by C. J. Box
How was it possible a team of eleven men couldn’t confirm his story? Where had the Grim Brothers gone? Was it possible they’d never been there at all? That everything Joe recalled was some kind of a fever dream?
A phone burred on a stand next to his bed. Until it rang, he hadn’t known there was a telephone there.
A crisp female voice said, “Hold for Governor Rulon.”
Joe closed his eyes. How much worse could this day get? he wondered.
“Joe! How in the hell are you?”
The governor’s voice was deep and raspy. There was heavy background noise, overlapping conversations, the bark of a laugh.
“Hello, sir. I’m fine.”
“Good, good. Can you hear me okay? I’m in Washington giving hell to these bastards, and I’ve got a few minutes between meetings. I don’t have long, so we need to get to the point.”
“Okay.”
“First, how is Marybeth? How are the girls?”
“Good all around. They’re here with me. . . .”
“Tell me straight: are you nuts? Did you go goofy down there in exile?”
Joe swallowed. “No.”
“I got part of the story from my chief of staff, who’s in touch with DCI. I’ve been anxiously awaiting news of a bloody shootout where two brothers are killed and two women are rescued in the mountains. Instead, I hear they can’t find anything or anybody.”
“I just heard from Sheriff McLanahan,” Joe said. “They must have been searching in the wrong places.”
“Hmmm.”
Joe asked, “Do you know a DCI investigator named Bobby McCue? He was in here earlier today asking me a bunch more questions about what I saw up there. Do you know why DCI is questioning my story?”
“What did you say his name was?”
“McCue.”
“The name is familiar somehow, but I can’t say I place him. You say he was with the state?”
“That’s what he claimed.”
“We have too many goddamned employees,” Rulon huffed. “I can’t know every one of ’em.”
Strike two, Joe thought.
Rulon said suddenly, “The Brothers Grimm?”
“They prefer the Grim Brothers.”
“Diane Shober?”
“I don’t swear it was her. I made that clear to the DCI. I said outright I may have been mistaken.”
“Wolves?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We don’t have wolves in southern Wyoming.”
“You do, sir. C’mon, governor. How can you doubt me? Have I ever lied to you? Or anybody?”
“Well, no,” Rulon said. “You haven’t. Sometimes I wish you would. An honest man can be a big pain in the butt to a politician, you know.”
Joe smiled.
“Have you been contacted by the press yet?” Rulon asked. “They’re going to eat this story up.”
“No.”
“Especially the Diane Shober angle. I know how those bastards think. They won’t care about Terri Wade or you. But they’ll be on the missing-runner thing like fat kids on a pie.
“Do not under any circumstances talk to them,” Rulon said. “Say ‘no comment’ and direct any inquiries to my office. We won’t talk to them either, but they don’t know that yet.”
“Okay,” Joe said.
“It’s gonna be damage-control mode. Luckily, we’ve had a little experience with that lately,” he said, almost wistfully. “How this plays out will be a reflection on me and my administration, since I hired you and tried to squirrel you away where you wouldn’t do any more damage. If this story gets out . . .”
“It’s not a story,” Joe said, gritting his teeth. “It’s the truth. It’s what happened. I’m in a hospital bed because of those brothers.”
“That sheriff of yours calls you a fabulist,” Rulon said. “We won’t be able to keep him quiet.”
“No,” Joe agreed.
Rulon paused. “Okay, then. I’ve got two calls I need to return. They both have to do with you. The first is from Chuck Coon at the FBI. He says he wants to be briefed, but I think he may know something about those brothers that he doesn’t want to reveal. As you know, the feds always have something going on behind the scenes.”
Joe grunted. Governor Rulon was getting more and more disparaging of the federal government all the time. Joe used to think he did it to gain popularity with his constituents. In a state where more than 50 percent of the land was owned and managed by federal bureaucracies, the battles between locals and Washington were fierce. Rulon had recently been quoted in national newsmagazines calling the government “thieving, blood-dripping vampire jackals” and “jackbooted fascist thugs.” Joe was beginning to think Rulon believed every word he said.
“I’ll have my staff talk to Coon,” Rulon said. “We may find out something that way that could benefit us. I’m curious he called, to be honest. I’m guessing he did it on behest of his apparatchik superiors.”
Joe found it interesting that Coon had called as well.
Rulon said, “And then I have a harder call to return. It’s the kind of call I hate to make because it makes my stomach churn. Maybe I should have you do it.”
Joe said, “Who, sir?”
“Diane Shober’s parents. Somehow, they found out about your story. They want to find their daughter and bring her home.”
Joe felt his stomach clench.
“Look,” Rulon said. “I’m officially placing you on administrative leave until we can get a handle on all of this. So go home and close the curtains and don’t answer the door or the phone. The media can be tricky bastards and blunt objects, and I don’t want you talking to them. That’s an order. Stay inside and don’t come out until you hear from me or my chief of staff. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.” Joe swallowed. “But . . .”
“No buts except that one you’ve got in a sling. I’m not hanging you out to dry because you’ve never lied to me, even when I wanted you to. Right now, though, we’ve got to go to ground until we can figure out the best course of action.”
Joe said, “I never got to thank you for letting me go home.”
“Oh, this is thanks enough.” The governor snorted, and laughed bitterly at his own joke. “And welcome home. It looks like you’re going to be seeing plenty of it in the next few days.”
Rulon punched off, and Joe lowered the phone to his lap, looked back up at the blank television screen, and clearly saw the abyss this time.
13
ON THE EASTERN SIDE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, ON THE opposite side of the range where Joe Pickett had ascended days before, Dave Farkus crept his pickup along an overgrown two-track through the timber toward his fall elk camp. The afternoon was warm and still, the last gasp of summer, and the insects in the tall grass hummed and jumped with the manic passion of the soon-to-die. Farkus ran his windows up to prevent grasshoppers from jumping inside. Grasshoppers bugged him.
He’d had a bad day so far, but there were signs of improvement. Being in the mountains on a nice summer day was always an improvement over just about anything.
He’d spent most of the day in Encampment, where he’d had a miserable lunch with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Ardith. Ardith had fled Baggs two months before and driven over the top of the mountains to Encampment, population 443 before she arrived to make it 444, where she worked as a bartender at the Rustic Pine Saloon, serving beers and microwave popcorn and pizzas to loggers, tourists, and fishermen. He’d been disappointed to find her not despondent. Farkus had never really liked her, but it disturbed him mightily that she didn’t like him. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her back. But if she did, he could leave. At least then the fellows would think it was his idea, not hers.
And even though he’d taken the day off, driven all the way over the top, delivered a stack of mail as well as her Book-of-the-Month and Fabric-Swatch-of-the-Month packages, she said she had no intention of ever coming back. The divorce paperwork was filed and wouldn’t be recalled. It was a matter o
f days before it was official and she’d be free, she said.
He’d even presented her with a Styrofoam cooler filled with packages of deer, antelope, and elk steaks as well as a pair of goose breasts, several mourning doves, and a young sage grouse he’d poached. Her so-called appreciation still rang in his ears.
“How romantic,” she’d said. “The gift of meat. It’s just so . . . you.” He’d wanted to tell her about his role in the big doings on the mountain, how he’d been the last man to see and talk to the game warden before he rode his horses up there. And he wanted to tell her his theory about what had happened. He was proud of his theory. But she said her shift started at one p.m. and she had to go.
“Don’t forget the cooler,” he’d said as she gathered herself up. As she did, he looked at her closely and determined she’d lost a few pounds and the blouse she wore was new and fairly tight across her breasts, meaning she probably had a boyfriend. The poor sap, he thought. He wondered if she did things with him she’d refused to do with Farkus.
“I don’t really need all this meat,” she said. She made an “Ooof ” sound as she grasped the handle of the cooler and hefted it from the tabletop. “It’s a lot of heavy meat, all right.”
He said, “Heavy like my heart.”
She looked back at him, smiled crookedly, said, “And just as f rozen.”
SO HE BOUGHT a twelve-pack of Keystone Light at the Mangy Moose because Ardith didn’t work there, and he’d drunk six of them on the way up. In the bed of his Dodge pickup were canvas Cabela’s outfitter tents to be unfolded and put up, cooking stoves to be assembled, an eating table to be unfolded, and grates for the fire pit.
Fall couldn’t come soon enough, he thought. Fall was his favorite season. Fall meant elk hunting, and elk camp, and the camaraderie of the boys. He could do what he excelled at—hunting, cooking over a fire, resuming his only true love affair with the outdoors—and discard the things he hated or was poor at, like being married to Ardith, working for the energy company, or running his household.
Farkus’s objective was to “claim” the camp by establishing it before other elk hunters could do the same thing. It wasn’t a problem with the locals. They all knew where Dave Farkus and his party camped. But every year there were more and more hunters from places like Cheyenne and Casper, and more out-of-staters who didn’t know or appreciate a damned thing about tradition or heritage. Officially, he and his buddies had no real ownership of their camp. The site was a nice opening in a stand of aspen with enough room to park 4 x 4s and ATVs. It had flat spots for the tents and a couple of old-growth pines within walking distance for hanging a meat pole. The forest was public land, and reservations weren’t taken by the U.S. Forest Service—nor permits issued. But elk hunters didn’t like setting up camp next to other hunters, and no one had ever moved into the area once the season started and the camp had been established. So the idea was to get up into the mountains before any other party could get there and stake out their traditional site. This year, it was Farkus’s turn to be the scout.
The last week had been interesting, even though Ardith didn’t want to hear about it. He’d been somewhat of a celebrity because he’d been the last person to talk to the game warden before all hell broke loose in the mountains. He’d been interviewed by the sheriff, state boys from DCI, including a lone investigator named Bobby McCue, and the local newspaper. It was the only time he could remember seeing his name in the local paper for a reason other than his DUI arrest last winter.
Like everyone else, he’d waited anxiously to find out what Sheriff Baird and the search team found. Speculation at the Dixon Club bar had been intense. When the search team returned and said they’d found nothing—nothing—to corroborate Joe Pickett’s story, it was like the air went out of the balloon. Farkus himself felt oddly let down. He wanted to hear tales of a wild and bloody shoot-out, or at least a good chase. Secretly, he’d hoped they would find some mutilated or cannibalized bodies, which would bolster his theory. Despite the fact they hadn’t, he still floated his speculation of the Wendigo. In fact, he’d told the fellows at the bar the fact the search team hadn’t found anything supported his theory even more. Wendigos, he explained, weren’t human. They could vanish and reappear. What Pickett had encountered were two Wendigos up there. They came out when they could do harm and they had the advantage on their side. But when they saw the size of the search team and the amount of weaponry, they’d vanished. The Wendigos would be back, eventually.
Which made Farkus grateful that his elk camp was on the other side of the mountain.
WHEN HE STOPPED THE PICKUP and got out to release a quart or so of the processed Keystone Light, he noted the tread marks in the two-track road. After zipping up, he squatted and looked at them more closely. The tracks were fresh, and there were dual sets of them, one on top of another. Like a vehicle pulling a trailer.
“Damn it,” he said aloud. “If some bastard got up here before me to claim that campsite, there’s gonna be a rodeo.”
Farkus climbed back into his pickup and cracked another bottle of beer. He drank the foam top off so it wouldn’t slosh on his lap from bouncing down the rough road as he drove. He pushed forward, steaming, but liking how the beers took the edge off his annoyance at Ardith’s behavior for him and always had.
HE CURSED WHEN, through the trees, he saw a late-model pickup and an eight-horse trailer parked right in the middle of his elk camp. No tents yet, though. He hoped whoever had stumbled into the site had it just for day use and had no plans to set up camp. If so, Farkus could at least dump the tents and stoves there for the time being and come back in a day or two. He hit the buttons for his power windows to lower the driver and passenger windows so he could yell a greeting.
He could see the rear ends of at least six horses tied up to the trailer. Four of the horses had saddles, the other two were equipped with sawbuck pack frames awaiting panniers, and one stood in reserve.
But the men who turned as he approached in his pickup looked like neither fishermen nor hunters. There were four of them at least. The men were young, fit, and hard-looking. Two wore black; two wore camo. The men in black had buzz cuts and chiseled, lean features. One was tall and lanky with red hair and the other was dark and built like a linebacker. Both men had holsters strapped to tactical vests. The men in camo were not as threatening looking, but certainly seemed fit and serious. One was blond with aviator sunglasses and a trim pale mustache. The other had a long sharp nose, black hawk eyes, and a thick black mustache that looked to Farkus like a work of art. Farkus noted the man’s face was daubed green and black with greasepaint.
“Jesus,” Farkus whispered, slowing his pickup to a stop twenty yards from the site.
Rifle barrels poked out from piles of gear on the forest floor. A quick glance at the rifles revealed them to be automatic assault-type weapons with long magazines, the kind known to Farkus as “black rifles.” Cases of electronic equipment were stacked, along with duffel bags. Farkus never spent much time on horseback but he knew a major expedition when he saw it. He craned his head out the window to try to catch a glimpse of the license plates on either the pickup or trailer, but because of the angle of the vehicle and the trees in the way, he couldn’t see either.
He didn’t like the looks of what he’d stumbled upon. These men didn’t belong, and Farkus didn’t want to find out why they were there. The presence of these men in the trees was jarring and unnatural. Cowboys, fishermen, campers, hikers, even bow hunters—sure. But these men didn’t jibe with a bucolic late-summer afternoon.
The tall red-haired man in black approached Farkus with his hand on the grip of his pistol, like a cop. The others fell in behind him at first, but fanned out, taking a step to the side with every two or three steps toward Farkus. Spreading out, making it impossible for him to keep track of them all at once.
“Can I help you with something?” the redhead asked in a way that belied the actual words.
“I was about to ask you t
he same thing,” Farkus said, voice cracking. “You fellas seem to be in my elk camp.” Then he quickly added, “Not that there’s any problem with that.”
“Your elk camp?” the man said, not really asking like he wanted to know more but instead to buy time while his compatriots took positions on all sides of the pickup.
Said Farkus, “Never mind. I’m sure you’ll be gone by the season opener. So I’ll just be going now.”
Before he could jam his truck into reverse and hightail it out of there, his rearview mirror filled with the chrome grille of a black SUV with smoked windows.
“Hey,” Farkus said, to nobody who cared.
The SUV eased up so closely behind him that he felt the bumpers make contact.
Farkus saw the red-haired man turn to whoever was driving the black SUV and arch his eyebrows. Like awaiting the word. In the rearview, Farkus could see a single occupant in the SUV, but he couldn’t make him out too well. He saw the driver nod once.
Instantly, the red-haired man in the dark uniform mouthed, “Get him.”
The driver stayed behind the wheel while the men in position broke and streaked directly at him from all four directions. The lead one, the redhead, had drawn his pistol and held it flat along his thigh as he ran.
Suddenly, the open driver’s window was blocked by the body of the linebacker. He’d leaped on the running board and was reaching through the open window into the cab for the wheel. Farkus got a close-up view of a veiny bare hand as it shot across his body and grasped the steering wheel. The man’s other hand grasped the shifter and shoved it into park.
Farkus said, “Jesus, you guys!”
The passenger door flew open and the redhead launched himself inside the cab, scattering empty beer bottles across the bench seat and to the floor. Farkus felt a sharp pain as a high-topped fatigue boot kicked his leg away from the accelerator and brake pedals. The man plucked the keys out of the ignition and palmed them.