Below Zero (29 page)

“Got him!” Sheridan cried, raising a triumphant fist in the air.

“Not yet,” Joe cautioned, swinging the pickup off the road into the ditch and aiming his grille at the Dodge.

Joe threw the transmission into park and launched himself out the door. He could see Connelly on the passenger side in his pickup instead of behind the wheel due to the impact on his passenger door, which had thrown him across the cab. Connelly sat stunned, shaking his head from side to side. Blood streamed down his face and into his mouth from a cut in his forehead.

Joe wanted to get to Connelly and subdue him before the Mad Archer tried to resist or run again. He was halfway there, his boots thumping on the asphalt, when Connelly looked up and saw Joe running in his direction. Connelly dove for the wheel and used it to pull himself back into the driver’s seat. He righted himself and started fumbling for the gearshift.

The engine growled and the blue Dodge lurched forward. Connelly cackled and maniacally turned the wheel away from Joe, who pulled up and reached for his Glock as the bumper of Connelly’s pickup grazed his thigh as it turned. “Later!” He laughed to Joe through a mouthful of bloody teeth.

The deep-throated concussions of Nate’s .454 Casull coughed out once, twice, and seemed to briefly suck the air out of the morning. The blue Dodge bucked as if it had hit a set of hidden ditches head-on. The engine went silent and the truck rolled lazily forward off the road. The front tires bit into loose sand and it lurched to a stop. As intended, both slugs had penetrated the engine block. Green radiator fluid pooled on the dirt and plumes of it hissed and rose in the air, coating the windows of the Dodge.

Gun drawn, Joe ran to the driver’s side of the pickup from the back. He yelled, “Thanks, Nate!”

“My pleasure,” Nate said, standing wide-legged on the other side of the road, still holding his revolver in a two-handed grip. “I like killing cars.”

Connelly opened his door cautiously. He looked at Joe coming at him. He turned his head to see Nate and his .454 in a cloud of green steam that made him look like an apparition from the Gates of Hell. Connelly was half in, half out of the cab. Joe could see only one of Connelly’s hands, the one holding the handle of the door.

“Let me see ’em both,” Joe said, raising the Glock and sighting down the barrel as he approached. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire. Nate was not far out of his line of fire through the windshield, and ricochets could threaten Sheridan.

Connelly hadn’t moved in or out an inch. He seemed to be weighing his options. Was his other hand gripping a gun?

“I said, show me your hands and climb out slowly,” Joe said. “You’re under arrest for skipping bond in Carbon County.”

Connelly smiled slightly, said, “Don’t you think this is excessive force? Since when is it okay for a damned game warden to injure a man and total his pickup for missing a hearing for a misdemeanor?”

Joe said, “Ever since you shot a dog with an arrow. Now shut up, get out, and get down on the ground.”

Nate emerged from the steam and aimed his .454 at the side of Connelly’s head. “Let me shoot him and tear his ears off, Joe. You know, for my collection.”

Joe stifled a smile and watched as Connelly leaped out of his pickup empty-handed and eagerly threw himself face down into the sand.

As Joe snapped handcuffs on Connelly’s wrists, Connelly said, “How in the
hell
did you find me all the way up here?”

Joe said, “Just good police work,” and winked at Sheridan, who had watched the arrest openmouthed.

 

 

 

WITH RON CONNELLY cuffed to the front strut of his dead pickup on the side of the highway, Joe called in the arrest to central dispatch. In the days since the Mad Archer had vacated Baggs, he’d obtained a new compound bow and a set of broadhead arrows, as well as a Ruger Ranch Rifle and a stainless-steel .45 semiauto. In the glove box were cartridges, a bloody knife still covered with deer hair, and plastic vials of crystal meth. Tim Curley, the game warden out of Sundance, heard the call and broke in.

“Joe, how the hell are you?”

“Fine,” Joe said, remembering Curley as a big man with dark eyes, impressive jowls, and a gunfighter mustache. “Can you come get this guy?”

“This is the one they call the Mad Archer?”

“Yup.”

“I thought I heard you already caught him and threw him in the pokey.”

“I did. But that was last week. You know how it goes sometimes.”

“What—a sympathetic judge who let him out on bond?”

“Tim, we’re on the radio.”

“Oh, yeah. Hey—you gonna stick around? It’s been a while since we got caught up. I want to hear your version of what happened to Randy Pope.”

“Nope,” Joe said in answer to both questions. “I’ll send you all the paperwork on Connelly later. You’ll need to send a tow truck to the scene.”

“Don’t tell me you wrecked another departmental vehicle?” Curley laughed. Joe was infamous for holding the record for the destruction of departmental vehicles. No one else was close.

“Not mine, this time.” But as he said it, he stepped away from the cab and gauged the damage he’d caused to the back of his pickup. Both taillights were smashed. The back bumper was curled under the frame. His trailer hitch was flattened to the side and his tailgate hung open and out like the tongue of a dead animal. “Not enough that
I
need a tow truck, anyway,” he said.

“What’s going on? What are you doing in my district? Last I heard you were sentenced to Baggs.”

Joe said, “I don’t have time to explain right now. This arrest cost us ten minutes. I have to go, sorry.”

Curley said, “Does this have something to do with that ranch deal that’s been all over the radio this morning?”

Joe said, “I’ll need to catch up with you later, Tim.”

Sheridan and Nate were already in the cab, and Joe swung himself in, hung up the mike, and gunned it.

“That was a good one,” Joe said to Nate and Sheridan as if they’d been privy to his earlier ruminations. He nodded at the view of Ron Connelly slumped against his pickup in his rearview mirror. “That was worth the time it took to get that guy back into jail where he belongs. Yup, that makes me feel real good. That’s one on the plus side, by golly.”

Nate chuckled as he replaced the two spent cartridges in his five-shot revolver with fresh rounds the size of lipsticks.

Sheridan glared at Nate. “Your
collection
?”

Nate winked at her.

In the distance, they could see the helicopter begin its descent.

“There’s the ranch,” Nate said, gesturing toward the cottonwoods marking the abandoned homestead. “You can let me off here. I’ll stay out of Tim Curley’s way and watch for you when you come back out.”

Joe said, “Do you finally have a cell phone so I can call you?”

Nate curled his upper lip. Nate hated cell phones. He once told Joe satellite phones were a necessity but cell phones made him feel that he was always on call.

“Here,” Joe said. “Take mine. I’ll let you know when we’re coming.”

Nate took it as if Joe was offering him a bar of feces. It was Sheridan’s turn to wink.

 

 

THE RANCH YARD WAS A HIVE OF ACTIVITY; SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT SUVs were parked at jaunty angles near the main house with their doors wide open, an ambulance driver was arguing with deputies to clear the way so he could back his vehicle in, and the FBI helicopter sat in a back pasture like a giant insect on a break. Joe drove his pickup to the other side of the yard near a Quonset hut filled with farm equipment.

“I want you to stay here,” he told Sheridan.

“What about April?”

“Believe me,” Joe said, “if April’s in there, I’ll come running.” Thinking,
Unless she’s in bad shape.

“Why don’t you get your mother on the phone?” he said. “Let her know what’s going on and that we’re both okay. I’m sure she’s going crazy.”

“I’m sure she is.”

TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES stopped Joe from entering the house, saying they were under orders to keep everyone out. Joe asked who to talk to and one of the deputies said the FBI was in charge and both agents were inside. “When one of them comes out,” the deputy said, “you can talk to him.”

Joe considered rushing them, but they were both bigger as well as filled with the official hubris that always resulted when there was a multiple homicide in a single-digit crime rate county. Their blood was running hot with purpose. He knew better than to try and get through them.

Instead, he circled the house hoping he could see inside. If he saw April, he decided, he was going in even if he had to fight his way inside. He walked on the lawn around the left side of the house and saw a side door with another deputy stationed at it. Joe waved and kept walking, looking in every window and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He walked the length of the back of the house and around the side. He was noting a broken window to what looked like the kitchen when the tip of his boot ticked something metallic. He stopped and looked down. Spent cartridges from a handgun blinked in the sun. He counted eight before he stopped counting, then stepped back and away so he wouldn’t crush them into the ground. From the location of the spent shells, he could imagine a gunman standing just outside the kitchen and firing inside. It bolstered his theory when he noted there was no broken glass under the window in the flowerbed—the glass had been blown inside the house. He wanted to show the FBI agents what he’d found.

Coon was exiting the front door of the ranch house, struggling with the removal of a pair of latex gloves. As Joe approached, Coon held up a gloved hand made a sick yellow by the latex covering and said, “I’d suggest you stay where you are. Agent Portenson just gave the order to seal up the crime scene as soon as we get more photos of the victims taken out of there.”

“Who are the victims?” Joe asked, feeling his chest constrict.

Coon said, “An adult male DOA in the kitchen. Another adult male in critical condition. The EMTs are loading him on a gurney as we speak.”

“Anyone else?”

Coon frowned. “Should there be?”

“The nine-one-one call mentioned bodies outside. Is there a girl in there?”

“No.”

“Can I look?”

“I said . . .”

“Stay the hell out,” Portenson interrupted, appearing behind Coon. He was red-faced. “Why are you always around, anyway?”

Joe sighed in frustration. “Can you at least describe the scene to me? What’s your best guess what happened in there?”

Portenson rolled his eyes and shouldered past Coon toward the helicopter, making it clear he didn’t have time to waste with Joe. Over his shoulder, he said, “I want Stenko. I want his head on a platter.”

When Portenson was out of earshot, Coon said, “He is not a happy man.”

“He never has been. What’s going on?”

Coon said. “Tony is in big trouble because of that incident earlier today. Our bosses don’t like that kind of thing anymore because it attracts the wrong kind of attention in the press and in Washington. We’re supposed to be counterterrorism these days except for the occasional slam-dunk mob arrest. And when we screw up like we did this morning, the shit rolls downhill.”

Joe nodded.

“I think you know that all Agent Portenson really wants is to get out of Wyoming. What happened earlier doesn’t help. Neither one of us is out of the woods yet. Hell, I don’t mind whatever happens. I like it here and so does my family. But Tony . . .”

“. . . wants out,” Joe said. “I know. He wants to run with the big dogs.”

Coon nodded. “The only way he can make amends is to nail Stenko.”

Joe gave it a beat. “So what’s it look like inside?”

Coon finally got his right glove pulled off with a sharp snap. “As I said, two victims. One under the broken kitchen window. Male, thirties, dressed in tennis togs, if you can believe that. His ID said he was Nathanial Talich from Chicago. He was the youngest of the three brothers and considered to be the craziest . . .”

“The psycho,” Joe said, repeating the term from the call.

Coon nodded. “Multiple gunshot wounds. I could see one right below his eye, but my guess is he took at least a few more in the belly the way he was curled up.”

“The other guy?”

“The sheriff said he’s the owner of the ranch. A guy named Leo Dyekman. Also of Chicago,” he said, raising a single eyebrow. “We think he’s a known associate of Stenko. His money man, we think. Portenson is in communication with Washington now to confirm that.”

“Can you tell what happened?”

Coon shrugged. “It looks like a gunfight. They were both armed and I’m guessing they shot each other.”

Joe shook his head. “I doubt that. Can Dyekman talk?”

Coon narrowed his eye, not pleased by the Joe’s casual disregard of their theory. “Why? What do
you
think?”

“I’ll show you in a minute. Can Dyekman talk?”

“I’d be surprised if Dyekman ever talks, judging by the amount of blood he lost. I don’t think his wound was fatal—it looks like he got hit on the side of the neck—but he might have bled out after he made the call. There is a
lot
of blood in that house.”

Joe hoped none of it was April’s.

Coon said, “That’s the problem with living out here in the middle of nowhere. The EMTs can’t get to you in time.”

“So why do you think the two guys shot each other up?” Joe asked.

“Because that’s what it looks like, Joe. But that’s why we called in forensics. They might be able to figure out what the hell happened in there.”

“So why did Dyekman refer to more bodies?”

Coon shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Was there any other blood anywhere?”

“I told you, Joe, there’s blood all over the place. It looks like a slaughterhouse.”