Blood Trail (11 page)

“What kind of weapon was used, do we know that?” Lothar asked. Pope looked to Robey.

“No bullet was found,” Robey said. “The best guess of our forensics guys based on the entrance and exit holes is a thirty-caliber.”

Lothar snorted.

“What?” Pope asked.

Again the paternalistic smile. “A .30 bullet is used in at least eleven configurations that I know of, from a .308 carbine to a .30-06 to a 300 Weatherby Magnum. Plus, if you don’t actually have the lead and you’re basing the finding on the hole size, it could have just as easily been a 7mm with seven configurations or a .311 with three more configurations! Your shooter could not have used a more common caliber, so this tells us exactly nothing.
Nothing !
”

Robey leaned into Joe and whispered, “TMI.”
Too much information.

 
 
THEY DUCKED under the crime-scene tape. Lothar asked Joe to show him where the body was hung and how. The master tracker stared at the space where Urman had been hung as if studying the body that was no longer there. Finally, he grunted as if coming to a conclusion of some kind and began walking the perimeter with his chin cupped in his right hand. Joe started to follow but Pope reached out and stopped him.

“Let him do his job,” Pope said softly. “This is what we hired him for.”

For fifteen minutes, Lothar studied the ground, the trees, the tape, the horizon, the opposite hillside, before pronouncing the crime scene “as useless as tits on a boar” because of the way it had been trampled by Urman’s nephew and friends as well as law enforcement for two days.

“We can just forget this as being any help at all,” Lothar said. “We’ve got to shift focus to where the shot was fired from and where the victim was hit. If we can pinpoint those two locations, we might have something to work with.”

“Makes sense to me!” Pope said with enthusiasm.

 
 
LOTHAR SAID to Joe, “When starting a search, there are three methods to choose from: the Grid Method, which consists of seven ninety-degree turns followed by seven intersecting ninety-degree turns; the Fan Method, where we start here at the center point where Urman’s body was hung and walk away in a straight line fifty yards or so, complete a one-hundred-and-seventy-degree turn and walk back to the center point, then do it again a few feet over from the first trek until a pattern like a fan emerges; or the Coil Method, which is to start at the incident area and circle it, coiling back to it with three-meter spacing. I think this scene calls for the Coil Method.”

Joe nodded, studying the folds and contours of the landscape. Behind him was black timber. In front was the saddle slope they had walked down from the vehicles, and on the other side of the slope the timber cleared and rose to a ridge, topped by granite outcroppings that had punched through the grass.

“Any questions?” Lothar asked.

“One,” Joe said. “What happened to the prisoner who escaped from the SuperMax in Colorado?”

“I meant about search methods,” Lothar said impatiently.

“We can coil around,” Joe said, pointing across the meadow toward the rising slope, “but it makes sense to me that Frank was probably shot up there. That’s where an elk hunter would be so he could look down on the meadows to the south.”

Pope said, “Joe, would you please let the man do his work?”

“Actually,” Lothar said, looking where Joe had gestured, “he makes a lot of sense. Joe knows more about animal hunting than I do, so he’s probably right. We should start up there. My area of expertise is man hunting, not elk hunting.”

Pope huffed and crossed his arms across his chest, chastened.

“So what about the escaped prisoner?” Joe asked.

“Butch and Sundance treed him near Colorado Springs.” Lothar sighed, as if the conclusion of the story was so boring and inevitable that it was a waste of his time. “And a guard killed him with an AR- 15. He fell out of the tree like a sack of potatoes.”

 
 
JOE BEGAN to admire Lothar’s skill as they crossed the saddle slope. It was like hunting or stalking in super-slo-mo, Joe thought. Lothar moved a foot or two, then squatted to study the ground in front of him for bent grass stalks, footprints, depressions, anything left behind. Robey had stayed back at the crime scene to call his office, and Pope was still there, once again working his cell phone. Wally Conway was with him. As Joe and Lothar distanced themselves from Robey and Pope, the quiet took over. Whether it was Lothar’s caution and study affecting him or the fact that just the day before a man had been hunted down and murdered at this very location, Joe’s senses seemed to tingle.

The afternoon was cooling down quickly as a long gray sheet of cloud cover was pulled across the sun. Joe felt the temperature drop into the midforties. It dropped quickly at this elevation, and he zipped his jacket up to his chin. A slight breeze kicked up, enough to make the tops of the trees sound like they were sighing. Whirls of wind touched down in the far-off meadows, making dead leaves dance in upward spirals.

He nearly stumbled into Lothar, who had dropped to his hands and knees and lowered his head to ground level until his jaw was nearly in the dirt, looking toward the opposite slope.

“All right,” Lothar said, “the story is starting to tell itself to us.”

“What story?”

“Come down here and see for yourself.”

Joe bent to his hands and knees, mimicking Lothar’s perspective.

“What am I looking at?” Joe asked.

“Get your head low,” Lothar said, “so low the grass touches your cheek, and look toward the mountainside over there.”

Despite feeling a little silly, Joe all but pressed his face against the ground. When he did, from his new angle, he could clearly see two lines, like dry-land ski tracks, through the grass on the far slope.

“Those are heel marks,” Lothar said, “where our shooter dragged Urman from where he shot him to where he hung him in the trees. They’re hard to see because the grass is so short and the sun is straight over our heads. But when you get down at grass-stop level, you can see where Urman’s boot heels or boot toes bent the top of the grass and made furrows.”

Joe grunted, impressed. He assumed Urman’s body had been moved to where it was hung up, but surprised it had been moved such a long way.

“It makes sense now when you think of it,” Joe said, standing up and brushing bits of grass and dirt from his clothing. “The shooter wanted to hang him from a tree like a deer or elk, and the nearest trees are back where we started. So he had to drag the body across here.”

“Which means,” Lothar said, “we have a good chance of finding a footprint. If the shooter was dragging the body, he was setting his feet hard into the ground to pull. Urman wasn’t a small man, so it would have been hard work. Even though the ground is hard and dry, he might have made a footprint we can find because he was stepping down with so much effort in order to drag the body along.”

Joe nodded.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Lothar said. “You mentioned that far hillside would be a good place to hunt because one can see so well from there.”

“Yup.”

“If it were you, where would you set up to look for elk? Where specifically?”

Joe studied the slope, fixing on the granite outcroppings. Several were too low down to provide a good field of vision into the valley. But there was one outcropping toward the top of the slope that not only offered a hunter enough cover to hide behind, but was high enough up the slope to see well into the valley below. Joe pointed at it. “There.”

 
 
THE SPLASH of blood on the granite was dark, almost black. It was puncture-wound blood, entry-wound blood. A few feet away on the rock was a spray of bright red arterial blood where the bullet exited Frank Urman’s body and tumbled somewhere down the saddle slope. From where Joe stood above the outcropping, he could visualize a herd of elk grazing on in the meadows below, downslope.

“From the angle of the entry and the exit,” Lothar said, “we can assume without doing any definitive ballistics or testing that the shooter”—he turned and pointed over Joe’s head to the top of the ridge behind them—“was there.”

Joe followed Lothar’s finger. On the horizon was a bump of a knoll—perfect to hide behind.

“Will we be lucky enough to find a shell casing?” Lothar asked aloud but rhetorically as they climbed toward the knoll. “A cigarette? Anything? It’s a shame Americans don’t smoke anymore. In Europe, Asia, and the Middle East I can always count on finding butts.”

Joe labored up the slope directly toward the knoll.

“No!” Lothar said. “Stop. Do not go up there.”

Joe stopped, confused.

“Look,” Lothar said, and Joe turned. In a depression in the granite, filled with fine sand deposited by the wind over the years, was a definitive boot print.

“It’s perfect,” Lothar said, as if examining a diamond. “I’d guess size eleven, Vibram soles but worn enough so the track is distinctive, one eighty, two hundred pounds based on the impression. Perfect!”

“It looks fresh,” Joe said. “The wind or weather didn’t get to it overnight.”

“Even better than that,” Lothar said, “is I doubt it was made yesterday. I think it’s today’s track, last night’s at the very worst. Our man is still around.”

Joe felt a chill wash over him.

While Lothar slipped his daypack off to prepare to make a composite cast, Joe looked back at the knoll.

“Don’t you want to see what’s up there?” Joe asked.

“Not now.”

“What do you mean? When, then?”

“Not until dark,” Lothar said. “We come back at dark.”

“Why wait?”

Lothar looked up. “Joe, do you remember how when you got down on the ground down there you could see clearly where the victim was dragged? But that when we were just walking along we couldn’t discern a thing?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why we track at night. It all comes out at night. You’ll see what I mean. Trust me.”

“But won’t he get away?”

Lothar nodded. “He might. But if he took the chance of coming back here, for whatever purpose, he might have reason to stick around.”

 
 
BACK AT the crime scene, Lothar briefed Pope on what they’d found and how he intended to take action. When Lothar mentioned the possibility of the shooter still being in the area, Joe saw Pope’s face drain of color.

“Maybe we should retreat to the vehicles,” Pope said, “you know, so we can rest up.”

“You mean get out of the line of fire,” Lothar said. “Good idea.”

As they hiked back to the trucks, Pope said, “The governor is prepared to issue a warning urging hunters to pack up their camps and go home. He’s preparing to close all state lands and alert the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and private landowners of what’s going on.”

“My God,” Joe said.

“That’s right,” Pope said. “I begged him to hold off, to give us a few days. But he’s worried as hell that Klamath Moore will spill the beans anytime now. If Moore tells the world that hunters are being systematically hunted down and executed and it looks like the governor has been withholding that information, he’ll look worse than incompetent. He’ll be liable, and so will we.”

Joe grunted.

AS THEY walked up the hill toward the trucks, Joe felt vulnerable and exposed in more ways than one. Literally, they were in the open on the slope, and if the shooter was still out there it would be an easy shot with a scoped, high-powered rifle. He looked over his shoulder at the mountainside he and Lothar had just scoured. It wasn’t inconceivable that the shooter could drop back over the rim into the knoll he’d used to kill Frank Urman and train his rifle on the four of them.

 
 
“AND THE hits just keep on coming,” Robey said to Joe and Pope as they approached the vehicles. “I talked with the sheriff’s departments in Albany and Fremont counties. One guess what was among the items found in John Garrett’s pocket when his body was brought in, and what was found inside the mouth of Warren Tucker but wasn’t included in the reports for some unknown goddamned reason?”

“Red poker chips,” Joe said.

“Yes,” Robey said. “Red poker chips.”

“Maybe the governor should close things down,” Joe said. “It’s looking like what we hoped it wasn’t.”

“That’s what Rulon’s new chief of staff is advising him,” Pope spat. “She’s telling him he should have done it yesterday.”

Joe thought,
She’s a smart woman.

Pope reached out and grasped Lothar’s arm. “We’ve got to find this shooter. Do you understand? We’ve got to find him
tonight.
”

Lothar pulled away, annoyed. “I can’t promise anything,” he said.

“But you need to,” Pope said, his eyes bulging with the kind of intensity Joe had seen directed at him several times. “That’s why we brought you here. That’s why we’re paying you. This guy out there is about to destroy my agency.”

Lothar looked away from Pope to Joe and Robey and mouthed,
Asshole
.

Wally Conway, who’d seen the interaction, looked away passively, not taking sides.

10

THE AFTERNOON got colder as they waited for darkness. Joe sat in his pickup next to Robey and glassed the timber and meadows through his spotting scope, looking for movement of any kind. He got the strange feeling that the birds and wildlife had subtly withdrawn from the area, clearing the stage for whatever was going to happen later. Robey nervously ate pieces of jerky from a cellophane bag he’d brought along. Piece after piece, chewing slowly. The cab of the truck smelled of teriyaki and anticipation.

Pope appeared at Joe’s window, blocking his view through the scope.

“I’m heading back into town,” Pope said, not meeting Joe’s eye. “I can’t run the agency with a cell phone that keeps going in and out of signal range. Let me know how things go tonight. Wally has agreed to stay here with you. Lothar’s getting all of his stuff out of my Escalade. He’ll have to wait with you.”