by C. J. Box
Joy thrust her arms out to encompass the entire store. “We’ve been here a long time doing the same thing. Clothes and boots come and go. If we stay here we’ll still be making minimum wage a year from now and doing exactly what we’re doing now.”
“So?”
“So is this what you want to do for the rest of your life? Sell clothes and boots?”
April shrugged, but she thought, Of course not.
Joy went around the counter and pulled up a website for college breakaway roping. April was intrigued.
She said, “I can ride okay, but I don’t know anything about roping.”
“That’s the thing,” Joy said. “Nobody does. But I’ve got an aunt who works at Northwest College in Powell. She told me that in order for the rodeo team to get funding, the college has to include a women’s event, so they came up with this. It’s better than barrel racing because you don’t need to spend eighty thousand dollars on a horse, and anyone can do it. They’re desperate to put a team of girls together, and right now they’ll take anyone who’s been around horses.”
“Anybody?” April asked. “Even us?”
“That’s what I hear from my aunt.”
April looked at the photo of the current rodeo team posing with their coaches. “I might have had my fill of rodeo cowboys.”
“Really?”
“Well . . .”
Joy had horses on her ranch. Her dad was willing to lease one to April if the two girls were serious about going to community college together.
—
IT HAD GONE WELL, April thought. She and Joy got along, and they’d recently placed third and fourth at the Casper College rodeo the week before, which was unusually high for rookies. April had surprised herself to discover she could throw a rope, and she liked the sport because it went easy on steers.
She liked the team because it gave her a solid base of operations in a new environment and she got to travel around the region. Not to mention, half the cowboys were in love with her, even though she’d given none of them the time of day. April had been to the big leagues, even though it was under regrettable circumstances. These poor boys had no idea.
She knew that one of the reasons she enjoyed Powell, college, and the rodeo team was that no one had ever expected her to go in that direction. Contrariness was fused into her nature. In the past, she’d shot down every suggestion of college her mother had made, because if she had taken the suggestion it would have seemed like it wasn’t her idea. April was hardwired that way, and she knew it.
She also knew that her parents were thrilled that she’d applied to Northwest and received a rodeo scholarship. Despite that, she wasn’t ready to quit. She knew they wouldn’t have been shocked if she’d run off and become a carny or something like that. But her going to college—that was a shock to them.
They were waiting for the other shoe to drop. So was she.
But for now, there was no reason to quit.
—
JOY WAS EASY to get along with. She rarely had boys come to the house, and she was a good cook and a reasonable roommate. She didn’t make demands or talk too much or play the drama queen.
She was also practical. It had been her idea to confine all their alcohol drinking to the unused breakfast bar so that if someone like a rodeo coach suddenly showed up, they could sweep all of the cans and bottles into the strategically located trash with one move rather than running through the house gathering them up.
Except for the fact that Joy sometimes borrowed April’s clothes without asking, they got along well. April chalked up Joy’s annoying habit to the two of them having so many similar clothes and outfits, because they’d both bought nearly everything they owned at the same store: Welton’s. That, and the fact that Joy was the only girl in her family, and she was used to everything belonging to her. April had endured two sisters and all the battles that entailed, so she was used to guarding her possessions and fighting for her territory.
Still, though, it miffed her when she was searching for something in her closet only to find out that Joy had already taken it.
But given the traumas she’d been through in her life, April was aware that borrowed clothing didn’t really rank very high, as aggravating as it could be at times.
As if to remind herself of that fact, she’d been fuming about her missing rodeo team jacket when Lucy had called to say Dallas Cates was out of prison.
It was a day April knew would come but hadn’t looked forward to.
She hadn’t seen him since he kicked her out of his pickup, but for better or worse—mostly worse—he still occupied a place in her heart. They’d had fun for a while, and at the time she was sure she was in love with him. That was hard to let go of completely, despite what had happened later. He’d told her he loved her as well—probably along with twenty other girls, but it still meant something, and she’d believed he meant it at that moment. An hour later, who knows?
But she’d never actually said good-bye.
Dallas had made no attempt to contact her after he’d been convicted and sent to prison. She didn’t know if he had access to a computer, but there hadn’t been a single email or social media post. Not even a letter.
She didn’t know if Dallas blamed her for what had happened to his family and him, or if he saw past it. But she knew he’d made threats against her dad and others in law enforcement.
These were things she thought a lot about but had been able to push off to the side as long as Dallas was in the penitentiary. Now that he was out, she’d have to confront them.
Would he try to see her again? And if he did, would he want her back or try to hurt her? Dallas was fully capable of both. Did he now consider her a traitorous extension of her father, the one who’d been responsible for taking down the Cates clan?
April hoped that with his toxic family mostly gone, and after a stint in jail, he might turn into a different person, but she wasn’t sure it worked like that. Dallas had been unconditionally coddled and protected by his mother all his life. With her in prison, he’d be in a new world. How much of that old world remained inside of him?
Lucy had texted to tell her in order to make sure she was armed with the pepper spray their dad had given them all.
Sheridan’s pepper spray was in her backpack, but April thought: To hell with that. Next to the canister of spray was a 9mm semiauto she’d borrowed from one of the rodeo team cowboys.
—
SHE WAS ON PAGE SIX of Candide when she heard a key in the front door. Joy was involved with a campus Bible study group and attended their meeting once a week.
“I’m back,” Joy said after she closed the door behind her.
“Hey there,” April said.
“I brought back some little sandwiches from my meeting.”
“Thanks, I’m okay. I had some soup.”
“Ah.”
April could hear Joy rattling around the kitchen when the doorbell rang.
“Got it,” Joy called out.
A moment passed. April envisioned Joy peering out the peephole in the front door.
“Some chick who thinks it’s still Halloween,” Joy said. Then: “Did you order pizza?”
“No.”
“Hmmm.”
Joy unlocked the door and opened it.
“Trick or treat,” a female voice sang out.
Joy said, “Hi. We didn’t order pizza.”
“Trick or treat.”
“Seriously? Aren’t you a little late for that?”
The female voice asked, “Are you April Pickett?”
April stopped reading. She didn’t recognize the voice and was not expecting a visitor.
Joy said, “Why do you ask?”
The front door banged open and Joy screamed. There was a sudden flurry of thumps and footfalls.
April felt
a bolt of electricity shoot through her and she flung herself out of her chair for her gun, but recalled that she’d left her backpack in the living room. Joy’s scream ended so abruptly that April felt the hair prick up on the back of her scalp.
She ran out the bedroom door, into the hallway, and around the corner.
Joy was on her back on the floor, writhing. A figure in a dark hooded sweatshirt was on her knees, straddling her roommate, bending forward in concentration, and April couldn’t see her face because of the hood.
They were struggling, and that’s when April saw the knife blade plunged halfway into the side of Joy’s neck. The stranger was leaning forward, trying to get leverage so she could push it in farther. Joy had both of her hands gripped around the arm of the attacker, trying to stop the progress of the knife. They were at a standstill, and all Joy had accomplished was to push back the sleeve of her assailant, revealing a slender white forearm.
On the floor beside them was an open pizza box and a cheap plastic Halloween mask of Casper the Friendly Ghost that must have come off during the attack.
April’s backpack was in plain view on the table, but she’d have to somehow get by Joy and the attacker to get to it.
April yelled “Stop it!” and the person on top of Joy froze and looked up. She was a gaunt woman with a long face and thin lips that were pulled back to reveal a top row of small yellow teeth. The edge of the hood obscured most of her face, but April locked on to one pale green eye for a second before the woman looked away. That eye, and the glimpse of solid multicolored tattoos on her exposed arm all the way to the top of her wrist, burned into April’s brain.
The woman flung herself back and the knife pulled out. Joy’s hands went to the wound in her neck, and bright red blood pulsed out between her fingers.
April stepped on the cushion of their old recliner and vaulted over it toward the table and her backpack, but by the time she fished out the 9mm, the woman was gone through the open front door. April could hear footfalls down the sidewalk and into the street outside.
Rather than pursue her, she tossed the gun aside and knelt down over Joy. Her friend’s eyes were wide open, and April had never seen her look so terrified.
Although she couldn’t speak, Joy’s eyes seemed to ask the questions Why? and Who was she?
April covered Joy’s hands with one of her own to try to stop the bleeding. With her other hand, she plucked her cell phone out of her pocket. It was hard to dial 911 because her entire body was trembling.
“You’ll be all right,” she said to Joy. “You’ll be all right . . .”
As the dispatcher picked up, April looked down to see that Joy was wearing her rodeo team jacket.
The one with April in script over the left breast.
7
Earlier, Joe had followed the pursuit and apprehension of Dallas Cates over the radio in his pickup via the state-assisted law enforcement communication system known as SALECS. He was patrolling the breaklands at dusk, too far away to assist, and he wasn’t wanted or needed there anyway.
Both Sheriff Reed and County Attorney Dulcie Schalk had made it clear—in a professional way—that they were fully in charge of the murder investigation, and after locating Farkus’s body, Joe was no longer to be involved. Dulcie made the point that, because of the personal animus and history between Joe and the Cates family, it would be cleaner all around if Joe stepped aside. She was already laying the groundwork for a trial and she didn’t want any unnecessary complications.
Joe was fine with that, and after giving his statement he’d spent the rest of the afternoon talking with happy elk hunters who were thrilled that the snow had caused the herds to move down from the high timber. He’d inspected a half-dozen carcasses hung in elk camps. All the hunters’ licenses and permits checked out, and he issued no warnings or citations.
The hunters he spoke with were oblivious to the events that had occurred in the mountains around them the past two days, although several asked about the lost elk hunter. They were ethical sportsmen who’d obtained meat for the winter for their families.
Joe admired them and liked being around them.
Then a call came from dispatch that a cowboy at the Thunderhead Ranch had reported that he’d seen two men emerge from a white SUV on BLM land adjacent to the property and gun down three antelope out of a large herd. The cowboy said he watched through binoculars as the shooters rumbled across the sagebrush, threw the dead animals in the back of the vehicle, and drove away “like they just stole the truck.”
Joe got to the location to find three steaming gut piles and no trace of the poaching ring.
—
AFTER HE’D RETURNED to the breaklands frustrated again, he’d overheard back-and-forth exchanges between dispatch, a reporting party, and Reed and Spivak.
The dispatcher said, “RP is a checkout employee at Valley Foods. She is on the line and says a man fitting the description of Dallas Cates is currently filling up a cart with groceries inside the store.”
“Is he alone?” Spivak asked.
“Affirmative.”
Which could mean he was by himself or that his buddies were sitting in their vehicle outside the store, Joe thought.
“How did the employee know we were looking for him?” Spivak asked.
“She heard about the APB. Oh, and she’s my sister.”
“Ten-four. On our way.”
Joe was once again reminded how quickly news spread in his small town, especially if it involved a member of the Cates family.
Within a few minutes, Spivak reported that he’d located an unfamiliar older-model four-wheel-drive Dodge in the parking lot of the grocery store. He requested a license tag check.
Joe’s interest perked when the dispatcher replied that the vehicle was registered to one Eldon Oscar Cates—Dallas’s father—and that the tag on the license plate was expired. Plus, a taillight was out.
It made sense. No one had been at the Cates compound to pay for annual renewals for almost two years and to place the small metallic stickers on the plates. Dallas had come into town hoping no one would connect the old pickup to him.
Spivak requested backup, and Deputy Steck arrived on the scene. They held back, though, because they didn’t want to confront Cates inside the store. They assumed he was armed, and they didn’t want to risk the safety of other shoppers or store employees.
They parked their cruisers in a weedy field adjacent to the grocery store parking lot and waited until Dallas emerged, laden with grocery bags. Cates was alone. He placed the groceries in the back of the Dodge, looked around but apparently didn’t see them, and then rolled out of town onto the state highway in the direction of his family home.
Spivak kept the Dodge in sight, but waited for authorization from Sheriff Reed to pull the man over.
“We’ve got eyes on the son of a bitch,” Spivak reported.
“Be careful,” Reed warned. “Assume he’s armed and dangerous.”
“Should we take him on the highway or at his place?”
“Highway. He’s alone in his truck, and it’s possible his buddies are waiting for him at the home. They’re likely to be armed as well. There’s no hurry to get them involved. We can move on them once we’ve got Cates in custody.”
“Ten-four.”
—
JOE PERCHED his pickup on an overlook and glassed the breaklands below through his spotting scope. The snow had stopped and the sky had cleared. The setting sun was transforming the muted beige-and-gray-sagebrush landscape into something dramatic and electric. Herds of pronghorn antelope that had been practically invisible under the overcast skies now stood out like beacons. Campfires and Coleman lanterns from hunting camps pierced through the deep shadows.
He couldn’t concentrate on what he was seeing through his lenses. Not until the SALECS band crackled and Spivak said to Sheriff
Reed, “We have Dallas Cates in custody. He’s cuffed and in the back of my rig.”
Joe closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.
Spivak said, “That’s not all. I searched his vehicle and found a .223 Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle under the seat. I sniffed it and it smells like it was recently fired. Plus, we can match up the slugs to those found in Farkus’s body.”
“You’re kidding,” Reed said.
“There’s dried mud and pine needles on the truck mats that look a hell of a lot like what we traipsed through in the mountains this morning,” Spivak said. “I can’t tell for sure, but there are what looks like smears of blood on the inside door panels. Like someone with bloody gloves got in and shut the door.”
“Good work, good work,” Reed said. “But don’t forget: the only thing we can charge him with right now is expired tags and that taillight.”
Spivak sighed audibly.
“We’ve got to do everything right this time,” Reed said. “Step by step. Don’t touch anything else inside the vehicle. Lock up that truck and tape it off and don’t move it until the tow truck shows up. That truck is a crime scene and I don’t want anybody getting inside until we have it secure and the evidence techs can go over it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay right there,” Reed said. “I’ll call up the rest of the department and we’ll meet you there. I’ll stop by Judge Hewitt’s house on the way out and get a warrant signed to search the compound. We should be prepared to arrest his buddies and bring them all in.”
“Ten-four.”
“Hold tight and keep me posted,” Reed said.
Joe could imagine the sheriff wheeling himself out through the door of his office and fitting on his Stetson. He could also imagine a sullen Dallas Cates slumped in the backseat of Spivak’s vehicle.
Dallas had miscalculated, Joe thought. He should have fled the county or bunkered himself in where he couldn’t be found.
But he’d apparently returned to his family home, and possibly brought his friends along with him.
Most criminals weren’t very smart, Joe reminded himself. That’s why they were criminals.