Free Fire

by C. J. Box

  “Nothing,” Bud Jr. said, but Joe had enough experience talking with guilty men to know something was up. The way they wouldn’t hold his gaze, the way they found something to do with their hands that wasn’t necessary, like Bud Jr., who was tearing off pieces of his bread crust and rolling them into little balls.

  “She swore she was eighteen,” Bud said, almost as an aside, “and she sure as hell looked it. Shit, she was in the Stockman’s having cocktails, so I figured they must have carded her, right?”

  Joe snorted and said nothing. It was interesting to him how an old-line, hard-assed three-generation rancher like Bud Longbrake could have raised a son so unlike him. Bud blamed his first wife for coddling Bud Jr., and complained in private to Joe that Missy, Bud’s second wife and Marybeth’s mother, was now doing the same thing. “Who the fuck cares if he’s creative,” Bud had said, spitting out the word as if it were a bug that had crawled into his mouth. “He’s as worthless as tits on a bull.”

  In his peripheral vision, Joe watched as Bud Jr. stood up from his log as the SUV churned up the hill. He was ready to run.

  It was then that Joe noticed the GMC had official State of Wyoming plates. Two men inside, the driver and another wearing a tie and a suit coat.

  The GMC parked next to Joe’s Ford and the passenger door opened.

  “Is one of you Joe Pickett?” asked the man in the tie. He looked vaguely familiar to Joe, somebody he might have seen in the newspaper. He was slightly built and had a once-eager face that now said, “I’m harried.” The man pulled a heavy jacket over his blazer and zipped it up against the cold breeze.

  “He is,” Bud Jr. said quickly, pointing to Joe as if naming the defendant in court.

  “I’m Chuck Ward, chief of staff for Governor Rulon,” the man said, looking Joe over as if he were disappointed with what he saw but trying to hide it. “The governor would like to meet with you as soon as possible.”

  Joe stood and wiped his palms on his Wranglers so he could shake hands with Ward.

  Joe said, “The governor is in town?”

  “We came up in the state plane.”

  “That was the jet we saw, Joe. Cool, the governor,” Bud Jr. said, obviously relieved that the GMC hadn’t come for him. “I’ve been reading about him in the paper. He’s a wild man, crazy as a tick. He challenged some senator to a drinking contest to settle an argument, and he installed a shooting range behind the governor’s mansion. That’s my kind of governor, man,” he said, grinning.

  Ward shot Bud Jr. a withering look. Joe thought it was telling that Ward didn’t counter the stories but simply turned red.

  “You want me to go with you?” Joe asked, nodding toward the GMC.

  “Yes, please.”

  “How about I follow you in?” Joe said. “I need to pick my girls up at school this afternoon so I need a vehicle. We’ll be done by then, I’d guess.”

  Ward looked at him. “We have to be.”

  Joe stuffed his gloves into his back pocket and picked up his tools from the ground and handed them to Bud Jr. “I’ll ask your dad to send someone out here to pick you up.”

  Bud’s face fell. “You’re just leaving me here?”

  “Get some work done,” Joe said, gesturing toward the fence that went on for miles. “Come on, Maxine,” he called to his dog.

  Bud Jr. turned away and folded his arms across his chest in a pout.

  “Quite a hand,” Ward said sarcastically as Joe walked past him toward the Ford.

  “Yup,” Joe said.

  THE GOVERNOR’S PLANE was the only aircraft on the tarmac at the Saddlestring Regional Airport. Joe followed Chuck Ward to a small parking lot at the side of the General Aviation building.

  Joe had heard the stories about the drinking contest and the shooting range. Rulon was an enigma, which seemed to be part of his charm. A one time high-profile defense lawyer, Rulon became a federal prosecutor who had a ninety-five percent conviction rate. Since the election, Joe had read stories in the newspaper about Rulon rushing out of his residence in his pajamas and a Russian fur cap to help state troopers on the scene of a twelve-car pileup on I-80. Another recounted how he’d been elected chairman of the Western Governors’ Association because of his reputation for taking on Washington bureaucrats and getting his way, which included calling hotel security to have all federal agency personnel escorted from the room of their first meeting. Each new story about Rulon’s eccentricities seemed to make him more popular with voters, despite the fact that he was a Democrat in a state that was seventy percent Republican.

  Governor Spencer Rulon sat behind a scarred table in the small conference room. Aerial photos of Twelve Sleep County adorned the walls, and a large picture window looked out over the runway. The table was covered with stacks of files from the governor’s briefcase, which was open on a chair near him.

  He stood up as Ward and Joe entered the room and thrust out his hand.

  “Joe Pickett, I’m glad Chuck found you.”

  “Governor,” Joe said, removing his hat.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Rulon said. “Chuck, you too.”

  Governor Rulon was a big man in every regard, with a round face and a big gut, an unruly shock of silver-flecked brown hair, a quick sloppy smile, and darting eyes. He was a manic presence , exuding energy, his movements quick and impatient. Joe had seen him work a crowd and marveled at the way Rulon could talk with lawyers, politicians, ranchers, or minimum wage clerks in their own particular language. Or, if he chose, in a language all his own.

  Ward looked at his wristwatch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before we need to leave for Powell.”

  “A speech for the Community College Commission,” the governor said to Joe before settling back in his chair. “They want more money—now that’s a shocker—so they’ll be willing to wait.”

  Joe put his hat crown down on the table. He was suddenly nervous about why he’d been summoned and because there was no way to anticipate what Rulon might do or say. Joe had assumed on the drive into town that it had something to do with the circumstances of his dismissal, but now he wasn’t so sure. It was becoming clear to him by Ward’s manner that the chief of staff didn’t really like the purpose of the meeting, whatever it was.

  “Everybody wants more money,” Rulon said to Joe. “Everybody has their hand out. Luckily, I’m able to feed the beast.”

  Joe nodded in recognition of one of the governor’s most familiar catchphrases. In budget hearings, on the senate floor, at town meetings, Rulon was known for listening for a while, then standing up and shouting, “Feed the beast! Feed the beast!”

  The governor turned his whole attention to Joe, and thrust his face across the table at him. “So you’re a cowboy now, eh?”

  Joe swallowed. “I work for my father-in-law, Bud Longbrake.”

  “Bud’s a good man.” Rulon nodded.

  “I’ve got my résumé out in five states.”

  Rulon shook his head. “Ain’t going to happen.”

  Joe was sure the governor was right. Despite his qualifications, any call to his former boss, Randy Pope, asking for a job reference would be met with Pope’s distorted tales of Joe’s bad attitude, insubordination, and long record of destruction of government property. Only the last charge was true, Joe thought.

  “Nothing wrong with being a cowboy,” Rulon said.

  “Nope.”

  “Hell, we put one on our license plates. Do you remember when we met?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was at that museum dedication last spring. I took you and your lovely wife for a little drive. How is she, by the way? Marybeth, right?”

  “She’s doing fine,” Joe said, thinking, He remembered her name. “She’s got a company that’s really doing well.”

  “MBP Management.”

  Amazing, Joe thought.

  “And the kids? Two girls?”

  “Sheridan’s fifteen, in ninth grade. Lucy’s ten, in fourth grade.”

  “And th
ey say I have a tough job,” Rulon said. “Beautiful girls. You should be proud. A couple of real pistols.”

  Joe shifted in his chair, disarmed.

  “When we met,” the governor continued, “I gave you a little pop quiz. I asked you if you’d arrest me for fishing without a license like you did my predecessor. Do you remember me asking you that?”

  “Yes,” Joe said, flushing.

  “Do you remember what you said?”

  “I said I’d arrest you.”

  Chuck Ward shot a disapproving glance at Joe when he heard that.

  The governor laughed, sat back. “That impressed me.”

  Joe didn’t know it had. He and Marybeth had debated it at the time.

  Rulon said, “So when we were in the air on the way to Powell, I was reading through a file that is keeping me up nights and I saw the Bighorns and I thought of Joe Pickett. I ordered my pilot to land and told Chuck to go find you. How would you like to work for the state again?”

  Joe didn’t see it coming.

  Chuck Ward squirmed in his chair and looked out the window at the plane as if he wished he were on it.

  Joe said, “Doing what?”

  Rulon reached out and took a thick manila file off one of the stacks and slid it across the table. Joe picked it up and read the tab. It read “Yellowstone Zone of Death.”

  Joe looked up, his mouth dry.

  “That’s what they’re calling it,” Rulon said. “You’ve heard about the situation, no doubt.”

  “Everybody has.”

  The case had been all over the state, regional, and national news the past summer—a multiple homicide in Yellowstone National Park. The murderer confessed, but a technicality in the law had set him free.

  “It’s making me crazy and pissing me off,” Rulon said. “Not just the murders or that gasbag Clay McCann. But this.”

  Rulon reached across the table and threw open the file. On top was a copy of a short, handwritten letter addressed to the governor.

  “Read it,” Rulon said.

  Dear Gov Spence:

  I live and work in Yellowstone, or, as we in the Gopher State Five call it, “the ’Stone.” I’ve come to really like the ’Stone, and Wyoming. I may even become a resident so I can vote for you.

  In my work I get around the park a lot. I see things, and my friends do too. There are some things going on here that could be of great significance to you, and they bother us a lot. And there is something going on here with the resources that may deeply impact the State of Wyoming, especially your cash flow situation. Please contact me so I can tell you what is happening.

  I want to tell you and show you in person, not by letter. This correspondence must be held in complete confidence. There are people up here who don’t want this story to be told. My e-mail address is yellowdick@yahoo.com. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

  It was signed Yellowstone Dick.

  Joe frowned. He noted the date stamp: July 15.

  “I don’t understand,” Joe said.

  “I didn’t either,” Rulon said, raising his eyebrows and leaning forward again. “I try to answer all of my mail, but I put that one aside when I got it. I wasn’t sure what to do, since it seems like a crank letter. I get ’em all the time, believe me. Finally, I sent a copy over to DCI and asked them to check up on it. It took ’em a month, damn them, but they traced it with the Internet people and got back to me and said Yellowstone Dick was the nickname of an employee in Yellowstone named Rick Hoening. That name ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “He was one of the victims murdered by Clay McCann. The e-mail was sent to me a week before Hoening met his untimely demise.”

  Joe let that sink in.

  “Ever hear of the Gopher State Five?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Me neither. And I’ll never know what he was talking about, especially that bit about deeply impacting my cash flow. You know how serious that could be, don’t you?”

  Joe nodded. The State of Wyoming was booming. Mineral severance taxes from coal, gas, and petroleum extraction were making state coffers flush. So much money was coming in that legislators couldn’t spend it fast enough and were squirreling it away into massive trust funds and only spending the interest. The excess billions allowed the governor to feed the beast like it had never been fed before.

  Joe felt overwhelmed. “What are you asking me?”

  Rulon beamed and swung his head toward Chuck Ward. Ward stared coolly back.

  “I want you to go up there and see if you can figure out what the hell Yellowstone Dick was writing to me about.”

  Joe started to object but Rulon waved him off. “I know what you’re about to say. I’ve got DCI and troopers and lawyers up the wazoo. But the problem is I don’t have jurisdiction. It’s National Park Service, and I can’t just send all my guys up there to kick ass and take names. We have to make requests, and the responses take months to get back. We have to be invited in,” he said, screwing up his face on the word invited as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “It’s in my state, look at the map. But I can’t go in unless they invite me. The Feds don’t care about what Yellowstone Dick said about my cash flow, they’re so angry about McCann getting off. Not that I blame them, of course. But I want you to go up there and see what you can find out. Clay McCann got away with these murders and created a free-fire zone in the northern part of my state, and I won’t stand for it.”

  Joe’s mind swirled.

  “You’re unofficial,” Rulon said, his eyes gleaming. “Without portfolio. You’re not my official representative, although you are. You’ll be put back into the state system, you’ll get back pay, you’ll get your pension and benefits back, you’ll get a state paycheck with a nice raise. But you’re on your own. You’re nobody, just a dumb-ass game warden poking around by yourself.”

  Joe almost said, That I can do with no problem, but held his tongue. Instead, he looked to Ward for clarification. “We’ll tell Randy Pope to reinstate you as a game warden,” Ward said wearily, wanting no part of this. “But the administration will borrow you.”

  “Borrow me?” Joe said. “Pope won’t do it.”

  “The hell he won’t,” Rulon said, smacking his palm against the tabletop. “I’m the governor. He will do what I tell him, or he’ll have his résumé out in five states.”

  Joe knew how state government worked. This wasn’t how.

  “Without portfolio,” Joe said, repeating the phrases. “Not your official representative. But I am.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” the governor said, encouraging Joe. “And that means if you screw up and get yourself in trouble, as you are fully capable of doing based on your history, I’ll deny to my grave this meeting took place.”

  Chuck Ward broke in. “Governor, I feel it’s my responsibility, once again, to advise against this.”

  “Your opinion, Chuck, would be noted in the minutes if we had any, but we don’t,” Rulon said in a tone that suggested to Joe that the two of them had similar disagreements as a matter of routine.

  The governor turned back to Joe. “You’re going to ask me why, and why you, when I have a whole government full of bodies to choose from.”

  “I was going to ask you that.”

  “All I can say is that it’s a hunch. But I’m known for my good hunches. I’ve followed your career, Joe, even before I got elected. You seem to have a natural inclination to get yourself square into the middle of situations a normal thinking person would avoid. I’d say it’s a gift if it wasn’t so damned dangerous at times. Your wife would probably concur.”

  Joe nodded in silent agreement.

  “I think you’ve got integrity. You showed me that when you said you’d arrest me. You seem to be able to think for yourself—a rare trait, and one that I share—no matter what the policy is or conventional wisdom dictates. As I know, that’s either a good quality or a fatal flaw. It got me elected governor of this great state, and it got you fired.


  “But you have a way of getting to the bottom of things, is what I see. Just ask the Scarlett brothers.” He raised his eyebrows and said, “No, don’t. They’re all dead.”

  Joe felt like he’d been slapped. He’d been there when the brothers turned against each other and went to war. And he’d performed an act that was the source of such black shame in him he still couldn’t think about it. In his mind, the months of feeding cattle, fixing fences, and overseeing Bud Jr. weren’t even close to penance for what he’d done. And it had nothing to do with why he’d been fired.

  “When I think of crime committed out-of-doors, I think of Joe Pickett,” Rulon said. “Simple as that.”

  Joe’s face felt hot. Everything the governor said seemed to have dual meanings. He couldn’t be sure if he was being praised or accused, or both.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Rulon smiled knowingly. “Yes you do. You want to say YES! You want to shout it out!” He leaned back in his chair and dropped his voice an octave. “But you need to talk to Marybeth. And Bud Longbrake needs to hire a new ranch foreman.”

  “I do need to talk to Marybeth,” Joe said lamely.

  “Of course. But let me know by tonight so we can notify Mr. Pope and get this show on the road. Take the file, read it. Then call with your acceptance.”

  Ward tapped his wrist. “Governor . . .”

  “I know,” Rulon said, standing and shoving papers into his briefcase. “I know.”

  Joe used the arms of his chair to push himself to his feet. His legs were shaky.

  “Tell the pilot we’re ready,” Rulon said to Ward. “We need to get going.”

  Ward hustled out of the room, followed by Governor Rulon.

  “Governor,” Joe called after him. Rulon hesitated at the doorway.

  “I may need some help in the park,” Joe said, thinking of Nate Romanowski.

  “Do what you need to do,” Rulon said sharply. “Don’t ask me for permission. You’re not working for me. I can’t even remember who you are. You’re fading from my mind even as we speak. How can I possibly keep track of every state employee?”

  Outside, the engines of the plane began to wind up.