Blood Trail (20 page)

Joe said nothing. She had the radio on a news station, and the reporter was excerpting portions of Rulon’s press conference, saying the authorities were following every lead and closing in on the killer.

“Well spun,” she said, nodding at the radio with professional admiration.

“I wish I agreed with it,” Joe said.

She laughed. “If the governor says we’re closing in on the killer, we’re closing in on the killer. Come on, get with the program.”

“I’ll never get used to this,” Joe grumbled.

“Back to where we were,” she said, turning the radio off. “So you’re a game warden. How can you stand to be around the kind of killing and mutilation that happens out there? You have daughters—how can you stand to see Bambi murdered?”

He eyed her closely to see if she was baiting him. She was, but there was a grain of sincere incredulity as well.

“I’ve yet to see Bambi murdered,” he said.

“You know what I mean.”

“In a shallow and very superficial way, I do,” he said. “But that isn’t what this is about. It’s about the murder of innocent men. This has nothing to do with
hunting
. That’s just what the shooter and Klamath Moore want you to think.”

“Struck a nerve, eh?” she said, a slight smile on her lips.

Joe sighed. “In order to process a game animal properly, the carcass needs to be field-dressed and the head and hide removed. Otherwise, the meat can be ruined. It’s not a pretty thing, but it’s necessary. And it’s not the purpose of the hunt.”

“What is?” she said. “To drink whiskey and grunt and run around in the hills with a rifle?”

“I don’t think we have the time for this,” Joe said wearily, thinking he was sitting at the longest red light in the state of Wyoming. “I just hope you ask the same questions the next time you sit down to eat dinner. What events occurred behind the scenes and out of your view to deliver that food to you? Some eggs get broken to make your breakfast omelet, you know. Do you ever think of that?”

“That’s different,” she huffed. “The food producers didn’t do it for pleasure. It is just a job to them.”

“Most hunters don’t kill for pleasure either,” Joe said, “and at least they’re honest enough to get down and dirty and take part in the harvesting of the food they eat. They’re honest enough not to use proxies to do their killing for them.”

“
Honest
enough?” she said with some heat.

“Struck a nerve, eh?” Joe said, and smiled. “Hey, the light’s green.”

 
 
“SO ARE you surprised I’m here?” Stella asked as she swung into the parking garage of the Federal Building.

“Very,” he said.

“Have you ever told anyone about what happened in Jackson?”

“I told Marybeth there was an attraction but nothing happened,” Joe said. “She doesn’t like you very much.”

“Not that,” she said, whacking him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “I mean about my relationship with Will Jensen. Does anyone know but you?”

“No,” he said.

“I helped him do what he was incapable of doing at the time.”

“So you say,” Joe said.

She pulled the big SUV into a dark parking space and turned off the motor and handed him the keys. “The governor is assigning this to you until you get your truck back,” she said. “Despite your reputation for destroying government property.”

“What about the state plane?” Joe asked. “I thought it was flying me back.”

“He said he wouldn’t send his worst enemy on that death trap.”

“But . . .”

“Don’t even ask, Joe. That’s what I’ve learned.”

He took the keys from her.

“I really like my new life here,” she said. “I like working for the governor. I’m damned good at my job. This is my second chance in life, and I’d like to leave my past behind me. You’re one of the few who know anything about it.”

“Okay.”

“What I’m asking you is if you’ll let it all go, what happened.”

“I already have,” Joe said.

She let a beat go by. “Do you ever think of me?”

“Only in the past tense,” Joe said.

Her eyes misted, and she wiped at them angrily. “I
hate
it when I do that. I don’t even mean to,” she said. “There is nothing about you to make me react this way. You are no Will Jensen, that’s for sure.”

Joe nodded. “Agreed. And you’re no Marybeth. Now let’s go see Portenson and get Nate before they close the building on us.”

As they walked to the elevator, she briefly locked his arm in hers, said, “I can be your best friend or your worst enemy, you know.”

As the elevator doors opened, Joe turned to her. “Likewise.”

 
 
THE FBI’S MAN on the inside of Klamath Moore’s movement was named Bill Gordon, according to the file handed over to Joe by a reluctant special agent. Gordon was from Lexington, Kentucky. There were three photos of him in the file. The informant was tall and lean with a ponytail, a long nose, and soulful eyes. Joe thought he recognized him from the gathering in front of the county building that morning.

Joe skimmed the documents behind the photo, learning that Gordon had encountered Klamath Moore and a few of his followers on a tract of heavily wooded and undeveloped land outside Lexington two years before when Moore was searching for a good place to set up a camp and hold a rally. Gordon was a solitary, bookish outdoorsman who knew of Moore and his beliefs but didn’t tell Klamath he vehemently disagreed with him. Instead, he shared tales of the Kentucky woods and helped Moore set up a campsite on the shore of a lake. Keeping his inclinations to himself, he stayed around for a small firelight rally where Moore spoke. Once Gordon felt he’d gained Moore’s trust, he visited the FBI office in Lexington and offered to become their informant in exchange for travel expenses and enough compensation to buy a small cabin he had his eye on next to a fine trout stream. The FBI, flush with Homeland Security cash and a new emphasis on domestic counterterrorism, thought it was a good deal all around.

The file contained Gordon’s reports from rallies across the United States and trips to Bath, England, and Tours, France. Joe closed the file, planning on reading later.

“Can you please let Bill Gordon know I’ll be contacting him?” Joe asked the agent, who answered by looking over his shoulder toward the corner office where Portenson sat with his door closed and the blinds half-drawn, trying unsuccessfully to ignore Joe and Stella.

“I’ll have to get permission to do that,” the agent said.

“I’ll need it before I can leave,” Joe said.

The agent got up and approached Portenson’s office and rapped on the door. Portenson signaled him in and Joe could overhear a sharp exchange.

When the agent came out, he looked chastened. “We’ll do it, but we have to wait until Gordon checks in. We can’t just call him on his cell phone in case he’s in a meeting with Klamath Moore or something.”

“How often does he call in?”

“Twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. He calls during working hours.”

“Did he call in today?”

“I didn’t take the call, but he must have.”

“So you won’t hear from him for three days, until next Thursday?” Joe asked.

The agent nodded.

“I hate to wait that long,” Joe said, mostly to himself.

The agent shrugged. “Nothing I can do.”

“There’s something else,” the agent said. “Agent Portenson asked me to tell you they’re bringing up the accused and the paperwork assigning him to your custody. He said Ms. Ennis needs to sign as well on behalf of the governor’s office.”

Joe and Stella exchanged glances.

“Don’t screw this up, Joe,” she said. “If my name’s on the document you better make sure you bring him back.”

Joe shrugged. “I’ll do my best.”

“I hope you’ll do better than that.”

Joe’s phone burred in his pocket and he drew it out. It was Pope.

“You need to keep me apprised, Joe,” Pope said, “every single step of the way.
Every. Single. Step
.”

“I don’t work for you,” Joe said.

“You don’t understand,” Pope said, his voice cracking. “This means everything to me. My agency, my career—”

Joe snapped his phone shut as the heavy doors opened and Nate Romanowski was led into the room in an orange jumpsuit, his cuffs and leg irons clanking.

But it wasn’t the Nate he knew, Joe thought. The man who shuffled forward with the crew cut, sallow complexion, slumping shoulders, and haunted blue eyes just looked like the container that used to house Nate.

18

THEY DROVE NORTH on I-25 under a wide-open dusk sky striped with vermilion cloud slashes stacked on the western horizon. The lights of Cheyenne were an hour behind them. Mule deer and pronghorn antelope raised their heads as the Escalade passed by, the tires sizzling on the highway, acknowledging the fact that Joe Pickett and Nate Romanowski were reunited. Or at least to Joe it seemed like it was what they were doing.

Nate had a smell about him that hung in the closed space of the state Escalade. Sterile, institutional, vapid. A jail smell. He wore his orange prison jumpsuit and a pair of blue boat shoes without laces.

“Nice sunset,” Nate said in a whisper so low Joe asked him to repeat it.

When he did, Joe said, “Yup.”

“They’ve got nice sunsets down here on the high plains,” Nate said. “I know this because I’ve watched three-hundred-and-five of ’em straight through a little gap in the window of my cell. This makes three-hundred-and-six.”

 
 
NATE SEEMED to relax as they hurtled into the night, Joe thought, as if his friend were shedding bits of defensive armor that had formed on his body over the past year, leaving them to skitter across the highway behind them like chunks of ice from the undercarriage of a car. Nate said, “It’s no fun to be in prison, I don’t care what anyone says.”

Joe grunted.

“Can you pull over here?” Nate said, gesturing to an exit off the highway that led to a ranch a mile away whose blue pole lights twinkled in the darkness.

Nate was out of the vehicle before Joe fully stopped it. Joe watched Nate stumble out and walk briskly into the brush, his broad back reflecting moonlight. Nate dropped to his knees and bent over forward, as if praying or in pain.

Joe called, “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

It took a moment for Joe to realize Nate was burrowing his face into the ground, breathing in the sweet dusky smell of sagebrush and grass, filling himself with fresh outdoor air as if fumigating his lungs of tainted, indoor oxygen.

While he waited for Nate, Joe called Marybeth on his cell phone.

“I’ve got him,” he said.

“Nate? How’s he doing?”

“I can’t tell yet.”

“Where is he now?”

“Outside the car smelling sagebrush.”

She chuckled.

“How’s Nancy?” he asked.

“Doing well, considering. I just left her at her house. She’s got relatives on the way. I’m going to go home and bake her a casserole and bring it by tomorrow.”

“How are the girls?”

“Fine. Joe, it’s only been two days since you went up into the mountains.”

“It seems longer than that.”

“A lot has happened, hasn’t it? You need to come home and get some sleep.”

“I need
you
.”

“That’s sweet, Joe. But you need sleep even more.”

He shook his head, not thinking that she couldn’t see him. “Did you hear the governor’s press conference?”

She laughed drily. “Yes, it’s good to know you’re closing in on the bad guy.”

“We aren’t,” Joe said with a sigh.

“I didn’t think so. Maybe Nate can help you out.”

Joe looked up to see Nate shedding his jumpsuit and rolling it into a ball, which he threw into the darkness like a football. Nate turned and walked back toward the Escalade in his laceless boat shoes, kicking off his baggy, dingy jail boxers. He left them draped in the branches of a mountain mahogany bush.

“You might not say that if you could see him now,” Joe said.

“Tell him hello,” she said. “Tell him we missed him.”

“I’m going to tell him to put some clothes on,” Joe said.

“I’ll explain later,” Joe said.

“Call when you get close to town. Try to stay awake.”

Nate climbed into the passenger seat, briskly rubbing his arms, chest, and thighs.

“It feels good to get that shit off,” he said, closing the door.

Joe eased onto the highway and set his cruise control at two miles under the speed limit. He didn’t want to risk being pulled in the governor’s car over by a trooper and trying to explain why there was a naked man sitting next to him.

 
 
“JOE,” NATE SAID as they got back on the highway, “I’m not going back.”

“But—”

“I’m not going back.”

“We’ll discuss it later.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Nate said with absolute finality.

 
 
TO KEEP AWAKE and try to make some sense out of the last two days, Joe detailed to Nate what had happened to the hunters and the investigation thus far. Nate listened silently, grunting and shaking his head.

At a convenience store near Casper, Joe filled the Escalade with gas and bought a set of extra-large Wyoming Cowboys sweats inside from a discount rack. He handed them to Nate, said, “Put these on.”

“I was just starting to feel good again,” Nate said sourly.

 
 
THEY WERE south of Kaycee when Nate finally said, “Amateurs.”

“Who?”

“All of you. Everyone except the shooter. He’s been playing with you people.”

“Maybe I ought to take you back,” Joe said.

Nate snorted. “Don’t be so sensitive. When I think about what you’ve told me, there are some things that just don’t fall into place like they should. When you lay it all out, there are some wrong notes in the narrative.”