by Box, C. J.
County twenty-two plates. Missy’s Range Rover.
Was she the person in the garage? Was she inside? Was she dead? Had she been forced to accompany Arthur as he fled?
Joe fought an urge to be okay with any of those outcomes. And he felt guilty about it.
*
BUT IT WASN’T Missy bound in duct tape and barely conscious on the garage floor. In a heavily slurred voice, she said her name was Candy Croswell.
Joe squatted down next to her as Steck cut through the tape on her wrists and ankles with a pocketknife. Woods, Williamson, and the town cops had stormed inside and were sweeping the house room to room.
The tension of the situation had largely lifted and faded away now that it was obvious Arthur had fled the scene before they got there. The sudden release of tension often resulted in giddy behavior and dark humor in cops on the scene, Joe knew. He felt it himself.
“Tom is gone,” Croswell said while her eyes filled with tears. “He left me. The cheating son of a bitch left me.”
Steck asked her, “Tom is Dr. Arthur?”
“Yumm,” she said, nodding her head. She meant “Yes.”
“Did he drug you?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, but I was already drunk,” she said with no inflection.
“How long ago did he leave?”
“No idea. What time is it now?”
Joe looked at his watch. “It’s three-twenty.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t know when he left me here,” she said. “Not long ago, I think. The cheating son of a bitch chose his stupid rifle over me.”
Joe and Steck exchanged glances when she said it.
“Sounds like a bad country song,” Steck said. “ ‘The cheating son of a bitch chose his rifle over me.’ ”
Joe didn’t want to smile, but he did.
At that moment, the door to the house opened and one of the town cops said, “We’ve got another one inside. Another woman. This one’s much older.”
“I think I know who she is. Is she all right?” Joe asked. The answer would be important one way or the other.
“She’s a mean old bearcat,” the cop said. “She cursed me when I cut her loose and she ran into the bathroom and locked the door. She won’t come out.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Joe said wearily. To Steck, he said, “Better call the highway patrol and get an APB out on Arthur’s pickup before he gets too far.”
“On it,” Steck said. “A gray Ford Raptor with vanity ‘DR TOM’ plates, right? It should be fairly easy to pick out.”
“Yup.”
“And we’ll soon find out who out there is listening to the police band tonight,” Steck added ruefully.
“I’m keeping my car,” Croswell said, gesturing to the Mercedes parked in the garage. “I don’t care what he says. Fuck him. I deserve that car.”
*
“MISSY, YOU NEED to come out,” Joe said as he leaned against the bathroom doorframe. “We’ve got to ask you some questions about what happened here tonight.”
He could hear her gasp when she recognized his voice.
“Why are you here?” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Sorry.”
“Go away.”
“I’m not going away,” Joe said with a sigh. “If you don’t come out, we’ll break the door down and drag you out.”
“Do not talk to me that way.”
As she said it, Woods walked by and winked at Joe.
“She’s my mother-in-law,” Joe said to him.
“Do you want to leave her in there?” Woods asked.
“Yup.”
Missy said, “Stop talking about me. I can hear you, you know.”
Woods rolled his eyes. Then: “We found a stack of checks in his office from clients all over the country. Some of them even say ‘medication’ in the subject line. Our good doctor was a drug dealer, it seems.”
Joe chinned toward the locked door. “That’s why she was here.”
“She’s an addict?” Woods asked.
“I am not a drug addict,” Missy hissed from inside.
“She’s addicted to husbands,” Joe said. Woods covered his mouth with his gloved hand so he wouldn’t laugh out loud. Giddy, Joe thought.
“I’m trying to save my husband’s life,” Missy cried.
“Then come out and talk to us,” Joe said to her.
There was a long beat. Then her voice, much more softly than before: “Joe, can you get me my handbag from the living room? It’s on a chair or on the coffee table. I look terrible. I need to fix my face before I can come out. There was tape around my mouth and in my hair. It’s embarrassing. I can’t let anyone see me like this.”
“No one cares what you look like,” Joe said.
“You’ve never understood anything,” Missy said. “Now go get my bag and pass it through the door. I’ll open it for you. But don’t you dare look at me.”
“Gladly,” Joe said.
He found it next to a gallon ziplock bag filled with prescription drug containers of what looked like hundreds of pills.
*
TEN MINUTES LATER, while Missy was still reconstructing her appearance in the bathroom, the front door blew open and a short man in full camo stepped inside. He brandished a semiautomatic rifle.
Joe was slow to react, but Deputy Steck and two of the town cops raised their weapons and shouted for the intruder to drop his gun.
Judge Hewitt did as he was commanded, but with obvious disdain.
“Oh,” Steck said to him, “I didn’t know it was you. Sir, I’m not sure you should be here right now—”
“Where is the bastard who shot my wife?” Hewitt demanded as he cut Steck off. “I’m going to kill him.”
The judge had not only brought his own AR-15, but he had a Colt .45 semiauto in a shoulder holster. No one asked him to toss the weapon aside.
“He’s in the wind,” Joe replied to the judge. “There’s an APB out for him.”
“I know, I know, I heard it on the police band,” Hewitt said to everyone in the room. “I didn’t realize you all were already here. I thought you were out chasing him and I could catch the son of a bitch in his lair and put a cap in his ass.”
“No, sir, not yet,” Steck said. “We’re in the process of securing the home.”
“Don’t let him get away,” Hewitt said, wagging his finger at all of the officers in the room.
“We’ll get him,” Williamson chimed in from where he’d ducked down behind the couch when the door opened.
The look Judge Hewitt gave the police chief was withering. “It’s a good thing your officers were on the ball and not hiding behind furniture,” he said to him.
Then: “Joe, what in the hell is going on here? Why did Sue’s doctor shoot her and then let her die of neglect?”
Joe glanced at the locked door to the bathroom, wondering how long Missy would take, then at Judge Hewitt.
“Let’s step outside for a minute,” he said. He threw an arm around the judge’s shoulders and guided him back though the front door. Joe could feel Hewitt trembling.
*
“IT WAS DUANE,” Joe said to Judge Hewitt when they were on the front lawn. “Arthur was the shooter, but Duane was the spotter. The whole plot was cooked up by Duane.”
Judge Hewitt listened with incredulity. Joe played the most revealing snippets of Patterson’s confession on his digital recorder. Finally, the judge said, “I think Sue just felt sorry for him. I didn’t think he was smart enough to plan and carry out something like this.”
Which was part of his motivation, Joe thought but didn’t say. Duane was, in his twisted way, striking back.
“And Dr. Arthur,” Hewitt said, “he either let her die or he helped it along. I kept wondering why he didn’t do more, but I actually trusted his judgment.”
“Yup,” Joe said. “Or maybe he’s just a really bad doctor.”
“I
want to kill him.”
“I know you do. But we’re not going to let you.”
“Then go find the son of a bitch and keep him away from me.”
“Yup.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
FROM HIS BUNK IN THE COUNTY JAIL CELL, NATE LISTENED to the chaos over the radio down the short hallway from the empty sheriff’s department lobby. He grew more and more anxious by what he heard, and his eyes felt hooded by a shroud of upcoming violence. His breathing became shallow and his hands tingled.
He was furious and desperate at the same time. All hell had broken loose out there: the county attorney had been shot and killed by an unknown assassin, the home of the local doctor had been raided, hostages had been found, and the suspect was on the run.
But his feelings of impotence and rage had begun fifteen minutes before the radio in the lobby had begun to squawk. They’d begun when he was awakened by a heavy whump against the frosted, wire-reinforced glass of the only window in his cell that faced outside. The blow to the window had a lot of force behind it; enough that it had cracked several of the glass panels.
The impact had awoken something primal inside him because he somehow knew what had caused it. When it happened, he sat up in bed wanting to render his own particular kind of justice in the worst way. Starting with the incompetent and feckless sheriff who had caged him on bogus charges with bogus evidence, all the while Liv and Kestrel were vulnerable.
Nate wanted out of that jail and he wanted out now.
*
FIVE MINUTES LATER, Nate heard someone enter the lobby and clomp around. That got his full attention. Sheriff Kapelow sounded flummoxed when he called out, “Ryan? Justin? Is anybody here?”
“Back here,” Nate answered.
In a moment, Kapelow made his way down the hallway and he stood on the other side of the bars. He carried what looked like a bundle of feathers in his hands.
“Where are they?” he asked Nate.
“Out doing your job,” Nate said. “I heard about it all over the radio somebody forgot to mute.”
Kapelow shook his head, not understanding.
“They’ve got one of the shooters of Sue Hewitt and they’re looking for the other one.”
“They can’t do that.”
“They deliberately cut you out,” Nate said. “So did the chief of police and Joe Pickett.”
“They can’t do that,” Kapelow protested. “I’m the sheriff.”
“And a piss-poor one. Now, let me out of here.”
Kapelow just stood there, stunned. The significance of what Nate had told him reflected in his slack face. He looked even more feckless and deflated than Nate had thought possible.
“You’re holding one of my birds,” Nate said, gesturing at the crumpled falcon Kapelow carried.
“What?”
“That’s part of my Air Force.”
“I found it outside. It looked like it crashed into the side of the building. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Hand it over. It might still be alive.”
The sheriff contemplated the request for a minute, then unlocked the upper half section of the door and opened it. He thrust the falcon toward Nate as if handing off a football.
Nate gathered up the bird and cradled it like a baby. It was one of his best performing peregrines, a bird that had worked with him for several years. It still wore the tooled leather hood Nate had placed on it before he was arrested. The falcon had flown blind from his mews through the night and it had broken its neck when it smashed into the jail cell window.
“Is it yours?” Kapelow asked. “Is it dead?”
Nate nodded. He couldn’t speak.
“How did it know how to find you? Here, give it back to me,” Kapelow said. “I’ll go throw it in the dumpster. Then I’ll go find my men and take charge of the operation. Oh, there will be hell to pay.”
Nate looked up slowly from the peregrine through an opaque film of pure red. In a series of lightning-fast movements, he dropped the body of the falcon, shot out both of his hands, grasped the back of Kapelow’s head, and pulled him over the bottom door into the cell.
While the sheriff thrashed and tried to fight back, Nate took the man’s weapon out of the holster and tossed it out into the hallway. He did the same with the pepper spray and cuffs on the sheriff’s belt. Then he pinned the man down on the floor by placing his knees on Kapelow’s shoulders and leaning over until they were nose to nose.
“You’re letting me out of here,” Nate hissed.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Kapelow said. There was panic in his eyes.
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Nate said as he reached down with his right hand and took a firm grasp of Kapelow’s left ear.
“Where is your keycard?” Nate asked.
“You’ll go to prison for this,” Kapelow said. “You’re assaulting a peace officer.”
With a hard torque of his wrist, Nate twisted Kapelow’s ear off and the man screamed. Twin pulses of blood sprayed across the concrete floor from the side of Kapelow’s head. His detached ear hung uselessly by thin strings of sinew.
“That bird flew here to warn me,” Nate said as he switched hands and grabbed Kaplow’s right ear. “Where is your keycard?”
“Back pocket,” the sheriff howled. “Back pocket.”
Nate let the pressure off and rolled Kapelow over to his belly. He found the card for the cell door in the man’s jeans. After he did, he stood up. The sheriff moaned and bent his knees into a fetal position while he covered his detached ear with his hands.
Nate reached over the open half door and inserted the card into the door lock. It released with a click and he pushed it open.
“You’re lucky I let you off easy,” he said to Kapelow.
Before he strode down the hallway into the lobby, Nate ducked back into the cell and retrieved the body of the peregrine. It deserved a dignified burial.
Nate detached a first-aid kit from the hallway wall and tossed it into the cell. Then he slammed the cell door shut on Kapelow, kicked the weapons aside, and found his .454 Casull in the evidence room.
*
NATE ROARED INTO the yard of his home in Kapelow’s stolen SUV and he knew instantly that Liv and Kestrel had been taken.
Their Yarak, Inc. van was parked in the open garage and the lights were on inside. The front door gaped open.
When Loren Jean Hill tried to explain that she’d been forced to call Liv home or the man would have her brother killed, Nate swung his pistol through the air and hit her on the side of her head with the long barrel and she dropped like a sack of cement.
For good measure, he stormed through every room of the house to confirm that no one else was there. Then he filled a small canvas duffel with .454 ammunition, binoculars, rope, gloves, a jacket, and two skinning knives.
The man from the cartel who’d taken his wife and daughter had an hour head start on him, possibly two. There was no way the kidnapper could know Nate had broken out of jail and was coming after him.
Nate abandoned Kapelow’s SUV and tossed the duffel bag onto the passenger seat of his old Jeep Wrangler that he’d kept in a shed. He knew it would start because even though he rarely drove it, he’d kept it maintained and ready to go.
As he sped up the gravel road away from his house toward the highway, Nate thumped the steering wheel angrily with the heel of his hand.
He’d let this happen, he thought. Against his better judgment, he’d gone along. He’d put his family in danger by trying to be more like Joe—to trust that the system would be fair.
No more.
Going back on the grid, marrying Liv, and fathering a daughter had not changed the facts on the ground. There were still more Sheriff Kapelows out there than Joe Picketts. Nate’s mission had always been to even the odds. Now, though, there were more innocent lives at stake. And it was his responsibility to save them.
When he approached the highway, he knew which direction to turn:
South.
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWO DAYS LATER, JOE NUDGED ROJO THROUGH A STAND OF closely packed aspen as he worked his way up the mountain. Rojo’s steel shoes crunched on the bed of fallen golden leaves as more leaves fluttered down through the air around them. It was a cold morning, the first freeze of the fall, although the intense midmorning sun was softening the ground as it rose behind him in the west.
Following Joe up the mountain on horseback were Mike Martin and Eddie Smith from the Jackson office. They’d responded immediately to Joe’s call, dropped what they were doing, and driven through the night to Saddlestring towing a horse trailer.
The three horsemen were a truncated version of the newly maligned Predator Attack Team, although this time they weren’t going after a killer grizzly. They were hunting a doctor.
*
AFTER THIRTY-SIX HOURS and alerts across the states of Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado, there had been no sighting of Dr. Arthur’s unique Ford Raptor with the dr tom plates. It wasn’t until Candy Croswell revealed, almost as an aside, that he’d recently closed on a remote mountain cabin on the back side of Wolf Mountain a few weeks before, that they knew where to go. She hadn’t been there, she said. Once she’d found out it didn’t have plumbing or electricity, she’d been reminded of her time in Alaska and said she’d had no desire even to see it.
A quick title search by Marybeth of the Twelve Sleep County Assessor’s Office provided the exact geographical coordinates of the place—known almost immediately to her and Joe as “Dr. Tom’s Cabin”—and she located it on Google Earth.
Joe had been in the remote area a few times checking elk hunters, and he knew the cabin wasn’t easy to get to or sneak up on. The only access was a weedy two-track that meandered through the pines and literally ended in a mountain meadow. On the edge of the meadow, with its back end in the wall of timber, was the cabin Tom Arthur had purchased.
Because it would be an all-day journey even to get there to check it out, Joe had asked Martin to send the Lifeseeker unit over the mountains to do a sweep. The pilot reported that he’d picked up a brief cell phone signal in the vicinity of the cabin location, but that it was just a few seconds long, as if the owner of the cell phone had turned it on just long enough to search for a cell signal—which was unavailable—before punching it off again.