Below Zero (6 page)

He waited a moment, said, “Tell Sheridan not to shut her phone off tonight.”

“She’s a teenager, Joe. She never shuts off her phone.”

He tapped out an e-mail to his district supervisor advising him of his decision to take immediate personal time, knowing it wouldn’t be received until the next day when he was already gone. Being the governor’s unofficial point man had its privileges. He snapped the phone shut.

The deputy was looking at him. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

“Did somebody die?”

Joe said, “Just the opposite.”

 

 

 

HE DROVE NORTH
on lonely state highway 789, where his headlights illuminated sudden herds of mule deer and pronghorn antelope along the road. The adrenaline rush that had surged through him during the arrest and arraignment of the Mad Archer was starting to wear off and a small headache, like a marble-sized ball of black, formed behind his right eye. Wildlife was everywhere, and they all seemed to be restless, on the move, as if anticipating full-fledged hunting season in two weeks. He had to slow down and stay alert. The night sky was clear and missing a moon and the only lights for the first fifty-one miles were the vertical twinkles from distant natural gas wells. Tube was in the front seat with his head on Joe’s lap, where he dreamed and drooled. The eagle was still lashed to the inside wall of his pickup bed with the sock on her head. He felt like he was piloting a traveling freak show in search of rubes who would pay admission.

Maxine, his Labrador who had once been scared white by something she saw in the timber, had passed on the previous winter. Her passing had been traumatic but also a relief of sorts because the old girl went deaf and blind in a remarkable hurry and suffered briefly from the liver condition that took her life. He’d buried her in a howling windstorm in the breaklands she loved, with Sheridan reading a eulogy that was whipped away by the wind. Her loss left a hole in their family that would likely never be filled. Tube might ease some of the pain, he hoped. If nothing else, it was impossible to look at the dog and not smile.

 

 

 

ON THE LONG top-of-the-world drive over the Shirley Mountains in darkness so complete that at times he felt he was in an outdoor tunnel, Joe recalled the incidents of six years before, where they’d lost April in the snow on Battle Mountain.

The Keeley family of Mississippi had played a significant and tragic role in Joe and Marybeth’s lives. Ote Keeley, the outfitter father, had turned up dead on Joe’s woodpile nine years before. Joe had interviewed his wife, Jeannie, as part of the investigation, and while he was talking with her was the first time he saw April, who was dirty, sick, poorly clothed, and six years old at the time. When Jeannie abandoned April, Marybeth swooped in and took the girl in as their foster daughter. She was nine years old and halfway through third grade at Saddlestring Elementary when Jeannie returned to the valley with the Sovereigns and took her back with a legal maneuver. The Sovereigns were a motley collection of Montana Freemen, survivalists, and conspiracy theorists lead by an old bear of a man named Wade Brockius who chose the Bighorns to establish a mountain outpost during the worst winter of recent memory and make their stand. Although the Sovereigns had really broken no laws other than overstaying their campground permit, a rogue Forest Service district supervisor named Melinda Strickland, with assistance from overeager FBI, BATF, and local police, surrounded the Sovereign camp and forced the issue.

The memories were still painfully fresh because they’d never faded very far beneath the surface, and they came back and he was there again . . .

The Sovereigns had scattered on snowmobiles, Sno-Cats, skis, and four-wheel-drives. It was chaos. He’d chased down Munker and found him mortally injured.

When he returned to the Sovereigns’ camp . . .

And he cried now, six years later, hot tears dropping on Tube’s head and snout. Joe was always shocked by the appearance of his own tears, as if he’d forgotten he was capable of them. Angrily, he wiped them away.

When he recovered, he called Marybeth. It was after one in the morning, but he knew she’d be awake.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Nearly to Casper,” he said. Which meant still three hours away.

“This won’t be like our usual reunion,” she said, as if in warning.

“I know.” The only good thing about the distance of his district from their home was getting back together. They missed each other and yearned for each other terribly, and seeing each other was still . . . wild. Not this time, though.

He said, “You know what’s always bothered me about that day on Battle Mountain? I’ve replayed that day over and over in my head for six years. But you know what’s always bothered me the most?”

“What?”

“If it had been Sheridan or Lucy in that trailer, I think I would have gone in after either one of them.”

“You could have been killed trying, Joe.”

“I know that. But I think I would have
tried.
I think something inside of me would have
made
me go into that camp after them, after my daughters. I wouldn’t have waited to see how the situation played out like I did with our foster child. That’s always haunted me . . .”

There was a long pause. “So what are you saying?”

“That if there’s even a remote chance—even a sliver of a chance—that April is alive, I don’t want to screw up again. I want to find her and save her. I want to set things right.”

“Joe . . . it’s time you let that go. I don’t think you did the wrong thing that day. You would have been killed trying, and where would that leave the rest of us?”

He didn’t respond, couldn’t respond.

After a long time, Marybeth said, “Joe, I can’t even imagine a scenario where she’s alive. But if she were, if she were . . .” her voice tailed off. He thought he was losing the signal.

Then she said: “What makes you think she wants to be saved?”

 

 

 

THREE YEARS AFTER
the incident on Battle Mountain, a man named J. W. Keeley showed up in Saddlestring seeking revenge on Joe. J.W. was April’s uncle. He was also a violent ex-con suspected of murdering a rich couple from Atlanta in his hunting camp. The ending of that encounter still made Joe shudder with guilt.

 

 

 

BOTH EXPERIENCES
stayed with him, messed him up, and made it difficult to concentrate on I-25 as he coursed north. He nearly forgot to acknowledge the memory of former Wyoming icon Chris LeDoux as he passed Kaycee.

But he snapped right back when his phone rang at two-thirty in the morning, when Marybeth said, “Sheridan got a text message an hour ago, Joe. From April.”

 

 

“
WHAT
ARE YOU DOING?” ROBERT ASKED HER. SHE QUICKLY jammed the phone between the arm of the overstuffed chair and outside of her leg so he couldn’t see it if he looked closely. She hoped her face wouldn’t reveal anything, but he’d startled her and she hadn’t seen him coming up behind her in the hotel lobby.

“Nothing,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound guilty.

“I thought I saw you doing something with your hands.”

She’d been texting. She was fast, a blur of thumbs. But because Robert was in back of her when he asked, she was fairly certain he couldn’t have seen the phone. All he could have seen, she thought, was her leaning forward in the chair, head bent forward, intent on something. Any kid would have known what she was doing, but despite what he seemed to think of himself, Robert was no kid. She doubted he’d ever sent a text message. Robert thought cell phones were for calls. That’s how old he was.

She held up her right hand. “My nails,” she said. “I hate my nails. I chew on them too much.”

She thought it was a pretty good lie. She
did
hate her nails.

Robert looked at her suspiciously, narrowing his eyes, darting them all over her and around her like a mental frisking. But he skimmed right over her legs and the arm of the chair where the cell phone was.

She’d had the phone for three days, and neither Robert nor Stenko knew she had it. It had been fairly simple to get. She’d asked them to stop at a Wal-Mart as they were passing through Cheyenne on the way to Colorado. She’d said she needed to buy some things. When Robert asked what she needed, she’d said, “Feminine things, if you gotta know,” and that shut him up. She knew they wouldn’t want to go inside with her to buy Kotex, or whatever else the two of them assumed were “feminine things.” She borrowed $50 cash from Stenko and he peeled it off the roll he had taken from the motor home.

The TracFones were located in the electronics section. While standing in line at the cashier’s, she bought a 120-minute Airtime card from a display.

She’d activated the phone in a restroom stall by calling an 800 number with the ten free minutes that came with the phone. Following the prompts, she loaded two hours of talk time onto the phone from the code on the Airtime card. Once it was loaded, she muted the ring and placed the call to the number she remembered from so many years ago to the house on Bighorn Road. She didn’t recognize the voice of the boy who answered, but he did give her Sheridan’s number, which she punched into the memory of the phone before powering it off. Then she threw away the packaging and the charger and slipped the phone down the front of her jeans. She knew that when the battery ran out she could buy another phone at any Wal-Mart or convenience store.

On the way out of the store, she gathered up a large package of Tampax, some nail polish and lotion, and her favorite shampoo. She’d learned years before from one of her many foster brothers that the best time to steal from Wal-Mart was early in the morning, when the employees were lethargic. So she bagged them all up at a self-service checkout and walked out past the staffer near the door who never looked twice.

Outside, she’d offered to give Stenko the change but he smiled and said, “Keep it.”