Blood Trail (25 page)

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I assume they did.”

Joe said, “Hmmmm.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I can tell you that Shenandoah is back and doing very well. I saw her recently. She looks good and she has a little baby. She’s married to a guy named Klamath Moore.”

It was obvious from Mrs. Thunder’s expression that she was grateful to hear the news but didn’t know who Klamath Moore was.

“I’m so happy to hear that,” she said, growing misty again. “That’s so good to hear. Please, if you see her again, tell her to come by the school. Tell her I’d love to see her again.”

Joe smiled. “If I get the chance, I’ll pass along the invite.”

“Tell her that old Alice Thunder wants to give her a hug.”

 
 
JOE WAS buoyed as he walked out into the parking lot. The best entree to Klamath Moore would no doubt be through his wife, Shannon . . . and Alisha.
Maybe
that was the angle Nate was working.

If his friend was working on anything at all.

 
 
HE SAT in the pickup without starting the motor. His mind raced. What was it Vern Dunnegan had once told him about the Indian camp cook?

Vern told a lot of stories. He talked nonstop. Joe had learned to tune him out because the chatter was incessant and many of Dunnegan’s stories were mean-spirited. Joe had tried to forget everything Vern had told him once Vern showed himself to be a liar and a criminal eight years before; he’d done all he could to expunge Vern Dunnegan from his mind. But he tried to remember this particular story about the camp cook. He hoped he’d written it down in his notebook at the time, and he planned to locate his old notes to try to refresh his memory.

 
 
THERE WERE two messages on his cell phone and he punched in the access number to hear them.

The first was from Stella, saying Randy Pope was doing everything he could to meet with the governor to get his blessing to leave Cheyenne and take over supervision of the case. She was running interference, but she said she couldn’t hold him off forever. What, Stella asked, was going on?

The second was from Portenson of the FBI, saying Bill Gordon was prepared to meet Joe that night in the little town of Winchester. He said Gordon wanted to talk and he had something to say. Portenson said Joe was to be at the park promptly at eight. No earlier, no later. If Joe wasn’t there on time and alone, Gordon, Portenson promised, would flee. And if something bad happened—if Joe was late or Gordon smelled a trap—there would be no more meetings, because the informant couldn’t risk them and, frankly, he had no idea if Joe could be trusted in the first place.

“You’ve got one shot at our man,” Portenson said. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Joe was grateful Portenson didn’t mention Nate, which meant he didn’t yet know. But Joe assumed the FBI would know soon, one way or another—possibly even Pope would tell them in an effort to take over—and he wondered if he’d hear the explosion from 350 miles away.

 
 
IT WASN’T the new knowledge of Shenandoah Yellowcalf, or the calls from Stella or Portenson that suddenly unnerved Joe, caused the hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck to stand on end, his flesh to crawl. It wasn’t something that had happened or what he’d learned as much as what he was feeling: there was something malevolent in the air.

He was being watched.

Over the years, he’d come to trust his instincts in this regard. When he had felt he was being watched he habitually discarded the notion, convinced himself he was imagining things, tried to move on, only later to learn that he had been correct in the first place.

He raised his eyes, surveyed the cars in the parking lot. No one. He scanned the school grounds, anticipating the sight of a student skulking in the shadows and alcoves, maybe sneaking a smoke, keeping his eyes on Joe. He scanned the windows of the school for a face. Maybe Mrs. Thunder and Mrs. Shoyo looking out at him, seeing him off. Maybe those boys who had been pretending to be “poaching fools” were having another laugh at his expense.

He scanned the sagebrush-covered hillsides that flowed like frozen swells toward the foothills and the mountains beyond. There were pockets of pine and aspen, plenty of vantage points to hide in.

Joe saw no one.

22

23

PORTENSON HAD said Bill Gordon would be waiting for Joe in the public park at 8 P.M. in the little town of Winchester, population 729, which was eighteen miles northwest of Saddlestring via the interstate north to Montana. Joe was familiar with the park because years before he’d taken Sheridan, Lucy, and Maxine to a local dog show there. Maxine didn’t place in any of the events but was awarded a “Most Unusual Color” consolation certificate that his girls were very proud of and that still hung on the refrigerator with magnets. None of the judges had ever seen a Labrador that had once been scared completely white. Nobody had.

The park consisted of a few picnic tables, a shelter, some benches, and a jungle gym and slide erected and maintained by the Winchester Lions Club, according to a sign. The park was a perfectly square town block. It was sealed off on four sides by neat rows of ancient cottonwood trees, which made it a good place to meet because of its seclusion on a cold fall night and because of its location off the main street.

As instructed by Portenson, Joe wore street clothes—Wranglers, boots, snap-button cowboy shirt, his worn Carhartt ranch coat—and drove the family van instead of his game and fish pickup. Any suggestion that he was official would blow the meeting, expose Gordon if someone saw them together. The interstate was clear of snow but black and wet in his headlights. His twelve-gauge Remington WingMaster shotgun rested against the passenger seat, muzzle down, and his .40 Glock was clipped to his belt and out of view under the coat. He was edgy, unsure, which is why he’d brought his weapons. But he wanted to talk to Gordon. Joe had the feeling—and it wasn’t more than that at this point—that he was getting somewhere, that momentum was finally with him. Not that he was solving the murders or understanding what was going on, but that finally he was in motion toward an end.

Winchester was primarily a ranching and timber town, five hundred feet higher than Saddlestring, where the foothills paused for rest before beginning their climb to become the Bighorns. Winchester’s lone public artwork, located on the front lawn of the branch bank, was an outsized and gruesome metal sculpture of a wounded grizzly bear straining at the end of a thick chain, its metal leg encased in a massive saw-toothed bear trap. Joe thought it was one of the most grotesque and disturbing pieces he had ever seen, while at the same time reflecting the rough sensibilities of the little town.

At 7:45, Joe took the Winchester exit. He was close enough to the town limits he could smell wood smoke from the two hundred or so homes already battened down and prepped for a long winter when the whoop of a siren came out of nowhere on the side of the road and his van was lit up by the flashing red-and-blue wigwag lights of a police car.

Joe looked at his speedometer—forty-five, the speed limit—before slowing down and pulling over onto the shoulder of the road. The cruiser eased in behind him.

“What?”
Joe asked aloud. “Why now? Why me?”
A burned-out taillight? What?

The thought that Portenson had set him up crossed his mind.

In his rearview mirror, Joe could see the inside lights go on in the police car. The lone Winchester town cop looked to be in his midtwenties, with a heavy shelf of brow, a buzz cut, and a slight mustache. He wore a neat blue police vest over a crisp blue shirt. The cop was calling in Joe’s license plate for a vehicle check before getting out and approaching. The look on the officer’s face was serious and zealous. Joe had seen that look on overeager cops before, and it was rarely a good thing.

Joe groaned, bit his lip, debated getting out first to head off what could quickly become ugly if the cop shone his flashlight inside the van and saw the shotgun or his sidearm. Joe’s badge was pinned to his red shirt on the back of a chair in his bedroom at home. He ran through his options quickly: get out, hope the cop recognized him as the local game warden and let him go quickly so he could meet Gordon in ten minutes (at the risk of the cop becoming alarmed by the armed violator he’d just pulled over); wait for the cop to approach him and try to explain away why he was entering Winchester with a shotgun and no badge or official identification, and beg the officer to let him pass; lie—say he was hunting coyotes or taking the shotgun to a gunsmith in Winchester to fix something, hope the cop didn’t check for concealed weapons. But he was no good at lying. Maybe he could hide the weapons under the seat where they may or may not be found, accept a ticket for whatever it was he was pulled over for, promise to buy a new bulb for the tailgate or whatever, hope the transaction would be done quickly enough so he would be at the park by eight; confess everything—
I’m working directly for the governor and I’m undercover in order to meet with a confidential informant for the FBI who may have information on the murders of those hunters so you have to let me go right now
—and hope the cop believed him even though Joe, in the cop’s place, wouldn’t buy it for a second. Or he could peel away when the cop got out of the cruiser and try to lose him on the two-lane highway before doubling back to meet Gordon in the park. . . .

Joe thought,
All bad options.

He watched the cop nod as he got confirmation on the plate and hung up his mike, then opened his door. His approach was textbook—Maglite in his left hand, his arm bent so the barrel of it rested on his shoulder with the beam directed into Joe’s van to illuminate the backseat, the floor, the side of Joe’s face. The cop’s right hand rested on his pistol grip. He walked close to the side of the van and Joe read his name badge backward in the mirror: NORYB.

Joe toggled the switch to open his window.

“Officer Byron,” Joe said, “I’m not sure why you pulled me over—”

“Put both of your hands on the steering wheel where I can see ’em,” the cop barked. He’d seen the shotgun.

“Look,” Joe said, “my name is Joe Pickett. I’m a game warden in Saddlestring—”

The cop stepped back and squared into a shooter’s stance, his pistol out and aimed at Joe along with the blinding beam from the flashlight. “Get out of the car!”

Joe briefly closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

“I said,
get out of the car, sir
. Now!”

“Okay, I’m getting out,” Joe said. “But I need to tell you right now I’m a peace officer myself and I’ve got a concealed weapon.”

Byron, eyes wide and mouth set, aimed down his semiautomatic. Joe kept his right hand aloft while he opened the door with his left and stepped out onto the cold wet pavement with his hands visible. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

Byron said, “Turn around and put your hands on the roof of the car and spread your feet.”

Joe hated to turn his back on the cop, but he did. He said, “This is a mistake. I’m on duty myself if you’d just let me explain.”

Byron kicked the inside of Joe’s left ankle hard, nearly taking his legs out from under him. The pain shot through his body.

“I said,
spread ’em
,” the cop yelled. “There. And lean forward. Put your weight on your hands.”

Joe felt his coat being pulled back and the weight of the Glock suddenly wasn’t there.