Trophy Hunt

by C. J. Box

  “Anything in regard to Tuff or the other guy?” Joe asked.

  “Nothing of significance,” Hersig said. “I know Barnum and Portenson have been interviewing people who knew them, that sort of thing. Standard procedure. But if either of them have anything, they haven’t told me yet. The investigation is stone cold, and although I hate to say it, we’re just sitting around waiting for another corpse, or a lucky break. But there’s nothing so far. That’s why I haven’t called a new meeting.”

  “Robey,” Joe said, “given the situation I want to widen my part of the investigation.”

  “You mean investigate the murders?” Hersig sounded hesitant.

  “Yup.”

  “That’ll piss off Barnum, for sure.”

  “I can live with that.”

  Hersig chuckled uncomfortably. “I’m not sure I can authorize that, Joe.”

  “You don’t have to. I’m independent. I’m a game warden; they have no authority over what I do or don’t do.”

  “Aw, Joe . . .” Then: “What’s your angle?”

  “I’m not sure I have one. But I can’t see how it could hurt to look at the murders from another perspective. Maybe we can compare notes at a task-force meeting and find some discrepancies in our information. That might lead us somewhere.”

  Hersig didn’t reply. In his mind, Joe could see Hersig sitting forward in his chair, elbows on his desk, concern on his face as he thought it through. “Alright, alright,” he said. “But out of courtesy I’ll need to advise Barnum and Portenson.”

  “Fine.”

  “And that sound you’ll hear will be the explosion when Barnum gets the news,” Hersig said.

  “Hey, those guys are welcome to go talk to Garrett or zoom around with their sirens on looking at crop circles that aren’t crop circles,” Joe said. “Maybe they’ll figure out something I missed.”

  “As if they’d do that.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Good luck, Joe.”

  “Thank you,” he said, rolling toward town. Here’s where we start to make people angry.

  PART

  THREE

  20

  HIS STARTING PLACE would be the site of Tuff Montegue’s murder, Joe decided. For reasons he had trouble articulating even to himself, he felt that Tuff’s death was the key to cracking things open.

  After grabbing a quick lunch at the Burg-O-Pardner on the edge of town, Joe passed through the small downtown toward the bridge over the river. Not Ike was fishing again, looping a fly-line through the air. Joe pulled off the road on the other side of the bridge and got out. Maxine joined him, and he cautioned her to stay close. He had just about broken her habit of wanting to retrieve artificial flies that landed on the water.

  Not Ike was a huge man with large, yellowed eyes, a quick smile, and a barrel chest so stout that his fishing vest strained to stay buttoned over the tattered I’M NOT IKE sweatshirt. When he saw Joe, the smile flashed, and he waved. Joe waited at the edge of the river, watching Not Ike’s graceful cast play out. Not Ike placed a dry fly perfectly inside the muscle of a current, and mended his line back so the line wouldn’t overtake the fly in the current. The dry fly drifted over the top of a dark, still pool. Joe saw a flash beneath the surface of the water, heard the ploop sound of the trout taking the fly, and watched the fly-line tighten and rise out of the water to the tip of Not Ike’s rod, which bent in the shape of a boomerang.

  “I got one!” Not Ike laughed. He had a booming laugh that made Joe smile.

  Not Ike retrieved the trout patiently, not horsing it in, and eventually netted it. He held it up for Joe to see, and the sun flashed on the bright rainbow sides of the cut-bow trout—a hybrid of a native cutthroat and rainbow trout—and the beads of water that glistened on the net.

  “Three for me!” Not Ike proclaimed.

  Not Ike always claimed he had caught three fish, whether the actual number was one or twenty.

  “Nice fish,” Joe said, when Not Ike reached the edge of the riverbank.

  “Nice fish, nice fish,” Ike repeated, then looked up, his brow furrowing. “What you need? You need to check my license again?”

  “You know it,” Joe said.

  “All right, all right, gimme a minute.” Joe watched as Not Ike walked back out a few feet, eased the net into the water, removed the fly, and released the fish. Joe could see the trout hover for a moment below the surface, then with a powerful twist it shot out of sight. The man knows how to release a fish, God bless him, Joe thought.

  Not Ike waded noisily toward the shore, still grinning. “Three for me!”

  Ike Easter had told Joe that his cousin had once been lucid, if a little mean, and that he had become mixed up with the wrong crowd in Denver. He’d gotten involved in gangs and drugs, and was in the middle of it during the Summer of Violence when he had taken three .22 bullets in the back of his head, was dumped in the Five Points district and left for dead. When he finally recovered three years later, he was a different man. Easter said Not Ike now had the day-to-day intelligence of a five- or six-year-old boy, and so Easter had agreed to become his legal guardian. Soon after he arrived in Saddlestring, Robey Hersig had taught Not Ike how to fish. Fishing gave Not Ike a purpose, and as far as Joe knew, fishing was what Not Ike did. Which was another reason for not coming down too hard on the man for having an improper license.

  While Joe checked the license Not Ike handed him, the big man loomed over him with the blank but brilliant smile. The license had expired the week before. “Jeez, what would it take for me to drive you over to Barrett’s right now and stand there with you while we bought you an annual fishing license?” Joe asked.

  “Ain’t got the money for the big one,” Not Ike said.

  “You say ‘big one’ like it costs a fortune. It’s only fifteen dollars.”

  “Ain’t got fifteen dollars, Joseph.” Not Ike was the only person who had ever called Joe “Joseph.” Joe didn’t know why.

  “Look, I’ll buy you one,” he said. “You don’t even need to spend your own money.”

  Not Ike took this as a personal affront, and scowled. “Don’t want your charity, Joseph. Never have, never will.”

  Joe sighed. He had offered to buy Not Ike a license before, and Not Ike had refused him then also.

  “Maybe I should talk to Ike about it.”

  “Won’t do no good,” he said, shaking his head as if sharing Joe’s frustration. “He knows I won’t take charity.”

  Joe handed the license back. “Well, at least go get a valid temporary one when you can, okay?”

  Not Ike nodded. He concentrated on refolding the permit and sliding it into his vest pocket. His big face furrowed as he did it. Not Ike had poor motor-skill coordination, and although his casting was graceful, it took him ten minutes to button up his fly-fishing vest, and longer than that to tie on a new fly. He had all the patience in the world, Joe thought, all the patience that didn’t manifest itself in greedy, impatient fishermen like Jeff O’Bannon.

  “Yeah, okay,” Not Ike said. “You gonna give me a ticket?”

  Joe shook his head. “Just get the new permit, okay?”

  Not Ike looked up, his face dark with sudden concern. “You found the Ripper yet?”

  “No.”

  Not Ike stepped close to Joe. “I think I seen them in the alley downtown the night before those two men got killed.”

  “Really.”

  “I was fishin’ a ways upstream, around the corner. I told the sheriff and that deputy. Even the FBI guy.”

  Joe wasn’t sure what to ask. “What did they look like?”

  “Wiry. Hairy and wiry. Creepylike. They were up in the alley, in the shadows,” Not Ike said and gestured toward downtown Saddlestring, toward the alley behind the buildings on Main Street.

  “And there’s something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  Not Ike leaned in even closer, until his lips were nearly touching Joe’s ear, and his voice dropped dramati
cally. “I caught three fish that night.”

  Tuff’s death was likely caused by massive head injury,” the county coroner told Joe when he finally returned Joe’s cell phone call. “It was obvious even before we sent the body to the FBI that there was severe head trauma. The wound looked like what a hammer or baseball bat would make, but most likely it was caused by a rock he hit when he was thrown from the horse. We found blood and tissue on a rock up there.”

  “What about the autopsy?” Joe asked, as he drove. “Anything unusual?”

  “Nope. His blood alcohol level was .15, so he was legally drunk. But I don’t think there are any laws against that if you’re riding a horse.”

  “But nothing else you found that was odd? Toxicology?”

  Joe could hear tinny country music playing in the background in the coroner’s office.

  “Nothing other than the obvious mutilations and the teeth marks of your grizzly bear.”

  Joe rolled his eyes. His bear again.

  “Have you spoken to the coroner in Park County about the other guy?” Joe asked. “Or should I call him?”

  “I talked to Frank yesterday,” the coroner said. “He’s a friend of mine. Basically, he determined the same thing on Mr. Tanner: blunt trauma head injury likely caused the death, although Frank thought it was possible that the blow to the head didn’t kill the victim outright. Frank said it was possible the man had a severe concussion, and that they started skinning him before he actually expired.”

  “Yikes,” Joe said, feeling a chill.

  “I agree.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, Frank’s guy didn’t have any of the other wounds we saw with Tuff Montegue. The body seemed to be found in the same place it fell, and there was no predation of any kind on it. Your bear didn’t make it over to Park County, I guess.”

  “Right,” Joe said absently, but it made him think of something. “Thanks, Jim.”

  “You bet,” the coroner said. “I’ve been over all of this with Sheriff Barnum and Agent Portenson.”

  “I know,” Joe said, his mind elsewhere.

  On the other side of town, outside the town limits, Joe pulled off of the highway into the rutted, unpaved parking lot of an after-hours club called the Bear Trap. The Bear Trap was a one-level cinder-block building with bars on the few small windows and a fading MEMBERS ONLY sign on the front door. The place looked like a bunker. There were five vehicles, battered pickups parked at odd angles near the front of the club. The Bear Trap skirted liquor laws by proclaiming itself a private club, and it catered to drinkers who were still thirsty after the bars in Saddlestring closed at 2 A.M. It made the Stockman’s Bar in town seem like an upscale establishment. Joe had been to the Bear Trap once before, following up on an anonymous poaching hotline tip that a “member” had been seen taking a pronghorn antelope out of season and that the poacher had retired to the club after field-dressing the animal.

  The poacher had been easy to find and arrest, because the still-warm carcass of the antelope was in the back of his pickup under a tarp, blood running in thick strings from beneath the tailgate into the mud, and the man himself was at the bar wearing a shirt matted with blood and clumps of bristly pronghorn hair. The poacher surrendered without a fight, and seemed to look forward to a calm night in jail. The Bear Trap was the kind of a place where a blood-stained shirt didn’t really stand out, the bartender had told him later. The bartender’s name was Terry Montegue, Tuff’s brother.

  Joe checked his gun and the pepper spray on his belt before entering. Once he was inside, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The barred windows were shuttered closed, and the only light came from Coors, Bud, and Fat Tire beer signs, a fluorescent backlight over the bar, and an ancient jukebox playing Johnny Horton songs. Joe liked Johnny Horton, but wasn’t sure he could ever justify the fact if somebody challenged him to say why.

  Four drinkers were crowded together on stools in the middle of the bar, and Terry Montegue hovered over them behind the bar. Joe heard the sound of dice being scooped into a cup, and saw a clumsy flurry as the drinkers stuffed the cash they had been gambling into their coat pockets.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Terry told the drinkers, looking over them at Joe. “It’s just the game warden.”

  Joe smiled to himself, gave the drinkers a wide berth, and sat on a stool at the end of the bar.

  Montegue was tall and bald with a beer belly that hid the buckle on his belt. He had a fleshy, cruel drinker’s face, made worse by the scar that cut a white, wormlike path up his cheek, through his eyelid, and into his brow. He wore a too-small short-sleeved shirt that showed off his arm muscles, as well as the rattlesnake-head tattoos on both forearms.

  “Can I get you something?” Montegue asked.

  Joe looked up at the drinkers, who were trying to look at him without being obvious. They looked like out-of-work ranch hands or CBM roughnecks between crew shifts. Joe guessed the latter, since their pockets were stuffed with cash. He wondered what he would turn up if he called their plates in.

  “I thought you had to be a member to drink here?”

  Montegue’s upper lip arced, and Joe assumed it was a smile. Montegue reached under the bar and tossed a thick pad of perforated cards on the counter. They were blank membership cards, Joe saw.

  “Membership costs fifteen bucks a year, or ten with your first drink. You wanna join?”

  “Nope,” Joe said.

  “What, then?”

  “Your brother, Tuff. I’m a member of the task force . . .”

  One of the drinkers snorted down the bar, and turned away. The others stared ahead, not looking at each other or, Joe surmised, they would be forced to laugh.

  Joe started again. “I’m investigating the death of your brother, Tuff. I want to ask you a few questions.”

  Montegue sighed, leaned forward, and placed both of his palms on the bar. He rotated his arms to give Joe the full effect of his triceps. “The sheriff’s been here, and some FBI dork. Are you guys just following each other around?”

  “Sort of,” Joe admitted.

  “I bet whoever sucked the blood out of Tuff was bombed for a week,” Montegue said. “Look for a drunk alien, is my suggestion.”

  This produced a big laugh from the drinkers.

  “I’m interested in what Tuff had been doing for the last couple of years,” Joe said. “I know he was working for Bud Longbrake at the time of his death, but what else was he into?”

  Montegue went down the list: ranch hand, school bus driver, roofer, customer service rep, surveyor, and professional mountain man at a Wild West show, until he hurt his back.

  “When was he a surveyor?”

  “Well, he wasn’t actually a surveyor. He was more like a surveyor’s peon.”

  “He was a rodman,” one of the eavesdropping drinkers said. “You know, the guy who walks out and holds the rod so the surveyor can shoot it.”

  “Who did he work for?”

  Montegue leaned back and rubbed his chin. “I know he worked a little for the county on the roads, but he also worked for some big outfit based out of Texas that was doing work up here.” He turned to the drinkers. “Anybody remember the name of that company Tuff worked for a while? I remember him bragging about it, but I can’t remember the name.”

  “Something Engineering,” one of the drinkers said. “Turner Engineering?”

  Montegue frowned. “No, that ain’t it. Something like that, though. Why does it matter?” he asked Joe.

  Joe shrugged. “I’m not sure it does. I was just curious. I’ll check around.”

  “Check away,” Montegue said.

  “Did Tuff have enemies? Someone who might want to kill him?”

  Montegue snorted, “Me, at times. He owed me 850 bucks. He still does, I guess, and I aim to sell a couple of his rifles so we’re even.”

  Joe nodded.

  “He had his share of fights, I guess. But he’s like all of these assholes. Th
ey fight, then they buy each other a drink, then they’re butt-buddies for life. I can’t think of any serious enemies Tuff had. Anything else you want to ask me?”

  “Nothing I can think of,” Joe said. “But I might come back.”

  “Feel free,” Montegue said, then thought of something that brought a smile to his face. “In fact, bring your wife. I’ll waive the first year of membership if you bring her.”

  “I’ll pay for your membership if you bring her,” one of the drinkers said, and the others laughed.

  “Leave my wife out of it,” Joe said with enough steel in his voice that Montegue raised his hands in an “I’m just kidding” gesture.

  As he climbed into the Bighorn Mountains and neared Bud Longbrake’s Ranch, Joe mulled over a theory that had been floating in the back of his mind. Something about Tuff’s death was just a little bit wrong. It almost but not quite fit the pattern.

  The wounds on the cattle and wildlife had been reported in gruesome detail in the Saddlestring Roundup, Joe thought. What hadn’t been reported was the exact kind of cut made in the hides of the cows. A person following the story would have known just enough to make Tuff’s murder appear to be like the others, he thought. But the wrong knife or cutting instrument was used. And how could a killer possibly prevent predators from finding the body? While there was something extraordinary in the bodies of the cattle, moose, and Stuart Tanner that apparently prevented predation, Tuff’s killer obviously hadn’t been able to duplicate whatever it was.

  Maybe, Joe thought, Tuff’s murder was a copycat and entirely unrelated to the others. Maybe Tuff was killed for reasons wholly different from the other deaths, by someone who saw his opportunity to take advantage of the bizarre happenings to solve a personal problem with Tuff Montegue?

  Again, Joe felt that if he could figure out what had happened to Tuff, and who murdered the man, the answers to the other and bigger parts of the puzzle might become more apparent.

  “Or maybe not,” Joe said aloud to Maxine, his voice rising with frustration. “Maybe all of this crap has been the work of two wiry, hairy, creepylike guys who hang out in an alley in Saddlestring, like Not Ike said.”