by C. J. Box
Nate shook his head in disgust. “But it always does,” he said.
Joe curled his mouth on the sides and nodded. “Yup, it seems to.”
“That doesn’t just happen,” Nate said.
“Oh, maybe it does,” Joe said.
Nate shook his head and looked away. They eventually settled into a comfortable and familiar silence.
Joe’s phone burred and he plucked it from his breast pocket and looked at the display. “Uh-oh,” he said.
Nate said, “Who is it?”
“It’s a 777 number I don’t recognize. But 777 is the state phone prefix. It’s probably the governor or one of his staff calling.”
The phone continued to ring.
“Are you going to answer it?” Nate asked.
Joe dropped the phone back into his pocket, then bent forward and clicked off his radio under the dashboard as well.
“Radio silence,” Nate said. “I like radio silence.”
“Unless, of course, Marybeth calls,” Joe said.
“Obviously,” Nate said.
“This one’s got a lot of moving parts, doesn’t it?” Nate said after fifteen minutes. Joe knew he was referring to the situation in general.
“Yup.”
“And a bunch of parts we don’t even know yet.”
“That’s the feeling I get.”
“Are the feds with us or against us on this one?”
Joe shrugged. “That’s something I can’t quite figure out yet. The FBI seems very interested in it, but from the outside. Usually, they move in and try to take over. This time, it’s like they’re trying to stay out of it but control things at the same time.”
“Have you talked to that agent you know, Coon?”
“Yup, I called him but he didn’t tell me much. He said he couldn’t comment on ongoing investigations, as if I were a reporter or something.”
“Ongoing investigations? And he hasn’t tried to get in touch with you since?”
“Nope,” Joe said.
“That tells me something right there,” Nate said.
“Me, too.”
“He should have contacted you again by now, if for no reason other than to see how you’re doing. There’s a reason he’s stayed away, and that’s probably because he doesn’t want to communicate with you and maybe let something slip out.”
Joe nodded. “The governor said there were some indirect federal contacts. Plus, Coon was adamant that the Grims, or Grimmengrubers, didn’t exist. At the time, I thought he was telling me I was nuts. In retrospect, I think he was telling me the names didn’t jibe with his investigation. In other words, he knows these brothers exist, but not under those names.”
“I wonder what he’s hiding,” Nate said. “And I wonder how far it goes up the chain.”
Joe’s phone rang again. He said, “Another 777 number.”
Nate said, “It’s always better to apologize than to ask permission.”
Joe breathed deeply and dropped the phone back into his pocket without answering.
Alisha’s uncle, Willie Shoyo, had herded a dozen of his horses into a temporary corral made of twelve-foot rail panels in the sagebrush well out of sight of his home and barn. Beyond the corral were undulating grasslands that rose in elevation and melded with the dark brush marching downward from the mountains. The horses in the corral obviously didn’t like being penned up together, and they were restless and jockeying for preeminence in the nascent herd. In the distance, horses that hadn’t been selected by Shoyo grazed on yellowing grass and pretended they weren’t paying attention to the arrival of the pickup and horse trailer.
As Joe parked and swung out of his truck, he heard the solid thump of a kick and the squeal of the kicked in the pen. It didn’t take long for horses to start establishing the pecking order.
Willie Shoyo wore a King Ropes cap, a green snap-button cowboy shirt, a big buckle with an engraving of a Shoshone rose, and crisp Wranglers tucked into the tops of scuffed Ariat boots. He stood near the corral with his boot on the bottom rail and crossed arms on the top. His hands seemed darker and older than the rest of him, the skin on the back of his hands like coffee-stained leather. Joe thought he had a pleasant face-smooth and round, with sharp dark eyes. Willie’s horses were prized as great cow ponies, and a few had won money in team penning competitions.
Willie said to Nate, “Alisha told me you’d like to rent a few horses.”
Nate said, “Three or four, we haven’t decided.”
“Three,” Joe said. “Geldings. Two for riding and one for packing. I haven’t had much luck with mares in the mountains.”
Willie sized up Joe for the first time and nodded. “I’ve got plenty of geldings to choose from.”
Alisha Whiteplume drove up as Joe looked over the horses in the pen. She got out of her car and stood still appraising Nate with her hands on her hips. Nate ambled over to her, and she didn’t change her expression or posture.
Shoyo had watched the interaction as well. He said, “I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Pickett. Mares can be too emotional at times, even though most of them want to please you. But you can never make them completely happy, in my experience.”
Nate looked over from where he stood with Alisha to Joe and Shoyo and said, “Are we talking about horses here?”
They were all stout quarter horses, sorrels and paints with white socks and all of stolid disposition. Joe wished he’d brought Marybeth because she knew horses better than he. All of the geldings looked good to him.
“How about those three?” he said to Willie, gesturing toward a Tobiano paint, a sorrel, and a red roan.
Willie nodded his head. “Those are good ones,” he said. “Calm and a little dumb. Bombproof.”
“Good.”
Nate hadn’t paid any attention to the transaction, but stood outside the pen nuzzling Alicia. Joe helped Willie cut the three from the herd and shoo the unpicked horses out of the pen through the gate. The released horses ran hard to join the others out in the grass, raising plumes of dust behind them like the tails of comets. The three remaining snorted and paced and looked offended not to be allowed to go with the rest of the herd.
Willie told Joe, “The three horses you picked are named Washakie One, Washakie Two, and Washakie Three.”
“You’re kidding,” Joe said.
Willie shook his head. “I’m not.” He pointed out toward the foothills. “Washakie Four through One Hundred Forty-two are out there grazing.”
Joe smiled, “Got it. It’s easier to remember their names when they’re all named Washakie.”
Shoyo said, “I know each one by color and personality, but they come and go so often I quit giving them individual names.”
Said Joe, “Will you take a government voucher for the cost?”
A frown passed over Willie’s face.
“It’s a state voucher,” Joe said quickly, realizing what the deal was, “not a federal one.”
“So I can’t charge you three times the going rate, then?” Shoyo lamented. He looked as offended as Washakie One, Two, and Three.
“Sorry.”
The cloud passed, and Willie said, “Okay, then.”
From near the pickup, Alisha said, “Uncle Willie, are you sure you want to do this? You’ve heard what happens to Joe Pickett’s horses, haven’t you? They meet the same fate as his vehicles.”
“Thanks, Alisha,” Joe said, his face flushing. He wanted to argue, but he had no argument.
“I’ve heard,” Willie said. “We can hope these horses bring you more luck.”
“I’ll need it,” Joe said.
Willie said, “I understand you need a couple of saddles and a pack saddle outfit, too, because you lost yours with your horses. I can lend you those.”
“Thank you,” Joe said.
“I’m doing this as a favor to my favorite mare,” Willie said, glancing toward Alicia and talking loud enough so she could hear. “I mean my favorite niece.”
“What�
��s he talking about?” Alisha asked Nate suspiciously.
Nate shrugged and said to her, “I don’t understand all this horse talk. You know that.”
As Joe and Nate approached Muddy Gap, towing the horses in the horse trailer, and took the highway toward Rawlins, the Green Mountains loomed like sleeping lions on the horizon. Nate said, “I don’t see where the woman fits. Do you think she’s up there with those brothers voluntarily, or is it some kind of Stockholm-syndrome type of deal? Is she a hostage, a kidnap victim, or a willing accomplice?”
Joe shook his head. “First, we don’t know if it’s Shober or if she’s still okay. She could be anybody.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nate said dismissively.
Said Joe, “If you saw those brothers in person like I did, there’s no way you’d think anyone in their right mind would stay with them willingly. They creeped me out.”
“Maybe you didn’t meet them in the best circumstances,” Nate said.
Joe shrugged. “Diane is a puzzle. I don’t see how those guys could have taken her up into the mountains if she didn’t want to go. She didn’t seem to fear them nearly as much as she regretted letting them down by taking me in. Are you thinking she’s the key to all of this?”
Nate sat back and sighed. “No. I can’t figure out how she fits. Or why, of all the places on earth, she’d end up there.”
Joe grunted.
Nate said, “Well, she had to know people were looking for her a couple of years ago, right? So even if those Grim Brothers grabbed her and kept her captive at the time, from what you said she was moving around of her own free will. If nothing else, she could just up and outrun those knuckleheads.”
“If it was even her,” Joe said wearily.
“And if it isn’t,” Nate asked, “then who is it?”
“Don’t know.”
“If it isn’t, how are you going to tell Mrs. Shober?”
Joe cringed.
After a few more miles, Joe said, “Nate, I want to thank you for coming along. I couldn’t do it without you.”
Nate said, “We haven’t done anything yet except rent some horses.”
Joe didn’t say anything.
“This thing spooked you, didn’t it?”
No response.
“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Nate said. “You got your butt kicked over and over. These guys ran circles around you up there and took everything you had, including your confidence. I can tell. You don’t want to go up there for revenge as much as to see if you can get your courage back, isn’t that it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” Joe said, swerving to avoid hitting a jackrabbit that darted out onto the blacktop. There were so many dead, flat rabbits on this stretch of road that the asphalt looked cottony in places, as if the rabbits had been violently hurled down to the pavement from the sky in a fit of pique.
“Like I said, they kicked your butt up one side of the mountain and down the other,” Nate said.
“You’re really irritating sometimes,” Joe mumbled.
“But what I can’t figure out is why they didn’t finish the job,” Nate said, looking over and locking his eyes on the side of Joe’s face. “They had you down from that shotgun blast, but they didn’t follow up. Guys like that, who hunt for a living, would know to find you in the grass and cut your throat or put one or two into your head. Why didn’t they do that?”
Joe shrugged. “I’ve been wondering that since I woke up in the hospital.”
Said Nate, “I guess maybe Camish was worried about Caleb since you shot him, or they were both tending to ‘Terri Wade’ or Diane Shober or whoever the hell she is. But it doesn’t jibe. They should have hunted you down and finished the job. Then they should have burned your body and buried the remains so deep no one would ever find you. That’s what I would have done.”
Joe said, “Not that you have experience in that sort of thing.”
“I do, though.”
“Nate, I was being sarcastic.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Nate said. “Back to my point. Why didn’t they finish you off?”
Joe looked over. “I have no idea.”
“Maybe they aren’t as bad as you think?” Nate said.
“Not a chance,” Joe said. “They’re worse. They’ve got a woman up there against her will. And who knows what else we’ll find?”
Nate rubbed his chin. “Maybe we’ll find that lady wants to stay.”
“No way,” Joe said again.
“Another thing,” Nate said. “They called you a government man. I find that interesting. Not a game warden or a fish cop or whatever. But a government man.”
Joe said, “I’ve been called everything else, but I’ve never been called that before.”
“But that’s what you are.”
“I guess I never thought of myself that way,” Joe said. “I’m surprised they used that choice of words.”
Nate smiled slyly. “That says something about their worldview, doesn’t it?”
Before Joe could answer, his phone rang again. He expected a 777 number but saw on the display it was from MBP Management. Joe opened the phone, said, “Yes?”
She said, “Has the governor found you yet?”
“No.”
“He called here a few minutes ago. When I told him you weren’t here, he didn’t sound very happy.”
“I can imagine,” Joe said.
“He said he’s been trying to reach you all day.”
“Yeah, well. ”
“When he asked me where you were, I couldn’t lie to him,” Marybeth said. “I mean, he’s your boss. And he is the governor.”
Joe considered telling her it was better to apologize, but thought better of it and said, “I understand.”
“He asked what you were driving and which route you were taking.”
Joe frowned. “He did?”
“That’s not all,” she said. “He told me this thing is blowing up all of a sudden and he needed to find you. Then he hung up. You know how he is.”
The cutoff toward Rawlins was ahead, and Joe tapped the brake to release the cruise control so he could swing into the turn. “Yup,” Joe said, “I know how he is.”
He closed his phone and dropped it to the seat. They topped a rise before dropping down into Rawlins. When they crested the hill, Joe saw the blue and red wigwag lights, the phalanx of state trooper vehicles, and the long row of eighteen-wheelers directly ahead, all waiting to pass through the roadblock.
“Oh, no,” Nate said, sitting up straight.
Joe looked over and saw his friend strip off his shoulder holster and cram it beneath the bench seat like a high-schooler hiding his open container.
“I’m not going back to Cheyenne,” Nate said softly.
Joe considered braking and turning around, but he was on a one-way exit and the ditches on either side of the road were too steep for him to pull the horse trailer through without high-centering the rig.
“I’ve got to keep going,” Joe said, “unless you have any ideas.”
“You could let me out here,” Nate said. “Let me run for it.”
Joe looked ahead. He counted four highway patrol cars and a Carbon County sheriff SUV.
“They’ll run you down in two minutes,” Joe said.
“Not if I take them out,” Nate said. Joe knew the.454 rounds were capable of penetrating the engine block of a vehicle, and he’d seen Nate do exactly that.
“If you take them out, we’re both going to prison,” Joe said, easing on his brakes so he wouldn’t rear-end a Walmart eighteen-wheeler. At that moment, both of his side mirrors filled up with the grinning chrome grille of another semitruck.
“We’re hemmed in,” Joe said.
Ahead of them, uniformed troopers walked along the shoulder of the road from car to car.
Nate sat back, his eyes glassy. He read aloud the words painted on the back of the rig ahead of them.
He sneered, “Always Low Prices. Always.”
24
Two state troopers approached Joe’s pickup, one on each side of the road. The trooper on the left was tall and stoop-shouldered and had a brushy mustache and hangdog jowls. The trooper on the right was short and wide and his hard, round belly strained at the buttons on his uniform shirt. When he looked up and saw Joe, his eyes narrowed and he put his right hand on the grip of his weapon. Joe couldn’t hear him speak to the other trooper, but he read his lips: It’s him.
The tall trooper put his hand on his gun as well, and as they walked up Joe lowered the driver’s and passenger-side windows.
“You Joe Pickett?” the tall trooper asked. His name badge read BOB GARRARD.
“Yes, sir.”
The other trooper couldn’t take his eyes off Nate, looking at him with practiced and wary cop eyes that came from approaching hundreds of pulled-over vehicles on the highway. He stayed a few feet away from the vehicle so, if necessary, he could draw cleanly and fire.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Nate said to him. Even though his gun was under the seat, Nate sounded as deadly as he looked, Joe thought.
“Governor Rulon is looking for you,” Garrard said to Joe. “Our orders are to take you to him.”
“To Cheyenne?” Joe said. “That’s three hours away.”
“What, are you on a schedule?” Garrard asked, with a hint of a sneer.
“Sort of,” Joe said.
“Naw, not to Cheyenne,” the trooper said. “He’s at the airport. He flew in about an hour ago and he’s waiting for you.”
Garrard looked in the back of Joe’s pickup. “What’s in the box?”
“My dad,” Joe said. “I don’t know where to spread his ashes.”
Garrard did a double take. “So you’re just driving him around the state? Like taking him on a vacation?”
Joe nodded.
The squat trooper on the other side of the truck said to Nate, “We were supposed to be looking for one guy. Pickett. Who might you be? Do you have some ID on you?”
“No.” Nate’s voice was soft but firm. Joe knew it was the way he spoke just before he tore someone’s ear off.
Joe said with false but distracting cheer, “Lead the way, men, and I’ll follow. The governor’s waiting, remember?”