Текст книги "Endangered"

Автор книги: C. J. Box

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“Right, they are,” she said.

Joe had been watching the two of them, back and forth, as if viewing a tennis match. He found it interesting how both of these big men deferred to Brenda at all times.

Joe said to Eldon, “Are you talking about Annie Hatch of the BLM and Revis Wentworth of the Fish and Wildlife Service?”

“That sounds like their names,” Eldon said. “They gave me their cards, but I used them to start a fire in the fireplace.”

Bull snorted again. He thought that was a good one.

In the distance, Joe thought he heard a high-pitched scream from the air compressor.

“Better shut that thing off,” Joe said.

“Why?” Eldon asked.

“Sounds like the bearings are going.”

Eldon shrugged. “It’s always something.”

Joe gave up.

“Are you sure it was their truck you saw?” he asked.

“No,” Eldon said. “I ain’t sure. But that’s what I thought at the time—‘Those sage grouse feds are back.’ But that’s a hell of a long way up there, and I just saw the white truck for a few seconds. Then I heard a bunch of shooting.”

Bull folded his arms over his chest and said to Joe, “There can’t be that many new white pickups in the county, can there?”

Joe was thinking the same thing. He asked Eldon what time he’d seen the white truck.

Eldon shrugged and said, “Six-thirty, maybe?” He looked to Brenda for confirmation.

“That sounds right,” she said. “We usually eat at six forty-five. We try to get done by the time Wheel of Fortune comes on.”

The timing worked, Joe thought. But it didn’t make sense—until he thought back on what Lucy had observed in regard to Hatch and Wentworth. Then it did.

“So,” Brenda said to Joe, “you want to see Dallas?”

The offer took Joe aback. “Yup,” he said.

“Come on in,” she said. “You’ll see that he’s as banged up as I told you he is. Then maybe you’ll finally believe us and leave us alone.”

Bull said, “He can come back, Mom. Just so it’s dark out and there’s no witnesses for when I whup his ass.”

“Damned straight, Bull,” Cora Lee laughed from inside the house.

As Joe mounted the peeling steps of the porch, he glanced over his shoulder to see if Eldon was coming in. The man was lumbering back to the garage, swinging the wrench back and forth at his side.

Joe heard the air compressor whine again. He hoped the bearings would burn out and disable the engine so he could think clearly without the background noise.

Brenda cracked the front door and leaned inside. “Cora Lee, put them dogs out back in their run. We’re comin’ in.”

15

The sound of the compressor muted as Joe stepped inside the house and the door was closed behind him. He removed his hat and held the brim with two hands.

“He’s in the back,” Brenda said.

Cora Lee was sprawled on a couch with one leg cocked over the arm. She was watching television, and she refused to look at Joe. That was okay with him. The show that blared from the flat-screen was something about spring break in Florida. Lots of bikinis and abs.

The house was small, cluttered, and close. It smelled of baked goods from the kitchen. The furnishings were familiar to Joe from so many visits to area homes: a unique combination of hunting memorabilia crossed with Wild West kitsch. An elk mount dominated the wall over a fireplace, and the fabric of the couch and chair was a motif of bucking horses and lariats. The low-hanging chandelier was a reproduction of a wagon wheel, with dusty little bulbs on each spoke. The adjacent wall, which melded into the hallway, was covered with cheaply framed photographs of rodeo action shots. Dallas riding a bull, Dallas on a saddle bronc, Dallas flying his hat like a Frisbee in an outdoor arena after a particularly good ride.

“That one is my favorite,” Brenda said as Joe leaned in to the picture. “It was taken three years ago at Cheyenne Frontier Days when Dallas won it. The ‘Daddy of ’Em All,’” she said.

A china hutch in the corner contained nothing but silver and gold buckles Dallas had won across the nation. There were four sparkling shelves of them.

As Joe passed by the wall, he searched for photos of the rest of the family and found one: an old shot of Bull, Timber, and Dallas with their arms around one another. It looked like it had been taken on a camping trip more than a decade ago. Bull’s mouth was agape and he looked simple. Timber was wiry and lean, and his eyes were closed as he smiled. Both brothers towered over Dallas, who stared straight at the camera with a kind of alarming confidence for a boy that small. By the looks of the photo, Dallas would have been nine or ten at the time, Joe thought. That was it as far as photos of his brothers went. The rest of the front room was a shrine to Dallas Cates. A stranger entering the house could have reasonably assumed Dallas was an only child.

Joe inadvertently glanced at Bull, who stood glowering by the door. As if Bull could read Joe’s mind, he winced and looked away. Joe almost—but not quite—felt sorry for him.

–

DALLAS RECLINED in an overstuffed chair in what appeared to be his old bedroom, judging by the yellowed rodeo posters on the walls and the photos of him playing football, wrestling, and running track as a Saddlestring High School Wrangler. He was watching a small television between his sock-clad feet. When Joe entered the room, Dallas turned his head stiffly and his eyes registered surprise when he recognized Joe. He lifted the remote and clicked off the set.

“Mr. Pickett,” Dallas said.

“Dallas.”

It wasn’t a ruse, Joe quickly determined. Dallas had been seriously injured. His face was still puffy and his left eye was swollen shut. The bruises on his face and neck were entering the gruesome blue, green, and yellow phase. His left arm was in a sling.

“I thought I heard Mom talkin’ to someone out there.” Dallas’s voice was muted and airier than Joe remembered. He attributed it to a throat injury.

Joe said, “Yup.”

Dallas winced as he shifted his weight in the recliner to face Joe. Even in his condition, Dallas radiated a kind of raw physical power, Joe thought. Muscles danced and his tendons popped beneath his skin as he moved. Sinew corded in his neck.

“Nothin’ hurts like busted ribs,” Dallas said, and he lifted the front of his baggy sweatshirt. His midsection was wrapped, but Joe could see the bruised discoloration on Dallas’s skin above and below the bandage.

“I broke my ribs once,” Joe said. “I know how it hurts.”

“It’s not so bad,” Dallas said with one of the big boxy grins he was famous for. “It only hurts when I breathe. Or talk. Or eat. Or try to move.”

Joe nodded sympathetically.

“Dr. Jalbani at the clinic in town says the only thing I can do is rest and let the ribs heal on their own. There’s nothing they can do to speed up the recovery. Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“When did Saddlestring get a Pakistani doctor?” Dallas asked. “It seems kind of funky.”

“He’s been here for two years.”

“Well,” Dallas said, “that just shows you how much I’ve been around, I guess.”

Dallas suddenly got serious, and said, “How’s April doing, Mr. Pickett?”

Joe realized Brenda was standing in the door right behind him. Dallas had glanced over to her before he asked the question. Joe wondered if Brenda had silently prompted it.

“She’s in bad shape,” Joe said. “She’s in a coma in a hospital in Billings.”

“Man,” Dallas said, “that’s bad news.” Then: “Is she going to make it?”

“We’re optimistic,” Joe lied.

Dallas nodded. And kept nodding. Then another quick glance to Brenda behind Joe’s shoulder.

“Has she been able to communicate?” Dallas asked.

“No.”

“Man, that’s rough. Will she ever be able to talk?”

“We hope so.”

Yet another glance. Joe considered whipping his head around so he could catch Brenda coaching her son, but he didn’t.

“Well, if she recovers, I hope you’ll tell her how sorry I am this happened to her,” Dallas said. “I mean, we had our problems and all, especially at the end. But she means a lot to me. I can’t stand to think of her stuck in some hospital room like that. So tell her I’m thinkin’ about her, will you?”

Joe nodded.

“Maybe I’ll be up and around soon,” Dallas said. “Billings ain’t that far.”

He paused, then said, “If that’s okay with you and Marybeth, I mean.”

Joe didn’t want to say, There’s nothing to see. And he didn’t like Dallas using his wife’s name so casually. He said, “I’ll let you know when she’s better. Maybe we can work something out.”

“That’d be great, Mr. Pickett.”

He seemed almost sincere, almost eager. Joe thought perhaps he had always judged Dallas too harshly. He’d been put off by his mannerisms, his history, his too-eager-to-please persona.

But maybe, Joe conceded, it had as much to do with the fact that April had left with him while Joe and Marybeth were away. That it had been Dallas’s fault as much as April’s why she had left.

Joe asked, “How long have you been back, Dallas?”

“Since March tenth,” he answered quickly.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Brenda said from behind Joe.

“Not the thirteenth?” Joe pressed.

“Hell no,” Dallas said, letting some heat show through, although the grin was still frozen on his face. “I see what you’re doin’ here.”

“Just had to check,” Joe said. “I’m sorry.”

“You ought to be,” Brenda said.

Joe looked back at her. She wasn’t as angry as he’d expected. Oddly, she looked relieved.

“Well,” Joe said to Dallas, “I hope you’re up and around soon.”

Dallas’s grin turned into a bigger box. “The only good thing about it is, I couldn’t have gotten busted up at a better time. I lost my entry fees on the Rodeo All-Star gig in Dallas, of course, but the big fun doesn’t really start until June. By then, it’ll be a rodeo a day, and sometimes two, through the rest of the summer. That’ll be one paycheck after another. I plan to turn this setback right around and light up the PRCA all the way to the national finals. I ain’t the first cowboy to get hurt, you know.”

Joe agreed.

“You and Marybeth ought to come see me at the Daddy, last week of July,” Dallas said, meaning Cheyenne. “I can get you some passes for the east-side stands.”

“Maybe,” Joe said.

“And you let me know how April’s doin’, okay?”

“Yup,” Joe said.

–

“SO,” BRENDA SAID as they went down the hall toward the living room, “are you finally satisfied?”

Joe said, “I have to say I am.”

There was no way Dallas could have administered such a serious beating to April in his condition. The broken ribs alone would have prevented it, Joe knew. He remembered the searing pain he had experienced simply lacing up his boots. And how Dallas had managed to drive from Houston to Saddlestring in his condition was both foolish and heroic, Joe thought.

Brenda shook her head and said, “You’re a hardheaded man.”

“I just needed to be sure,” Joe said. “I guess it still stings that April ran off.”

Brenda reached out and grasped his elbow before he entered the front room, and he turned.

She nodded at the Cheyenne photo of Dallas flinging his hat and said, “You know, this community don’t appreciate what we’ve got here.”

Joe was momentarily puzzled.

“Dallas,” she said. “He’s a champion. He’s our world-class athlete, and he comes from right here in Twelve Sleep County. There should be signs outside the town telling everyone they’re entering the home of Dallas Cates. There should be parades every summer. We ought to name the high school after him, or at least the rodeo arena.”

Her eyes were blazing.

“I talked to your wife about it a while back. I was trying to get her on board because I think she’d have some influence, bein’ the head of the library and all. Maybe you can talk to her. Maybe you can let her know what a big deal that boy is back there. Sometimes I think people around here don’t appreciate what they’ve got. They see Eldon pumping out their septic tanks and they don’t think, ‘That man—he’s the father of a champion.’ They just think, ‘That man is pumping out my shit.’”

Her grip on his arm was surprisingly strong.

She leaned into him and said, “What do we have to do to get it through all the thick skulls around here that they’ve got a rodeo champion right here? Who grew up right here? What’s wrong with them?”

“Brenda,” Joe said, “I don’t know that I’m the right guy to ask.”

“That boy back there is special,” she said. “He’s one-in-a-million. Do you know how many people have asked me about how he’s doing? Less than ten, I’ll tell you that. The newspaper should have been out here. The mayor should have been out here.”

“I hear you,” Joe said. He meant that literally, not that he actually agreed. He thought, Too many locals know about Dallas’s role in the sexual assault when he was in high school. Too many locals had been beaten up or terrorized by Timber before he was sent to prison. Too many local hunters have been burned by Eldon or Bull while they’re out trying to get meat for the winter. Too many locals have been harangued by Brenda about building monuments to her son.

He said, “Have you thought about letting it be their idea instead of yours?”

Her face turned to stone. After a beat, she said, “It would never happen. They all look down on us. We know if we don’t take care of ourselves, no one else will.”

“That isn’t my experience,” Joe said. “People around here are pretty decent. Maybe you ought to give ’em a chance.”

She looked at him with contempt.

“Thanks for letting me see him,” he said, twisting away from her grip.

He clamped on his hat and reached for the doorknob. Behind him, Brenda Cates said, “Don’t forget what we talked about here, Joe Pickett.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t.”

He couldn’t get out of the Cates home fast enough.

–

JOE FROWNED against the sound of the air compressor until he was back in his pickup. Daisy was happy to see him, but she threw nervous looks toward the house as if expecting the pack of dogs to come out at any second. As Joe backed up and pointed the nose of his pickup toward the gate, he noted that Brenda was watching him out the kitchen window and that Bull had cocked back the curtains in the living room.

As he squared the pickup to leave, he saw Dallas’s late-model four-wheel-drive pickup parked on the side of an equipment shed filled with a flatbed trailer with two snowmobiles on it. The pickup was a gleaming red Ford F-250 with a chrome cowcatcher and Texas plates. PRCA, PBR, and NFR stickers were on the windows. Anyone in the know would recognize the acronyms for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Professional Bull Riders, and National Finals Rodeo.

Eldon stood in the shadows inside the garage next to one of his pump trucks. Joe waved good-bye to him, but Eldon didn’t wave back. Joe could see the compressor vibrating at Eldon’s feet. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be a pneumatic hose attached.

–

SOMEBODY LET THE DOGS out of their run and they followed Joe’s pickup all the way to the county road. When he finally turned onto the graded road, he called Marybeth on his cell phone.

“I saw Dallas Cates,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”

“You saw him? Where?”

“At his house. I was checking out this sage grouse thing and the Cates place was within sight, so I stopped by to see if they’d seen anything.”

“How convenient,” she said, deadpan.

He described Dallas’s condition.

She said, “There was still a small part of me that was suspicious. Now I guess we can move on.”

He agreed. “They’re an odd bunch, though. Brenda buttonholed me about the town doing more to recognize her son. She might have a point, but she’s a little scary when she gets going.”

“She does that to everyone,” Marybeth said.

“Oh, and I might have gotten a lead on who shot all those birds,” he said.

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back,” Joe said, knowing he was about to hit a long dead zone for cell phone coverage. Then: “I’ll have to tread real lightly on this one.”

His phone blinked out and he didn’t know if she’d heard that last part.

–

TEN MINUTES LATER, Liv heard the compressor shudder into silence. She knew what it meant and she fought back tears. Whoever had arrived was gone.

The footfalls came and she could tell there were two sets of them.

“Open that up,” a woman said from above. Liv recognized the voice as belonging to the person who’d claimed she was Kitty Wells.

Dirt sifted into the root cellar when the doors were thrown back. Liv covered her face and eyes with her hands until it settled.

“You can go,” the woman said to the man.

“Are you goin’ down there?” Bull asked his mother with alarm.

“No. I just need to have a private conversation with this young lady. Go over there and help your dad.”

Bull slunk away.

“I’m Brenda,” the woman said, standing over the opening with her hands on her ample hips.

Liv brushed grit from her face and opened her eyes.

“I heard you screamin’ down there. Luckily, nobody else did. Eldon can’t hear much these days and the game warden thought it was the compressor goin’ out.”

Liv didn’t know what to say. She’d screamed so hard she was still wet with sweat. She’d guessed her screams were drowned out by the motor. That was the reason, she was sure, they’d fired it up in the first place.

Brenda said, “If you ever do that again, I’ll send Eldon out here to fill up this hole.”

By the tone of her voice, Liv had no doubt she’d do it.

“I’m thinkin’ you might go without dinner tonight,” Brenda said.

Liv hugged herself but didn’t respond. Brenda stood there, looking down at her.

Finally, Liv asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“You know, I ain’t never had a daughter.”

“What?”

“I always wanted a little girl,” Brenda said wistfully, more to herself than to Liv. “I wanted a little girl so I could dress her up in dresses and brush her hair and sing songs with her, you know? Instead, I got boys. All they done was run wild, punch each other, and break things. Of course, my little girl would be a little paler than you.”

Liv stayed quiet.

Brenda said, “But at least them boys didn’t scream. I’ve gone my whole life without a screamin’ female in it. I don’t plan to start now.”

With that, Brenda turned and vanished from the opening. Liv heard her say, “Bull, go close that back up now.”

–

TWO HOURS LATER, more footfalls. Bull. Liv was wondering if the game warden had been Nate’s friend Joe Pickett, and she planned to try to get the name out of Bull. She dutifully threw off her blanket and relocated her chair to accommodate the ladder.

When the doors were open, Bull said, “We got meat loaf and apple pie tonight.”

“Really?” Liv asked.

“I guess she changed her mind.”

Bull leaned over and tied a knot in the handle of the feed bucket and lowered it down to Liv.

“Is Joe Pickett coming back?” she asked in a conversational tone.

“He better not,” Bull said. “If he does, I’ll put him down and let the dogs clean up the remains.”

Liv nodded. “Aren’t you coming down?”

“Naw,” Bull said sullenly. “I ain’t supposed to anymore. Cora Lee, she . . .” He let his point trail off. But it had been made.

Liv reached up and grasped the bottom of the bucket with both hands. The plastic was warm to the touch.

“Besides,” Bull said, “what do you care if I come down there or not?”

Liv pretended she was thinking long and hard about what she was about to say. Then she said it.

“Because it gets kind of lonely down here.”

Bull was silent. She looked up. He seemed to be frozen there. She couldn’t see his face well because the sun was behind him, but she thought he might be blushing.

He closed the doors, locked them, turned, and went back toward the house.

Liv ate, but not because she was hungry. She ate because she needed fuel to survive.

As she did, those words came back.

I ain’t never had a daughter before. It chilled Liv to the bone.

But the trap was set.

16

After his encounter with the Cates family, Joe drove on the highway toward his home. He knew Marybeth was planning a big dinner with all the items Lucy liked best—pasta, garlic bread, green salad—as a way to atone for the time she’d been in Billings and for Joe’s food, and he wanted to be home for it. As he drove, a window opened in the storm clouds and he found himself suddenly bathed in warm yellow afternoon sun. The beam was small and concentrated, and the pool of light was no bigger than a half mile in every direction. It was as though he were the subject of some kind of cosmic spotlight. It felt good—Summer was on the way—although he was disappointed no revelation came along with it. It was just sun.

When his cell phone went off, he expected to see Marybeth’s name on the screen. That wasn’t the case.

“Governor,” Joe said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you on a Saturday evening.”

“Damn, I’m so jet-lagged I don’t even know what day it is,” Rulon said. Joe imagined the governor pacing back and forth in his home office as he’d seen him do—one hand holding his phone to his face and the other gesticulating and wildly punching the air as he talked.

“I just got back from a two-week trip to Asia,” Rulon said. “I was over there selling Wyoming coal—or trying to. We produce more coal than any other state, and the feds are shutting us down so they can stop global warming. The Asians want to grow so someday they can have First World problems like us. They want our coal, and as much of it as they can get. So we’ll shut down our coal-fired utilities over here and pay higher utility bills while they build them up over there and provide power and air-conditioning to their people so they can make things and get wealthy. You know, like Americans used to do.”

Joe smiled to himself. Rulon liked to rant. The governor said, “Somehow, we’re going to stop global warming by shutting down our clean power plants so the Chinese can burn our coal in their dirty power plants. Ah, the geniuses in Washington! They never fail to constantly lower the bar on common sense. Anyway . . .”

“Anyway,” Joe repeated.

“What’s this I hear that our precious sage grouse are being wiped out in your district?”

Joe sighed. “It’s true. I found an entire lek that had been—”

“I know all about it,” Rulon said, cutting him off. “I read the report from the Sage Grouse Task Force.”

Joe grunted.

“They’re required to keep me informed of their activities. And it’s attracting plenty of attention in the usual quarters, as you can imagine: ‘Wyoming Neanderthals Fail to Protect Endangered Species.’ That’s not the actual title, but it sure as hell is the tone.”

Rulon paused, then said, “Joe, I need you to clear up this sage grouse thing. I know you can’t bring those birds back to life, but if you find out who did it and throw the book at them, it’ll show the feds we aren’t complacent. Plus, it will set an example for other yahoos who might have the same idea.”

Before Joe could tell the governor what he’d learned, Rulon said, “The damned problem is the feds create reverse incentives and they don’t even realize they’re doing it. If you tell landowners that all their grazing land will be put off-limits for energy exploration or anything else if sage grouse are found up to two miles away, the incentive will be to get rid of the damned birds. Ranchers can’t make money ranching anymore, so they have to make deals for wind towers, or solar, or some damned thing Washington loves. So where does that leave a guy who wants to use his property?”

“I considered that,” Joe said. “The location where the grouse were shot is on BLM land.”

“Is it two miles away from anyone?”

“Well,” Joe said, “there’s one family.”

“Start with them.”

Joe knew Rulon fancied himself an amateur detective. He said, “I did that.”

“And?” Rulon prompted, ready to declare victory.

“They don’t have enough land for wind towers or fracking, so I doubt they’d have any lease opportunities. That’s not to say they might not be ornery enough to do something like this, but in this case I don’t think so. But they gave me a lead I’m going to track down,” Joe said. “If it goes where I think it could, we might have a bigger mess than we’ve got right now.”

Joe could hear Rulon take a breath, ready to continue with one of his rants. Then he paused. Joe understood why. Cell phone conversations could be monitored.

Rulon said, “Let’s meet tomorrow in my office. My afternoon’s free and I’ll try like hell to be lucid. Maybe I’ll send somebody out to get me one of those energy drinks, I don’t know. It’ll take me a couple of days to get back on track, I’m afraid.”

“I can drive down there tomorrow,” Joe said.

Saddlestring to Cheyenne was four hours. Denver was two hours beyond that. He could kill two birds.

“I’ll see you then,” Rulon said. “My antennas are up now.”

–

TWO MINUTES LATER, Joe’s phone lit up again. Rulon again.

“Joe, I heard about what happened to Romanowski and to your daughter. I meant to say how damned sorry I am, but I completely forgot when I called you the first time. Anyway: I’m damned sorry.”

“Thank you,” Joe said.

“Are they connected somehow?” Rulon asked, once again playing amateur detective.

Joe said, “No, sir. At least I don’t think so.”

“Two things like that happening in the same week in the same place,” Rulon said. “It just seems hinky. But you’re on the ground there, and I’m not. So how is your daughter doing?”

Joe told him.

“But they got the guy who did it?”

Joe hesitated before he said yes. Rulon had jarred him with his speculation.

“And the guy killed himself in his cell?”

“Yup.”

“That’s why I think we should issue nooses or electrical cords to every slimeball brought in on a nasty felony,” Rulon said. “Maybe with a little instruction book on how to do yourself in. It would save us a lot of money and time if we did that.”

Joe didn’t comment.

“What about Romanowski? I give him a conditional deal and he goes out and gets himself shot the very next day. That guy is something else.”

“As far as I know, he’s alive,” Joe said. “But the FBI has him under wraps. I can’t get anything out of him.”

Rulon cursed. He said, “I’ll talk to those bastards tomorrow. This is that Dudley guy, right?”

“Yup.”

“He’s a crap-weasel. I’ll go over his head. Maybe by the time you get here, we’ll know more.”

“I appreciate that,” Joe said.

“I’m fading fast,” Rulon said. “You’re a good man, Joe. Good night.”

“Good—”

Rulon had terminated the call before Joe said, “Bye.”

–

IT WAS DUSK when Joe cruised through the rows of cars in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. The lot was nearly full, which used to be unusual in March because it wasn’t yet tourist season. Things had changed, though, because the lot was filled with muddy oil service trucks on their way to—or from—the oil boom in North Dakota. Saddlestring was a logical halfway point between Denver and the Bakken formation, where the oil had been discovered.

It didn’t take long to find the white U.S. government pickup used by Annie Hatch and Revis Wentworth. For one thing, it was one of the few vehicles that had been recently run through a car wash. That in itself, Joe found interesting.

Since Wentworth was headquartered in Denver, he stayed at the hotel while he was in the area. Hatch lived in a rental in town, next door to her yoga studio.

Joe parked his pickup on the side of the hotel so it couldn’t be seen from any of the south-facing guest-room windows, and he carried his evidence kit through the parking lot.

When he found the white truck, he ducked down and opened his valise. Despite the fact that the outside of the pickup was clean, he ran his hand under the inside of the rear wheel wells and found a coating of dried mud. If analysis later proved that the soil was picked up in the vicinity of Lek 64, Joe knew, it proved nothing. Wentworth and Hatch had been in that area several times, including the night Joe discovered the crime. But if he could find mud that was embedded with feathers or sage grouse blood, well, even that was a reach.

Joe did it anyway.

When the evidence envelopes were filled with flakes of mud and labeled, he carefully photographed the tread on all four tires. If the tracks he’d photographed in the middle of Lek 64 matched up with the tread of the government pickup, he might have something. The allegation could be corroborated by Eldon Cates.

Wentworth and Hatch could claim that of course they’d left tracks when they got lost that night in the snow, but the time stamp on Joe’s shots would shoot that down.

It was circumstantial, but it was something, Joe thought.

And what about the shotgun shells? If he could find a half-empty box of 12-gauge shells in Wentworth’s room or Hatch’s home that were the same brand and shot quantity of the spent shells he’d found . . .

Then he smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand, nearly knocking his hat off. The realization hit him like a mule kick.

Hatch and Wentworth had been very concerned about the evidence Joe had gathered at Lek 64. Joe’d assumed they were concerned that he’d take too long, or that the state lab would somehow botch the analysis.

Given the circumstances, Joe had willingly handed over the box of evidence to them. He’d retained nothing but the photographs that were preserved on the memory card of his camera.

He thought:

What if they’d tampered with the evidence before sending it to Denver to their federal lab? Maybe changing out the photos he’d copied to a CD, or replacing or removing the spent shells?

What if they hadn’t even bothered to send it in?

If either thing had happened, Joe knew, he had nothing to tie the government vehicle to Lek 64 the night the sage grouse were wiped out.

–

JOE SHOOK HIS HEAD as he returned to his pickup. Before ducking around the side of the building, he looked up to see if he had any observers in the four-floor building.

At the second window on the third floor, Revis Wentworth stepped back. A moment later, the curtain was pulled shut.

Joe had been caught, he knew.

So how would he play it now?

–

HE PULLED HIMSELF inside his vehicle and started it up while punching the speed dial on his phone to his home number.

When Marybeth answered, he asked, “How long before dinner?”

“Why?” she asked, suspicious.

“I might have a break in the sage grouse case, and I have to act fast. I don’t want the suspects talking to each other before I get to them.”

Marybeth sighed. It was a familiar conversation to both of them. “We eat at seven,” she said. “You have an hour.”

“That should be enough,” he said, wheeling out of the parking lot.