“Sorry, sheriff. Just couldn’t sleep.” She managed a weak smile that told Dean Goddard he’d have to keep an eye out for Diane.
Diane Talbott was one of those women Dean’s father described as ‘built like a brick icehouse,’ which meant she was strong, attractive, had some style and a body that easily fired the imagination. For someone around 50 who had spent most of her adult life on the Range, she was still surprisingly unaffiliated, which was to say without a man. Not that there weren’t plenty who had tried. Some said she’d been known to party when she was young. But now she spent most of her time at her job, either for the Gazette or writing freelance, mostly covering wilderness issues.
“OK if I take some notes?” she asked.
The sheriff thought about it. “Williston have a next of kin?” he asked Bill Grebs.
“No one,” Grebs said. “There was a son, some years back. Disappeared. And you know Miriam died two years ago. Just us,” he added, indicating the four Club members in the room.
“Alright,” the sheriff said, turning toward Diane.
The sheriff spent the next ten minutes taking the Club members’ statements. Hal Young was the local insurance agent. He was the same height as Angus Moon and Bill Grebs but very different in stature and temperament. Bill Grebs was mean, but savvy enough to hide it. Angus Moon was like a wolverine, wild as the woods he hunted, with a temper that could turn on a dime, the few times the sheriff had crossed him. Hal Young was a businessman, and other than the Iron County Gun Club, about as four-square as a white cardboard box. Hank Gunderson was the dead man’s size, owned the Ford dealership in Defiance. The four Gun Club members filled in the details—solemn, maybe a little nervous, the sheriff figured, because their lifetime friend had just met his grisly end, maybe from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, though none of them betrayed that suspicion. Regardless, incidents like this one were sober reminders of one’s own mortality.
They’d assembled for poker. When Williston didn’t show, they came looking. And found him. They were quiet and grave in the poorly lit front room of Williston’s farmhouse. They looked tired.
While the sheriff spoke with the men, Grebs and Smith Garnes loaded Winthrop’s body into the doctor’s Explorer. Once he was finished in the house, the sheriff gave Diane the details she’d need.
“Hunting accident,” he said. “Massive head trauma. I’m sure you’ll say it using more words, but that’s the sum of it.”
Diane nodded. “Thanks, sheriff.”
He nodded and turned away.
Once outside, Dean Goddard approached the doctor’s car.
“I can drive with you to the office; help you unload him and get him squared away, providing you can give me a lift home.”
“No problem, sheriff.”
He thought maybe she sounded a little too eager, if anyone was listening. “Smith,” Goddard turned to his deputy. “Can you take the squad car and follow us over? You’ll have to help me with this cargo, at least to unload it. Then you can take the cruiser home and the doctor’ll give me a lift.”
Garnes nodded. “See you there.”
“Get your truck out of the road, Diane. Go home and get some sleep.”
But she was already too preoccupied to think about sleep, contemplating the story she was about to write. The sheriff knew he’d be reading about Williston Winthrop’s accident by morning.
They got into their cars and started their engines in the cold. Then they turned toward Vermilion Falls.
For the first mile the sheriff and coroner rode in silence, following Diane’s truck. Deputy Garnes followed them in the squad car.
“That was a horrible accident,” Susan Wallace finally observed, careful not to turn her head. “But it could uncomplicate things.”
The sheriff exhaled as though trapped air were being let out of a bag. “Could,” he said tersely, but clearly pleased.
“You think he mentioned it to anyone? Shared that video?”
“No way to know,” he remarked, eyes careful on the narrow lane in front of him. They were traveling over back roads. Williston Winthrop’s farmhouse was in one of the most remote areas of the county. On either side dense wilderness closed in on the narrow lane.
“What are we going to do, Dean?”
“You’re not going to do anything. I’m going to find that video.” He paused, thinking. “If I know Winthrop it’s someplace safe. I’d bet his office or the farmhouse. But it’s not going to be easy finding it.”
“What about his house in Defiance? Miriam’s old place?”
“Could be,” Dean guessed. They drove another half mile in silence. “I guess I’m going to have to sleep on it,” he said, his hands intent on the wheel of the doctor’s jeep.
The doctor stared ahead, peering to where the edge of headlights disappeared in darkness. Dean Goddard thought she was pondering the location of Winthrop’s evidence when he felt her hand inch over and graze his right thigh.
He could feel the heat of it through his jeans.
“Maybe we should sleep on it together.”
Chapter Two
January 27th—U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Denver Federal Building
By the time Sam Rivers arrived at U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Judy Rutgers’s message was being broadcast to a half dozen co-workers needing a Monday morning chuckle. Judy was a sheep rancher who lived over two hours southeast of Denver, Colorado.
“This is Judy Rutgers,” she blurted. “Last night one of my ewes was taken. A wolf! I got all the proof you’ll need. And I’m sitting here with my rifle, hoping the cocksucker shows its ugly head. When it does, I’ll be blowing it off.”
There was a pause, during which Maureen, the office assistant, said, “Wait. She’s not finished.”
Sam’s co-workers paused over Maureen’s speakerphone.
“I’ll give you till sundown to get out here and look, Rivers. Then I’m settin‘ traps.” The line went dead.
“Sundown!” Maureen repeated, parroting Judy’s rasp. The office broke into mild laughter.
Sam Rivers’s appearance caused his co-workers to fade back to their desks.
“Morning, Sam,” Maureen nodded.
“Maureen,” he nodded back.
His sallow-rimmed eyes told her all she needed to know about his weekend. She’d keep it to business, but like the rest of the staff she was waiting for an end to Rivers’s depression. Or maybe for his transfer back to national field operations. “Judy Rutgers has issues again.”
“I heard.”
“What should I tell her?”
“Tell her I’ll be out after noon. First I need to talk with Kay Magdalen, then finish some paperwork.” He had received another troubling email he hoped Kay could help him track down.
“Should I see if Kay’s in?”
“Her Outback’s in the lot.”
Maureen’s ears tracked gossip like a pair of Doppler radar dishes, and she had a mouth like satellite radio, which is why Sam never shared anything with her. Maureen might have been the one to overhear his business about Sam’s dog, Charlie.
“That’s two Kay Magdalen visits in less than a week,” she said. “You sure you feel OK?”
Maureen was fishing. He almost never visited his old supervisor. “Clarence is a Rockies fan and I have a lead on some tickets,” he lied. When she didn’t recognize the name he added, “Clarence is Kay’s husband. He and I go way back.”
Truth is he and Kay Magdalen had worked together for more than a decade—at least when he was a national field agent—and he had never met Clarence.
Maureen nodded. “Oh. OK. I’ll let Judy know you’ll be there this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Maureen.” Then he turned and disappeared into his cubicle.
Charged with protecting and managing the nation’s wildlife, the USFW had taken Sam Rivers, one of its best nation
al field agents, into places no sane person would want to go. That is until a year ago, when his failing marriage and then his failing best friend—his dog Charlie—prompted him to step down from the national spotlight to take a job in local investigations.
Five years earlier the Denver Post ran a Sunday feature on his work at the USFW, “Saving Endangered Species One Animal at a Time.” The article recounted one of his most recent cases. Rare Florida deer were being annihilated from a section of the Florida Keys. Their total disappearance from an area they’d previously inhabited was suspicious. Rivers investigated, and after some digging and a few lucky breaks he discovered a small group of developers who believed concern for the Key deer, which the USFW estimated to number around 800 animals, was negatively impacting their development plans. They’d hired a south Florida hunter to rid the proposed development site of any trace of the small, endangered deer. And they would have succeeded, if the hunter hadn’t begun selling Key deer skins, hooves, horns and venison on the black market.
The article called Sam Rivers ‘the predator’s predator,’ a moniker that stuck, at least within his office and the USFW. There was a picture of his 6’ 2” frame standing in front of the South Florida bulldozer he had singlehandedly idled. His square shoulders and 195 pounds looked small in front of the huge shovel blade. But his greasy black hair, disheveled undercover clothes, and four days’ worth of facial hair made him look like the swamp rats he’d hunted. The article recounted how before it was all over, Sam had to fight his way out of a backwoods bar.
Maggie had been proud of the Denver Post’s coverage. She cut out the photo and taped it to their fridge.
Kay Magdalen was as surprised to see him as he was to be there. “You’re coming back,” she opined.
“Not exactly. Still thinking about it.”
Kay Magdalen was heading up the new Interagency Task Force, and she wanted Sam Rivers back on her team. Kay had the demeanor of a truck driver, the appearance of a fullback, and could bull her way through USFW law enforcement bureaucracy unlike anyone he had ever seen, which was a rare quality and just one of the reasons Sam liked her.
“It would do you nothing but good, Rivers.”
“I suspect you’re right. I just need a little more time.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, passed it across her desk. “Got another one of these last Friday.”
Kay opened it. Another message from [email protected]. This one was short. “Soon,” it said.
“Soon what?” she asked.
“Good question.”
Sam had been receiving these messages for the last two years, spread out at least a month apart. They’d started after his mother died. The first he’d almost mistaken for junk mail. He still remembered it, because it was brief and personal. “Clayton?” it asked, in the subject line. The text of the message repeated the question using his full birth name: “Clayton Evan Winthrop?” That was all.
No one had called him Clayton Winthrop in years. He treated it the way he treated everything else from his childhood; he highlighted the message, and pressed Delete. But the email address was interesting. Canis lupus, the scientific name for the gray wolf.
And then a few days later he’d received a second message. This one contained a single phrase in the Subject line: “Seen this?” There was an attachment with the email. It was a PDF copy of his mother’s will. It left everything to the old man. There was the house, car, the proceeds from a large life insurance policy, and the money Sam’s mother had managed to save, a little over $179,000 and change. Sam was surprised, both by his absence from her will and the size of her estate, which he’d always assumed would be meager.
He’d spoken with his mother just weeks before her end. He was comfortable with their parting. Sam always remembered her as an old-school wife. For years she had been largely estranged from the old man, living in separate residences. But there had never been talk of divorce. There was logic to her leaving everything to Williston. But Sam was still surprised.
Over the last two decades he and his mother had only seen each other a handful of times. But the absence of visits hadn’t diminished their connection, such as it was. Though she’d been unable to stand up to Williston Winthrop, Sam considered his mother a positive influence in his life. He assumed he would be a partial beneficiary in her will, though they’d never discussed it. He wondered who had sent the will, and why. He immediately considered the old man, but then excluded him. Coy wasn’t the old man’s way. There was no good reason for the old man to be secretive or to send him a copy of the will. Why invite trouble, should Sam want to contest it?
Twenty years earlier Sam had fled west, changed his name, and disappeared. It had taken more than a year to reach back to his mom. And even then it was only by phone. Eventually he shared his new name and whereabouts, but made it clear she should keep it in confidence.
He had not seen or spoken to Williston F. Winthrop since the day Sam had wreaked havoc in the heart of their farmhouse, letting the old man know how he felt about the Winthrop family heritage. Then he fled. But not before stealing one of the old man’s precious Decimators.
There had been other cryptic messages. After wondering about it, he recovered the first email from his ‘deleted’ folder. Then, he’d created an electronic folder—named Defiance, the name of the closest town to his childhood home—and dragged the messages into it one by one over the intervening months, where they remained unanswered.
This message, like all the others, was typically cryptic. He printed off a copy to share with Kay. He wanted her to find out whatever she could about the sender. She had solid contacts in the USFW information technology group and he didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to it. He just wanted to know about [email protected]. Where did he/she live? Where did the message come from?
“Sorry, Rivers,” Kay said. “Another bizarre message isn’t going to change anything. I’m sure it’s annoying, but until something more specific happens, like maybe a threat, there’s nothing IT can do about it.”
She told him what he’d expected. Yahoo guarded the privacy of its members like Fort Knox gold. Truth was, given the ease with which Yahoo email accounts were set up, a person could easily register an email using a bogus name and address.
“IT tells me the only thing that they might be able to tell you,” Kay added, “would be the identity of the computer from which it was sent. But that would take some work, backtracking through code, IP addresses, proxy servers and plenty of email traffic, whatever that means. Nothing they’d even think about without a warrant.”
“I thought these people were your friends?”
“Colleagues, Rivers. We don’t have friends. I know them well enough. And if I wanted to push it, I could probably get them to look into it without a warrant, see what they could find out. But this is personal,” Kay said. “You know how the Service is about using resources for personal stuff.”
Her answer was bullshit and they both knew it. The flash of a badge enabled an agent to cut to the head of a line or get some free donuts and coffee, and Sam had seen it used countless times, had occasionally used it himself. Kay Magdalen knew what he was thinking.
“The last time I checked,” she said, “personal annoyance wasn’t enough for a judge to grant a warrant.”
She was using it. If he told her he was coming back to national field ops to be part of her Interagency Task Force, she might spend a little of her IT capital to help him. She was dangling a carrot.
“What’s keeping you from coming back?” she asked.
“Not ready.”
She considered him for a long few seconds. “You know what you need?”
“No idea.”
“You need to take some time off. Maybe head over to Las Vegas. It’s probably been a while since you’ve had your...” she paused, wondering how to say it.
“Your pipes cleaned out. You should take some time. You’ve got plenty of vacation built up. I’ve seen your file. If you don’t take it before the end of the year you’ll lose some of it.”
“Are you telling me I should buy a whore?”
She looked away, a little miffed by his crass characterization. “I think it’s more of a rental fee. Personally, I find it morally repugnant. But men feel different about these things.”
Truth was, his appetite for sex left with Maggie. He knew it would return. But hiring a hooker was about as far from his mind as vacationing in Cancun.
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Just saying,” she said, but left it there. Then she handed the paper back.
Sam returned it to his back pocket and stood up. “If I came back on the team, would you use your IT contacts to find out what you could about canislupustruth?”
Kay looked at him, considering. “Who knows? Teams are funny things. If a team member is going through a rough spot and it impacts the organization, then from my perspective it makes sense to do whatever you can to help out.”
Sam thought about pushing it, but he had his answer. She could get IT to look into it if she wanted, but until he decided to come back and work for her she wasn’t going to expend the capital to get it done. He turned to leave, and then remembered.
“If you happen to run into Maureen down in local investigations and she asks, Clarence and I are old friends and I got him tickets to the Rockies game this coming Saturday,” Sam said.
“Rockies? Clarence has never been to a baseball game in his life. You’ve never even met him.”
“I know. And I’m not taking it personally.”
She grinned. “Whatever, Rivers. I’ll cover for you. Just get your head on straight. We can’t wait forever.”
Sam Rivers didn’t get out of the Denver Federal Building until after 1:00. He contemplated skipping lunch, knowing Judy was waiting by her rear picture window with her finger on that trigger. Her ranch was one hundred fifty miles southeast, a two and a half hour drive. If he pushed it he could be there before 3:30 p.m. But it had been a very long night and his head still felt muddled from last night’s wine. The remnants of four glasses of dry red were giving him heartburn and a headache. He didn’t relish facing the big woman on an empty stomach.
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