Trophy Hunt (24 page)

“Can’t,” he said. “I’m too edgy. Every time I close my eyes, a million things charge at me and I can’t stop any of ’em.”

“What if I make it worth your while?” she said and smiled.

He hesitated, but not for long.

W
hen they were through, Joe rolled over onto his back. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t concentrate.”

“You did fine,” she purred.

T
HE COUNTY CLERK
’
S OFFICE
was located in the same building as the courtroom, jail, sheriff’s office, and attorney. A man named Stovepipe manned the reception desk and metal detector, and he nodded at Joe and waived him through at 7:45
A
.
M
.

“You’re up early this morning,” Stovepipe said, lowering the morning edition of the
Saddlestring Roundup.
Joe noted the headline: HERSIG SAYS NO PROGRESS IN MUTILATION DEATHS.

“Still broken?” Joe asked about the metal detector.

Stovepipe nodded. “Don’t tell nobody, though.”

“I never do. Is Ike in yet?”

“They don’t open until eight, but I think I seen him come in earlier.”

I
ke Easter’s glass-walled office was behind the counter where Twelve Sleep County citizens lined up daily to do business with the three matronly clerks who sat on tall stools and called out “NEXT!” Most of the
business transactions involved titles on automobiles and property. This was also the place to get marriage licenses, so the clerks who worked for Ike Easter were among the better informed gossips in the county, and much sought after when they got their hair done.

When Joe opened the door to the main office, all three of the matronly clerks wheeled on their stools and glared at him. It was easily one of the most unwelcome receptions he had ever received, he thought. One of the clerks quickly raised an open palm to him as he entered. “Sir, we’re not open for fifteen minutes,” she said. “Please take a seat in the hall and . . .”

“I’m here to see Ike,” Joe said flatly, ignoring her, and went through the batwing doors on the side of the counter.

“Sir . . .” The clerk was irritated.

“It’s okay, Millie,” Ike called out from his office when he saw Joe coming.

“I forgot about your elite Republican Guard,” Joe smiled, stopping outside Ike’s office and tipping his hat toward Millie. Millie huffed melodramatically. To Ike: “Do you have a few minutes? It’s important.”

Ike motioned Joe in, and Joe shut the door behind him.

“I’ll ignore the Republican Guard comment,” Ike said, not unpleasantly, “but they won’t. Next time you need a new title for your car, expect delays.”

Joe sat in a hardback chair across from Ike. “Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before we get a new car.”

“All my clerks are county employees,” Ike said. “They work eight hours a day and not one minute longer. They take an hour for lunch and get two fifteen-minute breaks. If you woke one of them up in the middle of the night, she could tell you to the hour how long she has until retirement, how many days of sick leave she’s got left this fiscal year, and to the penny what her pension will be. Those women keep me in a constant state of absolute fear.”

Ike had a smooth, milk-chocolate face and wore large-framed glasses. He had a silver mustache and his receding hair was also going gray. Like his cousin, Not Ike, Ike was quick to smile and had dark, expressive eyes. He had been reading the newspaper as well, and it lay flat on his desk,
opened to the page where the NO PROGRESS IN MUTILATION DEATHS front-page story was continued inside.

“Before you ask me whatever it is you’re going to ask me, can I say one thing?” Ike said.

“Sure.”

“Thank you for being so kind to my cousin, George. I know he gives you fits with all of those temporary licenses and all.”

Joe grunted, and looked down.

“I’ve tried and tried to get him to get a yearly license,” Ike said, “but I just can’t break through to him. It’s very generous of you to ease up on him a bit, Joe. I know you don’t have to do that. His life is fly-fishing, and I figure as long as he’s fishing he’s not getting himself into any other kind of trouble.”

“Okay, Ike, gotcha.”

“But I do appreciate it, Joe. Both Dorothy and I are grateful.”

“
Okay,
Ike. Enough,” Joe said.

“So, what do you want from me so early in the morning?”

Joe looked up. “How do mineral rights work?”

Ike’s eyes narrowed, and he paused. “Let me get another cup of coffee. This will take a few minutes.”

I
ke Easter used a legal pad to explain. He started out by writing “OG&M” on the top of the pad.

“When I say ‘OG&M,’ I’m referring to oil, gas, and mineral rights. They’re usually sold for a term on a specific piece of land, or they can be retained by the landowner. If the OG&M are sold, it usually means that the developer pays the landowner a fee for the rights or, in some cases, a percentage of the gross that is derived if the OG&M is exploited.”

Joe asked, “Are they like water rights?”

Ike shook his head. “No. Water rights go with the land. That means if you sell your land to somebody, the buyer gets your water rights. You don’t keep them and lease them back, and you can’t sell them separately to somebody else downstream or upstream.

“OG&M rights, however, can be bought and sold among companies or developers, or eventually returned to the landowner if the terms of the sale run out.”

Ike explained how the market for mineral rights in Wyoming peaked in the mid-twentieth century, during the boom years for oil, trona, coal, and uranium. Some landowners made much more from their mineral rights than they ever made from their cattle or sheep.

“Up until recently, we had almost forgotten about all of the intrigue and wheeling and dealing that gets done for mineral rights,” Ike said. “I had a clerk here who didn’t know what in the hell to do when some land man with a Texas accent walked into the office and wanted to file. But we all got back into the rhythm of it soon enough.”

“Because of CBM?” Joe asked.

“Yes, because of CBM. See, no one realized after the last oil bust that natural gas was down there in the kind of quantity it is. Suddenly, all of those fields that everyone thought were played out or useless were valuable again. Quite a few of the ranches had changed hands since their first leases or sales, and some of the new landowners didn’t even know that other people owned their OG&M rights. A lot of the squawking we all heard from ranchers bitching about the CBM companies on their land was because those ranchers discovered that the mineral rights had been sold years before.”

Joe tried to work it through. “So even if a ranch sells, the mineral rights stay with whoever had them?”

“Right.”

“The Timberline Ranch, for example, has six hundred wells planned for it. Those rights are owned by a mineral company, I assume, even though when they bought the rights they had never heard of coal-bed methane?”

“Right.”

Joe rubbed his face. He was missing something. The incentive to sell, or buy, or manipulate the land value, wasn’t there.

“Why would a company buy mineral rights to a ranch when they didn’t know what was in the ground?” Joe asked.

Ike shrugged, “It happened—and happens—all the time, Joe. Companies speculate. They lock up land, betting that somewhere down the road their investment will pay off.”

“Can I see the OG&M deed for the Timberline Ranch in the county record books?” Joe asked. “It would be interesting to know who has the mineral rights to the place. My understanding is that old man Overstreet sold the rights a long time ago.”

“Of course you can,” Ike said. “It’s a public record. But it might be a bitch to find right away.”

“Isn’t it all on computer?”

Ike laughed. “Not hardly, Joe. The most recent stuff is, of course. But anything older than ten years was indexed in deed books. Anything beyond twenty-five years is in the archives, but completely disorganized. There was a flood in the vault back then, and the deed books all got soaked. Because all of those old deeds and patents were typed on parchment paper, somebody emptied the books and put them into files after they dried out. They never were put back into new books in sequential order.”

“I’d still like to see it,” Joe said.

“May I ask why?” Ike said, lowering his voice.

Joe sighed. “It may be relevant to a sale of the place. Or a murder.”

“Really?”

“This is purely speculation on my part, Ike,” Joe said. “Please keep this confidential.”

Ike got up and opened his door. “Millie, can you please find and pull the OG&M file for the Timberline Ranch? Owned by the Overstreet sisters?”

Millie reluctantly got down from her stool, and gave Joe a look as she walked by.

“Why’d you ask
her
?” Joe said in a whisper.

Ike smiled sympathetically. “She’s been assigned to the archives, Joe. She’s the only one who can find any of that old stuff. We’re in the process of going through all of the old county files—which were kept off-site in file boxes for over fifty years—and bringing them in-house to recreate the old deed index books.”

“I heard something about that,” Joe said. “How the old county clerk charged the county rent for storage in his own house.”

“Um-hmmm,” Ike said, raising his eyebrows. The scandal was one of the reasons Ike Easter was elected county clerk.

“We think we’ve recovered all of the old records,” he said, “but every few months we find another box or two. The old county clerk had them in his basement, in bedrooms, and even in a couple of old locked garages in town.”

W
hile they waited, Ike asked Joe questions about the Murder and Mutilations Task Force, and the story in the newspaper. Joe confirmed that there was very little progress, but said that some things appeared to be emerging, although he couldn’t get into them.

“Hold it,” Joe said suddenly, looking at Ike.

“What?”

“The old county clerk’s residence, where the old records were kept—that’s where Cam and Marie Logue live now, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Would Cam and Marie have had access to the boxes?”

Ike thought about it for a moment. “I suppose they would have. The boxes were sealed up with tape, but they weren’t locked up or anything. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just interesting,” Joe said.

F
inally, Millie returned to Ike’s office, wiping her hands with a wet towel.

“Those old boxes are filthy,” she said, glaring at Joe.

“Did you find the file?” Ike asked, even though she wasn’t carrying anything.

She shook her head. “It must be in one of those boxes we’ve still got in storage. It hasn’t been brought up to the filing room yet.”

Ike groaned, thanked her, and waited for the door to close.

He told Joe, “We’ve got twenty or more boxes downstairs in the boiler room that still need to be brought up and gone through.”

“How quickly can you do it?”

Ike said, “Are you serious?”

“Yup.”

“Joe, I want to help you out and all, but can you at least give me a better reason so I can justify the overtime hours and feel good about it when the elite Republican Guard turns on me?”

Joe leaned forward on Ike’s desk. “As I mentioned, I think that the murders have something to do with either the potential sale of the Timberline Ranch or the mineral rights. I think if we know who holds the rights, we might know who ordered—or did—the killings.”

Ike swallowed. “Even the cows?” he asked.

“Maybe not the cows, but Tuff Montegue and Stuart Tanner.”

“And you feel pretty confident about this?”

Joe sat back and rubbed his face. “Kind of,” he confessed.

J
oe found Robey Hersig in his office reading the
Roundup
and looking very sour.

“Tell me something good, Joe.”

Joe sat down and recapped what he knew and suspected. Hersig grew increasingly interested, and began to take notes. When Joe was through, Hersig steepled his fingers and pressed them against the bridge of his nose.

“We don’t have enough to arrest anyone yet, or even bring them in for questioning,” Hersig said.

“I know.”

“So what’s your next step?”

“I’m going to go see Cam Logue.”

Hersig winced. “It might be too soon.”

“Maybe so. But it might break something loose. Or,” Joe said, “Cam may blow my whole theory out of the water.”

Robey sat for several moments, thinking things through. “What can I do to help?”

“A few things,” Joe said. “Intensify the search for Cleve Garrett. We’ve got to find him and make sure the girl’s okay. I can’t see him just blowing out of town like he did, after wanting to get so involved with the task force. Then follow up with Sheriff Harvey and Deputy Cook. They’ve already involved Portenson, so maybe we can find out more about this Eckhardt guy. I don’t know how or if Fort Bragg figures in, but Cook said he thought the army was stonewalling him when he called. Maybe if they heard from you, or the governor, we’d get some answers. Oh, and check up with Ike to see if they’ve located that Timberline Ranch file.”

“I can do all of that,” Hersig said, writing it down on the pad. “But you’re forgetting somebody. What about Barnum?”