Blood Trail

by C. J. Box

  “He was hired by the governor to track the man who shot your uncle,” Joe said.

  “Ah, man,” Urman cried, dropping to his knees before Lothar’s body. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do? CPR or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said.

  Urman bent over and struck Lothar’s chest with his fist. The body bounced. “Anything?” he asked.

  Joe shook his head.

  Urman hit Lothar again and again, so hard Joe thought he heard the dull snap of a rib.

  “That’s enough,” Joe said. “He’s gone.”

  Urman sat back, his face so pale it was the same blue-white shade of the moon and stars. “I killed a man,” Urman said.

  “It was self-defense,” Joe said. “I’ll back you up on that one all the way.”

  “Jesus,” Urman said, his eyes glinting with tears. “All that time in Iraq and I never killed anyone. . . .”

  “And all this time,” Joe said, his stomach turning sour, “we were following you.”

  THE FRONT of the pickup Robey and Conway were in bucked slightly and a sharp crack snapped through the night. Robey reacted instinctively by grabbing the steering wheel with both hands.

  “What was that?” Conway asked, his voice high. “A stray bullet?”

  “I don’t know,” Robey said. “Listen . . .”

  He could hear a hissing sound outside and felt the truck begin to list to the side. “I’m going to see what happened,” he said, reaching for the door handle.

  I SEE the dome light come on inside the pickup, illuminating the two men inside. I’m confused momentarily. I don’t recognize them at first. Then I do. The one on the driver’s side was in the airport today with the game warden and Randy Pope waiting for a passenger on the plane. The other at first confounds me because I didn’t expect him here, never saw it coming.

  I can’t believe my good fortune. It’s as if he was delivered to me, presented as a gift. He was the least guilty of them, but guilty all the same.

  I quickly work the bolt action and chamber another round. The acrid but sweet smell of gunpowder haloes my head from the first shot. I make a mental note to retrieve the spent brass before I leave.

  The pickup door opens and the man I don’t know gets out. He walks to the front of the truck, squats down to look at the tire I shot as it flattens. As I thought, the action drew him out.

  I clearly hear the man squatting by the tire say, “Come look at this,” and see my prey reach for his door handle and I thank my good fortune once again and know my plan has worked. I put the crosshairs in the center of the target’s chest and squeeze the trigger. An instant before the shot bucks the rifle upward, I see the other man unexpectedly stand up in the line of fire, but it’s too late to stop . . .

  CHRIS URMAN was explaining to Joe that he’d returned to the crime scene to track the killer on his own, that he’d been “less than impressed” with the sheriff and his ability to pursue his uncle’s killer in a timely fashion, that he’d participated in enough night patrols in the Anbar Province to follow a track and keep his cool, when they heard the shot.

  “What was that?” Urman asked.

  “It came from back at the truck,” Joe said, fighting a feeling of cold dread. He knew it wasn’t Robey trying to signal him because he would have used the radio. It was someone else. It was Frank Urman’s killer.

  Joe snatched the radio from his belt as two more quick shots rolled through the mountains.

  I’M OUT of breath from running down the saddle slope and up the other side to the pickup. The night is cold and still. The only sound I hear is from my hard breathing.

  As I jam the poker chip into my prey’s gaping mouth I hear the radio inside the truck come to life.

  “Robey? This is Joe. Is everything all right?”

  No, Joe, it isn’t.

  I have a decision to make. I had much more planned for my target but this may have to do for now.

  “Robey, can you hear me?”

  I have the urge to pick up the mike and tell him Robey can’t hear him, but I don’t.

  And I hear the sound of a motor, another vehicle grinding up the road from the direction of town. I see a splash of headlights in the trees less than a mile away, hear an engine downshift.

  As I step over the other body, apparently a man named Robey who had the bad luck to step in front of my first shot, I hear the radio again, the voice on the other end more urgent.

  “Robey, this is Joe. Talk to me, Robey. Please talk to me....”

  I bend down and place my gloved hand on Robey’s face and gently push his eyelids closed. I ask God to forgive me. This man did nothing to deserve this, and I truly am sorry.

  12

  AT THE SAME TIME, Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope pulled his departmental SUV into the lighted parking lot of the Saddlestring Holiday Inn. He was both tired and anxious, and a little surprised he’d heard nothing from Buck Lothar over the radio. He checked his wristwatch: 10:15 P.M. It just seemed later. The wait was killing him.

  He’d had an unsatisfying dinner by himself in that Burg-O-PARDNER restaurant on Main, finishing only half his steak, drinking only half his beer. The conversations at the tables around him among the locals were all about the murders of hunters in the mountains, how Governor Rulon may declare a state of emergency and lock all of them out of their own land, deny them their heritage and their rights. The word was out and it would spread like wildifire. There was no way to contain it, despite their best efforts. The news would be statewide quickly. Would it go national? These people, he thought. They had no idea what kind of pressure he was under. He’d kept his head down but was recognized nevertheless. When a fiftyish man who looked more like a bear than a human approached his table and asked him what the Game and Fish was doing to solve the crime, Pope said, “Everything we can.”

  “Then why in the hell are you sitting here eating a damn steak?” the local asked.

  ALTHOUGH HE could have used a side door and gone straight to his room, Pope used the main entrance so he could pass the front desk. He’d clipped the handheld to his belt in case Lothar or Pickett called him. The hotel had been built in the early 1980s when it must have made some kind of sense to put a huge fake waterfall in the cavernous lobby to simulate something tropical. The sound of stale rushing water struck him as incongruous. Rooms rose on three sides of the lobby for three floors. Most were empty.

  “Any messages?” he asked the night clerk, an attractive, slim blonde with a mesmerizing New Zealand accent. She was the reason he came in through the front doors.

  “Why, yes,” she said, handing him a message. “You’re to call the governor.” Her eyes widened as she said it, which he liked. She was impressed with his importance, finally. The night before, when he had explained to her who he was, she didn’t get it. After going over how many employees he had under him, how big his agency was and therefore how prominent he was, she told him how the pop star Prince had once been in the hotel and said she wished she’d had a chance to meet him.

  “In fact,” she said, “he stayed in the same suite you’re staying in—the Hunting Lodge.”

  Which was the best room in the place: two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bar, a living room decorated with deer, antelope, and mule deer trophies courtesy of the owner of the establishment. The walls displayed photos of the owner on safari, in the mountains, smiling over dead animals. Pope approved of the decor since hunting meant revenue for his agency, and wondered what Prince had thought of it, whoever he was.

  “The governor, huh.” Pope took the message, saying, “I see he left his private number for me to call him back,” and glanced up to gauge her reaction, hoping she’d be impressed.

  “When Prince was here he left the housekeeper a one-hundred-dollar tip,” she said.

  He detected an amused sneer at the corners of her pretty mouth.

  THE CARPET in the hallways, like the rooms themselves and the stinking waterfall in the lobby, was tired, of a
nother era, but this place was the best he could do in the sleepy little backwater town of Saddlestring. Pope dug his key card out of the back pocket of his jeans as he walked the length of the long hall, past the humming ice maker and vending machines, debating whether he should call the governor immediately or wait until he had something to report. He decided on the latter. The last thing he wanted was the governor to focus on and bring up the question of why he was back in town in his room instead of with his team at the crime scene.

  He placed his left hand on the door while he bent to fit the key card into the lock with his right, and was surprised when the door swung open a few inches. Stepping back, he cursed housekeeping for being so careless. The last thing they would get from him, he thought, was a hundred-dollar tip.

  Then he thought, What if it isn’t housekeeping?

  For the first time in his twenty-five-year career, Randy Pope drew his weapon from its holster somewhere other than the shooting range in Cheyenne. He’d fired the .40 Glock because of the departmental requirement to recertify, but it felt heavy and unfamiliar in his hand. He tried to remember where the safety switch was, and only then recalled it didn’t have one. He simply needed to rack the slide and it was armed. He did so, loudly, signaling to whoever was inside his room that he meant business. He braced himself, and fought an involuntary quiver in his lower lip.

  There was no sound, no reaction, from inside. Should he call the sheriff? Why should he, the head of an important state agency, a man whose hourly and daily decisions steered a multimillion-dollar department through the storm-tossed waters of state bureaucracy, risk his own life when he had dozens of less-valuable employees and local law enforcement available to do so on his behalf?

  But what if it was nothing? Could he risk the embarrassment of calling the local sheriff if the housekeeper had simply forgotten to lock the stupid door to his suite? The gossip afterward would be vicious.

  Damn it, he thought, and gently kneed the door open, both hands cradling his weapon in front of him.

  The room looked to be in order. Nothing out of place. The garbage near the door had been emptied. A quick glance into his bedroom revealed the bed had been made, which meant the housekeeping staff had been there.

  But had he left the light on in the sitting room? He couldn’t remember leaving it on that morning.

  He rounded the bar, his weapon out in front of him. There was a smell. Definitely an odor, he thought. Like something had died.

  Then he saw it. The mounted elk head that had been over the fake fireplace was lying on the floor. The black glass eyes of the mount reflected the light from the hallway. Its mouth was pursed into a permanent, silent bugle. But why would it smell?

  His eyes shot up the wall to where the mount had been, and Randy Pope screamed, dropped his gun, and backpedaled across the carpet until he tripped and fell backward onto the faux-leather couch.

  Frank Urman’s severed head was spiked into the wall where the elk head mount had been that morning.

  13

  IN HER third-hour social studies class at Saddlestring High School, Sheridan Pickett idly drew sketches of smiling faces, flowers, and falcons in the margin of her notebook while waiting for class to begin. Her teacher, Mrs. Whaling, an attractive, doe-eyed blonde from the Northeast who, to Sheridan, infused the mountain West where she now lived with too much Disneyfied romance, had announced earlier with breathless glee that there would be a “very special guest speaker” that morning. When she did, several boys including Jason Kiner and Sheridan’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Jarrod Haynes (a dream to look at but a nightmare to have a conversation with) moaned with audible disdain and their reaction was met with an icy glare from their teacher. Sheridan kept her head down.

  Mrs. Whaling was fond of guest speakers. She was also fond of showing movies during classtime that stretched over several days, silent reading, and hour-long forays into topics that had nothing to do with the curriculum. Sheridan found the class a waste of time, but couldn’t transfer out because she needed the requirement. She did her best to feign interest, read the textbook even though she wasn’t sure Mrs. Whaling had looked at it in years, and try not to laugh at Jarrod’s mumbled stupid jokes. He could be funny in an irreverent, sophomoric way, she had to admit.

  Today was worse than most days already, though, because of what had happened at home the night before and that morning. A sense of dread had enveloped her before she entered the building that morning and she had trouble shedding it or pushing it aside. She’d not been able to concentrate on anything at school because her head and heart were at home, with her mom, with her dad.

  She almost didn’t notice when Mrs. Whaling opened the door to the hallway. A big man with flowing blond hair and a barrel chest and a thousand-megawatt smile came in trailing a dark, pretty woman pushing a stroller.

  “Kids,” Mrs. Whaling said beaming, grasping her hands together in thrall in front of her bosom, “this is Klamath Moore.”

  “Save the wildlife!” Klamath Moore boomed, thrusting his arms into the air as if signaling a touchdown.

  SHERIDAN HAD been awakened by the telephone ringing at five-thirty that morning, a sound she normally would have slept right through. But it was the way her mother answered it out in the hall and talked—with such emotional earnestness and gravity—that connected with Sheridan’s semiconsciousness in a primal mother-daughter way and jerked her awake. She lay there for a few moments in the darkness, hearing snatches of conversation as her mother paced up and down the hall the way she did when a situation was serious:

  “Not Robey? Oh my God, Joe . . .”

  “. . . hospital . . .”

  “Three people shot and the other two dead . . .”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? . . .”

  “How could this happen?”

  “Why did this Lothar guy start shooting? Why didn’t he identify himself? He put both of you in danger . . .”

  “Another poker chip?”

  “This is awful, Joe, just awful...”

  Sheridan wrapped herself in her robe and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table looking pale, her eyes hollow and staring at nothing at all, her hands and the cordless phone on her lap as the coffeemaker percolated on the counter.

  “Mom?”

  Her mother jumped at the greeting, and quickly tried to assume her usual confident look of parental authority. Sheridan appreciated the attempt although it was a failure.

  “Are you okay? Is Dad okay?”

  “Okay is not the word for it,” her mom said. “I just talked to him. He’s at the hospital. Our friend Robey Hersig is in critical condition and not expected to last the morning.” Her mom took a deep breath, fighting back tears of frustration, and when she did so Sheridan felt a sympathetic welling in her own eyes even though she didn’t yet know what the situation was, only that it was affecting her mother so deeply that she was talking to her adult-to-adult, which was both thrilling and frightening at the same time.

  “Robey was shot last night up in the mountains where your dad was. Two other men were killed, one by accident, one not by accident—”

  Sheridan interrupted, “But Dad’s all right?”

  Her mom nodded and her face softened. “He’s not hurt. But he’s hurting, and I feel for him. He said the man who shot the hunter came back and killed Robey and another man I don’t know. It’s complicated. He says he feels guilty he’s the only one who made it through unscathed, that it was pure luck.”

  “Thank God he’s okay,” Sheridan said.

  “Yes, thank God for that. But poor Nancy Hersig and their two children. I can’t even imagine . . .”

  Sheridan pictured the Hersig kids. A boy who was a junior in high school and somewhat of a derelict, and a girl in junior high she’d last seen clutching a lunch sack and backpack on the school bus.

  “Will Mr. Hersig make it, do you think?”

  “Joe said the doctors doubt it. But we can pray for him.”

  Sheridan
shook her head. She didn’t want all the horrible details but she was confused as to what had happened. She wasn’t sure her mom even knew everything.

  “Come here,” her mom said, extending her arms.

  Sheridan did, and let her mother pull her close and squeeze her the way she hadn’t, it seemed, in years. Sheridan squeezed back.

  “Your poor father,” her mom said. “He’s sick about this.”

  “I’m just glad he’s not hurt.”

  “Me too, darling,” her mom said. “Me too. But like him, I feel a little guilty for being so happy he is the only one who made it through the night.”

  “What’s going on?” Lucy asked from the doorway.

  Sheridan and her mother quickly released each other, her mom becoming a mother again. Sheridan morphed into the role of older sister.

  As her mom sat Lucy down to tell her everything was all right, that there’d been an accident but her dad was okay, the telephone rang. Sheridan answered, hoping it would be her father.

  “Hello, little lady,” the voice said. “May I please speak with Joe?”

  “Who is calling?”

  “My name’s Spencer Rulon. I’m the governor of Wyoming.”

  At the name, Sheridan narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, said, “Quit trying to get my dad killed.”

  “Honey . . . I . . .” he stammered.

  Her mom wrenched the phone away from her before she could say more.

  KLAMATH MOORE paced the front of the classroom like a big cat in a cage, his shoulders thrust forward, his hands grasped behind his back, moving as if propelled by internal demons that would not let him rest.

  Mrs. Whaling said, “By point of introduction, I’ve been following Mr. Moore and his cause for quite some time, long before I moved here from Vermont. I read his blog daily and I’ve seen him talk and debate on CNN and other networks. He’s very controversial but very interesting, and he has some important things to say. When I heard he was here in our little community, I just had to invite him to school. Please welcome Mr. Klamath Moore. . . .” She stepped back and clapped, which at first was a dry, hollow sound in the room until the class got the message and joined in.