Out of Range

by C. J. Box

It took a moment for Joe to get his wits back and stand up. When he did, he saw Ed looking at him over the top of the batwing doors.

  "Don't say it," Joe said. Dark thunderheads of guilt had already begun rolling across his sky.

  "Just like Will," Ed said anyway.

  THIRTY-TWO

  At least once a day he takes his birds out," Bello said, while driving. "He lets them fly around and he puts food out for them or holds it in his hand. The birds drop out of the sky to eat it."

  "He's training the birds to hunt with him," Barnum said. "It's called stooping."

  "I don't care what it's called," Bello said testily. "I just care that he does it once a day, usually in the afternoon."

  The ex-sheriff felt a rise of anger but said nothing. Bello shouldn't talk like that to him, he thought. He was getting sick of the lack of respect people showed him, Bello included.

  "Like I told you," Bello said, swinging his SUV off the state highway onto the two-track that led to the stone house and the river, "before we actually get to his place the road goes up over a rise. It's about three hundred yards from the house. He can't see a vehicle approaching until it comes over the top. When I was scouting him, that's where I put the sandbags, up there on that rise behind some sagebrush. He never looked in my direction. The sandbags are about a hundred yards apart, so we'll have sight lines from two angles."

  "What if he hears us coming?" Barnum asked. "The noise of a car carries a long way out here."

  "That's why we walk the last mile to the rise," Bello said tersely. "I'm guessing your old legs can handle that."

  "Fuck you, Bello," Barnum said, not fighting his anger this time.

  Bello laughed dryly. "That's the spirit, Sheriff."

  Their rifles were between them on the seats, muzzles down. Bello's .300 Winchester Mag had a satin finish and an oversized Leupold scope. Barnum's old .270 looked like a hillbilly gun beside it, Bello said when he saw it.

  "Forty elk and a drunken Mexican with a shovel would disagree," Barnum shot back.

  BELLO HAD TOLD him the story almost casually the night before, as they sat on opposite sides of Bello's room at the Holiday Inn. Both had cocktails in hand that Barnum had mixed.

  Nate Romanowski had been known by a code name, the Falcon, and was one of the best the agency had, Bello said. He was out of the country for years at a time. But like others who were too tightly wound and too independent, Romanowski had started to choose which orders to follow and which ones to disregard. When he was called back to headquarters, it took three months for him to show up, and he clashed immediately with the new director. The Falcon quit loudly, in agency terms, intimating he would talk if they tried to stop him. "You've never seen paranoia like the paranoia we had in our outfit," Bello said, showing his teeth.

  Two operatives, one a friend of Randan Bello and the other his son-in-law, were sent to find the Falcon and assure themselves, and the agency, that he had no intention of talking after all. The operatives took annual leave to do it, so the agency couldn't be accused of official covert activity within the country. Their last dispatch was from northern Montana, via e-mail, reporting that they had heard about a loner who fit the profile of the Falcon. The suspect was a falconer who drove an old Jeep and packed a .454 Casull from Freedom Arms in Wyoming. The next day, the bodies of the operatives were discovered by a passing motorist, who reported the accident to the Montana State Patrol.

  "Romanowski killed them both?" Barnum asked. "Why didn't we hear anything about it?"

  Bello drained his glass of scotch and held it out for a refill.

  "The inquiry concluded that the engine on their vehicle quit on a switchback road and they lost control and rolled eight times. Both were crushed."

  Barnum looked over his shoulder as he poured. "You're pretty sure he did it though." It was a statement, not a question.

  "Sure enough that the day after I retired I headed out here to Wyoming," Bello said. "My daughter has never remarried."

  "Kids?"

  "Nope. I've got no grandkids."

  Barnum thought of his own grandchildren, teenage dark-skinned delinquents on the reservation he had never even met. No great loss, he thought.

  "Why are you telling me all of this?" Barnum asked, finally.

  "Because you asked," Bello said, drinking and looking out the window. "And you offered to help."

  BARNUM HADN'T BELIEVED him at the time—Bello's explanation just hadn't sounded right. Nevertheless, he had gone along, because he had reasons of his own.

  Bello pulled off the two-track more than a mile from the rise and turned off the engine. Climbing out, he pocketed the keys, slung the .300 over his shoulder, and buckled on a large fanny pack. Barnum followed suit, sliding his .270 out of the truck. He loaded it with 150 grain shells and worked the bolt.

  "Are you ready?" Bello asked in a low voice.

  Barnum nodded, and they shut the car doors softly. There was a slight breeze coming from the direction of the river, which was good because it made it even more unlikely that their car had been heard.

  Bello walked around the SUV and handed Barnum a small Motorola Talkabout set to channel four.

  "Keep the volume all the way down," Bello said. "If you need to talk to me about something, hit the chirp key and then turn the volume up a quarter of the way. But I hope we don't need to talk."

  Barnum clipped the radio to his shirt pocket.

  "Remember the plan?" Bello asked.

  "No, I forgot it," Barnum said gruffly, being sarcastic.

  Bello's eyes bored into the ex-sheriff. "Strange time for jokes."

  "When we have a visual," Barnum said, using the same words Bello had used earlier, "we signal each other by waving our hands, palms out. Then we both sight him in and when you give the signal, a double chirp from the radio, we fire at the same time so we increase our chances of knocking him down for good."

  "Aim for his chest," Bello said, interrupting, "with the crosshairs on the middle of the widest part of him. Forget about taking a head shot at this distance."

  "When he's down," Barnum continued, stepping on Bello's words, "we wait an hour, keeping the body in the scope and checking for movement. If we don't see any, you'll go down and drag him into the river. I'll stay back and keep watch down the road."

  Bello listened intently, his eyes on Barnum, making sure the ex-sheriff had everything correct. Barnum didn't like being looked at that way, and didn't make a secret of it in his rehearsed delivery.

  "Okay, then," Bello said, turning and walking down the middle of the two-track. Barnum followed.

  There were problems with Bello's plan, Barnum thought. He'd reviewed it the night before, turning it over again and again, and finally figured out what was wrong with it: He was being set up. When Bello double chirped and Barnum fired, Bello would deliberately miss, so the only slug to be found in Romanowski's body would be the .270 round. Everyone knew Barnum hunted with a .270, and a ballistics check would tie the slug to the rifle.

  Barnum was well known as a drinker and a talker, and the whole town was aware of his humiliation at the Stockman's. If Romanowski's body was found, and it would no doubt wash up somewhere downriver, Barnum would be a suspect.

  By then, Bello would be long gone.

  Of course, Barnum would implicate Bello. But, Barnum had realized, what did he really know about the man from Virginia? Was his name even Randan Bello? Barnum had never seen an ID. Was he even from Virginia, or were those stolen or counterfeit plates on his car? The man had been meticulous since arriving about leaving no records by paying for everything with cash. He had spilled everything out to Barnum so easily about the agency, and his son-in-law, and his intentions. Bello didn't seem like the kind of man to expose himself that way. The only reason he had done so, Barnum concluded, was because he saw in the ex-sheriff a way to pin the murder on someone else.

  But that wasn't going to happen, Barnum said to himself while he walked. When that double chirp came, the ex-sheriff was go
ing to swing his rifle around and shoot Bello in the head.

  That would give the morning men at the Burg-O-Pardner something to talk about.

  "I went to the sheriff with my concerns," Barnum would say, widening his hound-dog eyes, looking at each community leader in turn, "but he practically threw me out of his office. So I had to take care of things myself."

  "Sounds like we need a new sheriff," someone would say, should say, perhaps the mayor. And they would all look to him.

  "I don't know, fellows," Barnum would say humbly. "I was just getting used to being retired."

  BELLO STOPPED AND gestured at the sky. Barnum squinted, seeing the black speck of a falcon streaking across a pillowy cumulous cloud.

  "His birds are out, which means he's in the open," Bello whispered over his shoulder, his back to Barnum. "This will work perfectly."

  "Yup," the ex-sheriff said absently, seeing something in his peripheral vision. He turned, and learned he could actually see a bullet coming when it was aimed straight at his head from a quarter of a mile away, even before he could hear the shot.

  Part Five

  A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise.

  Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

  THIRTY-THREE

  They're getting to me somehow, Will Jensen wrote on the last page of his notebook. They're inside my head and inside my body. They know where I'm going and they track my movements. I know it sounds crazy, and it IS crazy. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. They figured out a way to screw me up.

  Joe sat at the table in the statehouse and reread the last few pages of the notebook again. He wished Will had been more specific.

  Who were "they"? What did he mean "they" were inside his head? If Will was right, how could "they" track his movements, as he claimed?

  Then he read the next passage, the one that had chilled him in the cabin:

  There is something so wrong with me. I'm not alone anymore. There is somebody inside my head. I've lost everything and my mind is next to go. Maybe it already has. I do things as if someone else were doing them. I watch myself say and do things, I know it's my body, but it isn't me. Dear God, will you help me? Will anyone? Nobody else will except Stella.

  JOE'S EYES LEFT the page and settled on an envelope on the table, the invitation to Don and Stella Ennis's party. Stella was the only person Will trusted. She was the connection. Was she close enough to Will in the end to report his movements? And how, exactly, could she facilitate "them" getting into his head, as he wrote?

  Joe couldn't make himself believe it was Stella, not after the way she had looked at him across the table. No one, he thought, could fake that kind of concern in her eyes, act that well. She had been on Will's side in his struggle; he had trusted her. But during breakfast, when Joe had mentioned the traces of drugs the doctor said were in his system, she reacted unpredictably. The information clearly triggered something in her mind. But he knew one thing—he had to make a decision about Stella that had nothing to do with Will. And he had to do it tonight.

  Joe rubbed his eyes. His head was full of questions about Will, but as of yet, he had no answers. He felt tired and frustrated and mainly just wished he had a beer. Forgetting about his stitches, he pushed back from the table and felt a sharp stab of pain. As the day wore on, his wound hurt more. Dr. Thompson had given him a prescription for Tylenol 3 to dull the pain, and he decided to take one.

  As he filled a glass from the tap on the refrigerator, he looked absently out the window at Will Jensen's old pickup in the driveway. Along the sidewalk, a neighbor wearing a tam was walking his dog, glancing furtively toward the house the way nosy neighbors do.

  Suddenly, Joe froze, the tablet on his tongue, the water glass an inch from his lips, several thoughts hitting him at once.

  Traces of drugs.

  Will's pickup.

  The intruder in his yard that night, clunking against the house.

  He knew how they had done it.

  And they were doing it to him.

  He lowered the glass, spit out the tablet, and opened the front door. The neighbor looked up, his eyes widening for a moment, then his face broke out into a relieved smile.

  The neighbor said, "Goodness, for a second there I thought you were—"

  "I know," Joe said.

  Puzzled, the man continued down the sidewalk.

  Joe threw open the pickup door and shone a flashlight into the entrails of colored wires under the dashboard. It took a moment before he found what he was looking for. Even as he touched it with the tips of his fingers, he was chilled how they had pulled it off.

  He climbed out of the truck shaking his head.

  "Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?" Joe yelled to the neighbor, who was halfway down the block.

  "Me?" the neighbor asked, pulling on his dog to turn it.

  Joe waited until the man came back. "You've lived here for a long time, right? You knew Will Jensen?"

  "Yes," the man said cautiously.

  "Do you walk your dog every night?" Joe asked.

  The man nodded. "As long as the weather doesn't keep us in."

  Joe's mind was spinning. "Were you walking your dog the night Will Jensen died?"

  THIRTY-FOUR

  There were Secret Service agents in addition to armed security guards checking invitations at the front gate of the Ennis home. Joe waited behind a black Lexus SUV until it was cleared to proceed, wishing he'd washed the pickup before coming.

  A security guard shone a flashlight into Joe's face and asked him to remove his driver's license from his wallet.

  "I know you," the guard said, seeing his name. "You're the guy who shot Smoke Van Horn."

  Joe nodded and looked away. A Secret Service agent stepped from behind the guard and walked around the front of the truck to the passenger side and opened the door. The agent was lean and young, with an earpiece and cord that snaked down into his jacket. "Are there weapons in this truck?" he asked, looking around inside.

  "Standard issue," Joe said, pointing out the carbine under the seat, the shotgun in the gunrack, the cracker shell pistol in the glove box. He was glad he'd left his holster and weapon in the statehouse.

  "This is a problem," the agent said, stepping back and speaking into a microphone in his sleeve.

  Joe waited, and several cars pulled up behind him.

  Finally, the agent climbed into the cab with Joe and shut the door. "Sorry for the inconvenience, but the vice president will be here soon. We'll need to park you away from the premises," he said. "I'll walk you to the front door, and I'll need your keys while you're inside. When you're ready to go tonight, just tell one of my colleagues and I'll meet you at the front door and walk you back to your truck."

  THE ENNIS HOME was spacious, with high ceilings, marble floors, and walls of windows that framed views of the Tetons. The furniture was made of stripped and varnished lodgepole pine, the style favored locally, and a massive elk antler chandelier with hundreds of small lights hung from a faux-logging chain. The home was crowded with guests bunched around portable bars, waiting for bartenders in tuxedos to pour their drinks. Joe scanned the crowd in the front room for anyone he might know, and saw no one familiar. Everyone, he noticed, looked exceedingly healthy and fit. The men wore open collars and jackets with expensive jeans or khakis, and the women wore cocktail dresses or ultra-hip outdoor casual clothes. He felt out of place, as he normally did. The feeling was made worse when guests gestured toward him and nodded to one another and he realized he was, in fact, being talked about.

  A tall man with silver hair and a dark tan—Pete Illoway, the Good Meat guru—broke out of one of the knots of people and strode across the floor with his hand held out to Joe in a showy way. Cautiously, Joe took his hand, wondering what he wanted, while Illoway leaned into him.

  "Good work up in those mountains, Mr. Pickett," Illoway said, pumping Joe's hand.
"Smoke Van Horn will not be missed. He was an anachronism, and the valley had passed him by."

  Joe said nothing, not accepting the praise nor refuting it, thinking about when Smoke had called himself an "arachnidism."

  "May I buy you a drink, sir?" Illoway asked.

  "That's okay, I can get it myself," Joe said.

  Illoway smiled paternalistically, then signaled a bartender and pointed to Joe.

  "Bourbon and water, please," he said.

  Don Ennis strode purposefully into the room, parting the crowd, saw Joe, and stopped as if he'd hit an invisible wall. Ennis looked at Joe coolly for a moment, then broke into a stage grin and walked over just as Joe's drink arrived.

  "Glad you could make it, Mr. Pickett," Ennis said. "I know Stella will be pleased."

  Joe wondered what he meant by that.

  "Everyone's talking about the incident up in the Thorofare," Ennis said. "You've become quite the celebrity."

  "Was it really a gunfight like in the movies?" Illoway asked eagerly.

  Joe shook his head. "Not really. It was pretty bad," he said, the image coming back of Smoke's vacant eyes, the way he chanted, It really hurts, it really hurts, it really hurts.

  "Well done," Ennis said smartly.

  "I said it was bad," Joe snapped back. "It isn't something I'm proud of or something you two should be so damned pleased about."

  "But it couldn't have happened to a better guy," Illoway said, raising his glass as if he hadn't heard a word Joe said. "He was an absolute asshole, if you'll pardon my French. Totally against Beargrass Village, and very vocal about it in public meetings. He was Old World, not New World, if you know what I mean."

  "Speaking of," Ennis interrupted. "Have you come to a decision on your recommendation? I know we've still got a few days, but..."

  Joe had been waiting for this. What he wasn't expecting was to find out Illoway and Ennis thought Joe had done them a huge favor by shooting Smoke.