the murders are random and not personal. The first was in Chicago, then Madison, then Keystone, South Dakota…”
“Hold it, slow down…” Coon said, obviously writing down the locations.
“… and Aspen, Colorado. Two days ago.”
“Jesus.”
“I said it was speculation, and I mean it,” Joe said. “Those are locations given in the text messages. There could be more, or it all could be hooey.”
Coon hesitated. “We need to put a device on your daughter’s phone.”
“No.”
“Damn it, Joe.”
“I told you the rules. And I already gave you the number to track. You have that number, don’t you?”
“Yes. We can get an operation up and running tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Will you let us look at the text messages?”
“Nope.”
He knew he was risking the chance that the FBI would pinpoint the location of April’s phone and close in on her without notifying him. But he doubted they’d be able to find her on their own, without his help. For one thing, they didn’t know it was April. They also didn’t know what kind of vehicle she was in or how many others she was with. The feds didn’t have the manpower to flood a ten-to-fifteen-mile radius in the hope of running into Stenko, especially if he was on the move. It was a risk giving up the number, but one he was willing to take.
“You’ll notify me if your daughter gets another text,” Coon said. Not a question but a statement.
“I will,” Joe said, “but only if you’ll give me the location of the call if you’re able to track it down.”
“Deal,” Coon said.
“I gave you something to run with,” Joe said. “Now what was the rumor you referred to earlier?”
“It’s just a rumor.”
“I understand that.”
Silence. Joe figured he could wait him out.
Finally, Coon sighed. “There is an unconfirmed report of a man matching Stenko’s description coming out of a brothel in Chicago two weeks ago. Later, the brothel manager or whatever he’s called was found murdered upstairs. No witnesses to the killing.”
“Small-caliber weapon?” Joe asked.
“Yes.” He said it with the same bolt of realization Joe was experiencing-the two stories coming together.
“Anyone with him? With Stenko?”
“This is unconfirmed.”
“Was anyone with him?”
“Calm down, Joe.” Then: “He was supposedly with an unidentified female minor. Mid-teens or slightly older. Blond, five foot four, possibly one of the prostitutes.”
Joe slunk against the door of the cab, his cheek on the window of the driver’s side.
“Joe?”
Rawlins, Wyoming
STENKO WAS SICK, ROBERT WAS ANGRY, AND SHE WAS SCARED. They were in a parking lot outside Buy-Rite Pharmacy someplace in Wyoming in the car they’d stolen. There was only one other car in the lot, a muddy and dented Ford Taurus in a handicapped space. Through the afternoon the sky had darkened and now the wind gusted and rocked the car from side to side on its springs. A herd of tumbleweeds-perfectly yellow, round and hollow, like exoskeletons of large beach balls-swept from somewhere out on the high plains and rolled across the blacktop of the lot and piled up against a high chain-link fence that separated the Buy-Rite from a bank that was closed for the night.
That’s me, she thought. A tumbleweed caught in a fence.
Stenko to Robert: “Morphine. You’ve heard of morphine. I need you to go in there and get me some.”
Robert took his hands off the wheel and waved his hands in the air: “How? We need a damned prescription. And if I take those empty bottles from Chicago in there, the pharmacist might do some checking and find out they’re looking for you. That would really screw up my life if we got caught in a hellhole like this.” When he said it he gestured toward the Buy-Rite, toward the town in general. Robert was startled and gave a little cry when a tumbleweed smacked and flattened against the driver’s side window before rolling up and over the hood toward the fence.
Stenko writhed in the front seat. She empathized and was an inch away from crying. She could smell his pain. It had a distinct odor as it oozed out through the sweat on his forehead and through his scalp. The poor man.
Stenko dug the gun out from under his seat and handed it to Robert butt-first. Robert didn’t take it. Robert said, “I can’t do that.”
After a moment, the act of holding the gun seemed to exhaust Stenko, and he let it drop to the front seat. Stenko looked away from his son, out the window on the passenger side. “Then take me somewhere and leave me so I can die. I can’t take this pain any longer. It’s hell, son. I’m in hell already.” His voice was pinched, and he hissed his words through clenched teeth. He wasn’t angry. He was hurting.
Robert crossed his arms in front of him and shook his head like a four-year-old who didn’t want to eat, she thought.
Stenko writhed again, twisted himself so he could rest his chin on the top of the front seat and look at her directly. His eyes were rheumy. Thick liquid gathered in the corners of his eyes near his nose. He tried to smile. “I’m so sorry, April, but this may be the end of the road. I feel terrible it turned out this way-I thought I’d have longer. But it is what it is. Don’t worry… I’ll give you enough money to buy a plane ticket as soon as we can get somewhere with an airport. And I’ll give you plenty extra because you’ll need it.”
For a moment, she was excited. This had turned out to be different than she thought it would be in every way. Now he was giving her a way out.
She said, “I’m not sure where I would go.”
He winced, and she couldn’t tell if it was from his stomach or what she said. He closed his eyes and the thick gel in his eyes squeezed out and pooled on the tops of his cheeks like wet glue. “You think about it, April,” he said. “You think about where you would want to go.”
She thought, No one should die like this, as if there were a brood of small fevered animals inside him trying to eat and claw their way out.
Robert missed the exchange. As usual he was deep inside his own head, with his own problems. When he spoke his voice was high. “You do it,” he said to Stenko. “This isn’t what I do. This is what you do. This is what you’ve done your whole life. I’m along just to keep score and try to help you redeem yourself in the eyes of Mother Earth.”
Stenko didn’t respond. He seemed too spent to argue. Instead he turned around again and slunk down in his seat and talked softly to the windshield. “Do you know how to get to the ranch, Robert? On your own without my help?”
Robert nodded. “I can read a goddamned map.”
Stenko raised one pale hand and wriggled his fingers in the air, a way of saying, I don’t want to battle with you.
“What ranch?” she said.
Robert ignored her as he always did.
Stenko said, “You’ll figure it out, son. Now, when you get there, you need to take that son-of-a-bitch Leo aside and make him give you all the account numbers. You may have to apply pressure because Leo can be real stubborn. There should be twenty-eight million in stocks, bonds, cash, and property. You won’t get access to it all before the feds realize what you’re doing, but if you pick the low-hanging fruit…”
Robert went bug-eyed, shouted: “TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION! Jesus Christ, Dad!”
“Yeah, give or take,” Stenko said, waving Robert away. “Now get that money and use it to pay down my debt. It’s the only way because I’m running out of time. How much did you say was left on my balance sheet?”
Robert was frozen for a moment, frozen by $28 million. His mouth was hanging open.
“Robert?” Stenko prompted.
Robert shook his head and dug for his laptop. Tap-tap-tap. “Twenty-two million to go on your balance,” he said. “So far, you’ve hardly put a dent in it because you really haven’t done so well.”
“I thought you said eighteen,” Stenko wheezed. “I distinctly remember you saying eighteen after Aspen.”
“I did some recalculating,” Robert said, with a speed-glance toward her. It was what he did when he was lying, she thought.
“I bet you did,” Stenko said without malice, “as soon as you heard what I have.”
“Dad! Those Indian casinos use up a ton of energy! The lights, the air-conditioning, all the gambling machines… think about it!”
“Sorry, son,” Stenko said, reaching over and putting his hand on Robert’s shoulder. Robert shoved it away.
“Really,” Stenko said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Old suspicious habits die hard. Do you forgive me?”
After a beat, Robert said, “Mmmmmn.”
“Okay then,” Stenko hissed. “Then go get that money and pay down my debt. Use the rest for your cause. Plant entire rain forests or buy wind farms or whatever the hell it is you do.”
It was quiet. She could see Robert thinking, probably shouting “TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION!” over and over to himself in his head.
An old woman with a headscarf pushed a walker out through the door of Buy-Rite and headed slowly for the Taurus. A white prescription bag was clutched in her hand.
Robert said, “Okay, I’ll go in.”
She watched Robert as he slammed the door shut and strode toward the pharmacy dodging tumbleweeds. He jammed the pistol into the back of his pants and made sure it was hidden by the hem of his jacket. At the door, he paused for a moment to rake his fingers through his hair, throw back his shoulders. Then he went in.
She said to Stenko, “Are you all right?”
He half-turned toward her, his face in profile. “Not really.”
“If you give me some of that money, can I use it for something else?”
“Like what?”
She said, “I’d like to rescue my sister. She’s not really my sister, but she’s all I’ve got. She’s still back in that house in Chicago with all the other kids. Can I use the money to get her out of there? To fly her to me?”
Stenko grimaced a smile. “Sure, April. Do anything you want.”
She sat back, satisfied. For the first time in her life, she had a plan of her own and would soon have the means to carry it out. Thanks to Stenko.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
Then Robert was back, throwing open the door against the wind and heaving himself behind the wheel. He entered talking, “… We need to find another pharmacy. This one’s no good.”
Stenko said, “You didn’t get the morphine?”
“Hell no,” Robert said. “The pharmacist in there is a redneck. I’m sure he has a gun. And he just stared at me all suspicious, as if daring me to try something. He knows, Dad. Somehow he knows… so I beat it out of there. We need to find another place.”
Stenko looked away. Robert turned the key and started the engine. “These little towns give me the creeps anyway. They all just stare at you like you’re from another planet. They’re all inbred or something.”
“I don’t think there’s another pharmacy,” Stenko said in a near-whisper.
“Maybe not in this town,” Robert said. “But there’s bound to be one in a bigger place.”
“It’s after five,” Stenko said.
She said, “Give me the gun.”
AS SHE MADE HER WAY UP the aisle with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up and the weight of the gun sagging in her front pocket, she gathered items into a shopping basket. Shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, hair coloring, a new TracFone since the one she had was low on power. She thought about how Stenko had barked a sharp “No!” to her request, but Robert quickly warmed to it, handed over the gun, and said, “Maybe she can finally do something useful.”
The jerk. She cared more about his father than he did.
The aisles were well lit, and they led the way toward a counter at the end of the store. Behind the counter was the pharmacist. He wore a white smock and had slicked-back hair and he pretended to busy himself with some kind of tiny project hidden under the cutout opening, but he was actually watching her closely. Robert was right about that. But she was the only customer-so why wouldn’t he keep his eye on her?
She hoped no one else came into the store. Robert had agreed to tap on the horn outside if anyone showed up, but she didn’t trust him to do it. If a police car turned into the lot, she was sure Robert would drive away and leave her in there.
She could hardly feel her legs and the shopping basket seemed weightless. She tried not to keep glancing at the pharmacist as she worked her way toward him, but she couldn’t help it. There was a distinct ache in her chest that got worse as she got closer to him.
He said something to her that didn’t register.
“What?”
“I said, can I help you find anything?”
What an opening. She knew she needed to decide right then whether or not to go through with it. Her instincts screamed at her to turn and run. But the image of Stenko’s tortured face was stronger.
“Do you have morphine?” She could barely meet his eyes.
“Why yes!” the pharmacist said with sarcastic enthusiasm. “And would you like some other narcotics along with it? We have those, too!” And he grinned wolfishly, his eyes sparkling.
She was confused.
Then he reached across the counter and grabbed her wrist, squeezing it hard.
“Why do you have your hood up?” he said. “Is it so I can’t see your face? Who are you and why do you want morphine?”
She struggled and pulled back but he gripped harder.
“Please, mister…”
He reached for her face with his other hand to peel the hood back but she ducked under his arm. The shopping basket fell to the linoleum but didn’t spill.
Then she noted that the pharmacist hesitated, that something or someone had diverted his attention. Suddenly her sweatshirt was lighter because the weight of the gun had been removed. Robert shot the pharmacist four times in his neck and chest. She screamed as his grip released on her wrist and she ripped her hand back. The pharmacist sagged out of view behind the counter, leaving a snail’s track of blood on the wall behind him.
Robert said to her, “Shut the hell up and help me find the morphine.”
Saddlestring
JOE AND MARYBETH WERE IN BED BUT NOT SLEEPING. HE’D arrived home after nine to find-pleasantly-that she’d saved him the last of the spaghetti and garlic bread they’d had earlier for dinner. While he ate, he’d outlined his day with Nate, the governor, and Coon. She nodded as he talked, seeing where it was going and becoming frightened by the inevitability of the situation ahead. Sheridan had already packed a Saddlestring Lady Wranglers duffel bag with clothes and placed it near the front door.
After they’d cleaned up the dishes, they’d continued the discussion about involving Sheridan, in his office with the door closed. He’d thought about the situation over and over while driving home, and each time he came to the same conclusion. He was more than willing to be talked out of the idea and hoped Marybeth could come up with a better way.
If another text came in while Joe was out in the field looking for April, it would be impossible for him to coach Sheridan into getting her foster sister to reveal her whereabouts. And even if Sheridan was able to get solid information, she’d have to relay that to Joe at a distance-providing he could be reached and was not himself out of range of a cell tower-and hope he was in the vicinity of where the call came in. If those were the only obstacles, though, they could try to get around them. Marybeth could be there with Sheridan if a call came in, for example. She’d probably do a better job of coaching than Joe could do anyway.
But the fact was April had chosen to contact Sheridan. Not Joe, not Marybeth. And if April agreed to meet somewhere, it would be with Sheridan.
Marybeth talked it out, which is what she did. Joe listened. His wife came to the same conclusion he had, and they looked at each other with trepidation.
They went to bed before eleven but it was perfunctory.
OUTSIDE, A COLD WIND rattled the bedroom window. Dried leaves that had been hanging from the cottonwood branches broke loose and ticked against the glass.
Marybeth rolled over and propped her head up by folding her pillow over on itself. She said, “I wish I could think of another way than to let Sheridan go with you, but I can’t.”
Joe grunted. While he welcomed the idea of his oldest daughter’s companionship, he was terrified by the possibility that he couldn’t keep her safe. This was his dilemma. This had always been his dilemma: keeping his family safe. Although there had been some horrific events and even more close calls, for the most part he’d been successful. Except once: April.
Joe turned to his wife in bed. “The last time she saw me, I was standing across the road with the local cops and the FBI who attacked the compound. I’m sure I looked like I was on their side. What is she supposed to think of me?”
“Your actions can be explained,” Marybeth said, “but not without gaining back her trust. And that won’t be easy, I don’t think. Not after all this time. And I’m sure I’m painted with same brush as far as she’s concerned. It makes my heart ache to think of that poor girl being out there for six years thinking that the family that took her in betrayed her in the end. It just makes me want to wail.
“Our only hope is she trusts Sheridan to at least listen to her, and later to us. I can see from April’s perspective that she assumes we chose not to try and find her after the fire. She probably doesn’t even know we were convinced she was dead.”
Joe stared at the ceiling, listened to the wind pound the window.
“If we somehow get through this,” Joe said, “if everything falls into place somehow and we can talk to her… would you want to take her back?”
“In a heartbeat, Joe.”
He smiled.
“But of course it would be up to her.”
After a long silence, Marybeth said, “Lucy wants to go, too.”
Joe groaned.
“I’m not letting her, no matter how angry she gets. I know I’ll hear plenty of, ‘She’s my sister, too,’ but she’ll just have to live with it.”
Marybeth turned over on her back as well to stare at the same ceiling. Joe hoped she could gain more wisdom from the view than he had been able to get.
Joe said, finally, “How could April get caught up with a Chicago mobster? How could it even be April?”
There was a light knock on the door before it opened. Sheridan stood in profile from a hall night-light. Her phone glowed blue in the dark. She whispered, “It’s her.”
From: AK
sherry, u awake dude
ak
CB: 307-220-5038
Aug 26, 12:12 am
Erase REPLY Options
yeah im awake. I’ve been waiting for u.
sorry. couldn’t text earlier.
where r u?
same as always. in a car. ha.
Sheridan was sitting at her desk in her bedroom. Joe and Marybeth hovered behind her, reading the screen of her phone as Sheridan typed and scrolled. Tube had taken to sleeping in Sheridan’s room, and he curled at her feet.
“Ask her if she’s moving or stationary,” Joe said.
Sheridan blew a breath. “Stationary? That’s not the best word, Dad. Texting words are short and sweet. She’d know you’re here.”
“You know what I mean.”
The list of questions he’d made out was on the desk. Marybeth gestured to it, and Sheridan nodded.
“I’ve got to be cool, you guys,” Sheridan said. “April’s always been pretty suspicious-she has a high-powered BS meter. So let me do this my way.”
r u still in aspen?
na. we left last night.
where now?
some bar. middle of nowhere.
yre in a bar? cool.
na. im waiting outside in the car. bored.
where at?
not sure. cant remember.
no idea at all?
savage I think. y so many????
Sheridan said, “See, I’ve got to be careful. She’s starting to wonder.”
Joe said, “Savage?” Then: “Not Savage Run? The canyon? That’s the only Savage I know.
“Dad, please.”
Marybeth shot him a look.
He mouthed, “Okay, okay.”
im worried about u.
im ok. but kinda scared now.
?????
bad day. stenkos sick and we’re going 2 some ranch.
r u scared of stenko?
na. robert. stenkos nice.
does robert hurt u?
na. but he hurt some man 2day in a drug store.
?????
2 awful 2 say. later.
Said Marybeth, “Oh no-is that it? Did she sign off?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sheridan said. “I think she means she’ll tell me what happened later when she has more time. It’s too much to text, in other words.”
Joe said, “Ask her where the drugstore is. Ask her where the ranch is. Ask her if you can meet her there-”
“Dad, please.”
“Joe, please.”
“Sheesh,” Joe said.
can I call u?
NO.
ok.
they cld come outside any minute.
ok. sorry. i want to hear yr voice again.
ya. me 2.
wheres this ranch?
not sure. black hills i heard stenko say.
can I c u?
id like that. me & my other sister.
Sheridan looked up. Joe and Marybeth shrugged.
there’s 2 of you? or do u mean lucy?
id like 2 see luce 2. my other sister. chicago.
confused.
sorry. i got a sister in chicago i want to fly out 2 me.
how?
get her a plane ticket 2 me.
when?
as soon as stenko gives me the $. Lol. do u drive?
ive got a truck.
cool. u drive.
where? u name it.
not sure yet. ill let u know.
????
soon i hope.
“Okay,” Sheridan said. “Here goes…”
can i bring my dad?
NO.
what about mom?
NO.
????
just u. us sisters.
Marybeth reached over and squeezed Joe’s hand. He looked up. Her eyes were moist with tears.
Joe thought, Savage? What ranch? What sister?
how bout 2morrow.
NO. do u miss maxine?
yes.
sad.
we have a new dog named tube.
can u bring him?
maybe 2morrow.
ill let you know.
Joe said, “See if you can get her to tell you what kind of car they’re driving.”
what kind of car u in?
just a car. no big whoop. what kind of dog is tube? is luce awake?
“Man,” Joe said, “she’s tough to crack.”
Sheridan said, “Unless it’s a cool car, girls don’t know makes and models and things like that, Dad. I don’t know what kind of van Mom drives and we’ve had it for years.”
Joe shook his had.
lucys sleeping.
can u wake her up?
hold on. tube is a corgi/lab mix.
LOL!
Joe looked to Marybeth, puzzled.
“Laugh out loud,” Marybeth said.
“Oh.”
Suddenly:
here they come G2G bye.
“Is she gone now?” Marybeth asked.
Sheridan sat back. “Yes.”
“Can you try again?”
Sheridan’s tapped out several versions of “Are you there?” “Are you coming back?” “April?”
No reply.
“She probably turned her phone off again,” Sheridan said.
“Why won’t she let you call her?” Joe asked. “This text message back-and-forth takes forever. If you could just talk with her…”
Sheridan said, “What she’s doing makes sense to me in her situation. If Stenko or Robert come out of the bar and look at her in the car they’d see the phone if she was talking on it. You can always tell when someone’s talking on a phone. But if she’s texting the phone’s in her lap and out of sight.”
Joe saw the logic of that.
“That’s what kids do at school,” Sheridan said. “They text each other under their desks all day long.”
“Really,” Marybeth said.
Sheridan shrugged. “Not me, of course.”
“Of course.”
JOE WAS IN HIS OFFICE with a Wyoming highway map spread open. He could find no Savage, and there was no bar near Savage Run Canyon. Of course, he thought, she could still be somewhere in Colorado. Or Utah. Or New Mexico, Nebraska, Arizona, Kansas… someplace up to twenty hours away from Aspen. That could be 700 road miles if they’d driven nonstop. He wished he knew when they’d left Aspen exactly so he could draw a radius. How many square miles would that be? Thousands.
But she’d mentioned black hills. The Black Hills were in western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. She might know the Black Hills because she claimed to have been there in Keystone. Was there a Savage, South Dakota? He searched his bookshelves for a U.S. atlas and was following the tip of his finger through the cities, towns, and locations of the state to find a Savage. No luck: he’d need to do an Internet search.
His phone burred in his pocket and it startled him. He glanced at his watch: past one A.M. He retrieved his phone and looked at the display. It was the number of the FBI office in Cheyenne. He thought, “Ah…”
“So you got the warrant,” Joe said, opening the phone. “That was quick.”
Coon said, “We had to interrupt Judge Johnson’s dinner to get it. That didn’t make him very happy, as you might guess.”
“You said it would be tomorrow.”
“I thought about it, Joe. I thought we couldn’t risk missing your daughter getting a new call tonight and we were right, weren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“So, do you want to know where it came from?”
“What do you think?”
“First, give me the gist of the exchange.”
Joe nodded. Coon had him.
Joe said, “The caller said they were sitting in a car outside a bar somewhere while Stenko and Robert were inside. We couldn’t get a description of the vehicle. The only place names we could get were ‘black hills’ and ‘Savage.’ I’ve been looking over the map and I can’t find any Savage. Oh-and it had been a very bad day. Robert allegedly hurt someone in a store.”
Joe left out the part about the sister on purpose because he saw no way of not revealing April’s identity if he went down that road.
“A store?” Coon asked. “What kind of store? And where was this?”
“We don’t know. A drugstore. The text said a drugstore.”
Coon paused. Joe knew the conversation was being taped. What he didn’t know was how much Coon and the FBI knew. There was no doubt they were withholding information as well.
“Joe,” Coon said, “the cell phone tower that got the ping is located between Pine Tree Junction and Gillette, Wyoming. On State Highway Fifty.”
Joe brushed the atlas aside and stared at the Wyoming map. Savageton was seventeen miles north of Pine Tree Junction and thirty-five miles south of Gillette. The middle of nowhere. Was it even a town at all? Or was it like so many place names on the Wyoming map-a location?
But every location in Wyoming had a bar.
Bingo.
He scanned the map. There were several south-to-north roads that could have been used from Aspen into Wyoming and on to Savageton in the northeast corner of the square state. There was WYO 789 through Baggs to I-80, WYO 130 or 230 through Saratoga to I-80, WYO 230 to Laramie. There were at least four other highways that could have been used to get to Savageton. If they were headed for the Black Hills, Stenko, Robert, and April would likely drive north through Gillette. From there, they would hop on I-90 East.
Joe’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the map. If one were headed toward the Black Hills from Gillette, I-90 was, for twenty-five miles, the only road east. At Moorcroft, other options appeared on both sides of the interstate. But for twenty-six miles, I-90 looked like a thin wrist that led to an extended hand with routes for each finger. And throughout the Black Hills, there was a spider’s web network of rural roads.
So if Stenko was to be located, it would be either on that I-90 stretch or before he got to Gillette on Highway 50 north of Savageton.
Marybeth came into his office looking puzzled. She’d heard him talking. He mouthed “FBI” and jabbed at Savageton on the map. Marybeth understood immediately, nodded, and turned in the threshold, said, “Sheridan…”
On the other end of the line, Joe heard a voice in the background he recognized as Coon’s boss, Tony Portenson. Portenson said, “Savageton!”
“We think we’ve found it,” Coon told Joe.
“So Portenson is there?”
“Of course. He’s my supervisor.”
“Mmmm.”
“Look,” Coon said, “I know you two have history. But Agent Portenson is willing to look the other way right now. To quote him, Stenko is a bigger prize than you are a pain in the ass.”
Joe smiled. He wondered how long it would take Portenson and Coon to coordinate a roadblock at the logical pinch point on I-90 with the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Then they’d order up their helicopter from the Cheyenne airport. He guessed it would take several hours at least to get the roadblock set up because there simply weren’t enough troopers available to handle it themselves, which meant local sheriff and police departments would be asked to provide men and vehicles. And it would take a while to roust the chopper pilots and get clearances in order to fly north. It would be unlikely Coon, Portenson, and team would take off before dawn. That gave Joe a five- to eight-hour window.
The drive from Saddlestring to Savageton would be less than two. He could beat them there.
“What else?” Coon asked. Joe couldn’t tell if Portenson was prompting him but he assumed so. “There has to be something else you can tell me. A twenty-minute text exchange and all you got was Savage, black hills, and Robert doing something bad in a drugstore?”
Joe felt his neck get hot. He didn’t want to get into the sister thing. But then he asked, “Twenty minutes? What do you mean twenty minutes?”
“I told you, Joe,” Coon said. “We have the ability to register the location of the phone from when it’s turned on to when it’s turned off. I have the printout right here in front of me, so don’t hold anything back.”
Joe said, “Hold on,” and dropped his cell on the desk. He met Sheridan in the hallway. She had her duffel bag over her shoulder, ready to go. Marybeth was behind her looking concerned. Joe asked to borrow her phone and he took it back to his office.
“You’re wrong,” Joe said to Coon after opening Sheridan’s phone and scrolling back through the exchange. “The first text came at 12:12 A.M. The last one came at 12:21 A.M. That’s just nine minutes.”
Nine long minutes of frustration while the two girls tapped out short messages to one another, sent and received, answered. So much could have been accomplished if April had allowed them to talk…
“I see what I see, Joe,” Coon said. Joe could hear paper rustling.
Then: “Oh, now I get it.”
“What?”
“We were both right.”
“What do you mean?”
“The phone was turned on for twenty minutes. But it looks like the first ten were to someplace else.”
“Where?”
Joe heard muffled voices. Coon had obviously covered the mouthpiece. Portenson and who knows how many other agents were having a heated discussion.
Joe paced. Marybeth and Sheridan stood outside his office, looking at him cautiously.
Finally, Coon came back on. “We aren’t at liberty to say right now.”
Joe stopped. He wished he could reach through the phone and grab Coon by the throat.
“We suspect you’re withholding information,” Coon said, speaking as if he were being coached what to say. “If we’re going to be partners in this investigation, you’ve got to come clean. Like who it is you think is sending the texts. When we feel you’ve come clean, we’ll do the same. Up until this moment, you’ve had the upper hand. But you forget, Joe. We are the upper hand.”
It was as if Portenson had his hand up the back of Coon’s shirt, using him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Joe decided it wasn’t worth it to reveal April. And while it was killing him to know whom she’d called before texting Sheridan, it might not be vital.
Joe said, “I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Where?” Coon said.
Joe snorted, “Chuck, you’re a good guy, but you’re not yet a good liar,” and hung up.
He turned to Sheridan. “Ready?”
Sheridan nodded. Her face was deadly serious, but her eyes sparkled.
AS JOE EASED OUT of the driveway in his pickup, he looked at his house. Marybeth was in the front picture window with Lucy, who looked stricken. Through the window, Joe could see her mouth, She’s my sister, too… and it was like a knife through his heart.
Joe and Sheridan waved, and Sheridan hid her face from him while she cried.
Savageton
THE FULL MOON IN THE CLOUDLESS SKY CAST THE PRAIRIE grass ghostly white/blue and threw impenetrable black shadows into the hollows of the hills and draws as Joe and Sheridan drove east on I-90 and crossed the Powder River. The river in the fall was no more than an exhausted stream marking time until winter came and put it out of its misery. Despite that, mule deer huddled on its banks and ancient cottonwoods sucked at the thin stream of water in order to provide the only shade and cover for miles.
Joe knew of a two-track ranch access road with an unlocked gate that would allow them to cut the corner of their journey and eventually intersect with Highway 50 and Savageton, although the likelihood of finding April still there seemed remote at best.
Although it was an interstate highway, there was no traffic at two-fifteen in the morning. Big semi-rigs were parked at pullouts with running lights on, and as they roared east, the twinkle of working oil and gas rigs dotted the prairie. This was the western frontier of the Powder River Basin. Under the thin crust of dirt were underground mountains of coal, rivers of oil and natural gas, seams of uranium. A bald eagle nearly as big as the one he’d delivered to Nate fed on a road-killed pronghorn antelope on the shoulder of the highway, and the bird barely looked up as the pickup sizzled by.
Sheridan was wide awake and filled with manic energy that no doubt came from both fear and exhilaration. The moonlight kissed her cheeks, and Joe was glad she was with him as well as concerned that she was. Her cell phone was in her lap.
“Do you have a signal?” he asked.
“Three bars,” she said.
“Good. Let me know if we start to get out of range. We can’t afford to miss a call or a text.”
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she said. “I mean, go on an investigation with you.”
Joe said, “I know. But you’ll have to be careful. You’ll really have to listen to me. This isn’t a game.”
“I know that.”
He nodded in the dark. She was miffed at him for stating the obvious, and he wondered why he’d felt the need to do so.
He kept the radio tuned to SALECS, which stood for State Assisted Law Enforcement Communication System, and listened as Coon and the FBI talked with the highway patrol. The HP had units in Gillette, Wright, Moorcroft, and Sundance, and all were rolling toward the checkpoint they’d agreed upon near Rozet, east of Gillette. The local police departments in Gillette, Moorcroft, and Hulett were sending officers as well. The operation was going smoothly, although the HP was obviously annoyed they didn’t know what kind of vehicle they were looking for or who would be in it.
“Two male subjects and possibly more,” Coon had said in response, giving a description for David Stenson, aka Stenko. Robert was described as Stenko’s son, but Coon said there was no physical description yet. He said they thought they’d have a photo of him within the hour and they would e-mail it for distribution. Joe was intrigued. Where did they find a photo of Robert so quickly in the middle of the night? Did Robert have priors as well? If so, Marybeth had not found any arrests on her Internet search.
As he usually did in anticipation of a confrontation, Joe did a mental inventory of his gear in addition to his weapons. On his belt was pepper spray, handcuffs, spare Glock magazines, and his Leatherman tool. He was a poor pistol shot so he’d rely on the shotgun if he ran into Stenko and Robert. But he prayed it wouldn’t come to that with Sheridan and possibly April present.
Joe maintained radio silence, but he was urged to grab the mike and tell the officers they should be looking for two adult males and one teenage female. But he couldn’t risk it. Not yet. As always, he doubted himself and fought against a compulsion to tell them what he knew. If Stenko, Robert, and April slipped through the checkpoint because the HP wasn’t looking for a girl with them, the guilt would eat him alive. Not only that, he could be brought up on charges for withholding information. But if local cops, buzzed on coffee and adrenaline-or the Highway Patrol or the FBI-overreacted as they had six years before and April was injured or killed, he’d never forgive himself. He didn’t realize he’d just moaned aloud until Sheridan asked him what was wrong.
“Nothing,” he said. He slowed and eased to the right of the highway because he didn’t want to shoot past the shortcut road.
“You can tell me,” Sheridan said. “Is it that you want to tell them to look for April?”
Joe grunted.
“We can’t,” she said, shaking her head in a gesture that could have been Marybeth’s. “Not yet. Not until I get a chance to see if it’s really her. We can’t let her down again.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want her to think I snitched on her, too.”
“Gotcha,” Joe said, turning off the pavement toward a sagging wire gate. Sheridan climbed out, opened it, and closed it again after Joe pulled through. He used the opportunity to dig his shotgun out from behind the seat, check the loads, and prop it, muzzle down, between the seats. He watched Sheridan skip toward the pickup through a roll of dust turned incendiary by his brake lights.
The two-track cut through the knee-high dry grass, and the uneven surface of the ranch road rattled everything that wasn’t secured in the cab of the pickup. Instinctively, Sheridan reached up and grasped the loop handle above the door and braced her other hand against the dashboard to steady herself.
“Do we have to listen to that?” Sheridan asked, gesturing to the radio. There was lots of chatter as law enforcement assembled on I-90.
“Yes.”
“We can’t listen to music?”
“No.”
“I’ve got a question,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“Do you think that the day you stop listening to new music is the day you decide you’re on the path to old age? Like you’ve given up on new stuff and you resign yourself to music you’ve already heard? Like you’re through discovering and all you want to do is rummage through your old things?”
Joe jerked the steering wheel to the left to avoid a rabbit in the right track that refused to move. He said, “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Sheridan said, “I think I’m right. That’s why I’m never going to listen to old music. I’m only going to listen to what’s new on the radio.”
“You might change your mind when you get older,” Joe said. “Don’t you think you’ll miss the songs you’re familiar with?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the new songs will be better.”
“It’s possible. But don’t you find that certain songs remind you of certain things in your life? That when you hear a specific song it takes you back to when you were listening to it?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “But then I’d be thinking backward and not forward. I’d be on the way to geezerhood.”
“Like me,” Joe said.
“Like you and Mom.”
He smiled in the dark.
“I mean, Mom listens to that old stuff when she’s in the car. People like Simon and Garfunkel, the Police, Loggins and Messina. I’m not saying it’s all bad but it is old. Pretty sad, huh?”
“Not really,” Joe said.
“Do you still have those CDs I made for you of new music?”
“Somewhere,” Joe confessed. They might be in the console or glove box, he wasn’t sure. Wherever they were, he hadn’t listened to them recently. “Sorry,” he said.
“See, you’re the same way.”
“I guess so.”
She paused, then said what was obviously heavy on her mind. “What if it’s April who’s pulling the trigger?”
“What?”
“What if she’s so messed up she’s turned into some kind of teenage killer? Think about it. She has a lot to be messed up about. She might be a no-hoper.”
“Sheridan, jeez…”
“She used to be pretty mean,” Sheridan said. “When she first came to live with us, I was kind of scared of her, but I never let her know that. It wasn’t until the end that she kind of opened up. Don’t you remember how mean she could be?”
Joe remembered. But they’d chalked it up to her transient childhood and to the presence of her on-again, off-again mother, Jeannie Keeley. April’s hardness was a tactic against getting hurt or betrayed, they’d decided. April tested them early on with outbursts and rudeness, but Marybeth said she was simply probing to see where the boundaries were. Once April found out there were limits and rules in the family, she visibly softened and relaxed. April, Joe thought, was like a horse. She needed to know what was expected of her and where she fit in the herd. Once she knew both she was all right.
Sheridan said, “April scared her teachers, she told me that. Every kid wants to be feared by adults. And the truth is a lot of adults fear us. You can see it in their eyes. It gives us power, you know? We’re like vampires. We feed off adults being scared of us. I could see April being pushed into hurting somebody.”
He said, “Sheridan, let’s not speculate too much until we have some kind of evidence, okay?”
Which didn’t stop her. She said, “What if we find her and she’s so messed up we know she’ll kill again? What do we do then?”
“Stop it,” he said. “We don’t know if she’s done anything wrong in the first place.”
Sheridan nodded, apparently thinking that over. She said, “No matter what, I miss her,” she said. “Toward the end there, I was really starting to like her and I thought it was cool how she looked up to me. She must still feel that way or she never would have started texting me.
“I remember when she lived with us,” Sheridan said, almost dreamily. “I came down the hall to get a drink of water at night and I heard you and Mom talking. I remember you saying you wondered if April was doomed.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” Joe said, although he could vaguely recall similar conversations.
“What if she heard you say that? What if it stuck with her? Do you think that would mess her up?”
They crested a hill and the countryside opened up ahead of them. In the distance were the Pumpkin Buttes; four massive flat-topped cone-shaped land formations that dominated the southern horizon. They looked like crude sand castles formed by inverted God-sized buckets. Moonlight bathed the tops of the buttes, which shone like four blue disks.
“Wow,” Sheridan said. “Those things are awesome-looking.”
“I’ve been on top of them,” Joe said, grateful to change the subject.
“What is it like up there?”
He told her how he’d climbed to the top of the middle butte and walked around. The surface was as flat as a tabletop, covered with short grass. Chippings from arrowheads and other tools winked in the grass like jewels, and there were a half-dozen campfire and tipi rings where the Indians used to camp. The height of the buttes afforded them protection from other bands because the view was unparalleled: oceans of treeless prairie to the east, north, and south. He told Sheridan he could see until the land met the sky and vanished. To the west was the knotty blue spine of the Big Horn Mountains.
“I’d like to climb them someday,” she said. “I’ve never found an arrowhead.”
“Look,” Joe said suddenly, “I’ve done and said things in the past I regret. I wish I could take some things back. You’ll understand someday. But getting a second chance to save April means a lot to me right now. So let’s concentrate on that, okay?”
Sheridan nodded. “Okay.”
“No more speculating.”
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll shut up.”
“You don’t have to shut up,” Joe said. “Just quit bringing up things that give me a stomachache. I’ve got to concentrate.”
She laughed, “So what is your opinion about never listening to old music?”
AS THEY DESCENDED on the two-track, Joe pointed out the windshield at a tight cluster of blue lights on the prairie floor to the northeast. “See that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Savageton.”
“That’s all there is?”
“Yup.”
Joe’s cell phone lit up and rang: Coon.
“Yes, Chuck?”
Joe could hear a roar in the background and recognized it as the ascending whine of helicopter rotors. He was surprised how quickly the FBI had located their pilots and fueled the helicopter. It sounded like they were ready to scramble.
Coon had to shout: “Damn it, Joe. You’re holding out on us.”
“What are you talking about?” Joe asked, wondering if Coon and Portenson had learned about April.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Coon yelled. “The subject fired up the cell phone a half hour ago. Are you telling me your daughter didn’t get a call or a text?”
Joe slowed to a stop on the two-track and jammed the pickup into park. He glanced over at Sheridan, who’d heard Coon shouting.
Sheridan shrugged and checked her cell, just in case. “No new texts,” she said, looking at the display, “and I still have a strong signal.”
“I’m sorry,” Joe said. “We’ve heard nothing. Do your contacts say calls are being made?”
“Yes, but we’re not sure which numbers were called. We don’t have that information yet,” Coon said. “The night staff at the phone company isn’t up on the tracing procedure, I’m afraid. But we do know the phone is on and starting to move.”
Joe felt a tremor in his face muscles. So April had been at Savageton all this time? And was just now starting to drive away? He dug beneath his seat for his spotting scope while Coon said, “Yeah, we’re tracking it going south on Highway Fifty, which is the wrong way! They’re supposed to be headed north to I-Ninety, where we’ve got the roadblock set up!”
Without consulting the map, Joe knew 50 would intersect with Wyoming Highway 387, which went southwest to northeast. On that road and several others, it would be possible for Stenko to access the Black Hills without ever putting his tires on the interstate. They’d all guessed wrong. He gave Stenko credit for being unpredictable in his movements.
Sheridan said, “I wonder why she turned her phone on.”
“Hold on a second,” Joe said to Coon and dropped his phone in his lap while he tightened the bracket of the spotting scope to the top of the driver’s side window. He leaned into it, focusing on Savageton.
Savageton consisted of a single green corrugated metal building on a small rise a two hundred yards from Highway 50. The sides of the structure had been battered by snow and wind over the years and the words SAVAGETON LOUNGE AND RESTAURANT could barely be read in the moonlight. The large gravel parking lot where energy trucks and semis parked during the day was empty and lit by four pole lights. He could see fifty-gallon drums that served as garbage barrels and large wooden spools that were used as makeshift outdoor tables. Two abandoned cars sagged on the side of the building. All the interior lights were on, but as Joe focused on them they went off one by one, from the back of the building to the front. Ten seconds later, the front door opened and a single large man came out, turned, and locked the front door. He was alone and obviously closing the place for the night. Joe was sure he couldn’t be Stenko.
“There!” Sheridan said. “I see a car.”
Joe looked to his right. Sheridan was pointing far to the south, where two tiny taillights could be seen for a moment as the vehicle passed between to small hills. As the lights receded from left to right a brushy rise blocked them and they blinked out.
Joe grabbed the cell and put the pickup into gear. “We have a visual,” he said to Coon. “A single vehicle headed south on Highway Fifty.”
“Can you see who’s inside?”
“No.”
“Make or model?”
“Too far,” Joe said. “And I’ve got at least two miles of rough road in front of me before I hit the pavement.”
“Stay on them!” It was Portenson, who had apparently snatched the phone from Coon. “Don’t lose them!”
“Hi, Tony,” Joe said.
“Don’t ‘Hi, Tony’ me!” His voice was rapid-fire and angry. Joe could visualize Portenson standing in the dark on the tarmac with his salt-and-pepper hair flying in the prop wash and his scarred lip pulled back in a grimace. He shouted, “Catch up with Stenko and stay on him until we can get the chopper there or divert law enforcement from I-Ninety your way!”
Joe said, “I’ll do my best.”
But he’d lost the taillights. Sheridan had, too, and looked over with a palms-up gesture.
“We can’t see the vehicle right now,” Joe said.
“You can’t lose him!” Portenson said. “It’s impossible. Christ, there’s only one highway-”
Joe said, “This whole basin is covered with roads, Tony. This is where all the energy development up here is. There are gravel roads everywhere going to oil rigs, wells, gas lines… and plenty of old ranch roads.”
“JUST STAY ON HIM!”
Joe wasn’t sure whether Portenson was yelling because of the increased motor noise from the helicopter or because his internal gaskets were blowing. Either way, Joe closed the phone.
“It’s for his own good,” Joe said to Sheridan.
She giggled as he tossed the phone aside and gripped the wheel with both hands. “Hold on,” he said to Sheridan, and gunned it down the hill.
“WOO-HOO!” she howled, thrilled.
Powder River Basin
BY THE TIME JOE LAUNCHED UP THROUGH A BORROW DITCH onto the stunning calm of the two-lane blacktop, he felt as if his bones had been rattled loose and his internal organs were sloshing around inside of him like loose pickles in a jar. He turned the pickup south on the highway and accelerated. The too-fast push down the butte and across the rutted steppe to the highway had been brutal, although Sheridan had shouted as if she were on a carnival ride.
“I feel like I just got tumble-dried!” Sheridan said, laughing. “That was cool!”
Unfortunately, the rough fast ride had jarred the glove box open and the contents-maps, papers, citation books, spent cartridges, spare handcuffs-had spilled all over the floorboards. As they sped down the highway, wind rushed in through the vents and sent papers flying through the air as if the cab of the vehicle were somehow gravity-free.
Worse: they’d lost sight of Stenko’s car.
The terrain was rolling hills and shallow arroyos, as if the high plains were severely wrinkled. Every time Joe topped a hill, they looked into the distance for red taillights before plunging back down into a low spot. Although there were plenty of static white lights on distant oil wells, there appeared to be no other traffic on the highway.
As they shot past gravel service roads that cut to the right and left of the highway, Joe and Sheridan tried to peer out into the murk for a glimpse of the car. As the minutes went by, Joe knew the odds of finding Stenko’s car were tumbling. There were so many ways for them to get lost at night in terrain like this-taking an unexpected service road, pulling so far ahead that Joe simply couldn’t see a vehicle, or simply pulling off the highway into the shadows of a depression and turning off their lights. If Stenko suspected Joe was chasing him-he could have easily seen Joe’s headlights on top of the rise-he could be making evasive maneuvers.
Joe scanned the night sky for a glimpse of the FBI helicopter and wondered how many minutes away from the Pumpkin Buttes it was…
“I just saw car lights!” Sheridan shouted, her face pressed to the passenger-side window. “Back there-we went right past them.”
Joe slowed and craned around, trying to confirm what she’d seen. They’d shot by at least two gravel exits on the right. Stenko could have taken either of them.
“Where?” Joe asked, slamming the truck into reverse.
“Out there,” Sheridan said, opening her window and waving generally to the west. “I saw taillights way out there, I swear…”
He nearly backed off the highway from going too fast, but he corrected the wheel and stayed on the pavement. Then he saw something on the second access road-an almost imperceptible roll of dust that lit up in the headlamps. He never would have seen the dust as they sped by, but in his brights the settling dust bloomed like a wilting flower in the road.
“They took this one,” he said. “See the dust in the air?”
“Yeah…”
He shut the lights off, and the gravel road vanished into darkness.
“Hey,” she said. “How are we going to follow them in the dark?”
“An old Indian trick,” Joe said while he reached under the dashboard and found the toggle switch for his sneak lights and turned them on. The sneak lights threw an orb of light down from under his front bumper into a pool immediately in front of the pickup. It was enough light to see to drive but because the beams pointed down into the dirt they were difficult to see from a distance. The sneak switch also disabled the taillights and brake lights, so that if he slowed or stopped, there would be no indication from flashing red.
“Hey,” Sheridan said, “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I’ve caught a lot of game violators over the years using these to follow vehicles or sneak up on poachers,” he said. “I’m sure Stenko probably saw us earlier when we were coming down that rough road with the brights on. But he’ll assume we went on down the highway, which is probably why he turned off here.”
“Cool,” she said. “How come you didn’t ever tell me about these spy lights?”
Joe said, “I keep some of my tricks in reserve. There are lots of tricks you don’t know about. You know, in case you ever decide to break any Game and Fish laws and I have to arrest you.”
“Very funny,” she said. “You’d never arrest your own daughter.”
“You know I would,” Joe said.
She sighed, said, “Yeah, I guess you probably would. But Mom would be mad at you.”
He smiled and reached over and squeezed her shoulder. Then he shoved the pickup into drive and turned off the highway onto the unpaved road. The truck vibrated and shook as it had before as his tires ground over egg-sized gravel.
Sheridan said what Joe was thinking: “So what do we do if we catch them on this crappy road?” she asked.
Joe said, “I’m not sure.”
He could feel her staring at him, waiting for a better answer. But she wouldn’t get one. He didn’t dare approach Stenko’s vehicle too aggressively with Sheridan in his pickup and April with Stenko. The chance for a confrontation would be too great and he couldn’t risk their lives. He was sure Sheridan would object so he didn’t even want to discuss it with her.
He said, “We’re going to maintain visual contact,” Joe said. “That’s all for now.”
Sheridan didn’t respond. He glanced over to see her furiously tapping a message on her phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m asking April what’s going on.”
“What if she can’t answer?”
“Then she won’t,” Sheridan said, testy. “But if her phone’s on like that man told us, maybe she’ll get the text from me. She might be able to respond when Stenko or Robert aren’t paying attention.”
“So what are you sending her?” Joe asked.
“I’m asking her if they know we’re back here.”
Joe nodded. “It would be interesting to know that.”
“Yeah, and she can text back with just a ‘Y’ or an ‘N.’ Easy.”
Because the sneak lights drastically cut down on his field of vision, Joe proceeded much slower than he would have preferred. He hoped that if Stenko saw no headlights in his rearview mirror, he’d have no reason to try and outrace him. He might even slow down or pull over to regroup. Joe and Sheridan topped a rise, and Joe saw the taillights ahead in the distance less than a mile away.
“There they are,” he said. He couldn’t judge if Stenko had slowed or not before they plunged down into a hollow.
Halfway up the next incline, Sheridan’s phone lit up and buzzed. Joe felt his stomach clench: April was responding.
Sheridan read the message in silence and lowered the phone to her lap. When Joe looked over for clarification he could see moisture rimming her eyes.
“What did she say?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“She said something bad,” Sheridan said, her mouth twisting into a pucker as if she was about to cry.
“What?”
“She said, ‘Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.’ ”
Joe nearly drove off the road. He didn’t know if he was more shocked by what April had written or the fact that Sheridan repeated it verbatim.
“Maybe somebody took her phone away from her and is using it to answer me,” Sheridan said weakly, turning her head away.
And Joe was instantly enraged at the idea of April-or whoever-talking to his daughter like that and he thought: Things are going to get real Western here in a minute.
IT WAS A CAR CHASE in slow motion: Joe fuming and driving under the duel handicaps of his anger and his sneak lights while the vehicle he was following ground on a half-mile ahead on the rough gravel road. Although they could only see Stenko’s vehicle in short glimpses as they drove on the tops of rolling hills or Stenko did, Joe started to discern that Stenko (or Robert) was driving erratically-racing ahead, sagging back, taking stretches of the road too fast and other stretches with ridiculous caution. He’d also noticed tire tracks meandering off the gravel road to both the right and left before correcting.
His mind raced with scenarios to fit the facts as he knew them. The scenarios made his heart race, and he didn’t want to share them with his daughter. She was smart, though, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was making the same speculations as well.
Was the driver injured or hurt, he wondered? Was there a fight going on inside the car, causing the driver to veer off the road and over-correct? And he thought about that message Sheridan had received and he knew that whoever had sent it-whether it was a suddenly hostile April or someone who’d taken her phone away from her-the situation had changed drastically from what it was. He could only guess where it would lead, and he found it hard to imagine a narrative in which April would be perfectly safe.
He located his cell phone on the seat next to him and handed it to Sheridan and asked her to speed-dial Coon. When she connected she handed it over.
“Where are you guys?” Joe asked. “I’ve been following the subject vehicle for half an hour.”
Joe could hear the roar of the props through the earpiece and he could barely make out Coon’s voice. He heard Coon shouting to Portenson that, “Pickett is still in hot pursuit.”
Then: “Joe, can you hear me?”
“Barely.”
“I’d use the radio, but Agent Portenson thinks Stenko may have a scanner.”
Joe shrugged.
“Anyway, the pilot says we’re ten minutes from Pumpkin Buttes. That’s where the cell phone pings have been coming from. Does that make any sense to you? I don’t know the geography around here.”
Joe nodded. “Yup. I’d be able to see the Buttes in my rearview mirror if the sun was up. Right now, we’re headed east on gravel roads through the oil field. I can’t tell you what road we’re on because I haven’t seen a number or a sign. But if you tell the pilot to head due east/southeast from the middle butte you should soon be over the top of us.”
Joe could hear Coon yelling the directions. While he did, Joe checked the coordinates from his dash-mounted GPS and read those to Coon.
“Okay,” Coon said. “We’ve got you located. We’re on our way.”
“Hey,” Joe said. “Are you tracking my cell phone as well?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Coon asked.
“No,” Joe said, feeling his neck get hot. “You must have forgotten.”
“Don’t say anything inflammatory,” Coon said. “I’ve got you up on speaker.”
“Look,” Joe said, “don’t do anything crazy.”
“Stenko is a dangerous man,” Coon said.
And suddenly Joe visualized the helicopter swooping in over his pickup toward Stenko’s car, guns blazing. Coon and Portenson would love to get Stenko. Capturing or killing a fugitive like Stenko might result in Portenson’s promotion and transfer out of Wyoming, which was what he wanted most.
Joe and Sheridan exchanged glances. She said, “Don’t tell them, Dad.”
He put the phone face down on his thigh to cover the mike. “I might have to,” he said.
She looked away.
To Coon, Joe said, “Promise me you’ll make your presence known to them without any hijinks. Promise me you’ll give them plenty of opportunity to pull over and give themselves up.”
Muffled conversation on the other end. Joe muttered to Sheridan, “I’ve got nothing to bargain with right now. They know our location and Stenko’s location. They can do anything they want and they know it.”
Coon came back, said, “I give you my word.”
Joe said, “What about Portenson?”
“He gives you his word, too.”
Said Joe, “He did that once before. When he broke it he told me, ‘Never trust a fed.’ Put him on. I want to hear it for myself.”
After a beat, Portenson said, “Damn it, Joe. We want Stenko alive and kicking. We need his testimony.”
Joe felt a wave of relief, said, “Okay, then.”
Suddenly, the cab of his truck exploded in white light as the helicopter bathed it with their halogen spotlights. They came swooping down with a roar. Sheridan covered her eyes with her hands and Joe squinted in order to see.
Just as quickly, the spotlights shot ahead up the two-track and found the fleeing vehicle, lighting it up as if it were daylight. Stenko was driving a battered silver SUV with Wyoming plates. Joe could see the silhouettes of two heads in the vehicle, one dark-haired and one light-haired, the dark-haired one driving.
Two people, not three, Joe thought. Who was missing or hiding? Robert?
“Is that April?” Sheridan shouted over the roar of the helicopter.
“Don’t know,” Joe yelled back, as the SUV took a sharp right off the road and bounced through untracked sagebrush. The spotlights lost it for a moment but found it again as the helicopter hovered overhead.
Portenson’s sharp voice filled the night: “You in the SUV… this is the FBI. You need to pull that vehicle over right now and come out with your hands in the air. I repeat, this is the FBI and you need to stop the vehicle immediately and get out.”
Joe felt himself gasp as he saw something come out of the driver’s side window-an arm, a hand, a gun in the hand…
Three heavy concussions from the handgun and three orange fireballs into the sky. The helicopter banked sharply to the left and roared away, the spotlights crazily strobing the distant hillsides. The SUV plummeted into darkness as the aircraft fled.
“Oh no,” Joe said. “I don’t know if the helicopter got hit but Stenko’s trying to get himself killed!”
“And April,” Sheridan cried.
The shots had been wild, Joe knew. The driver couldn’t have aimed so much as stuck the gun out the window and fired. Still, it was provocation enough for the FBI to return fire.
Joe turned off the gravel road into the brush. The tires heaved over sagebrush and Sheridan was tossed around inside, her arms flying. He thought if he could cut the corner and head off the SUV, Stenko might think he was surrounded and give up.
The chopper did a long arc through the sky and came back. In seconds it was once again back over the top of them, this time without the spotlights. Instead, Joe could see what looked like two red eyes like fireflies dancing on top of the SUV. He recognized them as laser sights that were likely mounted on automatic weapons. The FBI could open up any second and cut the SUV-and everyone in it-into pieces.
Panicked, Joe grabbed his cell-which was still connected to Coon and the speaker inside the copter-and shouted, “They’ve got a hostage in the vehicle… a minor.”
Silence. Joe knew what he’d done. Sheridan glared at him. Whether April was actually a hostage or was along for the ride could be sorted out later, he thought.
“A hostage? Who is the minor?” Coon asked, after no doubt being fed the question from Portenson. Joe noted that only one red eye remained on the top of the SUV. He guessed Coon had lowered his weapon while he questioned Joe. Which meant Portenson had not.
“Our foster daughter, April Keeley,” Joe said in a rush of words. “She’s the one who’s been texting my daughter.” In his peripheral vision he could see Sheridan slump into the door.
“Impossible!” Portenson shouted, once again apparently wresting the phone away from Coon. As he did, the second laser eye blinked out on the top of the SUV. “Is this your idea of a joke? Is this aimed at me because I was there when she died, Pickett? Are you trying to say she’s alive and with David Stenson? Come on… I was there.”
“I know you were,” Joe said. “But she claims to be with Stenko. Which is why you can’t attack that vehicle until we figure this out. Do you understand? If you do, the only way you’ll ever get out of Wyoming is as a civilian because you completely botched this thing and got a teenage girl killed. And worse, you’ll never see the end of me.”
Portenson sputtered something.
“I’m not kidding,” Joe said. “Leave that vehicle alone until we can get a visual in the light and see for sure who is in it. We need to make them give it up without a fight so April can get away.”
He tossed the phone aside. The helicopter spotlights came back on and lit up the SUV.
To Sheridan, he said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of any other way.”
That’s when the passenger door of the SUV opened and a female flew out into the dirt, arms out and hands clawing the air, blond hair flying like flames behind her in the harsh beams.
“DID YOU SEE THAT?” Coon shouted to Joe.
“Yup. I’ve got her,” Joe said.
“Pick her up and we’ll stay with the vehicle,” Coon said.
Sheridan shouted, “Oh, no! I hope she’s okay!”
Joe slowed down, hit his high beams, and cut the sneak lights. The scrub brush obscured where she’d landed. She’d not gotten up. Sheridan unbuckled her seat belt and shinnied halfway out of her open window, shouting, “April! It’s me, Sheridan! Are you okay? April!”
Joe heard the pop-pop-pop of additional shots up ahead as Stenko or Robert fired wildly again at the helicopter, but he didn’t look up. April was somewhere in the brush, possibly hurt, possibly dead.
The automatic weapons in the helicopter opened up and the sound was like twin buzz saws. Joe looked up to see angry streams of tracers pouring from the chopper into the SUV, raking it from hood to tailgate. Windows exploded and pellets of glass cascaded like droplets from a splash in a lake. The SUV lurched forward until one of the wheels dropped into a badger hole, where it stopped abruptly and rocked. Plumes of radiator fluid rose from the undercarriage. The helicopter hovered, looking for signs of life, before slowly descending and kicking up dust.
“Dad!” Sheridan shouted, pointing to a thin figure rising from the brush like a specter. Joe braked and swung his hand spotlight in the direction Sheridan was pointing.
The woman was thin with scraggly blond hair, hollow cheeks, and haunted eyes. She wore an open flannel shirt that hung from her skeletal frame over a stained white tank top. She held her hands up and grimaced. Her open mouth revealed missing teeth. Even at that distance Joe knew a meth addict when he saw one. Sheridan slid back into the cab. Disappointed and confused, she said, “Who is she?” Then: “Oh my God, Dad, was April in the car?”
“I don’t think so,” Joe said, watching the skids of the chopper kiss the top of brush as it settled to earth. “I think April’s long gone.”
“Then what’s going on? Why did those men in the helicopter say it was April’s phone?”
Joe said, “Because it probably is.”
ACCORDING TO A DRIVER’S LICENSE FOUND IN HIS BLOODY hip pocket, the body in the SUV belonged to one Francis “Bo” Skelton, thirty-four, of Moorcroft, Wyoming. A call via SALECS to dispatch in Cheyenne revealed Skelton had a significant rap sheet including multiple arrests for possession of methamphetamine, marijuana, and crack cocaine as well as one arrest for B &E that was withdrawn by the Crook County prosecutor when Skelton agreed to cooperate with authorities. Local law enforcement, who had been waiting in vain at the I-90 roadblock, knew Skelton as a rounder and informant who was working with a joint local/state task force to infiltrate methamphetamine traffic in northeastern Wyoming. When not doing drugs or informing, Skelton ran parts for oil well and gas supply companies based in Gillette.
The girlfriend of the deceased, Cyndi Rae Mote, thirty-eight, sat on Joe’s pickup tailgate with a blanket wrapped around her to ward off the predawn chill. It didn’t help much because the few teeth she had still chattered. She told Joe she’d ridden to the Savageton Bar that evening and they stayed until last call. As they left the bar she said the “alcohol caught up with her” and she staggered to a garbage barrel in the parking lot to throw up. The effort knocked her over and she was scrambling on all fours to get back on her feet when she found the cell phone in a stand of weeds.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “It looked like a perfectly good phone. I was gonna turn it in to Badger in case someone wanted to claim it…”
Joe said, “Badger?”
“The manager. He’s the bartender, too.”
Joe scribbled the name into his notebook, even though he had his mini-cassette tape recorder running in his breast pocket for backup. “Do you have a last name?”
“Mote,” she said, spelling it: “M-O-T-E.”
“Not yours,” Joe said patiently. “Badger’s.”
“Oh. No, I guess not.”
Joe thought, Badger should be easy to find. He glanced up to locate Agents Portenson and Coon, to see if he should call them in to participate in his interview with Cyndi Mote. He found them both where he expected them to be. Coon was circling the SUV with his flashlight, looking at the damage he’d helped inflict. Joe thought, When Coon was talking to Joe the evening before from his kitchen table with his son chattering at him, neither one of them could have imagined how the night would end. Joe felt bad for Coon. He knew Coon to be tightly wound but professional, basically good-hearted and honest. He doubted Coon had ever drawn his service weapon before, much less brandished an AR-15 with laser sights. Joe could only imagine what was going through his mind now that they’d confirmed that the entire incident, which resulted in a dead body, was all predicated on an error.
Meanwhile, Portenson was in the bubble of the helicopter making and taking calls. In a situation like this, Joe thought, raw priorities were revealed without pretense. While Coon was pensive, reflecting on what he’d done, Portenson was reaching out to people who could help bolster his case and save his job. Joe looked back to Cyndi Mote, assessing her. “Go ahead,” he said.
She said, “Anyway, I was gonna turn it in but Bo looked at it and said it was one of those cheap-ass phones like the ones you get at Wal-Mart. He said somebody probably used it up and threw it away.
“He was right. When I turned it on the battery light was flashing,” she said, “but I figured I’d get as many calls out of it as I could before it died.”
Her version confirmed Coon’s claim that the phone was being used to make other calls. It also explained the Wyoming area code and why the FBI hadn’t instantly tracked down the phone number to a specific user. April had been using a TracFone that could be purchased anywhere, loaded with minutes from a calling card, and used like any phone. It was a favorite among those who didn’t want or like long-term phone contracts, monthly bills, or the bells and whistles that came with more expensive phones. It was also the phone of choice among dealers and gangsters and others who didn’t want to be pinned down or tracked, and it came with a kind of temporary anonymity since the number assigned to the phone wasn’t assigned to a person but to the phone itself. But why had she thrown it away instead of recharging it or ordering more minutes? It didn’t make sense. Joe asked, “Who’d you call?”
She grimaced again. Her lips peeled back and her eyes narrowed into slits. Joe realized it was actually her smile.
“I called every ex-boyfriend whose phone number I could remember and told them they were full of shit,” she said, grinning/ grimacing.
“Do you still have the phone?” Joe asked, thinking they better check the call log to make sure it was the same phone April had used.
“I don’t know where it is,” Cyndi said, chewing on her nails. Joe saw that her nails were gnawed to the nub and bleeding. “It’s probably somewhere in Bo’s pickup. It’s probably shot up all to hell, like poor Bo.”
Joe said, “Why did Bo stick his gun out the window and start firing at the helicopter? Couldn’t he hear them ordering him to pull over? If he had, none of this would have happened.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes as if to say, Boys will be boys. “I couldn’t hear them neither,” she said. “We kind of had the music up loud. Like full freakin’ blast. We were just relaxing, you know? Driving down some roads Bo knew from work. All of a sudden the sky was full of light from that damned helicopter and all hell broke loose.
“I still can’t believe Bo started shooting,” Cyndi told Joe. “I knew he had a gun in the truck. I mean, who doesn’t around here? But when that helicopter showed up out of nowhere, Bo went postal and started screaming and shooting.”
She pulled her blanket tight and leaned forward, lowering her voice as if to tell Joe a secret. He bent toward her. The smell of cigarette smoke and souring alcohol was overwhelming. “See, he’s officially helping the cops on some cases and he’s not supposed to be messing with alcohol or drugs anymore. That’s his part of the deal. And he’s not supposed to have a gun. But when that helicopter showed up, he just lost it. He didn’t want to get caught, I guess. I told him to stop but he pointed his gun at me and told me shut up.” She said the last part indignantly, and Joe nodded.
“Back to the bar,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Who else was there? Anyone you didn’t know?”
She shook her head, “Just energy guys. You know, hardworking Americans providing power for the rest of the country so they can all look down on us with their lights on. Oil guys, coal miners, gas guys. Some juggies and some surveyors loading up before they had to go home. Badger was there, of course.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, scribbling, encouraging her to keep talking. A surprising number of witnesses loved to have their words inscribed, he’d found over the years. It made them feel important that their words mattered to someone. It was the same impulse some people had to immediately commence talking whenever a television camera was around.
“What I’m wondering,” Joe said, “was if there was anyone in the bar you didn’t recognize? Or maybe they just didn’t fit?”
She gnawed on her fingers and looked up at the sky and closed her eyes. “Thinking,” she said aloud. Then she snapped her fingers. “There were two guys sitting in back by themselves,” she said. “I remember them now. One older guy and one handsome dude, but in an Eastern, kind of faggy bark-beetle way…”
Joe interrupted. “What do you mean by that? Did he look homosexual?”
She laughed huskily and shook her head. “No, worse. He looked like an environmentalist. I can spot ’em a mile away. You know how some people have ‘gay-dar’ when it comes to picking out gay people? Bo said I had ‘Gore-dar,’ the ability to pick out whacko enviros. You know, after Al Gore.”
“Got it,” Joe said, suppressing a sigh.
“Anyway, they sat a back table keeping to themselves. I think they were arguing about something. Badger kept delivering them drinks. I noted they shut up every time he took drinks over to them, like they didn’t want him to hear what they were talking about. That was unusual because everybody around here knows everyone else’s business. Well, they acted like they were having a big important discussion. The good-looking enviro had a laptop out, and he kept pointing at the screen to the old guy.”
Joe paused. “Can you describe them a little better? I don’t have Gore-dar.”
She giggled. “Sure. The old guy was big-he had a big head and a big face. Dark hair, mustache. Mid- to late sixties, I guess. He was dressed pretty well in that he wasn’t wearing Wranglers. Definitely not from around here. He had nice eyes-I remember that. Maybe six foot or a little over. Maybe, I don’t know, two hundred and fifty pounds? The one with the laptop had wavy brown hair and his shirt was open too much for around here. Like I said, handsome in a faggy way.”
Joe thought, Stenko and Robert.
“Was anyone with them?” he asked.
“Not that I can remember.”
“A teenage girl, maybe?”
She barked a laugh. “Believe me, mister, if there was a teenage girl in that joint, I woulda known about her! I was the only female in the place!”
Joe nodded. “You mentioned you went outside a couple of times. Did you see anyone in any cars?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t look,” she said. “I was, you know, getting high.”
He paused, thinking what to ask.
Then she said, “Hey, I remember something. Bo came back in once. He’d gone outside to piss. He likes-liked-to piss outside rather than inside. One of his quirks. Anyway, he sat down by me and said there was an underage girl out there in one of the cars who saw him pissing. He said she was kinda cute. I smacked him. I thought he was shitting me about seeing a girl. You know, hallucinating. Are you saying he wasn’t?”
PORTENSON MADE CALL after call with a satellite phone. He was lit by the green glow of the instrument panel. He looked distressed and angry. The pilot sat silently next to him but made it a point to look away as if he found something out in the dark sagebrush worth careful study. The pilot wore sunglasses and headphones. Joe guessed he’d wear a grocery bag on his head if one were available.
Coon stood for a long time looking at the body of Bo Skelton behind the wheel of the pickup and cursing. Joe asked Coon to watch his language in deference to Sheridan, who leaned against the grille of Joe’s pickup with her arms crossed. Her cell phone, as always, was in her hand. Joe felt the need every ten minutes or so to approach her and give her a hug or a squeeze until she finally asked him to relax. She insisted she was okay, that the events of the night hadn’t traumatized her in any way.
“Don’t go near that SUV,” Joe cautioned. He’d caught a glimpse of Skelton’s body earlier. Machine-gun fire had practically gutted him and there were two bullet holes neatly spaced in his forehead like another set of eyes. Joe was thankful it had been a long time since he’d eaten anything or he likely would have lost it, like Coon had.
“I’ll stay where I am,” she said. “Should I call Mom and let her know we’re okay?”
“Yes, please.”
THERE WAS A THUMP on the inside of the Plexiglas bubble as Portenson smacked it with the heel of his hand. Joe looked up from where he was with Sheridan. Portenson was obviously furious and sharing his frustrations with the pilot, who listened without removing his sunglasses or headphones.
The FBI supervisor opened the hatch and climbed out. Joe said to Sheridan, “Hope he doesn’t scorch your ears.”
Sheridan said, “You are so protective.”
Portenson paced and spoke as much to himself as to Coon in the distance. “We have to stay right here and wait. So forget trying to find Stenko for the time being. The powers that be are sending up an incident team from Denver, and our orders are to stay right here and not touch anything. Like we’re a couple of suspects. Touch nothing! Hear that?”
Coon grunted in the dark.
“I think this was a righteous shoot,” Portenson said. “I think we did everything by the book. Why that son of a bitch started firing at us, I’ll never know. What the hell was wrong with him? Did he have a death wish or something?”
From the tailgate of Joe’s pickup, Cyndi Mote said, “Bo was paranoid. But you didn’t need to kill him for that.”
Joe said, “I’ll testify to what I saw. You guys handled everything the best you could. You had no reason to believe it wasn’t Stenko. And Skelton did shoot first.”
Portenson looked at Joe as if he’d forgotten he was there. The FBI agent sized him up, waiting for another shoe to drop. It didn’t.
“Your action was justified,” Joe said.
“I appreciate you saying you’d be willing to tell them what you saw and heard.”
Joe said, “Yup.”
“Because I know if you wanted to, you could hang me out to dry.”
Joe said, “I could and maybe I should. But I saw what I saw.” He put his hand on Sheridan’s shoulder. “We saw what we saw.”
Portenson looked almost embarrassed. “Thank you, Joe.”
TO THE EAST THE SKY took on a rosy cream color as dawn approached. Several Highway Patrol vehicles had found them and the troopers helped set up a perimeter. From whom, Joe wasn’t certain. Local police from Gillette, Moorcroft, and Hulett drove out to look at the pickup, Skelton’s body, and to count the bullet holes in the top of the SUV and whistle. Everyone waited for the FBI incident team to find them and clear the scene.
Coon wandered over and joined Joe and Sheridan leaning against Joe’s pickup. He looked ten years older than when Joe had seen him the afternoon before.
“You okay?” Joe asked.
“What do you think?”
Joe didn’t respond.
“Man, oh man,” Coon said. “Why did that idiot shoot at us?”
Joe said, “Meth. We’re drowning in it in rural Wyoming. Everyplace is.”
Coon pushed himself up and away from the pickup. “I nearly forgot. There’s something I need you two to look at. Come on, follow me.”
“Me, too?” Sheridan asked.
Coon said, “Especially you.”
COON OPENED THE passenger hatch of the helicopter and dug out his briefcase from under a seat. He unlatched it to reveal thick files and a sturdy government laptop. As he booted up the computer, he said, “I barely got a chance to see this before we took off. I downloaded it from the Carbon County sheriff’s department. From Rawlins, to be exact.”
“What happened in Rawlins?” Joe asked.
“A pharmacy got robbed and the pharmacist was killed in the robbery. We’re not sure what the bad guys took, but we’re guessing it was cash and drugs. The sheriff’s office is doing an inventory. The store had a closed-circuit camera, and they recovered the digital file. The quality’s not so good and the angle kind of sucks, but you can see the crime going down. The sheriff sent it to us to see if we could help identify the assailants.”
Joe and Sheridan exchanged looks, thinking: “na. but he hurt some man 2day in a drug store.”
The static image was in black-and-white and it showed four empty aisles stocked with packaging.
“From what I understand,” Coon said, “the camera is mounted on the ceiling behind the pharmacy counter. The view is basically what the pharmacist sees when he looks out into the store. As you can see, the store’s deserted.”
Joe felt Sheridan’s hand find his. He didn’t look down to draw Coon’s attention away.
“Okay, here,” Coon said, pointing at the screen, which showed a tall man with thick wavy hair entering the store and milling in the aisles. The man looked to be in his early to mid-thirties. Despite the poor quality of the transmission, Joe could see the man was fairly good-looking, with a prominent jaw and straight nose. He looked to Joe like an actor or an anchorman. The man was studying everything on the shelves with great interest, which struck Joe as discordant. No one was that interested in every single item on the shelves. His behavior was suspicious. Although there was no audio, it was obvious that someone-no doubt the pharmacist, who was out of view-asked the man a question because the man looked up with wide eyes and mouthed, “No.”
Then the man turned and walked swiftly down the aisle and back out the door. The exchange between the pharmacist and the shopper was brief and odd, Joe thought. He said, “We ought to have Cyndi take a look at this. She might recognize that guy. My guess is he’s Robert.”
Coon nodded and reached for the laptop. “Okay, we will in a minute. But we’re pretty sure it’s Robert Stenson. The bureau has a few photos of him and we’ve got agents looking for more. But just a second while I advance this. See if you recognize someone else…”
Joe felt Sheridan squeeze his hand.
The door in the store opened again and a second figure came in wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up and cinched tight. There was enough shape to the profile to determine it was a thin female. A strand of light hair crept out from the hood, but because she kept her head down, her face couldn’t be seen.
Joe watched transfixed as the girl dropped items into a shopping basket.
“She looks like she’s really shopping,” Joe said. “She’s picking things out. It doesn’t look random.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Coon said. “Do you recognize her?”
“Not yet. I can’t see her face.”
“Sheridan?” Coon asked.
“She could be somebody,” Sheridan said. “But I can’t tell for sure yet.”
Said Coon, “Keep watching.”
The girl went from one aisle to the next, dropping more items in the shopping basket. One package was large, flat, and square, the kind of packaging used for electronics.
Joe said, “I think that’s a TracFone.”
Coon stopped the tape and tried to zoom in on the package in the girl’s hand. He couldn’t get the controls to work. “We need to examine this on our hardware in Cheyenne,” he said. “I don’t know how to look closer. But if she’s got a new phone, everything we’ve got goes out the window. We can’t find her again unless she calls or sends a text to your daughter.”
Joe grunted. Sheridan looked at her cell phone as if willing it to ring.
Coon gave up trying to zoom in on the package and let the tape roll. The girl got closer to the camera, to the counter. She flinched and Joe guessed the pharmacist had addressed her. She turned, and for a second she raised her head and he could get a glimpse of half of her face. The other half was still hidden in the hood.
What he could see: her face was angular, smooth, pale, and there was a slightly Oriental cast to her eye, which was widened in alarm.
He couldn’t be sure.
Joe said to Sheridan, “Is that her?”
“I can’t tell,” Sheridan said quickly.
“Want to look again?” Coon asked. “It’s the best shot we’ve got of her face on here.”
Joe asked why. Coon said, “Watch.”
Two things happened at once on the tape. A white-sleeved arm reached out from the bottom of the frame and grasped the girl by the arm and pulled her closer. Unfortunately, it was too close to the camera for the lens to focus. All that could be seen was the top of her hood, which was dark and blurred. She appeared to be struggling. At the same time in the background, Robert threw open the door and strode toward the camera. His face was a snarling mask. He bent into the girl and out of view and emerged a second later with a gun in his fist. He pointed it below the eye of the camera and it bucked three times.
Sheridan gasped, “Did he shoot her?”
“No,” Coon said, “he shot the pharmacist. Killed him. And if you want to wait for a minute here, I’ll advance the tape to where you can see Robert and the girl leaving the store with the shopping basket and some rather large pill bottles. But their backs are turned to the camera, so we can’t see their faces.”
Joe realized that Sheridan was squeezing his hand so hard his fingers ached. He asked Coon to rerun the glimpse of her face again. They watched it over and over. He wanted to recognize April, but he was overwhelmed with the dark feeling that he couldn’t remember her face except in abstract: a ghost at a trailer house window. He wished Marybeth were there to give her opinion.
Was it her? She’d certainly look different six years older. But was it her?
“I just don’t know,” Sheridan finally said. “It could be. But it might not be.”
Coon sighed heavily, shook his head. “We can get that one shot blown up and printed. Maybe then?”
Sheridan shrugged.
“Man, I was hoping for better,” he said.
Joe agreed. It bothered him immensely that April had been an eyewitness to Robert shooting the pharmacist to death. No matter what her role was, there was no reason for her to have to see that. She was fourteen. He despised Robert for what he’d done. Then: “What about April’s cell phone? Cyndi said she left it in Skelton’s truck. Let’s see if it’s the right phone.”
Coon didn’t move.
“What?” Joe asked.
The FBI agent shook his head. “It got a direct hit. Maybe two. The pieces are there, but I don’t know if we can put them together to get anything out of it.”
Joe said, “I’m sure there’s a computer chip or something with the call log on it. Can’t you guys find that and analyze it? Isn’t that what you do?”
Coon nodded. “It may take a while.”
“I’d suggest you speed it up.”
Coon looked over at the SUV and his shoulders slumped. “If I’m not suspended.”
THE FBI INCIDENT TEAM arrived in two helicopters an hour after dawn. Eight men in suits and ties and sunglasses, so crisply and icily efficient that they’d cordoned off the SUV and separated the witnesses within minutes of landing. After Joe gave his statement, he declared himself free to go and was surprised there was no argument from the sandy-haired special agent who’d interviewed him. He was in his pickup with Sheridan and pointed back toward Savageton before someone else decided they needed him again.
In his rearview mirror, he watched as Cyndi gesticulated for three stone-faced men, giving her version of events.
Sheridan was already sleeping hard, her head tilted back on the headrest. Joe reached over and gently lowered her to the bench seat and pulled his jacket over her.
As he drove out of the basin, he scanned the landscape. Oil wells, gas lines, survey stakes, metal signs adorned with the company logos of international energy conglomerates. He was exhausted and there was too much swirling in his head to make sense out of anything. But as he beheld the magnitude of the basin, the multimillion-dollar efforts being undertaken to extract fossil fuel from beneath the earth’s crust in this particular place, he thought about energy, about power, about Cyndi’s statement in regard to being looked down upon by people with their lights on.
He thought about the size of the carbon footprints in the basin from all that activity. Then something hit him.
What had April written when Sheridan asked her why she was in Aspen? “Wedding & footprints.”
Joe thumped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
HOURS LATER, Sheridan moaned and woke up. “Where are we?” she asked. “I don’t recognize this.”
Joe said, “Ever hear of a place called Hole in the Wall? This is it.”
“Why are we here?”
“We’re gonna need some help, I think.”
She nodded, and realization crossed her face. “Nate. Where you brought the eagle.”
“Yup.”
“This is where he is?”
“Not far from here. We’ll need to do some hiking. Are you up for that?”
“Sure. What time is it?”
“Almost ten.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Where’s April?”
Bear Lodge Mountains, Wyoming
SHE OPENED HER EYES AND TRIED TO REMEMBER WHERE she was. It was late dawn. They were parked off the road, hidden in a thick knot of pine trees on the side of a hill. It was cool and still in the dark rolling hills, but above in the big azure sky there was a lot going on, she thought, the way those clouds scudded across from horizon to horizon like traffic on a highway, like they were being called in for emergency duty somewhere else. Up there, things were happening.
On the ground they were, too. Or soon would be. She just wasn’t sure about the details. Something about a ranch, a man named Leo, and the Talich Brothers. And about all that money.
THE NIGHT BEFORE, outside the bar, she’d decided to text Sheridan again and ask her to come and get her after all. The horrible incident in the drugstore haunted her. Up until that moment she’d assumed Stenko was in charge, that he’d protect her as he promised he would and give her the money he’d offered. And she still believed that was Stenko’s intention. But when she saw that look on Robert’s face as he aimed the gun at the pharmacist and pulled the trigger, she realized Robert had changed in front of her eyes. He was taking control as he hadn’t before. She could see he was capable of anything, and Robert seemed to realize that as well. What had changed him so quickly? It was obvious: all that money Stenko had. That’s what did it. Robert had a mission. And she needed to get away from him.
As she turned her phone on and waited for it to get a signal, she realized someone was standing outside the car in the parking lot watching her. For a moment she was terrified. Robert? If so, she didn’t know what she’d say, how she’d get out of it. Maybe she’d just start running away in the dark. But Robert was fit. He’d catch her.
But it wasn’t Robert. It was some drunk who’d come outside. He’d grinned at her while he urinated, and she was both disgusted and scared. But he’d seen her using the phone-she was sure of it. What if he went back inside and told Robert and Stenko? So once the drunk was gone, she pitched the phone toward the garbage barrels. It was nearly out of power, anyway, and she had a fresh one still in the package from the drugstore. Robert hadn’t even looked in the basket. So if Stenko or Robert came out and asked her about a phone, she could honestly say she didn’t have one on her. If Robert wanted to search her, she’d let him. And the new TracFone would stay in the package until she had some privacy and could activate it and text Sheridan.
ROBERT HAD TAKEN THE KEYS from Stenko once they’d finally come out of the bar at Savageton. She was worried about him driving drunk, but since Stenko was no better-in fact, he was sleeping- there was no choice. She kept quiet and pretended to sleep. It took two or three hours to get to where they were. Once the smooth road turned into dirt, Stenko awoke and gave Robert directions. She could smell the pine in the air. It had the same smell as that campground where Stenko shot the old couple, and that brought back bad memories. It was like they’d gone full circle and returned to the scene of the crime.
She’d slept fitfully in the back seat. Stenko had slept on the front seat and his wracking snores often woke them both up. Robert had gone off into the trees with a sleeping bag and a bottle of whiskey. She’d watched him try to start a fire, but he had no talent in that regard and had given up and angrily kicked the pile of wood away.
WHEN THE SUN CAME UP, she realized how hungry she was. They hadn’t eaten dinner the night before and now they were in the middle of nowhere. She wished she had grabbed snacks at the drugstore and had some in the basket with her TracFone. Her stomach growled so loudly Stenko stirred and grunted in the front seat. In a few seconds his hand, like a bear paw, flopped over the back of the front seat and he gripped the headrest to pull himself up into a sitting position. His hair was askew and his eyes were red.
“Makers Mark and morphine doesn’t mix well,” he croaked. “How you doing?”
“I’m hungry.”
He nodded. “Yeah, me too. And we don’t have anything in the car. We’ll have to try and get some breakfast at the ranch.”
She said, “What ranch?”
Stenko chinned toward the hill that rose behind him. “Over the top,” he said. “My money bought it.”
“Why don’t we go there now? I need a shower and a bathroom. I’m not used to sleeping in cars.”
“We’ll go soon enough. I need to scout it out first.”
“For what?”
“For my old friend Leo. Leo was my accountant. Still is, as far as I’m concerned. Leo knows where all my money is.”
She nodded. She could tell he wanted to say more.
“You know, April, I’ve learned a lot of important things in my life. It takes a while. When you’re young, you think you’re the only person to take this journey and you’re going to do it better, smarter, and more thoughtfully than all the people who came before you. But as you get older, you start to gain wisdom. Wisdom is a lost commodity. And here’s some wisdom in the form of a riddle: Who rules the world?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who really rules the world? Do you think it’s politicians? Lawyers? Presidents of the bank?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I never thought about it. All I know is it isn’t kids.”
He laughed. “Maybe this world would be a better place if you did. But no, April, it’s the accountants. Accountants rule the world. They can steal more with a pencil or a few clicks of a keyboard than a bank robber can with a gun or a politician can with a telephone. If the accountant is working for you and on your side, he can make you rich. But if he has his own dreams, well, he can secretly buy a ranch in Podunk, Wyoming, and live out his fantasy. He can be what he always wanted to be all those years in Chicago: a cowboy.”
With that, he rolled his eyes.
They both watched as Robert awoke in his sleeping bag. He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair and stretched.
Stenko said, “You know, I’ve really come to admire Robert. He’s still young enough to think he can change the world. He still has passion-maybe too much. I want to enable that passion before I go. That’s what this is all about.”
“He shot that man in the drugstore,” she said.
Stenko nodded. “He did it for me. So I could keep going.”
So he could get the money, she thought.
SHE FOLLOWED STENKO and Robert as they hiked up the hill. Robert had the gun in his belt. A pair of binoculars dangled around his neck from a strap. Stenko’s breath was labored from the climb, and he had to stop several times to steady himself against the trunk of a tree and rest.
When they reached the top, Stenko dropped to his knees, and for a moment she thought he’d collapsed. She reached out for him but Robert slapped her hands away. “Leave him alone-he’s fine,” Robert said. “Get down. We’re crawling the rest of the way. We don’t want them to see us.”
She was angry with Robert for treating her that way, but she kept her mouth shut. She’d remember it, though.
The three of them wriggled through the dirt and over rocks until they reached the top. A lush wooded valley opened up before them.
“Wow,” she said, pointing to a massive rock column in the distance. “What’s that?”
“Devils Tower,” Stenko whispered.
The column stood high above the forest like a primitive skyscraper. It was cylindrical with a flat top, and the sides were fluted.
She said, “I saw it in a movie once.”
Robert said, “Yeah-Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That’s where the aliens landed.”
Stenko said, “The legend is better than the movie, though. See, the Indians say there were seven sisters and a giant bear came after them. The bear was a bastard and had caused all kinds of trouble with the tribe. Well, this bear cornered the sisters and planned to kill and eat them, but they prayed to the Great Spirit, and as the bear got close, the earth started to rise. The sisters were on top as the column went up higher and higher into the sky. The bear got mad and still tried to get at them by trying to climb the tower. Those are supposedly his claw marks on the side. But he couldn’t get them.”
She asked, “How did they get down?”
Stenko turned to her. “They didn’t. They went to the Great Spirit and turned into stars. Have you ever seen the seven sisters in the sky?”
“No.”
“Me either,” Stenko said. “But it’s a good story. And you know how I know it?” he asked Robert. Before Robert could respond, Stenko said, “That damned Leo told me. This was eight, nine years ago. See, he wanted to buy a ranch out here that had a view of Devils Tower. He said land was always a good investment, and we had too much money tied up in the islands and in Indian casinos. He said we should consider something way out here as a quiet investment. He called it a ‘retreat,’ as if I’d ever retreated from anything. Apparently, Al Capone had a ranch out here in the Black Hills back in the thirties. So Leo made this pitch to me and when I asked him what the hell Devils Tower was he told me that crazy story. I don’t know why I remember it, but I’m glad I did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have figured out where this place is.”
Robert was focusing the binoculars down on the valley floor. She tried to see what he was looking at and for the first time noticed a light square of flat green as well as a red roof partially hidden by trees.
“Tennis court,” Robert said, “and I see a couple of guys playing tennis. Unbelievable.”
Stenko took the glasses. He snorted, “Nathanial and Corey Talich. And there’s Chase standing off to the side like he’s the referee. Damn! We’ve found it.”
He swept the binoculars over the grounds of the ranch. “I don’t see Leo, though. He must be in the house.”
Robert said, “So how do we get through those guys to get to Leo?”
Stenko said, “We don’t get through them, son. We recruit ’em.”
Robert just stared at Stenko, shaking his head slowly as if witnessing the sad last act of a madman.
THEY TOOK THE CAR down into the valley. Stenko directed Robert to drive right by the ranch entrance that led to the front of the sprawling old Victorian home with the red roof. He told him to turn on a service road that led to the rear of the property where the tennis court was located. They saw no one.
“You’re sure you want to do it this way?” Robert asked Stenko.
“I don’t see that we have a choice,” Stenko said. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned. When that happens, you either run away or bull straight ahead. I always bull straight ahead.”
“Any last words?” Robert asked with sarcasm.
“Yes,” Stenko said. “Where’s my morphine? I need another shot.”
“I’LL STAY BACK AND COVER YOU,” Robert said as he pulled off the road and parked. “You know them. I don’t. They’d probably just as soon shoot me as look at me.”
Stenko chuckled but didn’t refute Robert. To her he said, “Do you want to go with me or stay here with Robert?”
It was an easy choice. Despite the danger, there was no doubt in her mind that she’d choose Stenko every time. Shooting an unarmed pharmacist in a white smock was one thing. Facing three tough men from Chicago was another. If things got rough, she was sure Robert would run. If it weren’t for the possibility of getting the money, she thought he would have run already.
Robert dropped behind them as they walked into the trees toward the tennis court.
She asked, “What are they like?”
Stenko said, “The Talich Brothers worked for me for years. They’re loyal if not imaginative. I always got along with them, but I didn’t try to get too familiar. I just paid them well and that was enough.”
She said, “But they’re gangsters, right? I didn’t know gangsters played tennis. It’s just not right.”
Stenko chuckled and patted her on the shoulder. She was familiar enough with him now to know the morphine was surging through him, cheering him up, making him feel strong. He said, “Gangsters do all sorts of normal things, April. We’re just businessmen with a different kind of business. We marry, we have kids, and we paint the trim on our houses. We put snow tires on the car and go to PTA meetings. At least most of us do. My theory is we’re all the same-the gangsters and the citizens-except maybe for one or two percent of our personalities. That one or two percent isn’t much difference when you think about it. Of course, the really bad ones, the psychopaths who can’t control themselves, well, with a few exceptions they don’t last long.
“Besides,” Stenko said, “what else are these guys going to do but play tennis? They’re from the city. Are they going ride broncs or something? Rope doggies? Sing around a campfire? At least they know tennis.”
In the distance she heard the thwack of a tennis racket hitting a ball. Instead of another thwack she heard a man curse, “Shit!” and she imagined him missing it.
“There are three of them,” Stenko said, lowering his voice. “Corey’s the oldest. He has blond hair and he’s the best looking of the bunch. He’s smooth and does all the talking, usually. Chase is the middle brother, the one with black hair. Chase never smiles. Hardly talks, either. Chase is the one we send out to collect overdue loans because all he has to do is look at you with those black eyes and you start sweating bullets and reaching for your wallet. It’s a gift he’s got. On the rare occasion that he says something it’s best to listen. The youngest is Nathanial. He’s the redhead. He’s the one who worries me the most because he’s a hothead, and without his brothers’ calming influence, he’s known to explode. Don’t stare at him, whatever you do. He doesn’t like it. Plus, I don’t think he likes females very much, based on the stories I’ve heard about what he’s done to some of them. Frankly, he’s found his calling as a killer.”
She said, “They sound dangerous.”
“I won’t kid you-they are. That’s why Robert hung back. He’s heard of them. But I’ve got no animosity toward them, and as far as I know they’ve got none toward me. But anything can happen, April.”
She stumbled on a root but didn’t fall. She said, “When this is over…”
“You want to leave?” Stenko said, barely hiding the hurt in his voice.
She nodded.
“Well, I can’t say I blame you,” he said. “This isn’t what you bargained for, I’m sure. If everything goes well here, I can go out the way I want to go out. I’ll get my debt paid down below zero, Robert will get his funding, and you’ll get to be with your sister.”
She didn’t ask what would happen if everything didn’t go well. As they approached the tennis court, her legs got heavier and harder to move. It was difficult to get her breath and her stomach ached from more than hunger. She was getting tired of being terrified.
There was another sharp thwack and another curse and a man laughed, “You suck at tennis, Natty.”
COREY, THE BLOND BROTHER, was in the process of serving to Nathanial when they cleared the trees. He had just tossed the ball into the air and reared back when he saw them and froze in place. The ball dropped to the court and bounced between his feet. Then bounced again. Corey made no move to reach for it. Which made Chase, who stood at the side of the court and watched the match with dead black eyes, follow his brother’s lead and turn his head to see Stenko and her. And slowly reach behind his back, for something in his belt.
Nathanial was still poised to receive the serve. To Corey, he said, “What was that about, just dropping the ball like that? Don’t try to mind-fuck me, Corey. Just serve. Come on…”
Corey ignored Nathanial, said to Stenko, “I can’t believe what I see.”
“Me either,” Stenko said, much more jolly than she thought possible. The sound of his voice made Nathanial snap his head around toward the voice. Stenko said, “I never in my life thought I’d see the Talich Brothers playing tennis of all things. Target practice, maybe. Seeing who can hang the most men from a meat hook in a day, sure. But tennis? Come on, you guys.”
Corey laughed, repeated, “Hang the most men from a meat hook. You still got it, Stenko. You can always crack me up.”
“I never lost it,” Stenko said.
Corey pointed at her with his tennis racket. “And who is this?” To her: “You look familiar. Where have I seen you before?”
She shrugged. She was pretty sure she’d never seen Corey or any of the Talich Brothers.
“She looks like someone,” Corey said. “Who am I thinking of?”
Stenko said, “You’re thinking of Carmen. That was a long time ago. This is April. You don’t need to know any more about who she is.”
“I’ll bet,” Nathanial said, spinning his racket and leering.
Stenko went cold the way he had back in that building in Chicago. Before he pulled his pistol and rescued her. He said, “I’m sure, Little Natty. And I think you should keep your mouth shut when it comes to her.”
She was grateful Stenko had defended her that way, but she thought, Isn’t Natty the one Stenko described as a killer?
Nathanial, surprisingly, broke off and looked away first. But his face and neck were red. For the first time, she saw the bundle of leather and metal on a bench on the other side of the court. She recognized the bundle as a pistol or two in holsters that he’d taken off in order to play tennis. He could get to the bundle in three steps. He was staring at it and fuming, but he didn’t make a move. She found herself stepping closer to Stenko, reaching for his hand.
“Anyway,” Corey said, “I’m very surprised to see you.” To Nathanial, Corey said, “Calm down, little brother.”
Nathanial took a deep breath, but his face was still red. He faced them squared up, taking deep breaths that made his nostrils flare out.
Stenko said to Corey, “I know. You figured I’d be in jail.”
“No,” Chase, the dark-haired one, said. “We figured you were fucking dead.” The hand that had been around his back swung to the front again, empty.
“Is that what Leo told you?”
The three brothers exchanged looks, which confirmed that yes, that’s what Leo had told them. She was surprised at their reaction. Despite the fact that the three brothers were bigger and younger than Stenko and at least two of them had guns, it seemed understood Stenko was their superior.
Stenko said, “Guys, Leo screwed you and he really screwed me. I suppose he told you the gig was up, that I was all but gone and I was singing to the feds. So the only thing you could all do was pack up what you could and move our base of operations out here away from Chicago and the feds. Does that sound about right?”
Chase nodded yes. Nathanial looked to his brothers for direction. Corey said, “Mr. Stenson, Leo has never steered us wrong before. He was, you know, your second-in-command. He said you were going down and everything you’d built together was going down with you. He said you were all remorseful and feeling guilty, and that you were out of your head with pain and drugs.”
Stenko raised his arms and his eyebrows, said, “Is that how I look to you?
“Look,” Stenko said, reading their faces one by one, “Leo saw this as his chance to cut and run. He’d been planning this for years behind my back and using my money to finance it. Since he thought I might be sending someone after him, he convinced you boys to come along with him for protection. He played you for suckers. Can you believe the disloyalty? The betrayal?”
“So you ain’t even sick?” Nathanial asked.
“Oh, I’m sick,” Stenko said, “but as you can see, I’m battling it. And I think I’m doing pretty well, considering. But Leo screwed me. He diverted all my holdings and closed the accounts I had access to. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Can you believe Leo tried to do this to me?”
Corey said the obvious, “So you came here to get your money back. To get back in business.”
Stenko said, “Yes. And you boys can either help me or you can stand in my way. But if you help me, it’ll be just like the old days. We can go home and go back to work. You can’t tell me you like it here, can you?”
After he finished Stenko gave her a quick glance, signaling her he was lying to them. She was reassured.
Nathanial paused and appeared to be thinking over what Stenko said, then snorted and threw down his tennis racket as if it had suddenly become electric. It was a gesture that seemed to say he was throwing away the whole ranch as well.
Corey said, “The only one who likes this nature shit is Leo. We call him ‘Hoss’ behind his back because no matter how he dresses or acts like a cowboy, he’s still just a little jerk-off accountant to us. He’s the farthest guy you can think of for a Hoss.”
Nathanial said, “There’s nothing around here but trees and cows. There are no women unless you get really hot for fat divorcees, snuff queens, and barrel racers.”
Chase reached back and this time drew the pistol. He racked the slide and said to Stenko, “Let’s go see that son of a bitch Leo.”
THE TALICH BROTHERS and Stenko walked across a shorn hay meadow toward the side of the old house. They walked shoulder to shoulder, spaced evenly apart. Chase held his pistol loosely at his side. Nathanial had strapped on his shoulder holsters, and he held a gun in each hand.
Corey said, “Gunfight at the OK Corral.”
Chase said, “Tombstone.”
Nathanial said, “Fucking Young Guns, man.”
She stayed a few feet behind Stenko. When she looked over her shoulder, she couldn’t see Robert anywhere in the trees. She wasn’t surprised. She guessed he was back at the car hoping he wouldn’t hear any shots from the tennis court.
Stenko spoke softly to all three brothers, “Look, what I need most from Leo is information. Starting with where he keeps my cash hidden. Then account numbers, passwords, personal identification numbers. When I get all that info and check it out, then I don’t care what you do with him.”
Stenko scared her because he spoke with a coldness she wasn’t familiar with. She considered turning and running herself. But what if Robert had left in the car? Or if he was so jumpy he might start firing at her from the trees when she got close?
Corey said to Stenko, “Leo just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to do this, you know? I mean, he never said a bad thing about you until the end. He was the most loyal guy I ever seen all those years, you know?”
Stenko grunted, “That’s the kind you need to keep an eye on.”
“That son of a bitch Leo,” Nathanial said, echoing what Chase had said. “Son of a bitch Leo.”
Stenko turned his head as he walked, said, “April, I don’t want you here right now. I want you to go back with Robert.”
“Robert is hiding,” she said.
“Then go hide with him.”
“I’m staying with you.”
Nathanial kept talking, his words sounding like a mantra. “Son of a bitch Leo. A month out of my life, playing cowboy for no good reason. Son of a bitch Leo.”
They were nearly to the porch when the screen door opened. A small man clomped onto the wood in high-heeled cowboy boots. He was looking off in the distance toward the road, away from the Talich Brothers and Stenko, who approached him from the side. He was slight and bald with a large nose, and he held a cowboy hat in his hands.
“Leo,” Stenko said.
She could see Leo stiffen, his hands at his side. The cowboy hat dropped to the porch. Leo’s threw his shoulders back and raised his face to the sky in a reaction that was not unlike someone who’d just had an ice cube dropped down the back of his pants. Leo slowly looked over his shoulder at the four men who were now just ten feet away from him.
“Stenko, it’s good to see you,” Leo lied.
Stenko said, “Let’s go inside, Hoss.”
Hole in the Wall
“I KNOW THAT NAME, ROBERT STENSON,” NATE ROMANOWSKI said as the three of them hiked up out of the canyon. “If it’s the same guy you’re talking about, then he’s familiar to me.”
Sheridan had listened to her dad as he led the way up the trail, which was so narrow they had to climb single file. He’d been filling Nate in on the events that had taken place and what they’d learned since they’d last met. Her dad had ended his briefing with “and now we’re stumped. All we can do is hope that Stenko, Robert, and April slip up and get caught somewhere and whoever catches them has the presence of mind to hold them in place. Either that, or April decides to start texting Sheridan again from a new phone.
“The wild card,” her dad continued, “is whether or not Agent Coon will be available quickly and back on the case. He should be cleared-along with Portenson-but I don’t know how long FBI shooting inquiries take before the agents under investigation are cut loose. Even if it’s quick and Coon’s back on the job, he’ll have to start all over with April’s new cell phone number-going to the judge again, getting cooperation from the cell phone companies. There might be complications this time if the judge or phone company lawyers think the FBI will swoop down and smoke innocent citizens who just happen to pick up the wrong cell phone and use it like Bo Skelton and Cyndi Rae Mote did…”
But that’s when Nate interjected and said he knew Robert Stenson, which made her dad stop, turn, and glare at his friend. He asked Nate incredulously, “How do you know him?”
“It’s not like I know him personally,” Nate said, “I know of him.”
“And how do you know of him?” her dad asked, his irritation showing.
“I know of his work. He’s the owner of ClimateSavior.net, one of the flashier carbon-offset companies. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, just like you said your Robert Stenson came from, so it’s probably one and the same guy. We’ve exchanged e-mails.”
“What?”
Nate looked over his shoulder and winked at her. They both knew Nate was tweaking Joe by slowly doling out information her dad was desperate to hear.
“I sent him some money once,” Nate said. “It was Alicia’s idea. She’s trying to save the planet. Me, I just want to hedge my bets.”
Her dad briefly closed his eyes and breathed deeply to keep his impatience in check.
Sheridan looked from her dad to Nate and back.
“I have a different angle on him than you do,” Nate said. “To you, he’s just Stenko’s crazy son along for the ride. I know of him in a different way.”
“Not just that,” her dad said. “He’s a murderer. He shot and killed a pharmacist in Rawlins. It’s on tape.”
Nate whistled. “Then he’s really stepping out. I never would have guessed he’d cross the line. I mean, he’s very passionate and strident, but murder? Nah-that doesn’t fit.”
Her dad looked to Sheridan with exasperation, as if hoping she could translate Nate’s language into something a game warden could understand. Sheridan shrugged and mouthed, “Sorry.”
“Let’s say they’re the same Robert Stenson,” her dad said to Nate. “How does that shed any light on what’s going on? How does that get us closer to finding April?”
Said Nate, “I’m not sure it does.”
“And if Robert’s company has something to do with Stenko and the murders, why hasn’t the FBI been working that angle?”
Nate said, “You give them too much credit.”
“How do you always seem to have an angle I don’t have?”
“Because,” Nate said patiently as if explaining it to a child, “you think in a linear way and I don’t. You’ve got that law enforcement thing going. I never have. But give yourself some credit, Joe. You’re smart enough to reach out when you need help. That’s an unusual trait and a rare one with men of your ilk. Now if you’ll turn around and start climbing, we can eventually get out of this canyon and maybe we can put our heads together and find April Keeley.”
Her dad sighed and turned and began striding up the trail. Nate started talking.
SHERIDAN WAS THRILLED but tried not to show it. In the last hour while Nate packed a daypack with clothes and equipment, she admired not only the recovering eagle but also Nate’s other hunting birds-a male and female peregrine falcon and a red-tailed hawk. She was fascinated by the cave where Nate now lived and awed that her dad had brought her there. She wanted to believe she was being thought of as part of the team, and she knew that as long as she had her cell phone she was integral in the search for her foster sister.
Nate had been a shadowy part of their family for six years. He’d arrived the same time April had. She didn’t quite understand the partnership Nate and her dad had, but she found it exciting and reassuring. Nate had always been friendly to her, and she’d accepted his offer to be his apprentice in falconry. Her mom had told her several times over the years not to put too much stock in Nate’s presence, that she shouldn’t be surprised if he simply vanished from their lives some day. For the past year, she assumed he had gone away. Now, to her astonishment, she’d learned not only that Nate was still in the picture, but also that her dad kept in contact with him. No doubt her mom knew about Nate’s new home as well. That her parents had maintained the secret and kept it from Lucy and her surprised, angered, and impressed her.
Nate had a hooded prairie falcon in his gloved hand as he climbed and talked. He wore the shoulder holster for his.454 Casull revolver.
And as he talked, he made the case that it was the same Robert Stenson.
“I TRY TO LIVE LOW-IMPACT,” Nate explained to her dad, “as much out of necessity as a sense of duty. Naturally, I’m concerned about the environment and my planet. The whole world is in a tizzy about global warming, but I never take these crises for face value. If I did, I’d never get any sleep. Remember bird flu, swine flu, and mad cow disease? We were all gonna die from those, if you’ll recall.”
“What’s bird flu?” Sheridan asked.
“Exactly my point,” Nate said. “Sheridan doesn’t even know that it was supposed to be a big-time pandemic and that no one would be safe. One great crisis steps forward and replaces the last one and we don’t give it a second thought. Don’t forget the millennium bug! Ha! And I distinctly remember when I was growing up that we were headed for a new ice age. Remember that? I remember reading about it at grade school. Seems like people always want to think they’re doomed. It brings them some kind of black comfort, I guess. Anyway, since I’ve got that satellite Internet dish and plenty of time on my hands these days, I’ve been doing lots of research on climate change. I’m not sure what I believe yet. There’s no doubt there’s been an increase in temperature. Not much, but definitely real. The rub is whether it’s our fault or a natural cycle. There are some pretty convincing arguments on both sides. The problem is the issue has moved from science into religion, with true believers on both sides. There isn’t even debate anymore-both sides believe what they believe and their positions have hardened.”
Sheridan observed her dad. She could tell he was getting antsy waiting for Nate to get to the point. The muscles in his jaw balled up and released, as if he were chewing gum. He always did that when he was annoyed.
Nate continued, “It makes sense to me that the temperature of the planet isn’t stagnant. How could it be? How could it possibly remain at a single perfect temperature that never varies? That doesn’t wash with what I know about nature. All you have to do is look around to know that’s not right.”
Nate stopped and kicked at the dirt on the side of the trail. “I could dig a few feet down from where we stand and find fossils of ferns and fish when this canyon was a tropical swamp. Or I could dig a few feet further and find mammoth bones when it was covered with ice. So there’s no doubt the climate has changed and that logically it will change again.
“But at the same time,” he said, hiking again, “I have to believe that all the greenhouse gases we put into the air have to have some kind of overall effect. Again, it only makes sense that when you introduce all kinds of unnatural crap-including billions more people-into the ecosystem that you impact what’s there. If nothing else, maybe we’re accelerating a slow natural warming trend into something more serious, and if we can slow the trend, we should do it. Plus, it just goes against my grain to waste resources or use more energy than I have to. Like I said, I believe in living low-impact just because I want to. I don’t want or need too much stuff. So I’m conflicted and I’m trying to figure out the best way to live.”
Her dad grunted.
She didn’t know if he was agreeing with Nate or simply grunting for Nate to get on with it.
“What’s your take on man-made global warming, Joe?” Nate asked.
Joe said, “My take is I want to find April Keeley and bring her home safely.”
Nate rubbed his chin, said, “That’s an interesting take. Very Joe-like.”
Her dad shrugged, as if to say, Get on with it…
“Anyway,” Nate said, “that’s how I got to know of Robert Stenson and ClimateSavior. He’s got one of those carbon-offset companies where you can pay to reduce your carbon footprint. In my research his name kept popping up. He’s controversial because he’s so outspoken and he’s made a whole shitload of enemies. There was at least one website called PlanetStupido.com devoted strictly to attacking him and his company…”
Her dad shot her a look over his shoulder. She wasn’t sure why. Something Nate just said had jarred him.
Nate went on, “I sort of like the idea of being able to offset my energy consumption and I wanted to hedge my bets, so I sent his company some money and he sent me back an e-mail with photos of some eucalyptus trees they’d planted on my behalf in Nicaragua and Thailand.”
“How nice,” Joe said.
“Dad…” Sheridan admonished him.
Nate said, “That pissed me off, those photos.”
They were nearing the rim of the canyon. Sheridan was breathing hard from the climb.
Her dad said, “Why did eucalyptus trees you paid for make you mad? Isn’t that the point?”
Nate slapped his thigh with his free hand. “No! See, what I found out was planting certain kinds of trees in the Third World does more harm than good, both morally and scientifically. See, some of these companies like Stenson’s outfit plant trees like eucalyptus and pine-which are considered monocultures. Sure, those non-native trees suck up their share of carbon dioxide that comes from our fossil fuels. But I’m not sure I like the trade-off. Many of these companies not only take the land out of agricultural production for the locals, but they plant trees that gobble carbon dioxide but aren’t even native to the area. So my dollars are helping to introduce alien plant life to unique ecosystems. Not only that, but those kinds of trees deplete the water table, increase acid in the soil, and put locals out of work. Just so I’ll feel good about myself.”
They cleared the canyon. Her dad’s green pickup was parked a hundred yards away.
Said Nate, “I hate polluters. I do. But you know who I hate even worse?”
Before Joe could respond Nate answered his own question. “I hate people who prey on the sincere goodwill of others. I hate false religious prophets who milk the savings from people who want to be healed or saved and I hate false environmental prophets who do the same damned thing.”
Nate said, “I read where some of the tribes in the Amazon call these new plantings Devil’s Orchards. So I sent an e-mail to Stenson’s company and asked him what the hell he was doing with my money and raised all these issues. I expected some kind of reasoned response. But you know what I got back?”
Her dad said, “What?”
Nate said, “I quote: ‘You either believe or you don’t.’ Then he accused me of being a shill for the energy companies. Me!”
Her dad laughed. Nate continued, “You should see some of these websites, Joe. You can pay off your guilt for flying in a plane or taking a vacation. You can even offset the entire carbon footprint for your wedding!”
Sheridan felt her scalp twitch.
JOE STOPPED, fixed his eyes on Nate, and said, “What did you just say about a wedding?”
Said Nate, “You can calculate how much of a carbon footprint a wedding will make due to the number of guests, the miles they travel, and so forth. Then using one of these companies like ClimateSavior, you can write a check to offset the damage, and they’ll go plant trees or buy up rain forest or something to offset the damage.”
Joe said to Sheridan, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
His daughter’s eyes were wide, and she nodded without speaking.
To Nate, Joe said, “You’ve said some things that made bells go off in my head. The first was Robert’s company. The second was the PlanetStupido website because the owner of it was murdered two weeks ago in Madison. The third was the wedding because April said they were at a wedding in Aspen where the bride and groom were murdered. This can’t all be coincidence. It might just be a way to connect the murders.”
Nate said, “So why would Robert’s dad get involved? What’s in it for him? And what’s the deal with April? Are you sure it’s even her?”
Joe kicked the dirt. “I don’t know. But until now I thought Stenko was instigating this whole cross-country trip. I assumed he was running from the feds. Now I’m wondering if it isn’t being driven by Robert.”
WHILE NATE RELEASED his prairie falcon to the sky and Sheridan observed, Joe climbed into his pickup and tried to raise Special Agent Chuck Coon. When he didn’t answer on the mutual aid channel, Joe called his cell phone. It went straight to voice mail.
Joe said, “We need to look closer at Robert Stenson. Forget about Stenko for a few minutes. Robert may be the key. What you learn may help us determine where they’re going next.”
He closed the phone and sat back. The late-summer sun was intense through the windshield, and it warmed him. There was a dull ache at the back of his eyes from lack of sleep. He could use rest, and he knew Sheridan could, too. As he watched the prairie falcon climb slowly into the cloudless blue sky in wider and wider arcs, he heard a call come in on the radio from a local dispatcher based in Hulett, two hours to the northeast in the heart of the Wyoming Black Hills.
Someone had called 911, claiming he was dying of gunshot wounds. The alleged victim was a ranch owner named Leo Dyekman, who requested three ambulances to be sent to his ranch.
Joe sat up and increased the volume.
A scratchy response, probably from a Crook County sheriff’s deputy: “Come again? Did you say three ambulances?”
“Affirmative. He requested three.”
“We’ve only got one. You know that.”
“Affirmative. I’m simply relaying his request. He said he was injured.”
“Did he say what happened? Why he needed three?”
“Yes,” the dispatcher said. “He said, ‘One for me, one for the dead psycho, and one for more bodies outside.’ ”
“Oh, man. What’s the location of the ranch?”
“We’re trying to determine that now. The line went dead. We’ve been calling him back, but no one answers. Ruth here knows the area, and she says she thinks it’s in the Bear Lodge Mountains by Devils Tower. She says she heard some guy from back east named Leo bought it a few weeks ago.”
Joe started the motor and opened his window, yelled to Nate and Sheridan, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s GO!”
South of Devils Tower
BLOOD EVERYWHERE. HERS.
Robert, shirtless, driving erratically. Screaming. Stenko in the front seat, yelling back at Robert.
They were driving too fast down a bad, bumpy road. Pine trees shot by on both sides of the road, the sun strobing through them, reminding her of a bright bulb behind a rotating fan. Every time Robert hit a bump, the pain in her leg sent bolts of electricity piercing through her.
But she didn’t cry. Yet. Not until they got out of this. Not until she got out of this.
Stenko yelling, “Watch where you’re going, Robert! Watch the damned road or you’ll kill us all.”
Robert, panicked: “I’m watching the road! Stay out of my face. You’re the one who got us into this, not me.”
“You’re looking more at the mirror than the road. Look at the goddamn road!”
“I’m looking for the Talich Brothers. I’m sure they’re behind us. You know what they’ll do if they catch us…”
Stenko: “If you drive off the road and kill us all, they don’t need to do anything, do they? Their job will be done. Now calm down, son. Calm down. Calm down.”
Robert screaming: “Don’t call me son. And HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO CALM DOWN?”
Stenko: “This is where you need to calm down. This is the kind of situation where you can’t panic. It reminds me of that time we were at the place in Wisconsin and you saw the snake. Remember that? You screamed and cried like a girl until Carmen got a shovel and killed it. It was just a garden snake, not poisonous. But your reaction scared me and this scares me now. Calm down. Think. This is where you need to sit back and try to outthink them.”
“Easy for you to say, Dad. You’re a gangster.”
“Ah, that again,” Stenko sighed.
“I was wondering how long it would be before you brought up that damned snake.”
She couldn’t believe how much she’d bled, how much blood there had been inside her. How for a few frantic minutes all her blood was so eager to spill out of that hole in her leg.
IT HAD HAPPENED SO QUICKLY in a sudden eruption back on the ranch she didn’t see coming. She doubted anyone had.
After Stenko, the Talich Brothers, and the man they called Leo went into the house, she found herself alone on the front lawn. She had no idea how long they’d be inside and she really didn’t want to go in there, but Robert didn’t answer her calls for him. She wished she’d brought the cell phone so she could contact Sheridan and tell her to come get her now, please come get her now…
Inside the house she heard deep voices and sharp skin-to-skin slaps. She hoped Stenko was okay and wasn’t the target of any of the violence, but at the same time she felt sick thinking that he was likely administering the blows. She knew he was capable of anything, but she tried to block that out, tried to pretend he’d left that part of him behind. Because how could a man who was so kind to her be like that?
She yelled for Robert. Either he couldn’t hear her or he refused to answer.
The morning was cool, sunny, still. A beautiful high-mountain day that smelled of pine, grass, and clover. But from inside the house came the sounds of blows and shouts. And a maniacal laugh that gave her chills because she recognized the voice as belonging to Nathanial. The crazy one.
She tried to sit on a lawn chair and wait, but she couldn’t. She was nervous and scared and she didn’t like being alone, separated from Stenko. And who knew where Robert was? Robert and the TracFone, which she hadn’t yet had the chance to use. As she stared at the sky, it dawned on her the blue was marred by the lines across it-lines from power poles that went into the house. Phone lines. She’d forgotten that old-fashioned telephones had to use phone lines.
She jumped to her feet. She’d go inside, find a phone, and call Sheridan, beg her to come get her.
So she opened the front screen door and stepped inside, letting the door close behind her on a spring.
She was repulsed by what she saw. The man named Leo sat behind a table, his back pressed against the wall, his hands on the tabletop. He was next to a large window that overlooked the back pasture. In the distance, Devils Tower shimmered in the cold morning sun. One of Leo’s eyes was swelled shut and his lip was bleeding. Stenko sat across from him with his back to her. Nathanial stood next to Stenko, leaning across the table toward Leo. Chase was off to the side in the room, leaning back against a bookcase. Chase acknowledged her when she came in but turned back to Leo. Corey stood on the other side of Stenko facing Leo, his hands on his hips.
There was a phone on the wall of the dining room, past Corey Talich. No way she could get around him to use it. But there had to be another one somewhere, right? Maybe down the hall? Upstairs?
Nathanial saying, “You lied to us, Leo. You said the boss was dying and squealing to the feds. You said come with you and we’d be all right…”
Stenko saying, “The money, Leo. My money. I know you well enough to know you’ve got cash here. I need that cash and I need all the account numbers and passwords so I can get the rest.”
Corey saying, “I know where the safe is, Stenko. It’s in his office under the desk. I seen it there.”
She thought, his office. There would be a phone in the office. How to get there, though, without being noticed?
Leo saying, “I know I did the wrong thing, Stenko. I know now. I guess I panicked, you know? I shoulda trusted you to do the right thing, but… you know. I mean, we all screw up at times, right? Everybody screws up. I’ll come back-it’ll be like it used to be…”
Nathanial reaching over and slapping him again, hard.
“Jesus, Natty!” Leo complained, his voice cracking with a sob.
“Tell Stenko the fucking numbers for the safe!” Nathanial hissed, leaning in so close to Leo their foreheads were touching.
Leo sobbed out the combination.
Stenko pushed away from the table, saying, “I’ll go get the cash, Leo. But you’ll sit right here and write down the account numbers and the passwords to all the offshore accounts. ALL OF THEM. And you’ll have them all written on that napkin by the time I get back.”
Leo stared dumbly at the napkin and the pen on the table until Nathanial leaned over and cuffed him on the back of his head.
She felt sorry for Leo, who looked weak and soft. He didn’t look evil. He just looked like a man being picked on by bullies. The concept of men hitting men distressed her. They were like overgrown children, no better than animals. She knew the world could be like this-and was-but she wanted no part of it. She wanted to grow up. She wanted to get away.
On the way to the office Stenko saw her standing there and for a brief moment she saw the face and eyes of a monster, a man she’d not seen since that evening in the campground. And although he softened when he saw her, the image lingered, hung in the air like a mask.
“I told you to stay outside,” he said to her. “I don’t want you to see this.”
She didn’t respond, but she hoped her being there would make him change his mind, rethink what he was doing.
It didn’t.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“No,” Stenko said. “I don’t want you around right now. Go outside, April. This will be over soon.”
The way he said it sent a new chill through her.
She said, “I don’t know where Robert is. I don’t know where to go…”
“Out,” Stenko said, raising his voice to her for the first time. “Out. Now.” He paused to make sure she obeyed, and she turned for the door. As she crossed the floor toward the door, she looked over her shoulder to make sure he’d entered the office. He had. So instead of going out through the screen door, she pushed it open hard and let the spring bang it back. Stenko would think she was outside rather than down the hallway. She glanced back to see if the Talich Brothers were watching her. They weren’t. She ducked into the dark hallway, looking for a phone.
While Leo scribbled numbers on a napkin at the table, she could hear him muttering to the Talich Brothers, saying now was their chance to take over the operation, that he’d show them how, that they could become equal partners in everything like they deserved to be, that they didn’t have to answer to Stenko ever again, that it could all be theirs.
She paused and looked back down the hall into the dining room. She could tell Corey was listening. Chase, too. Both of them glanced toward the office where Stenko was, then exchanged looks.
Leo stopped writing. He knew he had their attention. His voice was more urgent. As he talked, blood from his broken mouth flecked the napkin on the table. He said, “Stenko is in his last act, like I told you. He plans to take the money and run. He’ll probably give it all to his useless son. The whole operation-all the businesses, the casinos, the real estate-it’ll all go away. You’ll have to start over somewhere. Me, too. And we’re too damn old to start over now…”
And she heard Chase ask Corey, “What do you think?”
And Corey say, “He has a point. Stenko doesn’t look right. There’s definitely something wrong with him.”
They talked as if she weren’t down the hall at all, like she was invisible. She had to find a phone, but she needed to warn Stenko. She couldn’t let him come out of the office into a trap. But how to let him know?
Nathanial missed the exchange between his brothers, but he’d heard Leo. He slapped him again, said, “How do I know you’re not lying again, Leo?”
The slap must have stung, because there were tears in Leo’s eyes. He glared at Nathanial and said, “Stop hitting me,” in a little-boy voice.
Nathanial hit him again, this time with his fist. Leo’s head snapped back and thumped the wall with enough force that a picture in a frame came loose and crashed to the ground.
“Natty!” Corey said sharply.
Nathanial ignored him and hit Leo again. “He’s a lying little shit. He’ll never turn anything over to us. He’ll keep it all because everything’s in his head. He’s been planning this for years, Corey. He’s not going to just hand it over to us now.”
And he hit Leo again, knocking him to the floor.
Tears filled her eyes and she wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know what to do.
Then Nathanial said, “Hey…” and she saw that he was distracted by something he saw in the pasture outside the window. “Who is this asshole?”
“What asshole?” Corey asked.
“Some pretty-boy asshole,” Nathanial said. “Creeping around out there in the bushes.”
Leo managed to pull himself back up by grabbing the edge of the table. When he stood, he wobbled.
Nathanial said, “Who is that?”
Leo sighed, “It’s Robert. Stenko’s loser son. The one he’s gonna give his money to. Robert thinks he wants to save the planet or some damned thing.”
“What’s he doing here?” Nathanial asked.
From the corner near the bookcase, Chase said: “Ambush.”
The way he said it made a chill creep through her scalp.
Nathanial barked a laugh and tapped on the glass with the muzzle of a.45. “Hey, you! Trust fund boy? What the fuck you doing in the bushes? You here to ambush us?”
There was a loud sharp pop from outside, and a pane of the window glass shattered. Nathanial grunted, “Ung,” and stepped back.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. The window imploded.
Nathanial doubled over like someone had punched him in the stomach. Corey and Chase dived out of the way.
She didn’t see Leo reach up under the table and pull a pistol loose that had been taped there all along, point it at the window, and start shooting. The pistol still had strips of tape on it. The shots were so loud inside the house that her ears rang from them.
Stenko materialized at the entrance to the hallway holding a large cardboard box that appeared heavy. He’d ducked and snatched the napkin from the table and it was crumpled in one of his fists. He saw her, yelled, “Run, April!” and started toward her. He spun and ran. There was a door at the end of the hallway with a window that streamed light, and she ran toward it. Stenko was behind her.
One of the Talich Brothers yelled, “Stenko! Stop!” but she felt him close in on her and she was relieved to find the outside door unlocked.
They ran across the lawn toward the trees. Behind them, in the house, she heard several more pops from Leo’s gun, followed by a series of heavy booms. As they ran, Stenko pulled ahead and a few untethered bills fluttered out of the box he was carrying and settled into the grass behind him. Fifty yards ahead, Robert was running as well, his arms flapping wildly. He never looked back.
It didn’t occur to her at the time that the reason Stenko was outrunning her was because something was wrong with her. She’d been hurt. She stopped and looked down, saw the bright red blood coursing down her right leg into her shoe, and when she saw the wound pulsing blood, she suddenly felt the pain and pitched forward into the grass.
She couldn’t remember him carrying her through the trees all the way to the car, or Robert screaming at him because he didn’t get the account numbers.
THEY’D DRIVEN A FEW MILES like maniacs, Stenko yelling for Robert to pull over. When he finally did, Stenko said to Robert, “Take off your shirt.”
“No! It’s my favorite-”
Stenko bellowed, “TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAMNED SHIRT!” and Robert did, as fast as he could, and he watched in horror as Stenko cut it into strips.
Her head was slumped back against the seat, and she wasn’t sure she could raise it. Her blood had soaked into the back seat fabric until the fabric was black. The sharp hot pain of the gunshot had faded some into a place that was empty, numb, and cold. It didn’t make sense she was cold.
Stenko winced as if it hurt him to move her, to swing her legs toward him so he could work on the wound. He used the strips of Robert’s shirt to tightly bind the wound. Robert watched from the front seat, making a face.
Stenko said to her, “There, I think I’ve got the bleeding stopped.” He looked into her eyes and cupped his warm hand on the side of her face. “You’ll make it now, I think. The bullet hit an artery but no bones or organs. As long as we stop the bleeding you should be okay. But we’ve got to get you to a hospital. You aren’t hit anywhere else, are you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“The way Robert was blasting away, I’m surprised we all aren’t dead.”
Robert said, “It wasn’t me who hit her. I never even saw her.”
Stenko said, “Shut the hell up, Robert. Of course it was you. Bullets were flying everywhere. Did you ever think about maybe, you know, aiming?”
“Hey, I’m not the gangster in the family.” Then, “Well, it wasn’t on purpose.” Petulant.
Stenko ignored his son and looked up at her, tears in his eyes. Said, “I’m so sorry, April. I’m so sorry you’re hurt. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I never saw it coming. I’d never seen Leo with a gun in his life. Leo is scared of guns, just like Robert used to be.”
“YOU KNOW THEY’LL BE AFTER US,” Stenko said to Robert after climbing back into the front seat and slamming the door shut. “They’ll want their share of the money. And who knows how they’ll be if their brother’s dead? He was a loose cannon, but he was their brother. They’ll want revenge.”
Robert hit the gas and the car fishtailed gravel and a plume of dust. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t want to stop.”
“We had to. She was gonna bleed out.”
A long pause. She pretended to sleep.
“What are we going to do with her, Dad?”
“We’re gonna get her some help.”
“How? For Christ’s sake, look around you. There’s nothing but trees and rocks for miles. And don’t you think they’ll be looking for us at all the local hospitals, or clinics, or whatever?”
“April needs a real doctor,” Stenko said. “There might be infection in that leg-or hemorrhaging.”
“We can’t run the risk-”
“The hell we can’t.”
“Dad-”
“Shut up, Robert. I’d do the same for you.”
“Look,” Robert said, lowering his voice, “we could drop her off at a ranch or something. With some nice old couple. They’d call an ambulance and get her into the emergency ward.”
“I’m not leaving her like that,” Stenko said. “She’d been left places all her life. I told her I’d take care of her.”
“This is insane!” Robert yelled. “You’re insane! What is she to you? This is your son talking. Your real son!”
“I’m not leaving her.”
SHE STARED at her bandaged leg as they screamed down the old highway. He was right: the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Maybe, she thought, because she didn’t have any more blood to lose. She was cold.
Robert yelling, “Why did he threaten me at the window like that? It was like he was begging me to shoot him. And Jesus, I was pulling the trigger before I knew what was happening. I mean, it wasn’t my plan. I didn’t have a plan…”
Stenko saying, “He’s crazy, that Natty. Like you, he doesn’t think things through. He just reacts. When he saw you outside the window, he probably thought we were trying to ambush them.”
“Like we’d do that,” Robert scoffed.
“Hard to tell you aren’t when you just start shooting everything up.”
“I was protecting you!”
“You were protecting yourself. You didn’t even know where I was. The problem with you, Robert, is you don’t hold yourself accountable for anything you do. It’s always someone else’s fault.”
Robert screamed, “You made me what I am. You made me what I am, Dad.”
“Calm down.”
ROBERT HAD BOTH of his hands on the steering wheel, squeezing it so tightly that his knuckles were white. She noticed that every time he shouted, he jerked the car one way or other.
“I wish I had more time with Leo,” Stenko said, uncrumpling the napkin and looking at the series of numbers. The black ink had soaked into the paper and obscured the accounts. “I don’t know where all these accounts are located or what Leo might have done to make sure only he could get to them. We still need Leo’s help if we’re going to get all the money for your cause.”
“I think he might have been hit, too,” Robert said.
Stenko groaned.
Said Robert, “How much cash did you get?”
“I don’t know. A few hundred thousand, maybe more. I didn’t take time to count it, Robert.” Stenko sounded weary, beaten.
“Count it now.”
“Robert…”
“Count it now!”
“Don’t grab at it, for Christ’s sake. Just concentrate on your driving. Robert!”
And she felt the car careen off the pavement and into a ditch, heard the furious scratches of brush from the undercarriage, saw the rolls of yellow dust blossom in clouds from both sides of the car. She closed her eyes as the car turned and hit something big and solid, felt the vehicle leave the ground, hit on its side in an explosion of dirt and shattered glass, begin to roll…
Bear Lodge Mountains
JOE SAW THE HELICOPTER WINK IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE right side of Devils Tower as it bore down on the ranch in the foothills of the Bear Lodge Mountains. The mountains themselves had an entirely different look than Joe’s Bighorns or the Sierra Madres he’d been in recently. Rather than vertical and severe with dirty glaciers sleeping the summer away in fissures, the Bear Lodges looked sedentary and relaxed, sleeping old dogs covered with a carpet of blue/black pine. The aircraft was miles away, a flyspeck on a massive blue screen, still far enough that the sound of rotors couldn’t be heard. He knew Coon and Portenson were inside because he’d heard the chatter on the radio. Apparently, the preliminary investigation into the shooting had gone well enough to release them to the ranch call. Crook County sheriff’s deputies were also en route. Joe guessed that all of them would converge at once on the location of the distress call.
They were on State Highway 14, north of Devils Tower Junction, looking for the ranch access that would take them east toward the mountains and the ranch headquarters. Dispatch had been quiet; whoever had placed the initial 911 call had dropped off the line and had never come back. Calls to the ranch house had gone unanswered, which didn’t bode well.
Joe thought, One for me, one for the dead psycho, and one for more bodies outside.
Sheridan sat in the middle of bench seat clutching her cell phone, staring at it as if willing it to ring. Nate hung out the open passenger window, squinting at the sky with his blond ponytail undulating in the wind. He reminded Joe of Maxine, his old Labrador, who liked to stick her head out the window and let the wind flap her ears.
“See that chopper?” Nate said, pulling his head inside the cab.
“Yup.”
“You had better let me off up here for a while. I don’t think it would help anyone concerned if Portenson sees me.”
“Agreed.”
“Why not?” Sheridan asked.
“Because I’m on the run,” Nate said, matter-of-fact.
“On the run?” she asked. “Like from the law?”
He nodded, said, “Thanks to your dad I’m not in jail right now.”
Joe felt Sheridan’s eyes on him, hoping for an explanation.
“Dad, I thought you put people in jail.”
“I do.”
“But…”
“It’s a long story.”
“Are you going to tell it to me?”
“Not now.”
“Nate?”
“Me either,” Nate said, taking Joe’s cue.
“There’s a stand of trees up ahead on the right,” Nate said, changing the direction of the conversation. “Maybe I can hang out over there and wait for you.”
It was an old homestead. On the high desert that led toward the foothills, the only trees were those once planted by settlers trying to make a go of it. In nearly every case, they’d failed-overwhelmed by poor soil, harsh weather, isolation, and market conditions. All that remained of their efforts were rare stands of trees, usually cottonwoods, that had been put in for shade and to provide a windbreak.
The highway was a straight shot across the stunted high-country sage. Traffic was practically nonexistent except for a single pickup ahead in Joe’s lane. The vehicle crept along with its right wheels on the shoulder.
“Let me pass this guy and get up ahead out of his view,” Joe said, “then I’ll drop you off.”
As he approached the slow vehicle-a late-model blue Dodge pickup with out-of-state plates and no passengers-and swung into the passing lane, Joe felt a rush of recognition. The Oklahoma plates-reading “Native America”-confirmed it.
The driver, Ron Connelly, looked over casually at first to see who was passing him as Joe shot by. Their eyes locked and Joe saw Connelly’s nostrils flare as he recognized Joe as well. Connelly slammed on his brakes and Joe shot by him on the highway. But Connelly’s face lingered as an afterimage and Joe was sure it was him.
Joe said, “Hang on-it’s the Mad Archer!”
Nate said, “The mad what?”
“Brace yourselves,” Joe said, flinging his right arm out to help protect Sheridan from flying forward as he hit the brakes.
Joe cursed himself for being careless and alerting Connelly, who’d been moving down the highway much too slowly and too far over on the shoulder with no apparent car problems or flashing emergency lights. He’d been cruising the road with all the characteristics of a road hunter-scanning the terrain out the passenger window for game animals to shoot illegally from the comfort of a public road. And since most wildlife became acclimated to the singing of traffic on the rural highway, they no longer followed their instincts for caution. Over the years, wildlife had learned not to look up unless a vehicle stopped. Unscrupulous road hunters like Connelly took advantage of the new paradigm and jumped out firing.
“Is he the one who shot Tube with an arrow?” Sheridan asked as Joe came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the highway.
“That’s him,” he said, throwing the transmission into reverse. To Nate: “He’s the same one who shot your eagle.”
“Let’s get him,” Sheridan said through gritted teeth.
Nate said, “Proceed.”
Connelly had decided to run and was in the process of turning back the way he’d come, his back tires churning up fountains of dirt in the borrow pit, his front tires on the pavement. His pickup was bigger and newer, and Joe knew that on the open road Connelly could outrace him. He had to stop Connelly before he could get going.
Rather than turn around and give chase, Joe floored it in reverse. He was filled with sudden anger at Connelly, at Stenko and Robert, the choices he’d made that consumed him with guilt, at everything. Getting the Mad Archer would be another one in his good works column.
“Joe,” Nate said calmly as the motor revved, “are you sure you want to do this?”
“Brace yourself,” Joe said to Sheridan and Nate.
Joe used the rear bumper and tailgate of his pickup to T-bone Connelly’s pickup on the passenger side as Connelly tried to make his turn. The impact knocked the Dodge six feet sidewise, and Joe saw Connelly’s hat fly off and his arms wave in the air. The collision wasn’t as severe in the Game and Fish pickup because they’d been accelerating straight backward, had braced themselves for the collision, and were cushioned by the seat.
“Got him!” Sheridan cried, raising a triumphant fist in the air.
“Not yet,” Joe cautioned, swinging the pickup off the road into the ditch and aiming his grille at the Dodge.
Joe threw the transmission into park and launched himself out the door. He could see Connelly on the passenger side in his pickup instead of behind the wheel due to the impact on his passenger door, which had thrown him across the cab. Connelly sat stunned, shaking his head from side to side. Blood streamed down his face and into his mouth from a cut in his forehead.
Joe wanted to get to Connelly and subdue him before the Mad Archer tried to resist or run again. He was halfway there, his boots thumping on the asphalt, when Connelly looked up and saw Joe running in his direction. Connelly dove for the wheel and used it to pull himself back into the driver’s seat. He righted himself and started fumbling for the gearshift.
The engine growled and the blue Dodge lurched forward. Connelly cackled and maniacally turned the wheel away from Joe, who pulled up and reached for his Glock as the bumper of Connelly’s pickup grazed his thigh as it turned. “Later!” He laughed to Joe through a mouthful of bloody teeth.
The deep-throated concussions of Nate’s.454 Casull coughed out once, twice, and seemed to briefly suck the air out of the morning. The blue Dodge bucked as if it had hit a set of hidden ditches head-on. The engine went silent and the truck rolled lazily forward off the road. The front tires bit into loose sand and it lurched to a stop. As intended, both slugs had penetrated the engine block. Green radiator fluid pooled on the dirt and plumes of it hissed and rose in the air, coating the windows of the Dodge.
Gun drawn, Joe ran to the driver’s side of the pickup from the back. He yelled, “Thanks, Nate!”
“My pleasure,” Nate said, standing wide-legged on the other side of the road, still holding his revolver in a two-handed grip. “I like killing cars.”
Connelly opened his door cautiously. He looked at Joe coming at him. He turned his head to see Nate and his.454 in a cloud of green steam that made him look like an apparition from the Gates of Hell. Connelly was half in, half out of the cab. Joe could see only one of Connelly’s hands, the one holding the handle of the door.
“Let me see ’em both,” Joe said, raising the Glock and sighting down the barrel as he approached. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire. Nate was not far out of his line of fire through the windshield, and ricochets could threaten Sheridan.
Connelly hadn’t moved in or out an inch. He seemed to be weighing his options. Was his other hand gripping a gun?
“I said, show me your hands and climb out slowly,” Joe said. “You’re under arrest for skipping bond in Carbon County.”
Connelly smiled slightly, said, “Don’t you think this is excessive force? Since when is it okay for a damned game warden to injure a man and total his pickup for missing a hearing for a misdemeanor?”
Joe said, “Ever since you shot a dog with an arrow. Now shut up, get out, and get down on the ground.”
Nate emerged from the steam and aimed his.454 at the side of Connelly’s head. “Let me shoot him and tear his ears off, Joe. You know, for my collection.”
Joe stifled a smile and watched as Connelly leaped out of his pickup empty-handed and eagerly threw himself face down into the sand.
As Joe snapped handcuffs on Connelly’s wrists, Connelly said, “How in the hell did you find me all the way up here?”
Joe said, “Just good police work,” and winked at Sheridan, who had watched the arrest openmouthed.
WITH RON CONNELLY cuffed to the front strut of his dead pickup on the side of the highway, Joe called in the arrest to central dispatch. In the days since the Mad Archer had vacated Baggs, he’d obtained a new compound bow and a set of broadhead arrows, as well as a Ruger Ranch Rifle and a stainless-steel.45 semiauto. In the glove box were cartridges, a bloody knife still covered with deer hair, and plastic vials of crystal meth. Tim Curley, the game warden out of Sundance, heard the call and broke in.
“Joe, how the hell are you?”
“Fine,” Joe said, remembering Curley as a big man with dark eyes, impressive jowls, and a gunfighter mustache. “Can you come get this guy?”
“This is the one they call the Mad Archer?”
“Yup.”
“I thought I heard you already caught him and threw him in the pokey.”
“I did. But that was last week. You know how it goes sometimes.”
“What-a sympathetic judge who let him out on bond?”
“Tim, we’re on the radio.”
“Oh, yeah. Hey-you gonna stick around? It’s been a while since we got caught up. I want to hear your version of what happened to Randy Pope.”
“Nope,” Joe said in answer to both questions. “I’ll send you all the paperwork on Connelly later. You’ll need to send a tow truck to the scene.”
“Don’t tell me you wrecked another departmental vehicle?” Curley laughed. Joe was infamous for holding the record for the destruction of departmental vehicles. No one else was close.
“Not mine, this time.” But as he said it, he stepped away from the cab and gauged the damage he’d caused to the back of his pickup. Both taillights were smashed. The back bumper was curled under the frame. His trailer hitch was flattened to the side and his tailgate hung open and out like the tongue of a dead animal. “Not enough that I need a tow truck, anyway,” he said.
“What’s going on? What are you doing in my district? Last I heard you were sentenced to Baggs.”
Joe said, “I don’t have time to explain right now. This arrest cost us ten minutes. I have to go, sorry.”
Curley said, “Does this have something to do with that ranch deal that’s been all over the radio this morning?”
Joe said, “I’ll need to catch up with you later, Tim.”
Sheridan and Nate were already in the cab, and Joe swung himself in, hung up the mike, and gunned it.
“That was a good one,” Joe said to Nate and Sheridan as if they’d been privy to his earlier ruminations. He nodded at the view of Ron Connelly slumped against his pickup in his rearview mirror. “That was worth the time it took to get that guy back into jail where he belongs. Yup, that makes me feel real good. That’s one on the plus side, by golly.”
Nate chuckled as he replaced the two spent cartridges in his five-shot revolver with fresh rounds the size of lipsticks.
Sheridan glared at Nate. “Your collection?”
Nate winked at her.
In the distance, they could see the helicopter begin its descent.
“There’s the ranch,” Nate said, gesturing toward the cottonwoods marking the abandoned homestead. “You can let me off here. I’ll stay out of Tim Curley’s way and watch for you when you come back out.”
Joe said, “Do you finally have a cell phone so I can call you?”
Nate curled his upper lip. Nate hated cell phones. He once told Joe satellite phones were a necessity but cell phones made him feel that he was always on call.
“Here,” Joe said. “Take mine. I’ll let you know when we’re coming.”
Nate took it as if Joe was offering him a bar of feces. It was Sheridan’s turn to wink.
Bear Lodge Mountains
THE RANCH YARD WAS A HIVE OF ACTIVITY; SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT SUVs were parked at jaunty angles near the main house with their doors wide open, an ambulance driver was arguing with deputies to clear the way so he could back his vehicle in, and the FBI helicopter sat in a back pasture like a giant insect on a break. Joe drove his pickup to the other side of the yard near a Quonset hut filled with farm equipment.
“I want you to stay here,” he told Sheridan.
“What about April?”
“Believe me,” Joe said, “if April’s in there, I’ll come running.” Thinking, Unless she’s in bad shape.
“Why don’t you get your mother on the phone?” he said. “Let her know what’s going on and that we’re both okay. I’m sure she’s going crazy.”
“I’m sure she is.”
TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES stopped Joe from entering the house, saying they were under orders to keep everyone out. Joe asked who to talk to and one of the deputies said the FBI was in charge and both agents were inside. “When one of them comes out,” the deputy said, “you can talk to him.”
Joe considered rushing them, but they were both bigger as well as filled with the official hubris that always resulted when there was a multiple homicide in a single-digit crime rate county. Their blood was running hot with purpose. He knew better than to try and get through them.
Instead, he circled the house hoping he could see inside. If he saw April, he decided, he was going in even if he had to fight his way inside. He walked on the lawn around the left side of the house and saw a side door with another deputy stationed at it. Joe waved and kept walking, looking in every window and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He walked the length of the back of the house and around the side. He was noting a broken window to what looked like the kitchen when the tip of his boot ticked something metallic. He stopped and looked down. Spent cartridges from a handgun blinked in the sun. He counted eight before he stopped counting, then stepped back and away so he wouldn’t crush them into the ground. From the location of the spent shells, he could imagine a gunman standing just outside the kitchen and firing inside. It bolstered his theory when he noted there was no broken glass under the window in the flowerbed-the glass had been blown inside the house. He wanted to show the FBI agents what he’d found.
Coon was exiting the front door of the ranch house, struggling with the removal of a pair of latex gloves. As Joe approached, Coon held up a gloved hand made a sick yellow by the latex covering and said, “I’d suggest you stay where you are. Agent Portenson just gave the order to seal up the crime scene as soon as we get more photos of the victims taken out of there.”
“Who are the victims?” Joe asked, feeling his chest constrict.
Coon said, “An adult male DOA in the kitchen. Another adult male in critical condition. The EMTs are loading him on a gurney as we speak.”
“Anyone else?”
Coon frowned. “Should there be?”
“The nine-one-one call mentioned bodies outside. Is there a girl in there?”
“No.”
“Can I look?”
“I said…”
“Stay the hell out,” Portenson interrupted, appearing behind Coon. He was red-faced. “Why are you always around, anyway?”
Joe sighed in frustration. “Can you at least describe the scene to me? What’s your best guess what happened in there?”
Portenson rolled his eyes and shouldered past Coon toward the helicopter, making it clear he didn’t have time to waste with Joe. Over his shoulder, he said, “I want Stenko. I want his head on a platter.”
When Portenson was out of earshot, Coon said, “He is not a happy man.”
“He never has been. What’s going on?”
Coon said. “Tony is in big trouble because of that incident earlier today. Our bosses don’t like that kind of thing anymore because it attracts the wrong kind of attention in the press and in Washington. We’re supposed to be counterterrorism these days except for the occasional slam-dunk mob arrest. And when we screw up like we did this morning, the shit rolls downhill.”
Joe nodded.
“I think you know that all Agent Portenson really wants is to get out of Wyoming. What happened earlier doesn’t help. Neither one of us is out of the woods yet. Hell, I don’t mind whatever happens. I like it here and so does my family. But Tony…”
“… wants out,” Joe said. “I know. He wants to run with the big dogs.”
Coon nodded. “The only way he can make amends is to nail Stenko.”
Joe gave it a beat. “So what’s it look like inside?”
Coon finally got his right glove pulled off with a sharp snap. “As I said, two victims. One under the broken kitchen window. Male, thirties, dressed in tennis togs, if you can believe that. His ID said he was Nathanial Talich from Chicago. He was the youngest of the three brothers and considered to be the craziest…”
“The psycho,” Joe said, repeating the term from the call.
Coon nodded. “Multiple gunshot wounds. I could see one right below his eye, but my guess is he took at least a few more in the belly the way he was curled up.”
“The other guy?”
“The sheriff said he’s the owner of the ranch. A guy named Leo Dyekman. Also of Chicago,” he said, raising a single eyebrow. “We think he’s a known associate of Stenko. His money man, we think. Portenson is in communication with Washington now to confirm that.”
“Can you tell what happened?”
Coon shrugged. “It looks like a gunfight. They were both armed and I’m guessing they shot each other.”
Joe shook his head. “I doubt that. Can Dyekman talk?”
Coon narrowed his eye, not pleased by the Joe’s casual disregard of their theory. “Why? What do you think?”
“I’ll show you in a minute. Can Dyekman talk?”
“I’d be surprised if Dyekman ever talks, judging by the amount of blood he lost. I don’t think his wound was fatal-it looks like he got hit on the side of the neck-but he might have bled out after he made the call. There is a lot of blood in that house.”
Joe hoped none of it was April’s.
Coon said, “That’s the problem with living out here in the middle of nowhere. The EMTs can’t get to you in time.”
“So why do you think the two guys shot each other up?” Joe asked.
“Because that’s what it looks like, Joe. But that’s why we called in forensics. They might be able to figure out what the hell happened in there.”
“So why did Dyekman refer to more bodies?”
Coon shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Was there any other blood anywhere?”
“I told you, Joe, there’s blood all over the place. It looks like a slaughterhouse.”
“So why is the kitchen window broken?”
Coon gave Joe a big-eyed exasperated expression. “I don’t know, Joe,” he said with annoyance. “That’s why we called in our team.”
“I can’t wait for your team,” Joe said. “Look, there’s brass on the side of the house outside the kitchen window. I tried not to disturb it much. But what it looks like is that somebody stood outside and started blasting.”
Coon stared at Joe skeptically.
Joe said, “April’s not here. Every minute we wait for your team she gets farther away.”
Coon threw up his hands, said, “We don’t even know that she was ever here, Joe. Come on…”
Joe held up his hand and extended a finger for every point: “One, she said she was going to a ranch in the Black Hills. Two, these guys are associated with Stenko. Three, the caller said there were people who might be injured. Four, someone who is not on the floor in there stood outside the house and fired inside. Which says to me they got away from here and they probably took April, who might be hurt.”
“Is there a five?” Coon asked sarcastically.
“Five, where else could she be?”
“Go home, Joe,” Coon said. “For once, I agree with Portenson. We’ve got this handled. There’s nothing you can do. Plus-”
Joe waited. Coon didn’t finish. Instead, he stepped out of the way of the EMTs who came crashing through the door with a body on a gurney. Joe stepped aside as well and walked alongside the gurney, hoping the slight middle-aged man beneath the sheet would open his eyes. The man-Leo Dyekman-was ghostly white. Swinging plastic units of blood coursed into both arms as they wheeled him toward the open ambulance. Joe recognized the stitched brown cowboy shirt Dyekman was wearing as one he’d seen on a Western wear store clearance rack.
“Leo, talk to me,” Joe said, prodding Leo’s chest.
“Please don’t touch him,” a bearded EMT warned.
“Leo, where’s April?”
“Man…” the EMT said, shaking his head.
“Leo!”
And Leo’s eyes shot open.
“Jesus,” the EMT said, as surprised as Joe.
Joe reached out and stopped the gurney and leaned over the victim. His eyes were open but there was no expression on his face. “Can you hear me?”
Dyekman groaned.
“Leo, who shot you?”
“Fuck. I’m gonna die.”
“No you’re not. You’ll be fine. Now who shot you?”
Dyekman rolled his head to the side. “I think Robert. But it could have been Natty. Lots of shots.”
“Robert Stenson?”
“Who else?” As he said it, his eyes drooped. Joe didn’t think Dyekman would be conscious much longer.
“Was there a girl in the house?”
“Stenko,” Dyekman said. “That damned Stenko got the cash.”
“Clear the way,” the bearded EMT said to Joe. “We need to get going. You can talk to him later in the hospital.” He pushed on the gurney and the lead EMT pulled. Joe walked alongside.
“What about the girl?” Joe asked again.
“What about her?”
He felt a thrill. “So there was a girl. Do you know who she was?”
Dyekman’s face contorted with pain.
Joe slapped him. The bearded EMT said, “Hey!” One of the sheriff’s deputies guarding the front door broke away and started jogging toward them, his hand on his weapon.
“Did you see what he just did?” the EMT said to the deputy.
“Clear the hell away, mister,” the deputy growled.
But the slap had opened Dyekman’s eyes again. Joe cocked his hand as if to do it again.
Dyekman said, “I didn’t get her name!”
“Blond? Fourteen?”
“Could be.”
The deputy bear-hugged Joe while the EMTs rolled Dyekman into the ambulance.
“Man, what’s wrong with you?” the deputy hissed into Joe’s ear.
“Let me down,” Joe said. “I got what I needed.”
When the deputy released him, Joe turned toward his pickup near the Quonset hut. Sheridan had watched the altercation and looked to him with pleading eyes. He knew what she was asking: Was April here? He nodded: “Yes.”
“SHE WAS HERE,” Joe told Marybeth on Sheridan’s cell phone. “I just know it.”
Marybeth was calm, he thought. Calmer than he was. It always amazed him how pragmatic she became when events seemed out of control.
“But Sheridan said she might be hurt,” she said.
“We don’t know. They won’t let me inside the house. But she’s gone-that we know.”
“Did someone identify her?”
“Maybe. I couldn’t get much out of him.”
Marybeth sighed. “This is tough, Joe. It’s tough that you’re gone with Sheridan. And I understand you went and got Nate. I don’t know-is she ready for this? Is she okay?”
Joe assessed his daughter, who leaned against the door of the pickup pretending she wasn’t listening to every word. What he saw was a young woman who was lucid, calm, but worried. She’d never been out in the field on an investigation with him. All she knew were the results. She’d never been in the middle of a chaotic crime scene like this one with uniformed men cursing at each other and running around, the jockeying for status and position, the clash of jurisdictions among personnel from different agencies, the baseless speculation thrown around in regard to what might have happened. He wondered if she was questioning his acumen and clearly seeing his fallibility. Lord knows he was fallible. But he was her dad. He knew she always thought he had special abilities. Now, he thought, she’d know that he didn’t. That he could run around and speculate with the best of them.
“I think so,” he answered Marybeth, trying not to tip off the question.
But Sheridan sensed it and mouthed, “I’m fine, Dad.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then: “Maybe it’s time to bring her home, Joe. There haven’t been any calls from April. I know she’d rather be with you and Nate, but I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”
He looked up to see Sheridan glaring at him. He wondered if his face betrayed Marybeth’s question, and he tried to deaden his expression. “You may be right,” he said. And for Sheridan’s benefit: “I’m exhausted. We haven’t gotten any sleep for I don’t know how many nights. We would both probably welcome being in our own beds.” He nodded as he talked and looked to his daughter for agreement. The glare didn’t waver.
He turned away. “How’s Lucy doing?” he asked in a whisper.
“She’s not happy. She wishes she were with you and Sheridan. This morning at breakfast she looked at your empty chairs and said, ‘I’m sick of being the baby in the family.’ ”
“She said that?”
Before she could answer, there was a chirp on the phone that he disregarded. He assumed it was a bad cell connection.
“Yes, Joe. She’s growing up. She’s an interesting child. She observes the rest of us and makes up her own mind. And I’ve found when she says something, I’d better listen.”
“I can’t imagine being out here with the both of them,” Joe mumbled. “Especially with Nate.”
“Yes,” Marybeth said, “I heard about the ear collection.”
Joe cringed. “You know he really doesn’t have one, right? That it’s his way of joking?”
“I knew that. But does Sheridan?”
“I think so.” What was he doing to his daughter?
“Don’t worry,” Marybeth said, as if reading his mind. “Sheridan might just have a better understanding of Nate than either of us. She’s almost grown up with him around.”
He chuckled, despite himself. And the phone chirped again.
“Hold on,” he said to Marybeth. Cupping the mike, he said to Sheridan, “Your phone is making a funny beep. Does that mean you have to charge it or something?”
Her eyes shot open. “No, Dad. That means there’s a call coming in. Or a text.”
It took a moment to realize what she meant. But Joe quickly said to Marybeth, “Look, I’ve got to go.”
“What?”
He snapped the phone closed. He felt bad doing that to Marybeth, but he knew he could always call her back and explain. Quickly, he handed the phone to Sheridan, who took it and looked at the display.
She said, “It’s a number I don’t recognize. There’s no text or message. It says I missed two calls.”
Joe thought, April took a fresh TracFone from the pharmacy in Rawlins. It would have a new number. And if it was April, her situation was desperate enough that she finally decided to call, not text.
“I know,” Sheridan said, again reading his mind, again staring at her phone. Again, willing it to ring.
Although Joe had told her to stay in the truck, she jammed the phone into her pocket and stalked away into the meadow to regroup. Joe didn’t stop her.
“JOE, THIS ROBERT ANGLE you suggested may have legs,” Coon said. Joe hadn’t seen him walk over from the helicopter, and his sudden presence jarred him. “I just talked to our team in Washington. They’re going crazy with the linkages. I can’t believe we weren’t looking in his direction before this. Stenko’s such a big fat target that we didn’t really move the spotlight off him.”
Joe turned away from Sheridan and her cell phone, hoping Coon wouldn’t pick up on what might be happening.
“Sometimes we think in too much of a linear way in law enforcement,” Joe said, echoing Nate.
“What?”
“Never mind.” Joe was preoccupied. If all Portenson wanted was Stenko’s head on a platter, as he said, April could once again end up being collateral damage. Joe refused to open up that possibility. Which meant he couldn’t yet confide in Coon regarding the incoming calls. They were back to square one.
Coon said, “The dead guy in Madison, Reif? Apparently, he was Robert’s nemesis. The two of them used to work together at one point and they founded the carbon-offset company together. But they had a falling out. Reif got disillusioned with either Robert or the cause or both, because he left ClimateSavior and spent all his time ripping our boy and the company on his own blog. He hated Robert and no doubt he damaged the credibility of Robert’s company and his cause. And then he turns up dead and Robert’s nowhere to be found.”
Joe said, “You guys need to run the spent casings on the lawn over there against casings found in Madison.”
“Already on it,” Coon said. “But there’s more. Like a double homicide in South Dakota of a couple with a giant RV. Robert had a thing against those big vehicles and he railed about it on his website. In fact, he tried to urge his fans to sabotage them.”
Joe said, “Keystone. That poor old couple.”
“Yeah.”
“And the Aspen wedding?”
Coon said, “Two trust fund kids with high profiles on the society and gossip pages. Two great big huge carbon footprints.”
Joe shook his head.
Coon said, “I don’t want to believe what it’s looking like. Plus, I believe in global warming and climate change. I don’t want this to screw up the effort. It’s up to all of us, you know. These guys could give it all a bad name.”
Joe grunted.
“There’s something else,” Coon said, stepping in closer and looking over his shoulder.
“What? Are you worried about your boss overhearing you?”
Coon leveled his gaze at Joe until Joe was uncomfortable.
Coon said, “I was watching your truck through my binoculars as we came in earlier. I saw you pull over and let somebody out.”
Joe looked away.
“Some big guy with a blond ponytail got out,” Coon said, taking another step toward Joe until they were inches apart. “That wouldn’t have been Nate Romanowski, would it?”
Joe said, “Who?” But he knew his face was flushed.
“So it was him,” Coon said. “You are a really lousy liar.”
Joe didn’t respond.
“If Portenson knew he was around, you would both be in a world of hurt,” Coon said. “Not that I told him what I saw.”
Joe nodded. He was grateful Coon hadn’t told his boss. And wished he were a better liar.
“What are you going to do if you find her, Joe?” Coon asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you think you can save her?”
Joe met his eyes again. “I don’t know.”
Coon asked, “What do you know?”
Joe shook his head. “Not much. But I know she deserves better than what’s happened to her. She needs to know somebody cares.”
Coon started to speak but stopped himself. Instead, he tilted his head back and looked at the big blue autumn sky. Finally, he said, “That’s admirable. It may not be protocol, but it’s admirable.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond.
“If she calls again,” Coon said, “you need to give me the number. I’ll help you track her down.”
Joe made a decision. He said, “It’s a deal.”
Coon walked away.
In the meadow, Sheridan kicked though ankle-deep cheatgrass toward a wall of trees. She had no destination other than to have a few minutes to herself. She didn’t want to simply go home. Not without April. The grass was dry and stiff and crunched underfoot. She noted she wasn’t the only person to have recently walked through it. There were two parallel tracks heading from the house toward the trees-one heavier than the other. Then she saw the blood flecked across the stalks of grass and yelled, “Dad!”
He came running.
While she waited for him there was another chirp. She pulled out her cell phone and read the message.
As her dad approached and saw the blood on the grass, Sheridan said, “It’s her.”
SHE HANDED THE PHONE to Joe. He looked at the display and his stomach clenched.
It read:
From: AK
im hurt and its getting bad. im in the woods. the car is crashed. i need u 2 come get me now. i think there r some men coming 2 get me. i hear them. idont know what theyll do 2 me. plz come get me sherry. take me home. plz help me.
ak
CB: 307-220-4439
Aug 26, 11:18 am
Erase REPLY Options
South of Devils Tower
SHE COULD HEAR THEM COMING.
Far above her, in the trees. They were working their way down the steep slope and occasionally one of them stepped on and snapped a dry branch or dislodged a rock that tumbled down. They were certainly taking their time. A half hour before, while she was texting Sheridan, she’d heard the sound of an engine and the crunch of tires on gravel far above her on the road. Then the sound of two car doors slamming.
She had no doubt they’d find her. Although the hillside was extremely steep, the trail leading to her was obvious. Far above, as far as she could see, there was a gap in the brush near the road where the car had torn through. It had rolled to the bottom, snapping off pine trees and churning up the ground. The car now rested upside down on its hood, wheels in the air. The motor had finally stopped ticking. She was grateful it hadn’t burst into flames like cars did on television when they crashed and rolled down a mountain. Instead, it was immensely quiet. The only sounds were the buzz of insects, the watery sound of a breeze in the treetops, and footfalls as they got closer.
She’d tried to stand but the pain in her leg wouldn’t let her. Her hands and face were covered with tiny cuts and her neck and shoulder ached from where the seat belt had bitten into her. She was too weak to crawl any farther from the car than to the base of a huge dark pine. She sat slumped against it.
Waiting.
SHE TRIED TO RECALL the events of the last half hour but they came to her in bits and pieces. She remembered the car rolling, her head either pressed against the inside of the roof as it dented down farther with every rotation or being slammed back again to the back seat. Robert was screaming the whole time, holding his hands in the air as if to stop the hood from collapsing on his head. The sounds of snapping trees were like gunshots and there were glittery jewels floating through the air. No, not jewels-tiny cubes of safety glass from the windows as they shattered. She’d picked some of the glass out of her hair and from folds of her clothing. Her leg had begun to bleed again.
She’d faded in and out of consciousness, but she knew both Robert and Stenko had somehow survived the crash as she had. She remembered Stenko moaning-something about his ribs-and Robert pulling him out of the car through the open windshield. When Robert crawled back into the interior of car to get his computer case and Stenko’s daypack, she’d opened her eyes. He scowled at her but didn’t speak, as if she weren’t worth his words, as if he just wished she’d go away. She seemed to be floating in the air upside down, and she realized she was hanging suspended from the seat belt.
Later-she wasn’t sure when-she heard Robert imploring Stenko to take more morphine.
Robert saying, “Come on, Dad. We’ve got to walk. You can walk downhill, can’t you? They’re gonna find us here if we stay. And if they find us, they’ll butcher me. You need to take more of that stuff so you can function.”
“What about April?” Stenko had asked, his voice slurred like he was drunk.
She had wanted to answer, to call out. But she was in shock and nothing worked. The only words she could express were in her own head.
“She’s dead in there,” Robert had said. “I’m sorry.”
She remembered wondering if she was dead.
Stenko started sobbing. The recollection of the sound brought tears to her eyes now.
“It’s okay,” Robert had told him. “She couldn’t have walked out of here anyway with her leg and all. You never should have brought her, Dad. You never should have brought her. She isn’t Carmen and she never was.”
Sloppy, racking sobs from Stenko.
“Come on, Dad. We can’t stay. We’ll go downhill until we run into a road or a ranch where we can get a car.”
Stenko said, “She was innocent. She never hurt anyone. I was trying to save her, Robert. Every time I try to do something right it seems like they end up getting hurt…”
Robert: “Get the box of cash. We need to take that with us. And you still have that napkin with the account numbers on it, don’t you?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Stenko cried.
Robert’s voice was shrill. “Yeah, I heard. Like you need to tell me you screw up the lives of those around you. Sheesh. Like that’s news to me. It’s a freaking wonder I’m so well adjusted, you know?”
Then silence. They were gone.
FROM A RESERVE she didn’t know she had in her, she managed to find the buckle of the seat belt and release it. When it opened, she dropped a few inches. Although she was hurting everywhere, no bones seemed to be broken, and she crawled out of the car through the gaping rear window. She’d found the cell phone a few feet away from the vehicle but not the card she’d need to load minutes.
In the shade of the big pine tree, she tore at the packaging with her teeth and powered the phone. There was an automatic ten minutes of airtime on the phone to enable the user to call and load it with more time. Instead, she tried to call Sheridan, who didn’t answer, so she sent a text.
SHE HEARD A VOICE.
“Chase, down here.” She recognized the voice as Corey Talich, the oldest brother. It came from above in the trees and to her left. It was a whisper/yell. He was being cautious.
“What do you see?” Chase asked in the same tone. He was above to her right. The brothers were descending the mountain on either side of the churned-up ground the rolling car had made.
“An upside-down car. I can see the tires. It’s got to be them.”
Then she heard something else. Either a rock dislodging or a car door slamming.
She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. If she lay still, maybe they wouldn’t see her against the tree. Or, like Robert, they’d think she was dead.
“D’you see anybody?” Chase asked, his voice low but bolder, as if he was starting to believe there were no survivors.
“Nobody I can see.”
“I hope Robert isn’t dead,” Chase said, “because I want to kill him.”
Corey laughed harshly. He was very close. She cracked an eye and saw him as he pushed into the clearing through a pine bough on the other side of the car.
“Jesus,” he said. “How many times did it roll over to get all the way down here?”
“Not enough,” Chase said. “Are Robert and Stenko in there? Is our money in there?”
She knew they wouldn’t let her live if they found her. She just hoped they’d just kill her and nothing else.
She thought of her sisters and how much she’d like to see them again. How she never would. She wished Stenko would come back. Even Robert. No, not Robert.
“The car’s empty!” Corey hissed. She couldn’t see him and she assumed he’d dropped to all fours on the other side of the vehicle to look inside.
“You’re kidding!” Chase said, emerging from the trees on the right side. He had a gun in his hand.
“No, man, I’m not kidding. There’s no Stenko, no Robert, no money. Even that girl is gone. Where in the hell did they go? How in the hell did they get out?”
“Shit,” Chase barked. “This is why I hate seat belts.”
Corey stood up and she could feel his eyes lock with hers. He raised his hand and pointed. “There’s the girl.”
“What?”
“I see that girl. She’s over against that big tree.”
“Where?”
Corey shook his finger at her. “There.”
She’d never felt more helpless.
“I bet she knows where those bastards went,” Chase said, walking around the car toward her. His face was expressionless, his eyes dark coals. The lack of feeling or emotion on his face scared her more than if he’d been snarling, because he approached her as if he had a routine job to do and wanted to finish it so he could go on to the next task.
When he was ten feet away he raised his pistol and she could see the black O of the muzzle.
“Where’d they go, bitch?” Chase said. Corey walked up behind him. It was obvious by the way Corey looked at her expectantly that he had no intention of stopping what was about to happen. Especially if she didn’t talk.
She moaned and felt hot tears cut through the grime on her cheeks.
And suddenly there was a red fist-sized hole in Chase’s chest accompanied by a massive BOOM that seemed to shake the earth. Blood, bone, and tissue spattered the grass. Chase’s eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped straight down as if he were a mountain climber whose rope had been severed.
Corey cursed and wheeled around, fumbling at the back of his pants for a pistol grip.
“Freeze and put your hands up where I can see ’em!” a man shouted as he came out from under the branches of a tree in a crouch. He had a rifle or a shotgun-a shotgun-and he wore a red shirt and a gray cowboy hat. There was a badge on his breast that caught a glint from the sun.
Corey stiffened and slowly released his hold on his gun behind his back. He said, “Okay, okay, you don’t have to shoot.”
The man with the hat and badge stood up and walked stiff-legged toward Corey, aiming at him down the barrel of his shotgun as he closed the distance between them. His face was white, and he looked determined. His eyes were hard, but there was something pleasant and a little sad about his face.
“Get down on the ground on your belly,” he said to Corey, “hands on the top of your head, fingers laced.”
“My brother,” Corey said, his voice a plaintive cry, “you killed my brother.”
“Wasn’t me,” the man said. “Now get down like I told you.”
At the same time a blond man appeared from the trees holding a giant silver revolver with both hands. He was bigger than the man with the shotgun.
Corey dropped to his knees, then flopped forward with his hands on his head. The man in the hat was quickly on top of him, flinging Corey’s gun into the brush and yanking on one wrist at a time to snap on handcuffs.
Only when he was done and he was sure Corey Talich had no more weapons on him did he pause and look up at her.
She managed to say, “Thank you.” Her voice was a croak.
The expression on his face was anguished. He said, “Who are you? Where’s April?”
The blond man with the ponytail slowly shook his head.
The heavy beat of helicopter rotors coming over the mountain drowned out any more questions.