Blood Trail (6 page)

“What’s with the three files?” Joe asked.

“Not now, Joe,” Pope said out of the side of his mouth.

“Why are you and the governor so directly involved in this case?”

Pope shot Joe a look of admonition tinged with panic, and repeated, “Not now, Joe.”

The middle monitor flickered, revealing the top of a desk and the State of Wyoming seal on the wall behind the desk. The technician brought the audio up as Wyoming Governor Spencer Rulon filled the screen and sat down. Rulon was a big man with a wide, expressive face, a big gut, a shock of silver-flecked brown hair, a quick sloppy smile, and eyes that rarely stayed on anything or anyone very long. Joe thought the governor had gained some weight since he’d seen him last, and his upper cheeks seemed rounder and ruddier. He wondered if Stella was there in the room, if she would appear on the screen.

“Are we live?” Rulon asked. His voice was gravelly.

“Yes, sir,” Pope answered.

“Sheriff, we’d like to thank you for the use of your facilities.”

McLanahan nodded, still chewing. “You paid for ’em,” he said.

“There are benefits to being flush with cash,” Rulon said with a slight smile, referring to the hundreds of millions of dollars of energy severance taxes flowing into the state. “This is one of ’em.”

Rulon’s eyes left the camera and shifted to his monitor. “I see we’ve got everyone here. Director Pope, Sheriff McLanahan, Robey, Joe Pickett. How you doing, Joe?”

“Fine, Governor,” Joe said, shifting in his chair for being singled out. “Considering.”

“Game Warden Phil Kiner is present as well,” Pope said quickly.

“Okay,” Rulon said without enthusiasm. Joe could feel Kiner deflate next to him at the governor’s cool reaction to the mention of his name. Then: “What have we got here, gentlemen?”

Pope cleared his throat, indicating to everyone in the room that he planned to take the lead. Joe wasn’t surprised.

“Mr. Frank Urman’s body was found this morning about three miles from his elk camp. Urman was sixty-two. He owned a hotel and gas station in Sheridan. What we heard over the radio turned out to be true. He was killed and mutilated in a manner that suggests he was left to resemble a game animal.”

Rulon winced, and Joe’s eyes wandered to the photos on the bulletin board.

“The crime scene has been taped off and contained,” Pope said. “State and local forensics spent the afternoon there and they’re still up there working under lights. The body is being airlifted to our lab in Laramie for an autopsy. The scene itself was pretty trampled by the time we got there, I’m afraid. Mr. Urman’s nephew and his friends were all over the scene.”

“Is it possible they had something to do with it?” Rulon asked. Before becoming governor, Rulon had been the federal district prosecutor for Wyoming, and Joe thought he easily slipped back into the role.

“We haven’t ruled it out,” Pope said at the same time McLanahan said, “They didn’t do it.” The two exchanged glances.

“Which is it?” Rulon asked.

“They’ve been separated and questioned,” Pope said. “We’re comparing their stories and we will re-interview them later tonight to see if their recollection has changed any. But I’ve got to say we’d be real surprised if any of them had anything to do with the shooting. They’re all cooperating. They’re vets just back from Iraq, and they seem too angry with what happened to have had anything at all to do with the crime.”

Rulon seemed to mull this over. “So you’ve got nothing?”

Pope sighed and nodded. “Correct.”

McLanahan said, “No footprints, no DNA, no fibers, no casing, no weapon, no motivation. Squat is what we’ve got. Squat. Not a goddamned thing.”

“Do we know if the murder victim was targeted or random?” Rulon asked.

“I’d say random,” Pope said quickly. “I think he was murdered because he was a hunter. The way his body was mutilated suggests the killer was sending us a pretty strong message.”

“You’ve got a good grasp on the obvious, Director Pope,” Rulon said, letting an edge of impatience into his tone. “What else can you tell me? What steps are being taken to find the shooter?”

Joe watched the blood drain from Pope’s face as the director seemed to shrink in size.

“Governor,” Pope said, “you’ve got to believe me that we’re doing everything we can. The scene is being analyzed and we’ll start a grid search of the entire mountain tomorrow. We’ve got every single law-enforcement body in the county questioning everybody they locate in a fifty-mile radius from the scene up there to see if anybody saw anything like a lone hunter or a vehicle leaving the area. I’m bringing all of our agency crime-scene investigators up here to comb the Bighorns. APBs are out. We’ll find something, I’m sure. A footprint, a spent cartridge, something.”

Rulon sat back, looking away from the camera at something or somebody in the room. Joe thought,
Stella?

“What about this?” Joe asked Pope, holding up the small evidence bag with the poker chip he’d found in the grass near the body. Joe had been examining it through the plastic. The chip was old, red, and had a faded stamp of a flower of some kind on one side. It was blank on the other. A residue of dark powder clung to the chip and the inside of the bag, but no print was found on it besides Joe’s.

“Urman probably dropped it,” Pope said dismissively. “Poker games and elk camps go together like shoes and socks.”

McLanahan snorted.

The governor asked the sheriff, “Do you have something to say about this, Mr. McLanahan?”

The sheriff sat back in his chair and slowly stroked his new mustache. “Well, you know Joe,” McLanahan said. “I don’t mean to beat the devil around the stump or nothin’, but ole Joe kinda likes to play to the gallery in situations like this. A poker chip is just a damned poker chip, is what I think.”

The governor paused a few beats, as did Pope.

“Get out,” Rulon said, waving his hand at the camera as if shooing away a fly. “Get out of the room, Sheriff McLanahan. And take your minions with you. I don’t have the time or patience to learn a foreign language.”

McLanahan was taken aback, stammered, “This is my building. This is my case!”

“This is my state,” Rulon countered. “If you expect any more favors from me, you’ll gather up and leave the room. I need to have a talk with my men.”

McLanahan unwisely looked to Joe for help, then Pope.

“This ain’t wise,” the sheriff grumbled, pulling himself to his feet. His deputies followed suit, with Deputy Mike Reed struggling to keep from laughing. “This ain’t wise at all.”

Robey asked Rulon, “Do you mind if I stay?”

“Joe, what do you think?” Rulon asked. Joe could feel Pope’s eyes on him. The director was miffed he hadn’t been asked that question.

“Robey’s integral to this case,” Joe said.

“He stays then,” Rulon commanded.

“And I ain’t?” McLanahan said.

“I’ll stay and report back,” Robey said under his breath to Deputy Reed, who winked.

The governor sat back and waited until he heard the door slam shut.

“Are they gone?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Pope said.

“What the hell is wrong with him? What’s this ‘beat the devil around the stump’ crap?”

Joe said, “He thinks he’s a western character.”

“I have no patience with those types,” Rulon said, “none at all. There’s room for only one character in this state, and that’s me.”

Joe grinned, despite himself. And he thought he heard Stella giggle off-camera.
Okay, then,
he thought.

“Since they’re gone, let’s get to it,” Rulon said into the camera. “We received word about an hour ago that Klamath Moore is in the state. He plans to come up to Saddlestring with his entourage in tow. Apparently, he already knows about our victim and how he died.”

Randy Pope went white.

Joe had seen footage of Klamath Moore being arrested at anti-hunting and animal-rights rallies and being interviewed on cable-television news programs for several years. He was a bear of a man, Joe thought, who came across as passionate and charismatic as he thundered against barbarians and savages who slaughtered animals for fun. There was a documentary film on his exploits that had won prizes in England.

Randy Pope said, “That guy is a nutcase. He’s my worst nightmare. How’d he find out about Frank Urman so fast?”

“We’d all like to know that,” the governor said. “My guess is one of his followers has a police scanner and heard the whole thing today and tipped off the big man. But we can’t spend much time and energy finding out who tipped him off, because in the end it doesn’t matter. What does matter is how fast we can find the shooter and put him away so Klamath has to go home. The longer that guy stays here, the more trouble he’ll cause.”

“Hold it,” Robey said, realization forming. “Klamath Moore is the guy who—”

“He’s the guy who thinks hunters should be treated the same way he thinks animals are treated by hunters,” Rulon said. “He’s the main force behind most of the protests you hear about where hunters get harassed in the field or game animals get herded away from lawful hunting types. He sends his people into the hills in Pennsylvania on the opening day of deer season tooting kazoos and playing boom boxes. The media loves him because he’s so fucking colorful and politically correct, I guess.”

“Why is he coming here?” Robey asked.

Rulon said, “Think about it for a second. The only reason he’d come to Wyoming is to give aid and comfort to whoever shot Frank Urman and the two other hunters we know about.”

With that, Joe sat up. Now he knew what was in the two other files Pope had brought with him.

Pope sighed.

“Two we know about,” Rulon said. “There may be more for all we know. I’ve got DCI going over every ‘hunting accident’ that’s occurred in the last ten years. One to four people a year are killed during hunting season, and sometimes none at all.”

That was true, Joe knew. Most of the fatalities were the result of carelessness within a group of hunters, and often involved family members—hunters who mistook other hunters for game, hunters who didn’t unload their guns, or, the biggest killer of all, hunters climbing fences or crawling through timber when their gun went off and killed a companion or themselves. Rarely were there hunting accidents where the shooter wasn’t quickly identified, and most of the time the assailant confessed in tears.

“How long have you suspected this?” Joe asked Pope.

Pope shrugged. “We couldn’t be sure. We still aren’t, but today . . .”

“Whoever did that to Frank Urman wants us to know it,” Rulon said. “In fact, he wants the whole country to know it.”

Kiner said, “Jesus,” and sat back in his chair. Robey moaned and put his head in his hands.

“And it’s not only that,” Pope said. “This could kill us as an agency. It could just kill us. Hunting and fishing brings in over four hundred million dollars to the state. Licenses pay our salaries, gentlemen. If word gets out that hunters are being hunted in the state of Wyoming, we’ll all be looking for work. We’ll be ruined.

“Think about it,” Pope continued, as Joe and Robey exchanged looks of disgust. “Using our economic multiplier, we know that every elk is worth six thousand dollars to us. Every bear, five thousand. Bighorn sheep are twenty-five thousand, every deer is worth four thousand, and every antelope is three thousand. The list goes on. If hunters aren’t hunting, our cash flow dries up.”

“Try not to use that argument with any reporters, Randy,” Rulon said with undisguised contempt.

“So that’s what this is about,” Joe said. “That’s why you’re up here personally.”

“Of course,” Pope said. “Why else?”

“Well, an innocent man got killed and butchered, to start,” Joe said.

“Save me your sanctimony,” Pope spat, “unless . . .” Pope stopped himself. Joe had been braced and ready for Pope to light into him, to accuse him of insubordination, destruction of government property, playing cowboy—all the reasons he’d used to fire him in the first place two years ago. Joe wouldn’t have been surprised if Pope brought up the disappearance of J. W. Keeley, the Mississippi ex-con and hunting guide who’d come to Twelve Sleep County to get revenge and had never been heard from again—the darkest period of Joe’s life. But for reasons Joe couldn’t fathom given their acrimonious history, Pope bit his tongue.

“Unless what?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Pope said, his face red, his nose flared from internalizing his emotions. “This case is too serious to expose those old wounds. We need to work together on this. We need to put our past aside and find the shooter.”

Robey, who had been ready for an explosion and had placed his hands on the edge of the table so he could push away quickly and restrain Joe, looked as perplexed to Joe as Joe felt.

Pope took a deep breath and extended his hand. “I need you on this one. I don’t know what it is, but you seem to have a knack for getting in the middle of trouble like this. Plus, you know the area and the people because this is your old district. We need you here on the ground.”

Joe shook Pope’s hand, which was clammy and stiff, his long, thin fingers like a package of refrigerated wieners.

The governor said, “That’s what I love to see. A little love and cooperation among my employees.”

 
 
“HOW TRAMPLED is the crime scene?” Rulon asked.

“Trampled,” Pope said. “We’ve all been all over it, not to mention Urman’s nephew and his friends.”

“What about the immediate area? Did you determine where the shot was fired?”

“Not yet,” Pope said. “We ordered the forensics team to stay at the immediate crime scene. I was thinking we’d go up there tomorrow when it’s light and see what we can find.”

Rulon made a face. “Do you think it’s possible the shooter is still up there somewhere?”

“Possible,” Pope said, “but unlikely. Why would he hang around?”