Below Zero

by C. J. Box

  “He’s gone.”

  Joe noted the thick Okie accents—he’d heard a lot of them lately in the area.

  “Are you sure?”

  Brad said, “He’s long gone. I seen his truck go over that hill a while back and now I can’t even hear it.”

  “Let’s give it ten minutes anyway. If you see his lights or hear anything, shout.”

  “You bet, Ron. But you know I gotta get back. I’m so goddamned late now Barb’s gonna kill me.” A little bit of panic in Brad’s voice, Joe thought.

  “She’ll live,” Ron said.

  “Yeah, she’ll live. But she’ll make my life a living hell. She’s probably throwin’ my clothes out into the yard right now.”

  “Heh-heh,” Ron laughed. Then, “What was he doing down there all that time? That game warden?”

  “I don’t know. But you can bet he got your plate number and he’ll know who you are.”

  “He can’t prove nothing, though. All we gotta say is the truck stalled and we walked out trying to get help. That’s our story, and we’re stickin’ to it.”

  “Yeah.” Cautious.

  “We’re okay.” Arrogant. “He can’t prove nothin’.”

  “Yeah.” Unsure.

  “ ’Cause he’s an asshole,” Ron said.

  “Yeah,” Brad said.

  Joe thought, Ron is the Mad Archer. Brad is his buddy along for the ride. Brad will turn on Ron. Ron is toast.

  Joe felt strangely disappointed. For a month he’d tracked the man, studied his crimes, gathered evidence. In the back of his mind, he supposed he’d built Ron into something he was not. Ron was just a stupid redneck poacher with too much time, too much money, and too many arrows.

  WHEN JOE BATHED THEM with the beam of his Maglite, Ron was reaching for his door handle with one hand while gripping the compound bow with the other. Brad was urinating on the road. Both were wearing full camo and face paint. They were in their early thirties, thick and hairy. Energy workers. Empty beer cans and energy drink containers littered the bed of the pickup.

  “Hello, boys,” Joe said, the Glock lying alongside the barrel of the flashlight.

  Ron and Brad looked nervous and scared. Joe was, too, but he feigned confidence. He knew the blinding beam of his flashlight was his best defense if either of them decided to go for a weapon. He could see them clearly, and all they could see of him was the intense white light.

  “Drop that bow,” Joe said to Ron. “Toss it into the back of your pickup. The arrows, too.”

  Ron did. The arrows clattered in the bed of his truck.

  “Both of you, up against the truck, legs spread.”

  “He did it all!” Brad shouted suddenly, reaching for the sky, his spray going everywhere.

  “Shut the fuck up, Brad,” Ron hissed.

  “I never shot once,” Brad said, “not a single damn time. I was just along for the ride.”

  “Would you shut up!” Ron said, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Up against the truck, fellows,” Joe said. To Brad, “Zip up first.” To Ron, “I’m kind of hoping you make a stupid move since you’re the guy who shot my dog.”

  Ron turned quickly and assumed the position as if he’d done it before.

  “That dog was the worst thing Ron done,” Brad said, also turning around.

  Ron sighed, “That dog ain’t good for nothing.”

  Joe jammed the muzzle of the Glock into Ron’s ear hard enough to make him wince. “And you are?” he asked.

  JOE FOUND a .357 Magnum revolver under the pickup seat, but neither Ron nor Brad was armed. There was also a baggie containing two vials of crystal meth. He said to Ron, “I’ll stay right on your bumper all the way into town. Don’t even think about running. I’ve caught you boys cold and there aren’t enough roads around here to get away on.”

  “You mean I’ve got to drive my own self into town to get arrested?”

  Joe nodded. “Either that, or I cuff you and throw you in the back of my truck with that eagle you shot.”

  “Can I ride in with you?” Brad asked Joe.

  “Sure you can, Brad,” Joe said. To Ron, “Lead on, Mad Archer.”

  BRAD TEARFULLY CONFESSED into Joe’s microcassette while Joe drove toward Baggs and Ron followed. Every crime had been committed by Ron Connelly, Brad said.

  “Why’d he do it?” Joe asked.

  “Ron claimed at first he was tuning up for archery season, but things got plumb out of hand. The problem is Ron is as horny as a three-peckered owl. There’s plenty of natural gas but there are no women here, you know. I got Barb, and she’s no treat, but Ron . . . Ron is a mess.”

  “Ah,” Joe said. His hands were still shaking from adrenaline, but he hoped Brad couldn’t see them in the dark.

  “Ron did it all. Every one. Ron should be in prison,” Brad said.

  “Don’t worry,” Joe said, “I’ll do my best,” knowing jail time was unlikely for the game violations but the meth might be the ticket.

  “Good,” Brad said.

  After a few miles, Brad said, “Jesus, you’re that game warden, aren’t you? The one from up north?”

  Joe didn’t respond.

  “I heard about you,” Brad said.

  When Joe cleared the mouth of the canyon in the dark, he heard his radio suddenly gush with voices. He was back in range. At the same time, the cell phone in his pocket burred with vibration.

  He took it out, flipped it open.

  Three missed calls from Marybeth.

  Uh-oh.

  4

  IN THE THREE HOURS IT TOOK TO GET THE POACHERS BOOKED and processed into the tiny Baggs jail, the word got out within the community that the Mad Archer was in custody. As Joe hoped, the deputy sheriff added drug charges to Joe’s list of game violations, and a quick search of Ron Connelly’s history via the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database showed outstanding warrants from Texas for additional drug-related charges and nonpayment of child support. In Joe’s experience as a game warden, the bad ones rarely just committed game violations. Behind the violation was usually a pattern of serious offenses in other fields. Ron Connelly, the Mad Archer, was a perfect example of the theory. Ron’s pal Brad, however, was clean except for a seven-year-old possession charge that had been pled out.

  The deputy, a young former Iraq War vet named Rich Brokaw, was new to the job but had the weary old eyes of someone who’d seen things far beyond whatever life in Baggs could bring him. He said to Brad, “You’re free to go, but don’t even think of missing your court date.”

  Brad refused to move. He, like Joe, had been noting the number of vehicles gathering outside on the street in front of the jail in the past twenty minutes. He, like Joe, could hear the rumble of men’s voices out on the sidewalk and the occasional shout. Apparently, the bars had emptied and the patrons were right outside wanting a piece of the Mad Archer and his accomplice. The new county building, financed with energy money, was under construction across the street. So the jail was located in a temporary modular unit on an empty lot. The modular was cheap and the walls quivered in strong wind. There was a single jail cell inside, open to the deputy’s office. The setup reminded Joe of the friendly small-town set for The Andy Griffith Show. If the men gathering outside stormed the door, they could be inside in seconds.

  “If it’s all right with you guys,” Brad said, “I’ll spend the night in here.”

  “Pussy,” Connelly jeered. “Assclown.”

  “It’s like a damn cowboy movie,” Brad said to Joe, pretending he didn’t hear Ron. “The mob out there, Jesus. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come back with torches and pitchforks and shit.”

  Joe said, “Neither would I.”

  “Maybe we can sneak you out the back,” the deputy told Brad.

  “No way,” Brad said, shaking his head. “I ain’t leaving tonight. If you want, I’ll pay you to stay here. There’s got to be a cost for staying the night, right? I’ll cover it so the taxpayers don’t hav
e to.”

  Brokaw looked at Joe and smiled, then went back to filling out the paperwork for Ron Connelly. Joe still clutched his cell phone. Three calls were akin to a home-front three-alarm fire, but when he’d tried to connect from the pickup, their home phone was busy. He’d left a message saying he had a man in custody and would call the second he had a moment of privacy. Marybeth knew the drill. He hoped that moment came soon, because he could feel his stomach start to roil. There were so many scenarios he could imagine involving Sheridan, Lucy, Marybeth, his crazy mother-in-law, Missy. Maybe his friend Nate had been apprehended by the FBI?

  Someone pounded hard on the front door of the modular building, shaking the walls. Ron Connelly stared at the door, tried to act calm, but failed in his attempt. His hands gripped the bars of the jail door as if to milk them. Brad squirmed in a hardback chair as if he needed a bathroom.

  Joe said, “If you guys would have shot somebody or robbed a bank or something minor like that, it would be calm out there. But you killed some nice game animals out of season and you shot that dog. So as far as those people out there go, it’s personal.”

  Ron Connelly nervously raked his fingers through his long hair and chinned toward Joe and the deputy. “Those rednecks out there want blood and there’s just the two of you between them and us.”

  “Yup,” Joe said. “And if it were up to me, I’d step aside.”

  Ron’s face twitched. He didn’t know if Joe was kidding or not. Joe didn’t, either. He disliked Connelly more every minute he was exposed to him. What kind of man shot an eagle on the ground? Or Tube?

  “I’ll up my offer to stay here tonight,” Brad said.

  Brokaw finished the page he was working on, looked to Joe, said, “Okay. Let ’em in.”

  Ron Connelly ran in terror to the back of the cell. Brad shrieked.

  “Just kidding,” the deputy said, standing up and stifling a smile. “I’ll go outside and talk to ’em.”

  Joe watched with admiration as the deputy stepped outside with a shotgun and told everyone to calm down and go home. When a man shouted that the Mad Archer should be released to them, the deputy racked the pump on his shotgun, said, “Go ahead, boys, I got nothing to lose. I don’t like this job much, anyhow.”

  The crowd dispersed, and the deputy came back in, sighed, “Whew,” to Joe.

  “Impressive,” Joe said.

  “I learned in Basra that there is no sound in nature that makes men move along faster than the pumping of a shotgun. Except maybe a chainsaw, but we won’t go there.”

  SIMULTANEOUS WITH the snap of the jail door on Ron and Brad, Joe opened his phone and speed-dialed Marybeth.

  She was anxious. Someone claiming to be April had called their old house.

  It took a moment to register. His stomach did a half-turn. Ron, Brad, the deputy, Baggs all faded from his consciousness. “Is this a sick joke?”

  “I wish I could say for sure.”

  “Impossible,” Joe said.

  “Of course it’s impossible,” she said. But there was a hesitation—an opening he could sense that maybe she thought it wasn’t impossible.

  “We paid for her funeral. We were at her funeral.”

  “There was never an autopsy.”

  “There was no need. I saw her, Marybeth,” Joe said. “She was there.”

  “You saw her before. You didn’t see her after. None of us did.”

  “Impossible,” he said again.

  “All I can say is someone called our old house and asked to speak to Sheridan and Lucy. And whoever called identified herself as April and now has Sheridan’s cell phone number.”

  “This is the sickest joke anyone’s ever played on us.”

  “It’s depraved,” she said. “But Jason said the girl asked for ‘Sherry.’ No one has ever called Sheridan that except Lucy and April.”

  He waited a moment, said, “Tell Sheridan not to shut her phone off tonight.”

  “She’s a teenager, Joe. She never shuts off her phone.”

  He tapped out an e-mail to his district supervisor advising him of his decision to take immediate personal time, knowing it wouldn’t be received until the next day when he was already gone. Being the governor’s unofficial point man had its privileges. He snapped the phone shut.

  The deputy was looking at him. “You okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “Did somebody die?”

  Joe said, “Just the opposite.”

  HE DROVE NORTH on lonely state highway 789, where his headlights illuminated sudden herds of mule deer and pronghorn antelope along the road. The adrenaline rush that had surged through him during the arrest and arraignment of the Mad Archer was starting to wear off and a small headache, like a marble-sized ball of black, formed behind his right eye. Wildlife was everywhere, and they all seemed to be restless, on the move, as if anticipating full-fledged hunting season in two weeks. He had to slow down and stay alert. The night sky was clear and missing a moon and the only lights for the first fifty-one miles were the vertical twinkles from distant natural gas wells. Tube was in the front seat with his head on Joe’s lap, where he dreamed and drooled. The eagle was still lashed to the inside wall of his pickup bed with the sock on her head. He felt like he was piloting a traveling freak show in search of rubes who would pay admission.

  Maxine, his Labrador who had once been scared white by something she saw in the timber, had passed on the previous winter. Her passing had been traumatic but also a relief of sorts because the old girl went deaf and blind in a remarkable hurry and suffered briefly from the liver condition that took her life. He’d buried her in a howling windstorm in the breaklands she loved, with Sheridan reading a eulogy that was whipped away by the wind. Her loss left a hole in their family that would likely never be filled. Tube might ease some of the pain, he hoped. If nothing else, it was impossible to look at the dog and not smile.

  ON THE LONG top-of-the-world drive over the Shirley Mountains in darkness so complete that at times he felt he was in an outdoor tunnel, Joe recalled the incidents of six years before, where they’d lost April in the snow on Battle Mountain.

  The Keeley family of Mississippi had played a significant and tragic role in Joe and Marybeth’s lives. Ote Keeley, the outfitter father, had turned up dead on Joe’s woodpile nine years before. Joe had interviewed his wife, Jeannie, as part of the investigation, and while he was talking with her was the first time he saw April, who was dirty, sick, poorly clothed, and six years old at the time. When Jeannie abandoned April, Marybeth swooped in and took the girl in as their foster daughter. She was nine years old and halfway through third grade at Saddlestring Elementary when Jeannie returned to the valley with the Sovereigns and took her back with a legal maneuver. The Sovereigns were a motley collection of Montana Freemen, survivalists, and conspiracy theorists lead by an old bear of a man named Wade Brockius who chose the Bighorns to establish a mountain outpost during the worst winter of recent memory and make their stand. Although the Sovereigns had really broken no laws other than overstaying their campground permit, a rogue Forest Service district supervisor named Melinda Strickland, with assistance from overeager FBI, BATF, and local police, surrounded the Sovereign camp and forced the issue.

  The memories were still painfully fresh because they’d never faded very far beneath the surface, and they came back and he was there again . . .

  He had been slumped against the outside of the command Sno-Cat, but he now stood up. He rubbed his face hard. He didn’t know the procedure for a hostage situation—they didn’t teach that to game wardens—but he knew this wasn’t it. This was madness.

  He reached into his snowmobile suit and found his compact binoculars. Moving away from the Sno-Cat, he scanned the compound. The nose of Brockius’s trailer faced the road. Through the thin curtains, he could see Brockius just as Munker had described.

  Then he saw someone else.

  Jeannie Keeley was now at the window, pulling the curtain aside to look out. Her
face looked tense, and angry. Beneath her chin was another, smaller, paler face. April.

  “Fire a warning shot,” Melinda Strickland told Munker. . . .

  The slim black barrel of a rifle slid out of blinding whiteness and swung slowly toward the trailer window. Joe screamed “NO!” as he involuntarily launched himself from the cover of the vehicles in the direction of the shooter. As he ran, he watched in absolute horror as the barrel stopped on a target and fired. The shot boomed across the mountain, jarring the dreamlike snowy morning violently awake.

  Immediately after the shot, Joe realized what he had just done, how he had exposed himself completely in the open road with the assault team behind him and the hidden Sovereigns somewhere in front. Maybe the Sovereigns were as shocked as he was, he thought, since no one had fired back.

  But within the hush of the snowfall and the faint returning echo of the shot, there was a high-pitched hiss. It took a moment for Joe to focus on the sound, and when he did he realized that its origin was a newly severed pipe that had run between a large propane tank on the side of the trailer and the trailer itself. The thin copper tubing rose from the snow and bent toward the trailer like a rattlesnake ready to strike. He could clearly see an open space between the broken tip of the tubing and the fitting on the side of the trailer where the pipe should have been attached. High-pressure gas was shooting into the side vents of the trailer.

  No! Joe thought. Munker couldn’t have—

  He looked up to see a flurry of movement behind the curtains inside the trailer a split second before there was a sudden, sickening whump that seemed to suck all of the air off the mountain. The explosion came from inside the trailer, blowing out the window glass and instantly crushing two tires so the trailer rocked and heaved to one side like a wounded animal. The hissing gas from the severed pipe was now on fire, and it became a furious gout of flame aimed at the thin metal skin of the trailer.

  Suddenly, a burning figure ran from the trailer, its gyrations framed by fire, and crumpled into the snow.