Below Zero (15 page)

Joe said, “At least you could have pretended you weren’t poaching.”

Nate said, “My life is an open book. You just don’t want to read it.”

Joe thought,
He’s right.

Nate handed Joe a cup of coffee, and Joe told Nate about the text messages. Nate had been there backing up Joe at the Sovereign camp that winter afternoon. As Joe talked, Nate’s expression never changed.

Nate said, “I’ve always wondered about that day. I was pinning down the feds, as you know, but in my peripheral vision I saw maybe a dozen snowmobiles take off into the trees. A couple of them had two or three people on them, and I remember one in particular that had some small people clinging to it.”

Joe paused. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“I never really thought about it,” Nate said, shrugging. “You told me you saw April in the first trailer that burned down. I knew they had kids in that camp besides her, so why would I assume she was one of them on that snowmobile?”

Joe conceded, took a sip.

“Now that I think about it,” Nate said, letting the sentence drift away.

“Yeah.”

“You feel guilty,” Nate said. “You’ve always felt guilty. That’s why you were crazy with rage and almost killed that FBI agent who fired the shot. It wasn’t about him—it was about you.”

Joe stared into his coffee cup, studied the film of oil on the top of the liquid. “What’s your point?”

Nate said, “It isn’t April out there. But you want it to be. You want to apologize and make things right. That’s how you are, Joe. You’re a good man.”

“Shut up, Nate,” Joe said wearily.

“I was there. You wanted to trust the system and the government. You wanted to believe the authorities would do the right thing. You never thought they’d fire and torch the Sovereign compound with all those people in it. You didn’t realize then that the scariest thing on earth is a bureaucrat with a gun.”

“Enough.”

 

 

 

“HOW’S ALICIA DOING with the new baby?” Joe asked after a long while. They’d both been silent, each with their own thoughts about that afternoon in the campground.

Alicia Whiteplume was Nate’s woman, a schoolteacher on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and the mention of her name produced a goofy, sloppy grin from Nate. Joe was still not used to seeing Nate’s face light up.

“Still smitten, I see,” Joe said.

“With both of them. I just don’t see them enough, you know?”

“Believe me, I know.”

“I hate having to hide out, Joe. I’m never turning myself in, but I hate hiding out. I’m starting to consider my options.”

“You mean moving?” Joe didn’t blame him, but Nate was a part of him now and he’d saved Joe’s life more than once. And he was Sheridan’s master falconer.

“Either that,” Nate said, lowering his voice, speaking in his breathy Clint Eastwood cadence, “or taking out every damn one of them who is after me.”

Joe groaned. “Nate, you forget I’m a peace officer who took an oath. I take that oath seriously. You just can’t say things like that around me.”

Nate smiled. “Sorry, I forgot.” Then: “I’ve no plans yet. I won’t just vanish.”

“Good.”

“Because it sounds like you might need me on this one.”

Joe nodded.

“You want me to come with you now?”

“No, not yet. I’m going to be working closely with the people who want to throw you back into jail. You don’t want to be around.
I
don’t want you around.”

“But you’ll let me know if you need help.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yup. What’s the best way the contact you? When I need your help, I might be too far away to come down and get you in this canyon.”

Nate dug into his cargo pants and pulled out a satellite phone.

“You get a signal all the way down here?”

Nate shook his head. “Of course not. I don’t even think the eyes in the sky can see down into this place. But twice a day I hike up the trail to the top to check for messages. And if for some reason I don’t respond right away, call Large Merle and he’ll let me know.

“Just send a text,” Nate said. “You know how to do that, right?”

 

 

 

AS JOE PARTED the camo netting to leave, Nate said, “I never really thanked you for what you did for me last year, Joe. I bet your life has been hard since then.”

Joe said, “If I trip over that wire on the way out and the shotgun goes off and I never find April, I’m really going to be pissed at you.”

 

 

THREE HUNDRED MILES FROM HOLE IN THE WALL CANYON, hours after Joe cleared the rim and hiked toward his pickup to drive to Cheyenne, she leaned against the stall of the gas station bathroom in Craig, Colorado, and listened to Stenko retching horribly in the men’s next door. The sounds were awful, and she was frightened.

It had already been a long day. Stenko had awakened her deep into the night and hurried her out of the hotel in Aspen into the SUV. Robert was already inside the car. He was anxious, jittery, super-charged, thumping a rapid-fire beat with his hands on the dashboard like a drummer. “Go man go,” Robert said to Stenko, “Go-go-go-go-go . . .”

They drove north until dawn came pink and glorious, through still-sleeping Glenwood Springs and Rifle. Robert was still jazzed and had been talking incessantly about the need to change vehicles and tactics, but she tuned him out and went back to sleep. At a convenience store in Meeker, Robert pointed out a local Chevy Suburban parked and running while the driver was inside getting coffee. Stenko pulled to the side of the building while Robert got out, duck-walked to the Suburban, and drove it away. Stenko followed, cursing under his breath. A half hour out of town, when the terrain emptied of homes and buildings, Robert took a beat-up old dirt road and they bounced along it for what seemed like forever. Finally, the Suburban brake lights flashed and Stenko slowed to a stop.

Stenko addressed her by looking in the rearview mirror. “April, you’ll need to gather up all your things and take them to the Suburban. We’re making a change.

“This isn’t a hybrid, son,” Stenko said as he climbed into Robert’s car.

“I know,” Robert grumbled. “These people out here give us no green options, but you’ll just have to make it up on the other side.”

The morning was cool and smelled of dust and sagebrush. After climbing into the far back seat of the Suburban, she watched with fascination as Robert sprayed lighter fluid on the seats of Stenko’s SUV and tossed in a match. With the new Suburban, they pushed the burning vehicle over a cliff into a deep arroyo. The crash on the bottom was fantastic.

Their only other stop before arriving in Craig was at a roadside rest area, where Robert stole the plates off a car and replaced them with the plates from the Suburban.

 

 

 

SHE WAS STARING VACANTLY out the window when a cell phone burred and for a moment she thought it was hers, thought she’d been betrayed. Had she forgotten to turn the ringer off?

But Robert didn’t even turn around. To Stenko, he said, “Are you going to get that?”

“I forgot I even had it,” Stenko said, slapping absently at his shirt pockets, then finally digging it out of his trousers. He looked at it for a moment, said, “One of my friends in blue . . .” and opened it up.

Stenko said very little, prompting the caller to continue with several “uh-huhs.” Then he closed the phone and tossed it on the seat next to him.

“Who was it?” Robert asked.

“Like I said, one of my friends in blue.”

“What’s up?”

“Leo’s wife called the station. She doesn’t know where he is and she wants him found. She thinks he’s taken up with a chippie and relocated to Wyoming.”

Robert said, “Wyoming? What the hell’s in Wyoming?”

Stenko said, “My ranch.”

Robert did a dry spit take and the car weaved until he jerked it back into his lane.
“You own a ranch?”

“I think I do, anyway. The more I think about how things went down with Leo, the more I become convinced I own a ranch.” Stenko sat up in the seat and smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “That damned Leo. He always wanted to be a cowboy—he told me that once. Here’s this little mousy guy who grew up on the South Side getting his lunch money stolen from him every day on the way to school, but he secretly wants to be a cowpoke. It used to crack me up.”

Robert said, “You’re drifting.”

“No, I’m not,” Stenko said. “I know where Leo is with all my money. He’s on my ranch, the son-of-a-bitch.” To her, he said, “Sorry for the language.”

She shrugged, totally confused.

Robert shook his head, muttering, “
A ranch.
You own a ranch. What else do you own?”

Stenko said, “A lot.”

 

 

 

SHE’D BEEN SLEEPING SOUNDLY in the roomy back seat when she was awakened by Robert shouting, “Dad? Dad, what’s wrong?”

AND SHE COULD HEAR Robert now, through the wall. Something about Stenko’s morphine. “Then take more!” Robert yelled. “Take as much as you need to!”

She’d gotten a glimpse at Stenko as he staggered into the bathroom. He’d looked back at her. His face was white, his eyes rimmed red. His mouth was twisted in pain, but he still managed to smile at her and gesture with his hand that he’d be right back. The way he bent forward as he walked made her think it was his stomach that was hurting him.

The bathroom she was in was filthy, with grime on the floor, an overflowing trash can, and the strong ammonia smell of urine from the stall. She imagined the men’s was just as dirty, and she felt sorry for Stenko, who sounded like he was probably clutching the toilet, knees on the floor.

She heard Robert say harshly, “For Christ’s sake, Dad. Hang in there already. We’ve got too much to do here.”

And she thought: What if he dies right there? What would Robert do with her? She thought about the look on his face that morning in the car, his wild eyes, the way he beat that drum solo on the dashboard. It was either that or long hours of pouting and sarcasm. Plus the way he sometimes leered at her, his eyes pausing on her breasts. She didn’t want to be alone with Robert.

She fished the TracFone out of her jeans. She hadn’t turned it on since the night before, when she’d made contact. It seemed like forever before the phone grabbed a signal, showed strong bars.

She typed:

 

 

 

JOE HIT THE NORTHERN OUTSKIRTS OF CHEYENNE MID-AFTERNOON. He was traveling south on I-25 when he saw the first of many concentric circles of massive new homes. He also saw more grazing horses than had likely ever been there when the capital city was the hub of the Union Pacific and home to dozens of wealthy ranchers in the 1880s and 1890s, when the west was new.

He was running late. Too much time in the Hole in the Wall.

Special Agent Chuck Coon was getting up to leave and was obviously ticked off when Joe walked into The Albany downtown. The place was old and dark, with private booths. The building was in the shadow of the restored Union Pacific depot. Between the lunch and dinner crowds, The Albany was devoted to serious drinkers and none of them even turned around and looked at Joe as he said, “Sorry I’m late, Chuck, please sit back down.”

Coon had stripped off his tie and loosened his collar, but Joe thought there was no one with a shred of intelligence in the bar who wouldn’t look at him and say, “FBI.” Coon had close-cropped brown hair, small features, and a boyish, alert face that didn’t wear his impatience well.

Joe slid into the booth across from Coon.

“I can’t spend much time,” Coon said, looking nervously around the bar before sitting back down. “I told the secretary I had a podiatrist appointment. I don’t know why I said that. There’s nothing wrong with my feet.”

“I won’t waste your time then,” Joe said. “Here’s the number.” He slipped a page from his notebook across the table with the number of April’s cell phone.

Coon didn’t pick it up. “I told you, Joe. I can’t seek a tap unless we get approval to open up an investigation. I’m sorry you had to drive so far to hear that in person.”

Joe nodded but forged on. “I’ve got other business this afternoon, but since I’m here at least you can answer some questions though, right? So I know more about this?” He tapped the notebook page.

Coon sighed, shot out his wrist, and looked at his watch.

“I’ll be quick,” Joe said. “First, tell me if it’s possible to pinpoint the location of a cell phone user. I mean, assuming you’ve got the court order and everything’s aboveboard.”

“The short answer is yes,” Coon said. “The long answer is what screws us up all the time.”

“Meaning?”

“When a cell phone is turned on, it has to reach out and grab a signal before you can make a call. When it connects with a cell tower, it’s referred to as a
ping.
The telephone providers can key on a specific number and they can pinpoint the location of the phone based on which cell tower got the ping.”

“Great,” Joe said, smiling.

“There is also a GPS feature in a lot of the newer phones. Most people don’t even know their phone is also a GPS device. We’re waiting for someone to come up with software that blocks the signal, but so far no one’s come up with an easy system. So we’ve got two ways to track down where a call comes from, the ping and the GPS if the phone has one.”

“Even better,” Joe said.

Coon looked around the bar again to see if anyone was listening to him. Satisfied, he leaned toward Joe. “The technology we’ve got is really good, but there are some real drawbacks out here in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the cell towers are ten miles or more apart from each other. The mountains play havoc on the tower sight lines, for instance. It isn’t like a city, where there are towers everywhere. So even though we might pick up the ping we’ve been waiting for, we often can’t narrow the actual location of the phone down much more than a ten- or fifteen-mile radius of the tower. That’s twenty or thirty square miles—a big area, Joe.”