by C. J. Box
Joe and the girls stared dumbly at the space Marybeth had just occupied.
“What’s wrong with Mom?” Sheridan asked.
“She’s just upset,” Joe answered. “Everything’s fine.”
“Who is Stewie Woods?” Lucy asked Sheridan.
Sheridan shrugged, and turned back to her breakfast, giving Lucy a “please be quiet” glare.
“You girls need to finish up and get dressed for school,” Joe said gruffly.
He walked them to the bus, kissed them good-bye, and said hello and good morning to the driver, and then went back in to read the newspaper. Joe knew from experience that when Marybeth was upset she would need some time, and he would give her that time.
The front-page story was more accurate than usual and Sheriff Barnum was quoted throughout. While the woman who was killed at the scene was yet to be officially identified (although Joe knew that they had found her Rhode Island driver’s license in a fanny pack at the scene and had been as yet unable to connect with relatives), the man was tentatively identified as environmental activist Stewie Woods. A wallet with his driver’s license, credit cards, and One Globe membership card (he was Member number 1) had been found in an abandoned Subaru near the trailhead. Woods’s shoes, backpack, and famous red bandana had been found at the crime scene. A carpenter’s pouch, filled with sixty-penny spikes, was recovered as well as a small sledgehammer covered with fingerprints. Forest Service officials confirmed that trees had been spiked near the crime scene and that there was a discernible “trail” of spiked trees leading from the road to the crater. Forensics results had not yet come back from Cheyenne as yet, but all of the circumstantial evidence suggested the vaporized dead man was Woods.
Joe had talked with Sheriff Barnum the day before, when they had met on the same two-track gravel road. Each had eased to the shoulder so that their vehicles were parallel, and they rolled down their windows and had a “cowboy conference” in the middle of the sagebrush prairie. Barnum divulged his theory that Woods was attaching explosives to a heifer as a spectacular publicity stunt. Stewie Woods and One Globe were known, after all, for this kind of thing. Blowing up cows that were grazing on public land was just a short step up from spiking trees, disabling the machinery and heavy equipment used for forest road building, or other “direct actions” that One Globe claimed credit for. Blowing up cows would be an escalation in ecoterrorism.
Barnum doubted that Woods or his cronies had the training or expertise required to use C-4 explosives in a safe manner. Barnum’s guess was that Woods and his companion were in the process of attaching the explosive to the animal when it went off.
Afterward, Joe had followed Barnum to his office. “I like my investigations the way I like my women and my eggs,” Barnum said to Joe, “I like ’em over easy.”
Joe had heard Barnum say that more than once in the past two years and he still thought it was ridiculous.
Barnum showed Joe a sheaf of faxes that had come into the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department over the past two days, most filled with newspaper clippings of Stewie Woods’s and One Globe’s past monkey-wrenching activities. Joe read several of them. Woods and his colleagues had attracted a good deal of attention just a few years ago when they unfurled a massive canvas banner from the catwalk of a Colorado dam that made it look like the $800 million structure had a huge crack in it. They had done this behind the U.S. Secretary of Interior as the secretary gave a speech about hydroelectric power. The stunt was caught on videotape and broadcast throughout the country and around the world.
“Blowing up cows is just another form of monkey wrenching,” Barnum said. “Some dead writer made up the term to promote sabotage in the name of the environment.”
“Edward Abbey,” Joe said, “it was Edward Abbey. He wrote a book called The Monkeywrench Gang.”
Barnum looked blankly at Joe. “Whatever,” he said dismissively.
Then Joe paused. “Any chance somebody tipped off Finotta about the explosion before I talked to him?
Barnum’s eyes narrowed. “Why? What did he say?”
“It wasn’t what he said . . . it’s what he didn’t say,” Joe continued. “It’s what he didn’t ask. About the victims, for example. When I thought about it later, I realized he hadn’t shown much interest in who died. Like he might have already known.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“No.”
Barnum sighed, then shrugged. “Finotta has lots of contacts, so it’s possible. Maybe he heard about it over a scanner or something. I don’t see where it much matters, to be honest with you. The death of an environmental whacko probably wasn’t very high on his priority list. Or mine.”
Joe put the newspaper down and drained the last of his coffee. He hadn’t had a chance to tell Marybeth about the conversation when he got home the night before, other than to say that the victims had been identified and that they weren’t local. Joe wondered why the name of the dead man had affected Marybeth the way it had. Or was it the fact that he had forgotten to tell her?
Joe was aware that within the town of Saddlestring, Stewie Woods’s death was already turning into something of a joke. He guessed that it was the same throughout the west in the logging communities, the mining towns, and the farm and ranch centers, where Stewie Woods and One Globe were known and despised. One Globe was one of the most extreme of the environmental groups, a media darling, and one of the few organizations that openly advocated direct action. They hated cattle, they hated the practice of grazing on public land, they hated the ranchers who had or applied for leases, and they hated the politicians and bureaucrats who continued to allow the practice.
Barnum had speculated that Woods was hoping for headlines like “Cow Explodes In National Forest”—something that would focus attention on the grazing debate—when something went horribly wrong.
An interesting angle raised in the newspaper, and previously unknown to Joe, was the fact that Stewie Woods was a local boy, born and reared in Winchester. He had attended high school in Saddlestring and had played middle linebacker for the football team with a recklessness that made him All-State. Then, according to his coaches and neighbors, he had gone to the University of Colorado in Boulder and instead of playing football for the Golden Buffaloes, he hooked up with the wrong people and went crazy.
Joe wondered about the embarrassing legacy Woods’s death would leave. Like an overweight Mama Cass, who died from choking on a sandwich, or Elvis Presley, who died on the toilet, or fitness author Jim Fixx, who died while running, Stewie Woods would forever be remembered as the environmental activist blown up by a cow. Despite the stunts, the publicity, the best-selling biography written by Hayden Powell, and the attention Woods had garnered through the years, Stewie Woods would always be linked with a cow explosion. Joe knew there were ranchers, loggers, and politicians who would find this all very amusing.
Joe raked a hand through his hair. What he still didn’t know was why Marybeth was so upset by the news. But he knew she would tell him when she felt she was ready. Since her shooting injury and the loss of their baby, Marybeth readily admitted that she was more prone to quick mood swings and tremendous bouts of strong emotion—mostly sentimental ones. Sometimes she couldn’t identify exactly what it was that triggered the tears. He had learned not to press her, not to make her give him a definitive answer right away because sometimes she simply didn’t have one. It bothered her more than it bothered Joe, for she was a woman who had no room or time for baseless theatrics.
So whatever it was, Joe knew he would find out what was bothering her when Marybeth was good and ready to tell him.
He waited half an hour and finished his coffee. When she didn’t come downstairs, he pulled on his hat, called Maxine, and walked outside to his pickup to go to work.
6
Joe called it “perching.” Perching was patrolling in the break lands in the foothills of the Bighorns, where the sagebrush gave way to pines, driving his truck up rough two-tracks to promontori
es and buttes where, with his Redfield spotting scope mounted to the driver’s-side window, he could scope flats, meadows, and timber blow-downs for game, hunters, hikers, and fishers. After two years on the job, he was still locating new adequate perches throughout his district, which consisted of 1,500 square miles of high plains steppe, sagebrush flats, craggy break lands, and mountains. These raised vantage points, where he could “sit and glass,” generally had some kind of road to the top that had been established over the years by ranchers, surveyors, or hunters.
Perching is what Joe had done for the past few days, since Marybeth’s outburst. He had left early, stayed late, and filled the hours between with routine patrolling of his district in the strange season between hunting and fishing activity. Even if he patrolled every working hour, Joe knew he could never adequately cover his 1,500-square-mile district. But it was an important part of his job.
At night, he had worked late in his small office near the mudroom at home, updating logs and reports, writing out a comprehensive purchase request from headquarters for the goods and equipment he would need in the coming fiscal year (saddles, tack, new tires, roof repair, etc.) and waiting for Marybeth to come to him and explain what had happened that morning. They still needed to talk and clear the air. Every time he heard her walk by his door, he paused, hoping she would enter and close the door behind her and say “About the other morning . . .” He didn’t push her, either, although the incident hung around the house like an unwelcome relative. Several times, he wanted to go to her, but he talked himself out of it. The guilt he felt about her injury, and the subsequent loss of their child, was like a blade, ever poised, near his heart.
That morning, after the girls had left for school and the silence between them seemed to approach white noise, he told her about his encounter with Jim Finotta. She listened, and seemed grateful to be discussing anything except what he wanted to discuss. Her eyes probed his while he talked.
“Joe, are you sure this is something you want to pursue?” she asked.
“He poached an elk. He’s no better than any other criminal. If fact, he’s worse.”
“But you can’t prove it, can you?”
“Not yet.”
She stared at a spot behind Joe’s head. “Joe, we’re within sight of getting our debts paid for the first time since we’ve been married. I’m working two jobs. Is this the time you want to go after a man like Jim Finotta?”
Her question surprised him, although it shouldn’t have, and it momentarily put him off balance. Marybeth was nothing if not a pragmatist, especially when it came to her family.
“I’ve got to check it out,” Joe said, his resolve weakened. “You know that.”
A slow, resigned smile formed on her face. “I know you do, Joe. I just don’t want you to get in trouble again.”
“Me neither.”
And for a moment, he could see in her expression that she wanted to add more. But she didn’t.
It was rare to find many people about in the mountains in the late spring and early summer, when unpredictable squalls could sweep down from the Continental Divide in buffeting waves of wet snow, and when the snowmelt runoff was still too foamy, cloudy, and violent to fish or swim in. Crusty drifts of snow still lay in draws and swales, but had retreated and regrouped from the grass and sagebrush into the safe harbor of thick wooded stands.
Maxine slept on the passenger seat, her head resting on her forepaws, her brow crinkled with concern from whatever peril she was dreaming about.
Hazelton Road, the route to the site of the cow explosion, cut upward through the timber to the west and there was a small streamside campground, empty except for a single vehicle that was partially obscured by trees. Near the vehicle was a light green dome tent. Joe zoomed in on the tent and the campsite with the spotting scope, feeling like a voyeur. Through a shimmer caused by the distance and warmth, he could see people sitting at a picnic table. Two stout women, one with a mass of thick brown hair and the other with short straight hair, sat on opposite sides of the table. Between them, on the tabletop, were pieces of equipment Joe couldn’t identify from this distance. Their heads were bent over whatever they were doing, so Joe could not see the face of either woman.
Joe zoomed out and moved the scope through the rest of the campground. Empty.
Upstream, though, a reed-thin man with a straggly beard and baggy trousers cast a spinning lure into the boiling creek. The man stood bolt upright, with one shoe on shore and the other on a rock in the stream. Joe smiled to himself. No fishing vest, no tackle box, no creel, no waders, no stoop to his back as he sneaked up on a promising pool. This man did not look like a fisherman any more than Joe looked like a cricketeer. The stream was wild and would calm down, clear, and become fishable in about six weeks, in mid-July. Now, it was swelled past the banks with spring runoff, and lures cast into it would rocket down the stream with the fast flow and hang up in streamside willows.
Nevertheless, fishers were required to have both licenses and state habitat stamps, even if it was unlikely that a fish could be caught, as was the case here. Joe’s job was to make sure fishermen had licenses. He zipped the spotting scope in its case, rolled up the window, and started the truck, which woke Maxine from her worrisome adventure.
One of the stout women at the picnic table turned out to be a man wearing thick dreadlocks that cascaded across his shoulders and down his back, but the woman looked vaguely familiar. Both turned to him as he stepped out of his pickup in the campground. They had been reassembling a well-worn white gas camping stove on the table, and the man seemed frustrated by it.
Joe left Maxine in the truck in case the campers had dogs of their own and approached them on a moist, pine-needled path. Their vehicle was a twenty-year-old conversion van with California plates. He introduced himself, and the couple exchanged a furtive glance.
The two were purposely ragged looking. He wore khaki zip-off trousers that were fashionably blousey and stained, and an extra-large open shirt over a T-shirt.
“Raga,” the man said, wiping his hands on his pants and standing. “This is Britney. We can’t get our stove to work.”
“You could use the fire ring instead,” Joe offered, pointing to the circle of fire-blackened rocks. “It’s real early in the year and there are no fire restrictions as yet.”
“We don’t do fires.” The man called Raga snorted. “We don’t do charred flesh. We’re low-impact.” It was said as a kind of challenge, and Joe had no desire to follow it up.
“Raga?” Joe asked.
“It’s short for Ragamuffin,” the woman said abruptly. Her voice was grating and whiney. Joe turned to her, and the sense of familiarity was stronger.
Raga shook his hair and tilted his head back, and looked down his long nose at Joe. “This is Britney Earthshare. It’s not her real name, of course, but it’s the name she goes by. You might have seen her in the press a couple of years ago. She lived in a tree in Northern California to protest the logging of an old-growth forest.”
Yes, Joe thought. She was familiar. He had seen her on television, being interviewed by reporters who raised their microphones into the air alongside the trunk of the tree she had named Duomo. She would answer their questions by shouting down from her platform, which was equipped with thousands of dollars of high-tech equipment and state-of-the-art outdoor gear.
Britney Earthshare glanced at Joe from her place at the table and then looked quickly away. She was already bored with him, he surmised.
“You may not do charred flesh,” Joe said, “but do you know the guy who’s fishing upstream?”
“Tonk?” Raga asked.
“Is he with you?”
Raga nodded yes. “Is he doing something wrong?”
“Probably not. I need to check his license, though.”
Raga crossed his arms and Britney, at the table, rolled her eyes.
“A driver’s license?” Raga asked.
“Fishing license.”
Rag
a said “Hmmm.”
As he did, Tonk walked into the camp from the stream, pushing his way through the brush. He was talking as he entered, and had obviously not yet seen Joe.
“. . . Fucking fast water threw my lures all over the place,” he was saying. “Lost two good Mepps and a Rooster Tail and now I got—” Tonk saw Joe and froze in mid-sentence. Joe finished for him: “Now you’ve got a treble hook in your arm.”
Tonk held his arm out and winced painfully and almost comically, like a child will do when an adult points out an injury the child has forgotten. The No. 12 Mepps spinner had bitten deeply into Tonk’s sinewy bicep. All four sets of eyes moved to it.
“It got hung up in a bush and when I pulled it back—look what happened. It came flying straight back at me,” Tonk said, looking a little sheepish. “It hurts.”
Joe advised Tonk to drive into Saddlestring and get the lure removed at the clinic. “If Doc Johnson isn’t in you can get it taken out at the veterinary clinic,” Joe explained. “The vet removes fish hooks from fishermen and their dogs all the time, and it’ll cost you about half of what Doc Johnson charges.”
Tonk nodded dully. He was fascinated by the lure embedded in his flesh. Britney and Raga seemed to be fascinated with it as well.
Sharply, Britney turned. “You said you were the game warden, right?”
Joe nodded.
“I read somewhere that there was a game warden present when the exploding cow was discovered a week ago,” she said. “And that the place where the explosion happened is close to here.”
Raga was suddenly more interested in Joe than in Tonk’s mishap.
“That was me,” Joe said. “I was one of the first on the scene.”
The campsite seemed to have quieted, and Joe was being examined by all three campers with a different level of intensity than just a moment before.
“That’s why we’re here,” Raga declared. “To find the place where they claim Stewie was murdered.”
It took Joe a moment to respond. “Who says he was murdered?”