C J Box - [Joe Pickett 02]

by C. J. Box

  They were still in the tall trees below the rim, and Joe had searched in vain for a natural shelter of some kind. But he had not located a cave, or a protected wash, or even an exposed root pan large enough for the three of them. As the evening sky darkened, there were no signs of thunderheads, so he hoped there wouldn't be rain. The temperature had dropped quickly as the sun had gone down. At this elevation, there were wide swings of temperature every day Joe had estimated that it had been about eighty degrees that afternoon, and he expected it to drop to forty by the predawn hours.

  They were, by Joe's guess, only five miles from the cabin. That was all the progress they had made, despite an entire afternoon of climbing, hiking, and crawling over exceedingly rough terrain.

  The place they had chosen to stop had its advantages. It was close enough to the top of the ridge that they could peer over it into the valley. Because they were on the other side of the second mountain, their camp could not be seen if Tibbs was glassing the country with his spotting scope. There was water nearby and the grade of the slope behind them was not nearly as difficult as the two they had already come across. If Tibbs suddenly appeared, they could move into the trees and down the mountain fairly quickly And if a helicopter arrived, on the remote chance that one had been called out, they could scramble out into the open areas and be seen from above.

  Joe lay on the still-warm shale at the top of the ridge and looked through his binoculars at the first mountain and the valley below them. As it got darker, the forest appeared to soften. There was no way looking at the country now, to know how rough and ragged it was beneath the darkening velvet green cover of treetops.

  Joe looked for movement, and listened for sounds in a vast silence so awesome it was intimidating. Although he didn't expect to see Charlie Tibbs riding brazenly through an open meadow, there was the chance that Tibbs might Spock deer or grouse and give away his location. That is, Joe thought, if he were out there at all.

  Joe didn't turn when he heard the crunching of heavy steps as Stewie joined him on the top of the ridge.

  "See anything?" Stewie asked, settling into the shale with a grunt.

  "Trees."

  "Britney's not in a very good mood, so I thought I would join you," Stewie said. "She tried to wash John Coble's blood out of her shirt but she couldn't get it all out."

  "Mmm."

  "Damn, it's beautiful, isn't it?"

  "Yup."

  "Do you ever actually talk?"

  Joe lowered the binoculars for a moment. "I talk with my wife." Then he cautioned Stewie: "But I don't talk about my wife."

  Stewie nodded, smiled, and looked away

  "Have you wondered how it is I came to be?" Stewie spoke in hushed tones, barely above a whisper. "I mean, now After getting blown up by a cow?"

  "I did wonder about that."

  "But you haven't asked."

  "I've been busy"

  "It's an amazing story A horrible story You got a minute?"

  Joe smiled in spite of himself. Did he have a minute?

  "The force of the explosion pinned you to a tree trunk," Joe said. "I saw the branch you hung from. I even climbed up to look at it."

  Stewie nodded. That's where it began, he said.

  ***

  HE WAS ALIVE. Either that, or he was in a state of being that was at least similar to being alive, in the worst kind of way. He could see things and comprehend movement. His imagination flowed around and through his brain, like warm fingers of sludge, and the sludge had taken over his consciousness. He imagined that a thin sinewy blue string or vein, a tight wet cord that looked somewhat like a tendon, tenuously secured his life. He thought that the tendon could snap and blink out the light, and that his death would come with a heavy thumping sound like a wet bundle of canvas dropped onto pavement. An impulse inside him, but outside his control, was working like mad to keep him living, to keep things functioning, to maintain the grip of the tendon. If the impulse ran out of whatever was fueling this effort, he would welcome the relief and invite whatever would happen next And for a moment his senses focused.

  Blood painted the trees. Bits of clothing and strips of both human and bovine flesh hung from branches. The smell of cordite from the explosion was overpowering and it hung in the air, refusing to leave.

  He was not on the ground. He was in the air. He was an angel!

  Which made Joe laugh out loud, the way Stewie said it.

  He watched from above as the three men wearing cowboy hats approached the smoking crater. He could not hear anything beyond a high-static whooshing noise that resembled the sound of angry ocean breakers. Red and yellow globules that his own damaged head had manufactured floated across his field of vision. It reminded him of the time he ate peyote buttons with four members of the Salish-Kootenai Nation in northwestern Montana. Then, however, he had been laughing.

  But he was not an angel--the thought of that alone was preposterous --and he was not having an out-of-body experience, although he couldn't be sure since this was his first. His soul had not left his body and had not floated above in the blood-flecked branches of the trees.

  When the heifer went up, so did he. He had flown upward and back, launched out of his shoes until stopped fast, skewered through his shoulder by a thick pine bow. His feet, one sock off and one sock on, had floated below. They swung a hit in the wind.

  He had not thought such things were possible.

  What an awful tragedy it was that his wife was dead, atomized, before he had really known much about her. Conversely, he wondered if perhaps he had known her at her absolute best and that he was blessed to have known her at all. Nevertheless, she had done nothing to deserve what had happened to her. Her only crime was to be with him. Blinking hard, he had tried to stay awake and conscious.

  The men below had stretched yellow tape around the crater and had left in the dark. Two of them were talking, their cowboy hats pointed at each other and their heads bobbing. He waited for the man who was standing to the side to look up. He wondered if the pattering of his blood on the leaves far below the leaves made any sound.

  "That was me," Joe said.

  "I know that now"

  I will be dead soon, he had thought, and sleep took him.

  But he wasn't dead yet. The thoughts of his bride had, strangely, given him strength. When he awoke, the men were gone and the forest was dark and quiet.

  A raven landed directly in front of him on the bloody branch. Its wings were so large that they thumped both sides of his head as it settled. He had never seen a live wild bird this close. This was not a Disney bird. This was an Alfred Hitchcock bird. The raven's feathers were black and had a blue sheen, and the bird hopped so closely to Stewie's face that he could see his reflection in the beads of water on its wings. The raven cocked its head from side to side with clipped, seemingly mechanized movements. The raven's eyes looked intense and passionless, he thought, like glistening ebony buttons. Then the raven dug its black beak into Stewie's neck and emerged with a piece of red flesh.

  He had closed his eyelids tightly so the raven could not pluck his eyes out. The raven began to strip flesh from his face. The raven's beak would pierce his skin near his jaw and clamp hard, then the bird's body would brace as it pulled and ripped a strip upward, where it would eventually weaken and break near his scalp. Then the raven would sit back calmly and with lightning nods of its head devour the stringy piece whole, as if it were a thick, bloody worm.

  The thought he had, as the wind increased and his body swayed gently, was that he really hated this bird.

  "I saw the same bird when I climbed your tree," Joe said. "The bird made me fall out of it."

  He freed himself by forcing his body up and over the branch, sliding along the grain of the wood, in the single most painful experience of his life. Disengaging himself from the skewer left him weak and trembling, and he fell more than climbed from the tree. For ten days he crawled. He had become an animal and he had learned to behave like an animal.


  He tried to kill something to eat but he was hampered by his bulk and lack of skill. Once, he spent an entire agonizing day at the mouth of a prairie dog hole with a makeshift snare, missing the fat rodent though it raised its head more than forty times. So he became a scavenger

  As he crawled south west, through the forest, he competed with coyotes for fresh deer and elk carcasses. Plunging his head into fresh mountain springs, he had crunched peppery wild -watercress. He had stripped the hard shells from puffballs and had gorged on mountain mushrooms, grazing in the wet grass like a cow. A thick stand of rose hips near a stream had provided vitamin C. He had even, he was ashamed to say, raided a campsite near Crazy Woman Creek and had gorged on a two pound bag of Doritos and six BallPark franks while the campers snored in their dome tent. He had seen the earth from inches away for weeks on end. It was a very humbling experience. His clothing was rags. He slept in the shelter of downed trees. He wept often.

  He had purposely not crawled to a road or campsite where he could be found, because he thought to do so would be to invite his death -when the men who had already tried to kill him once found out about it.

  At a ranch house near Story Wyoming, a lovely woman, a widow, found him and took him in and agreed to keep it quiet. She fed him, let him use a guest room in the bunkhouse, and gave him her dead husband's clothes to wear. He gained enough strength to walk again. She had been a tough, independent rancher and a woman of strength. She was exactly the type of rancher he had convinced himself in previous years to despise.

  Eventually he was well enough to get a ride from her to the cabin. He had known about it from his youth and it belonged to a family friend who never used it. Slowly, he had initiated contact with colleagues. Britney had been the first to respond, and had come hearing groceries and communications gear. Hayden Powell said he was coming but he died mysteriously Attorney Tod Marchand didn't make it, either. Both, he now knew, had been murdered by Coble and Tibbs.

  "That's a hell of a story"

  Stewie shrugged and looked away His good eye was moist. Joe couldn't tell whether the retelling of his story made Stewie cry or if it was something else.

  "What's that glow over there?" Britney Earthshare suddenly asked from behind them. Joe had not heard her approach.

  To the west, the peak of the first mountain was illuminated by a faint band of orange.

  "That's your cabin burning down," Joe said, feeling the words catch in his throat. "That means Charlie Tibbs is still with us."

  ***

  JOE'S EYES SHOT OPEN TO UTTER DARKNESS, his heart racing. Something had set off an alarm in his subconscious that had jolted him completely awake.

  It took a moment to assess exactly where he was. He had fallen asleep in the camp beneath the ridge. The sky was brilliant with stars. There were so many of them their effect was gauzy There was a blue sliver of moon like a horse's hoof print.

  Stewie and Britney were huddled together near Joe's boots, their arms and legs entwined. They were both sleeping from sheer physical and mental exhaustion, like he had been.

  Above him, somewhere near the tree line, Joe heard a muffled snap and the rustle of something heavy-bodied in the trees.

  As quietly and deliberately as he could, Joe shifted his weight so he could unsnap his holster and slip out his .357 Magnum. His mouth was dry as cotton. With his eyes wide open, he tried to will himself to see better in the dark.

  There was a footfall. Was it the step of a horse? Was Charlie Tibbs on top of them already? Would Tibbs, on horseback in the shadows, suddenly appear before him?

  He pulled the hammer back on the revolver, felt the cylinder turn, and heard it ratchet and lock. He raised it in front of him with two hands. Using the muzzle as a third eye, he moved the pistol as he

  swept his gaze through the darkness.

  A large black form disengaged itself from the gloom and passed in front of the gray trunks of the trees. There was a snort and a cough, and Joe felt his face twitch involuntarily

  It was an elk. The form had a light brown rump that absorbed the starlight. Joe eased his finger off of the trigger. The elk continued to move through the trees until it was out of view. Joe noticed the

  familiar musky elk odor in the air.

  Then something in the night seemed to snap, and it looked like the trees themselves were moving, the pale color of their trunks strobing light and dark, light and dark. Joe suddenly realized that it wasn't the trees that were moving but the elk--dozens of them--streaming across the mountain. They moved in a steady run, their ungulate hooves pounding a drumbeat. They were now all around him, passing through the camp like a ghost army Four feet high at the shoulder, several huge bulls trailed the herd. Glints of their eyes were reflected in the moonlight and he heard the wooden click of massive antlers catching low branches.

  Then they were gone. It wasn't as if he could see that last cow, calf, or bull elk pass as much as he could feel a kind of vacuum, an emptiness in the stand of trees that just a moment before was full.

  He stood and let the gun drop to his side. Carefully he lowered the hammer back down. Stewie was now awake and sitting up. Britney rubbed her eyes.

  But it wasn't over, as he again felt the presence of animals, this time swift and low to the ground. Shadows were moving through the grove in the same direction as the elk had, as quickly but with more stealth. Their movements had a liquid flow He squinted and listened, his senses almost aching from the force of his effort. He saw a glimpse of long silver-black fur and a flash--no more than a half-second--of a pair of large canine eyes reflecting the slice of moon.

  Wolves! It was a small pack of wolves, no more than five. They were following the elk, hunting for a calf or straggler to drop off from the herd.

  Then as quickly as they had come, the wolves were no longer there.

  Joe stood and waited, wondering almost absurdly what would happen next. Nothing did. He looked at his wristwatch. It was only ten-fifteen.

  "There are not supposed to be wolves in the Bighorn Mountains," Joe said.

  "Maybe they're Emily's wolves," Stewie answered, smiling so widely that Joe could see his teeth in the starlight.

  Joe holstered his revolver and walked to the top of the ridge. In the darkness there was no definition to the land, no difference in degrees of blackness between one mountain and the other. There was only the horizon and the first splash of stars. Charlie Tibbs, he knew, was out there and closing in on them.

  Joe pictured his children as he last saw them that morning. April and Lucy had been silly giddy chattering as they waited to go to overnight church camp. Lucy was wearing a pink sweatshirt, denim shorts, pink socks to match her sweatshirt, and blue snub-nosed tennis shoes. April was wearing a turquoise sweatshirt and jeans. Their faces had been wide and fresh, their eyes sparkling, their hair summer blonde.

  Sheridan stayed away from the fray, waiting until the littler girls left so she could take over the television and the house. Sheridan in her sleeveless shirt and Wranglers, starting to look like her mother, starting to molt from childhood. Sheridan, who had been through so much but had come through it so well.

  And then there was Marybeth.

  "Help me, Marybeth," he whispered.

  ***

  Stockman's Bar in Saddlestring was dim and smoky, and Marybeth wore her determination like an invisible suit of armor. As she closed the door behind her and absorbed the scene on this Saturday night, she confirmed to herself that the armor was necessary

  Ranch hands, mechanics, fishing guides, and flinty divorcees peopled the bar. Dark booths were behind them. The walls -were covered with faded black-and-white rodeo photos and local cattle brands, and the support and ceiling beams were made of twisted and varnished knotty pine. In the back of the long and narrow building, low hanging lamps made fields of light green on three pool tables. Loose billiard balls in abstract geometrical configurations glowed beneath the lights. Eight-ball specialists in cowboy hats or backward caps either sipped from
beer mugs or leaned across the pools of light to sight in on cue balls, like elk hunters aiming at a bull.

  Marybeth sat on the first empty stool at the bar and waited for the bartender to work his way down to her. She ordered a glass of beer. Throughout the Stockman at least a half dozen sets of eyes were working her over. She felt the eyes on her in a way that made her think of her law career, the bar's patrons like judges waiting for her answer to a question.

  She had been to the Stockman only once before, four years earlier, when Joe had brought her to meet with his supervisor, Vern Dunnegan, and Vern's then-wife, Georgia. Vern had a booth near the pool tables that he had claimed as his and where people met with him. Marybeth had smiled politely with Georgia as Vern and Joe discussed department policy and disputed directives, and she had nudged Joe with her foot to get his attention so they could leave. The Stockman was historic, dark, local, and corrupt, and she had seen enough at the time. Both Vern and Georgia made her uncomfortable, and the mounted elk, deer, sheep, and moose heads on the walls seemed to want to draw her back to an earlier, rougher era. She had not planned on ever coming back. When Sheridan, still outside in the car, had realized that her mom was leaving her to go inside the Stockman Bar, she had erupted.

  "What if the sheriff comes by and sees me here?"

  Marybeth had stopped with the door half open and the dome light on. "Tell him I'll be back in a minute."

  "What if he says it's child abuse? I mean, you are leaving your loving daughter outside in your car while you go into a saloon!"

  "I'm investigating something, and I think there may be a man inside who can help us," Marybeth said patiently, but her eyes flashed. "Don't forget that your dad is missing."

  Sheridan started to speak, but caught herself.

  "There's somebody in there who might know where Dad is?"

  Marybeth took a deep breath. There was a lot to explain. "That's what I'm hoping," she said, almost pleading. "Please don't do your thing on me now."

  Sheridan thought about it, nodded, then leaned forward in her seat to hug her mother's neck.