Текст книги "Endangered"

Автор книги: C. J. Box

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

11

Has she had a chance to say anything yet?”

Of all the things that had been said that morning in that courtroom, it was Brenda’s parting question that lingered in Joe’s mind as the most bitter and profound. It hung in the air in the cab of his pickup like a foul smell, and it lingered as he exited the town limits and merged onto Bighorn Road. He needed to feed the horses and Daisy before embarking on his two-and-a-half-hour trip north to Billings.

It wasn’t: “How is she doing?”

Or: “When is she expected to recover?”

Or: “When can we see her?”

But: “Has she had a chance to say anything yet?”

Joe answered aloud: “What are you afraid she might say, Brenda?”

–

DESPITE TILDEN CUDMORE’S crazy guilt dance of a performance in the courtroom that morning, which seemed designed to show Judge Hewitt he was mentally incompetent to stand trial, and what he had said about April—who he’d not admitted to even knowing when he was arrested—Joe wondered why Brenda had asked that particular question.

And he wondered why the Cateses had shown up for the arraignment.

–

HE MADE THE LAST straight ascent to his home. In the distance, Wolf Mountain was budding green through his passenger-side window. And when he approached his house, he saw the white pickup with U.S. government plates parked in front.

For a moment, he wondered if the horses and Daisy could wait to eat until late that night. Then he groaned and continued into the driveway.

Annie Hatch opened the passenger-side door and walked over to greet him with her hands stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans. Her body language said: I am remorseful. Revis Wentworth stayed behind the wheel of the pickup. Apparently, he wasn’t as remorseful, Joe thought.

Joe parked and got out. “Now isn’t a good time, Annie,” he said.

“That’s why we’re here,” she said, looking up from her boot tops to Joe. “Why didn’t you tell us about what had happened to your daughter? I—we—feel terrible about pressuring you during this time in your life.”

“You’re doing your job,” Joe said. “I didn’t want to bring my own personal stuff into it.”

“But if you would have told us . . .”

Joe chinned toward Wentworth, who seemed to be studying something fascinating on the dashboard. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Joe said.

“It would have to me,” she said.

“Thank you, Annie.”

“How is your daughter?”

“She’s stable. It’s complicated.”

“Good, good,” Hatch said. “I’m so glad to hear that.”

Joe nodded. It was apparent there was more on her mind, but he didn’t want to hear what it was. He said, “Well, it was nice of you to come by, but I’m on my way to the hospital right now.”

Because she didn’t turn around and walk back to her truck, Joe knew that she definitely had more to say.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, I almost hate to ask,” she said, “but we were wondering if you’d sent that box of evidence from Lek Sixty-four to your people at the lab.”

Joe took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. The anger he’d felt in the courtroom had dissipated, but it was still within reach.

“No, I haven’t,” he said. The evidence box had been taped up and labeled, but was still on his desk in his cluttered office. He hadn’t even thought about it the past few days.

“In that case, Revis was wondering if you wouldn’t mind handing it over to us. We’d like to FedEx it to our experts in Denver. The word is getting out that an entire lek was massacred, and, well, you know how it is. We’ve got people breathing down our necks, wondering what we’re doing about it. Revis even got a call from D.C.”

Joe put his hands on his hips.

From the open window of the pickup, Wentworth spoke up. “Like you said, we still have a job to do.”

Joe knew he’d screwed up, and he wanted the sage grouse twins to go away.

He said to Hatch, “I’ll go get it. Just let me know what you hear back, okay?”

“Thank you, Joe.”

“One more thing,” he said.

“Yes?”

He pointed at Wentworth. “Keep him away from me.”

–

USING A BROKEN GREEN PINE BOUGH he’d found on the side of the road, Joe propped up the yellow crime scene tape that was stretched across the open gate of the HF Bar Ranch and then drove his pickup underneath it.

Gary Norwood was leaning against his SUV and eating an apple when Joe pulled into the ranch yard. Norwood had been on the job less than two years and had taken it straight out of college. He looked it. He wore a loose oversized cowboy shirt over a black concert T-shirt, baggy jeans, and a backwards baseball cap. He had a shaved head and a soul patch beneath his lower lip. He’d not taken off his latex gloves to eat the apple.

“The sheriff said you might stop by,” Norwood said. “I don’t mind the company, since it’s just me: the entire Twelve Sleep County Evidence Tech Department.”

“I can’t stay long,” Joe said, getting out of his pickup. “What have you found?”

“Follow me,” Norwood said, opening the back door of his SUV and tossing the apple core onto the floorboard, into a month’s worth of fast-food wrappers and other trash. “Just make sure to walk clear of the evidence markers. I’ve got everything prepped for when the feds show up later.”

He led Joe through the ranch yard on foot toward an ancient log horse barn.

“This is quite a place,” Norwood said over his shoulder. “It would be cool to see it in full operation. I might come up this summer when it’s in full swing. I bet there are some good-looking rich women who come out here to play cowgirl.”

“That’s usually the case,” Joe said. He knew how the local single cowboys and wranglers made sure they got the night off during the summer—usually Wednesdays—when the guest ranches brought their clients into town. Many liaisons between rawboned local boys and well-heeled women executives from the east had occurred over the years at the Stockman’s Bar.

“Did I hear it right that you know the guy they found here last night?” Norwood asked.

“Yup.”

“He going to make it?”

“It doesn’t sound good.”

“I can see why,” Norwood said, matter-of-fact. “Because somebody lost a hell of a lot of blood.”

–

NORWOOD WALKED JOE through his best reconstruction of what had happened.

“He was found here,” Norwood said, pointing toward a clearing on the near end of the ranch yard marked with a yellow plastic evidence marker. “I don’t know whether he was trying to crawl farther and just played out, or what.”

“Can you tell where it happened?” Joe asked.

“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Norwood said. “I just wish it hadn’t rained yesterday. Any footprints or tire tracks I might have been able to find in the dirt were washed away. But I can show you where he was shot.”

Joe followed, and Norwood shined his flashlight on a massive spoor of blood on the floor of the barn. Evidence markers were spaced around the pool.

“He bled quite a bit here, so I think this is where he first went down. There’s an intermittent blood trail going out the open door and through those trees toward the ranch yard. That’s where the FBI guys found him.”

Joe said, “So as far as you know, the FBI guys never came into the barn?”

“As far as I know. I think they landed the helicopter and scooped him up and took him to Saddlestring Airport. They were met there by the Billings Life Flight chopper that took him to the hospital.”

“Why didn’t the FBI take him there?” Joe asked.

“Their chopper was too big to land on the roof, from what I understand, so they had to move him onto a smaller aircraft. You know how the feds are—only the biggest and best equipment for them.”

“Anyway,” Joe said, prompting Norwood. “Could you determine where the shots were fired from? Or how many shooters there were?”

Norwood dug out an ultraviolet flashlight from his gear bag and shined it on the back of the sliding barn door. A pattern of tiny flecks appeared under the light and glowed like a frozen starburst.

“It appears from the blood spatter that he was shot from shoulder height from one of those empty stalls over there. There’s also some blood spatter near the baseboard—see it?”

“Yup.”

“That indicates a second shooter from up there in the loft, because the spatter is nearly on the ground. So two shooters at least—one at ground level and one from above—but it’s just a guess.”

Joe rubbed his chin. “Did you find any spent casings?”

“No,” Norwood said. “The shooters must have had the presence of mind to pick them up before they left. But I think I know what kind of weapons they used.”

Joe arched his eyebrows.

“Shotguns. Both of ’em.”

Norwood walked to the doorframe of the sliding barn door while opening a pocketknife. He jabbed the point into the old wood and started digging. In a moment, Joe heard the knife click on something metallic. Norwood dug it out and handed it to Joe.

“A shotgun pellet. Pretty big, too. I’m guessing double-ought, but I’ll have to gather up a few more and measure them in my lab. It could be a zero buck, but I think it’s too big to be an ‘F’ or a ‘T.’”

“Yup,” Joe said, rolling it around in his palm.

Hunters in Wyoming didn’t use buckshot for deer. That was a southern thing, using shotguns in heavy brush at close range. Wyoming deer hunters used rifles because there was rarely much cover and most shots were at a distance. The only real use for buckshot was to kill men or bears at close range.

Norwood said, “And as you know, this makes identifying the weapons much tougher. Spent bullets have unique marks on them from the rifling of the barrel. We can identify the caliber and match up a test round fired from the same gun. But shotgun pellets? No markings. Even if we find someone with a half-empty box of double-ought shells it’s difficult to make a match that’ll stand up in court.”

“So this was a trap from the get-go,” Joe said. “Somehow, they lured him up here with the express purpose of shooting him down.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Norwood said.

–

JOE CONNECTED on the phone with FBI Special Agent Chuck Coon when he was in sight of the WELCOME TO MONTANA sign on I-90. The snowcapped Bighorns were in his rearview mirror and the vast rolling terrain was a carpet of brilliant green grass.

Coon was in charge of the Wyoming office of the FBI in Cheyenne. He was intense and honest, a by-the-book G-man as distressed by some of the goings-on in Washington as the locals. Which meant, Coon had told Joe, that he’d be stationed in far-off Wyoming for the rest of his career.

Joe said, “Nate Romanowski walked into an ambush and, from what I can tell, he wasn’t armed. How did you people let that happen?”

Coon sighed and said, “Hold on.” That was code for closing his office door so he couldn’t be overheard.

“Look,” Coon said, “the deal with your pal Romanowski was negotiated directly with the DOJ, with your governor playing a supporting role. They didn’t include us local guys in the deal and they didn’t let us see the final agreement. I didn’t even know he was gone until after the whole thing came down.”

“But they took away his weapon,” Joe said. “They sent him to his death.”

“I wouldn’t have done that,” Coon said, “but then, I wouldn’t have agreed to let Romanowski out of the basement for the rest of my natural life. Everywhere he goes, somebody winds up dead or with their ears twisted off. But this isn’t any secret to you.”

“No, it isn’t,” Joe said. “So who is the agent in charge?”

“His name is Stan Dudley.”

“Can you patch me through to him?”

“No can do,” Coon said. “The only way I can talk to him is if I go through the DOJ channels in D.C. That’s the way they have it set up. Besides, I don’t think he’s in the building. I think he’s hovering around Romanowski on his deathbed, hoping he’ll find out who shot him with your pal’s last words.”

“Dudley’s in Billings?”

“I think so,” Coon said. “That’s the last I heard. But don’t hold me to it. Like I said, Dudley’s operating on a separate track. Frankly, I don’t really like the man, but that’s neither here nor there. He probably doesn’t like me, either.”

Joe paused, then asked, “But do you know what’s going on? Why would they want Nate out? Not that I’m against it, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Me, either,” Coon said. “I’ve heard some things, though. Governor Rulon wanted him out because, well, he likes him. He made Romanowski promise not to commit another felony in Wyoming. But for the feds—my understanding is they wanted to put him out there to serve as bait to Wolfgang Templeton. They wanted to snare Templeton when he came after Romanowski.”

“And Nate agreed to that?”

“Apparently,” Coon said. “He agreed to stay out of trouble, but it sounds like that didn’t last very long.”

“Nope,” Joe said. “Why is the DOJ even involved? Don’t they have enough on their plate these days?”

Coon snorted. “What I’m going to tell you is complete speculation on my part. And if you repeat where you heard it, you and I are going to have a problem.”

“Shoot,” Joe said.

“Some of Templeton’s victims were crony capitalists or friends of big fund-raisers for the current administration. It’s personal. Officials who shall remain nameless want revenge on Templeton and they want to shut him up. Simple as that. Romanowski is just a means to an end.”

Joe felt his ire rising once again. “So Templeton, or Templeton’s men, found Romanowski and they took him out? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m purely speculating. Who else would want him dead? I’m surprised they even knew that quickly he was out. Unless, of course, someone on the inside let them know.”

That possibility gave Joe an instant headache. “You mean like someone in your building?”

“Like I said, I’m speculating,” Coon said.

“Who else could it be?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Coon said. “Maybe someone at DOJ tipped Templeton off. Maybe Templeton acted a lot more quickly than the bureaucracy thought possible and they weren’t prepared yet. Have you thought of that? We’re a big agency and we move slow. Someone may have started something that quickly went over their head.”

“They wouldn’t want anyone to know that,” Joe said. “There would be some big-time CYA action going on right now.”

Joe drove on. He could hear Coon breathing on the other end.

“Are you done?” Coon asked.

“I guess so. I’ve got a lot to think about.”

“You do.” Then, with his voice softening, Coon asked, “How’s your girl, Joe? I hear she’s in the same hospital.”

Joe brought Coon up to speed, and told him briefly about the calamity in the courtroom that morning.

Coon said, “It’s a good thing you’ve got Marybeth. If I had all that going on . . . I don’t know what the hell I’d do.”

Joe agreed.

“Chuck,” Joe said before punching off, “please let me know if you hear anything about Nate or Templeton.”

“Not officially,” Coon said. “But I may give you a call from time to time on your cell phone.”

“Thank you.”

“Hang in there, man,” Coon said.

12

April’s hospital room was dimly lit and quiet except for the muffled hum of the HVAC and an occasional soft click from one of the many electronic monitors hovering over her bed. Thin wires from embedded catheters coiled up from her head. She was being fed intravenously through a tube, and other tubes delivered hydration and medication. Additional tubes carried waste away into receptacles underneath the bed. Because she was so still, it seemed to Joe she was simply serving as a disinterested processing center for the transfer of incoming fluids.

Marybeth was with him when he entered the room and she stood behind him as he approached the bed.

“I haven’t seen her since she left,” he said, reaching out and brushing April’s cheek with the back of his hand. She was battered but sleeping, her expression untroubled. He could not tell from looking at her that she had brain trauma. Her hair was brushed neatly, although the part was wrong. How would the nurses know?

Joe listened as Marybeth explained the procedure the doctors had undertaken, and she pointed out what the readings on the monitors meant. She showed Joe the all-important readout that would indicate an increase—or decrease—in brain activity when she was brought out of the coma.

He found April’s limp hand under the blanket. It was warm but unresponsive.

“I’ve seen her eyelids flutter a couple of times,” Marybeth said softly. “That’s not supposed to happen unless there’s brain activity. But when I asked, I was told the monitors didn’t pick it up. But I swear I saw it happen.”

Joe looked over. He believed her, of course. But he didn’t want to read too much into it.

“She’s got great doctors and nurses,” Marybeth said. “They’ll look out for her. They know to call or text me the minute they determine they want to bring her back, or if her situation changes in any way. I want to make sure I’m here if either happens.”

Joe nodded. He had trouble speaking. His job was to take care of his family, to protect them. He hated it that there was nothing he could do to help April now. Her fate was up to doctors he didn’t know, to April herself, and to God. He could only hope that somewhere in her sleeping body she had the ability and the will to get better.

He leaned down close enough to April that he could smell her hair. It smelled medicinal, not like it used to smell. She belonged to the hospital now. He started to say something, but his throat was constricted.

He rose and took a deep breath. Then two.

After a few moments, he leaned back down to her and said, “I just wish you could wake up and tell me who did this to you. I’ll get the man who did it.”

He hoped against hope for a fluttering of her eyelids or a sign—any sign—of a reaction.

Nothing.

Marybeth reached under the covers and gently placed her hand on Joe’s. She whispered to him, “Don’t you dare lose hope.”

–

IN THE HALLWAY, Joe said to Marybeth, “Do you know where Nate is?”

“They haven’t let me see him.”

“Who told you that?”

She said, “There’s a special agent in charge. Kind of an unpleasant man, if you ask me. I know there are rules about only family members in ICU, but . . .”

“Is his name Stan Dudley?”

“He didn’t introduce himself.”

Joe said, “Let’s go find him.”

–

SHRI RECKLING had just come on the night shift and she agreed to help them. She used her key card to open the secure ICU door. When the nurse on duty looked up to see three people come into the hallway, Reckling said, “It’s okay. They’re with me.”

“We’re here to see Nate Romanowski,” Joe said.

Before the ICU nurse could respond, a portly man in an ill-fitting suit leaned out from the waiting lounge and said, “Forget it. He’s back in surgery again. Patching this guy up just so he can die in a couple of days is going to bust my budget.”

Joe said, “You must be Stan Dudley.”

Dudley looked Joe over carefully, from his lace-up outfitter boots to his Wranglers to his red uniform shirt and weathered Stetson. He said, “And you must be Joe Pickett.”

“I’m Marybeth,” she interjected, stepping forward.

“The two of you, then,” Dudley said. He seemed to be contemplating what he’d say next. Then: “Well, it doesn’t really matter that you’re here, because there’s no chance to see Romanowski. They took him back into surgery about half an hour ago. More internal bleeding, I guess. He hasn’t regained consciousness and he hasn’t said a damned word since we found him. It wouldn’t do anybody any good to try and see him now anyway. The doctors won’t let you into the room.”

Joe said, “I hope their bedside manner is better than yours.”

Dudley puffed out his chest. “I don’t sugarcoat things. I’m a straight shooter.”

“I think you’re an ass,” Joe said.

Marybeth shouldered past Joe and stood in front of him so he couldn’t advance on Dudley.

Her voice was calm. “How long will he be in surgery?”

Dudley shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. He’s been in there twice already. The doctors removed something like seventeen hunks of buckshot. There are a couple near his heart they may just leave there because it’s too dangerous to try and get them. Plus, he lost a lot of blood. One more hour of him lying in the dirt on that ranch and we wouldn’t even be talking here right now.

“So,” Dudley said, gesturing with his hand at Joe and Marybeth as if shooing them away, “you two should just scoot on out of here. You can’t see him, and he’s not likely to ever sit naked in a tree again, or whatever it is he supposedly does for fun.”

“Not so fast,” Joe said, lowering his voice.

“Come again?” Dudley said, glancing back inside the lounge, where, Joe guessed, there were a couple of backup agents.

“Who bushwhacked him?” Joe asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Dudley said. “But my guess includes the name Templeton.”

“How would he know Nate would be there?”

“The guy probably has his tentacles in everything,” Dudley said. “Somebody must have tipped him off. But I do know who could probably answer that question. Do you know Olivia Brannan?”

Joe heard Marybeth gasp in front of him and saw her raise her hand to her mouth.

“I know that’s your theory,” Joe said. “But it doesn’t wash.”

“So where is she?” Dudley asked with a forced grin. “She picks him up, takes him to that ranch, and vanishes off the face of the earth. It isn’t a stretch to guess she colluded with the shooters.”

Joe shook his head.

“Do you know where she is?” Dudley asked. “Does anybody? She wasn’t at the scene, and her and her van are AWOL.”

Marybeth said, “She’s head over heels for Nate, and he feels the same way about her.”

“She devoted years of her life to working for Wolfgang Templeton,” Dudley countered. “She’s known Romanowski for what—six months?”

“I’m not buying it,” Joe said. But his mind was spinning because it made sense.

“Maybe we can ask her,” Dudley said. “If she can ever be found.”

–

LATER, AS JOE’S PICKUP rose above the rimrocks that defined Billings and the dark prairie was stretched out in front of them, Marybeth said, “If both April and Nate are taken away from us . . .”

Joe said, “Don’t you dare lose hope.”

–

AS THEY CROSSED the border back into Wyoming, Joe’s cell phone lit up. Dulcie Schalk.

“Hello, Dulcie,” he said.

He could tell by her long pause that bad news was coming.

She said, “Tilden Cudmore hanged himself in his cell. They found his body an hour ago.”

Joe tapped his brakes so he could pull over to the shoulder of the highway. Marybeth studied his face. Joe repeated what he had just heard, and Marybeth closed her eyes.

“How did it happen?” Joe asked, holding the phone away from his face and punching the speaker button so Marybeth could hear the conversation as well.

“He used a bedsheet for a rope and he tied it to the light fixture,” Dulcie said.

“Where were the deputies?”

“We just interviewed them. They checked on him at eight-fifty p.m. and he appeared to be sleeping in his bunk. When they went back in at five past nine, he was dead. They did CPR on him when they cut him down, and the clinic tried to revive him, but he was DOA.”

Joe said, “He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would do himself in.”

“I agree,” Dulcie said. “Otherwise, we would have put him on a suicide watch. You just never know what’s going on in a man’s head. Especially that man’s head.”

“Is it possible someone got to him?” Joe asked.

She sighed. “No. It’s all on videotape. He waited until the deputy left the cell and he jumped up and went to work. No one was watching the monitor at the time he did it. So, no. He killed himself.”

“His guilt got to him,” Marybeth said. “Or he was a coward who couldn’t face jail.”

“I’m guessing the latter,” Dulcie said. Then: “Marybeth, I’m sorry I had to call you with this news.”

Marybeth said, “Don’t be. I would have gladly handed a rope to the man who assaulted April.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Dulcie said. “I’d rather have sent him to Rawlins, but in a sense, we’ve got justice—just not the kind I prefer.”

After a pause, she asked, “So how is April?”

Joe turned off the speaker and handed the phone to Marybeth.

While Dulcie and Marybeth talked, he eased the pickup back out onto the highway.

He could not have predicted this turn of events. It was not at all satisfying to him. He couldn’t get over the fact that he wasn’t sure justice had been served at all.

Cudmore was a creep and a paranoid conspiracy theorist. The evidence was stacked against him. The things he had said and done at the arraignment hearing had almost convinced Joe he was capable of beating and dumping April. Dulcie obviously believed Cudmore had done it. Marybeth seemed to think the same thing.

Joe wasn’t so sure. And he couldn’t reach out to Nate for help because Nate was dying.