Joe sat back and said, “Hmmmm.”
• • •
BUT THERE WAS OBVIOUSLY A REASON why Wolfgang Templeton had chosen to relocate in the most remote and economically depressed part of Wyoming—and it certainly wasn’t because the cattle business was booming. If Templeton had a long-term reason for choosing Medicine Wheel County—and he might—Joe couldn’t figure out what it was.
Unless, of course, Templeton simply wanted to be left alone. There was nothing wrong with that, and Wyomingites tended to give new people the space they desired and not stick their noses where they didn’t belong. Joe felt a little uncomfortable doing exactly that on behalf of the governor.
Unless, of course, Templeton was a killer.
• • •
COON’S CASE FILE didn’t reveal much more about the victims than Joe had been told.
Jonah Lamprecht had disappeared in Saint Louis in 2004.
Brandon Fonnesbeck had vanished off the coast of Long Island in 2008.
Henry P. Scoggins III had been abducted—or walked away—from his fishing lodge in Montana the month before.
Several threads connected them, but tenuously. All the victims were extremely wealthy and well connected, and ran with a certain elite international crowd. No traceable ransom demands were ever received by their families or loved ones. Most important, none of their bodies had ever been found. The only dubious connection was that the name Wolfgang Templeton had been brought up peripherally in each case.
Joe shook his head. It was weak, very weak. So weak that he would never take the circumstantial evidence in the file to his own county prosecutor, Dulcie Schalk. Dulcie would hand the file back and tell him she needed more. There were years between the incidents—as long as five between Fonnesbeck and Scoggins, which certainly didn’t lend weight to the idea of a busy hit man’s schedule.
But the FBI, with everything they had on their plates these days, had invested time and interest to build the file. They must have reasons beyond what Joe could see, he thought. It was possible Coon didn’t even know what the reasons were.
Joe wondered if there were additional disappearances of similar people that weren’t included in the case file—maybe even scores of missing persons where the name Wolfgang Templeton simply hadn’t come up. If the FBI’s suspicions were correct, there likely were, he thought. And if the whole thing was a wasteful fishing expedition . . .
But there was the DCI agent, whose name had been redacted from the incident report. The man had been sent to Medicine Wheel County to find out what he could about Templeton, and within a few days there had been a fire in his room that killed him.
And there was that photo of the man who could possibly be Nate.
• • •
THERE WAS A SMALL SIGN vandalized by bullet holes that read ENTERING MEDICINE WHEEL COUNTY as Joe crossed the Cheyenne River. Within twenty minutes, the landscape changed once again. The flats began to fold into gently sloping hills and then fold again, as if they were a floor rug being jammed into a corner. The folds led into heavily wooded small mountains. The thick spruce that covered the hills was dark under the leaden sky—thus the name Black Hills—and sharp ravines knifed through the surface and chalky bluffs jutted out from the timber like thrust jaws.
It was beautiful and complex country, Joe thought, mountainous, but not severe and dangerous like his Bighorns. The terrain was oddly inviting and accessible, with wide meadows bordered by hillocks. The road itself changed from a straightaway into a winding pink road that hugged the contours of the foothills and sometimes plunged over blind rises.
He glimpsed some structures in the timber as he drove, mainly older houses tucked behind the first wall of trees. They were well situated but looked ramshackle and abandoned. The only homes he saw that were occupied were marked with collections of old vehicles and newer four-wheel-drive pickups scattered around their lots. Wood smoke curled from blackened chimneys and dispersed in the upper branches of the spruce trees before filtering into the close sky.
He didn’t slow to read the old markers on the side of the highway as he drove—he could do that later—but he was left with the impression of a place that had once been vibrant and filled with energy and ambition but now held only testimonials to failed enterprise. He did slow down, though, to let a clumsy flock of wild turkeys cross the road. They waddled like fat, drunk chickens.
• • •
MEDICINE WHEEL DISTRICT game warden Jim Latta said he’d meet him two miles south of Wedell, one of three small communities that still existed in Medicine Wheel County, the others being Medicine Wheel itself and Sundance on the far western border.
Latta’s green Game and Fish pickup was parked just off the highway on an old two-track trail at the bottom of a wooded grade. As Joe slowed to join him, Latta waved for him to follow.
The road was narrow and muddy, and twisted through the timber. At times, Joe couldn’t see Latta’s truck because the trees were so dense, but he knew the game warden was ahead of him because there were no other exit roads. Finally, after grinding up a sharp rise, he found Latta’s truck parked in a grassy opening and Latta himself climbing out and pulling on a green wool Filson vest identical to the one Joe wore.
Joe parked next to Latta’s truck and let Daisy out to romp and relieve herself.
Latta approached with his right hand extended and a sly smile on his face, and as Joe shook his dry and meaty hand Latta said, “Long time, Mr. Pickett.”
“It has been. When was it, the Wyoming Game Wardens Association dinner a few years back?”
“Seven years, I think,” Latta said. “That’s the last time I went.”
“Seven years,” Joe echoed.
“Time flies,” Latta said. “So, you brought me some birds.”
“Yup,” Joe said, clamping on his hat. “Let’s pull that canvas off so you can see ’em.”
Jim Latta was a few inches shorter than Joe, thick through the shoulders and chest, with a large round head, cherubic cheeks, and a gunfighter’s sweeping handlebar mustache. His eyes didn’t give much away as he spoke—he had the cop’s deadeye down to perfection—and his voice was surprisingly high for his bulldog features. His badge said he was warden number six, and he had ten years seniority on Joe. Although he’d no doubt moved from district to district around the state as Joe had in his early years, Latta had been in the Medicine Wheel District since Joe had been hired. Latta was a fixture in the northeast corner of the state, and rarely ventured out.
Joe climbed up in the back of his pickup after lowering the tailgate. The metal beaded moisture from a light combination of rain and snow, and the surface of the bed was slick under his boots.
While Joe unhooked the nylon straps, Latta said, “It pains me to say this, but we could save a whole lot of energy by just delivering these birds to about six local yahoos up there in Wedell. Those bastards will have ’em poached out of here by the end of the month.”
Joe shook his head to commiserate.
“In fact,” Latta said softly, “I think I see one of those reprobates now.”
Joe paused.
“Don’t look up there real obvious, but I think I see a four-wheeler up there to the southeast on that hill behind you. I’d guess he’s scouting so he knows where we release these damned birds.”
So he wouldn’t turn and obviously look at the potential poacher, Joe sidled to the side of the crate and used the mirror on the passenger side to see. He had to duck a bit before he got a bead on the man Latta had spotted.
Midway up the timbered hill behind and to the side of them, Joe glimpsed a man who appeared to be holding his head. No, he thought, the man was using binoculars.
“There’s an old logging road up there,” Latta said. “He’s probably standing on top of the seat of his four-wheeler so he can see us.”
“Do you know him?”
&nbs
p; “Not sure. But it might be Bill Critchfield. He’s kind of the ringleader of the bunch. If it’s him, he’s probably poached more deer, elk, and birds in these hills alone than any other guy besides Gene Smith, who’s his best buddy. They live up in Wedell, but they spend a lot of their time down here.”
Joe said, “Have you ever caught him?”
“Twice,” Latta said wearily. “Caught him and Smith dead to rights while they were gutting out a dry doe on a sunny day in June, and another time with twenty dead pheasants in the bed of Critchfield’s pickup. Judge Bartholomew let them skate both times. You ever run into Judge Ethan Bartholomew?”
“Nope.”
“Good thing,” Latta said. “He has a way of making a game warden feel . . . kind of useless.”
“So what do you want to do now?” Joe asked while he folded up the damp canvas cover.
“Nothing to do,” Latta said. “Let’s release the birds and hope like hell they’ll take to cover in the canyons between here and Wedell before Critchfield and Smith wipe ’em out.”
Joe paused. “It’s that bad around here, huh?” He called Daisy in, and she bounded into the cab of his pickup.
“It’s a whole different world,” Latta said.
“Sounds like a plan. Not a good plan, but a plan,” Joe said. “I don’t like the idea of releasing these birds so they can be poached out. That just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Yeah,” Latta said with a shrug. “Used to bother the hell out of me, too. But we can’t take these birds home. My backyard isn’t big enough.”
It was meant as a joke, but Joe didn’t laugh.
Joe said, “Maybe we could set up surveillance and catch them in the act. With me here, you’ve just doubled your forces.”
Latta responded with a frown. “Yeah, and we can drag their sorry asses in front of Judge Bartholomew, who will say we entrapped them or some such bullshit. Naw,” Latta said, nodding toward the crate, “let’s let ’em go.”
“You’re the man in charge,” Joe said, shaking his head and leaning down to open the crate.
Daisy watched and whined as if tortured inside the cab of Joe’s truck while 150 pheasants shot out of the crate one by one like fireworks and soared into the dark timber on the north side of the meadow. Within three minutes, the crate was empty. Joe could see a few of the birds perching in the trees at the edge of the meadow, taking in their new surroundings.
“Good enough for government work,” Latta said, nonchalantly.
Joe was surprised Latta had chosen to release them all at once in the same place, and not disperse them throughout the drainage. But Latta was the local warden and he was running the show.
When Joe paused at the door of his pickup to take off his gloves before getting in, he heard a distant grinding and then a two-stroke motor fire up. The four-wheeler whined away in the trees.
“There goes Bill Critchfield back to tell his buddies so they can load their shotguns and charge up their spotlights,” Latta said with bitter resignation.
“Well,” Joe said, puzzled by what had just taken place, “I guess I’ll go find my motel and check in before it gets too late.”
“Where you staying?”
“The Whispering Pines Motel in Medicine Wheel,” Joe said.
Latta nodded but seemed troubled. “That’s the place that had a fire a month ago. Maybe you didn’t hear about it, but some poor guy from Cheyenne died in one of the cabins when it burned down during the night.”
Joe said, “Yeah, I heard about that. But I figure, what are the odds of the same place burning down twice?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Latta said. Then: “I live in Wedell. How about I buy you a beer at the Bronco Bar on your way to Medicine Wheel? Believe me, that motel won’t be full this time of year. In fact, you’ll probably be their only customer.”
“I could do that,” Joe said. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” Latta said, putting his hands on his hips and surveying the darkening timber surrounding them, as if looking for additional spies. “Maybe you can tell me why Cheyenne wants you to ride along with me up here for a couple of days. It ain’t like I don’t have a good handle on my district.”
Joe nodded. Latta was already suspicious. He had a right to be, Joe thought.
But Joe had some questions of his own.
Wedell, Wyoming
The downtown of Wedell was a single block of slumped and decaying storefronts, most of them boarded up. The only paved street was the old state highway that halved the few remaining businesses—a dollar store, a convenience store, a gas station with twenty-four-hour pumps, the ancient post office, a craft store/rock shop/hardware store, and the Bronco Bar, which was situated in the dead center of the block. Unpaved residential roads spurred off the old highway and led to a mishmash of double-wide trailers, clapboard homes, and a few two-story brick Victorian houses that towered over the rest of the community, looking like royalty that got off at the wrong stop.
Hard pellets of snow bounced off Joe’s pickup hood and windshield as he pulled in next to Jim Latta’s vehicle in front of the saloon. There were few other cars or trucks on the street, and no pedestrians. The pending darkness and the low cloud cover made Wedell seem particularly gloomy, although the neon Coors and Fat Tire Ale signs in the windows of the bar looked inviting.
He told Daisy to be patient, and followed Latta inside. Three patrons, all men wearing ball caps and muddy boots, sat at the long bar that ran the length of the room. They had bottles of beer in front of them, and they were all watching the Speed Channel as if they had money riding on who would win the three-month-old Pure Michigan 400 NASCAR race being replayed on the screen. All three glanced over at the two game wardens in their red uniform shirts, and their looks held just long enough to confirm that none of them were in trouble. When they were assured Latta and Joe weren’t looking for them, they shifted back to the race.
The bar itself was typical, Joe thought: dusty elk, bear, deer, and pronghorn antelope heads on the walls, yellowing Polaroid shots of drunken patrons from years before thumbtacked to the rough-cut timber walls, a hand-drawn poster above the bar mirror with the details of a raffle for a .270 Winchester rifle to benefit the local Gun Owners of America chapter. An old sign with frontier-style writing read:
A farting horse will never tire and
A farting man is the man to hire
A jukebox in the corner played Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.”
The woman behind the bar, who had big blond hair and an overfull figure and a wide Slavic face, said, “What can I get you, Jim?” to Latta.
“I’ll have a Coors Light,” he said, slipping into the farthest of two booths from the bar itself. To Joe, he said, “I’m watching my girlish figure.”
“Make it two,” Joe said to the bartender.
She plucked bottles from a cooler behind the bar and twisted off the caps. As she did, the sleeves of the black long-sleeve Henley she was wearing slid back to reveal Popeye-sized forearms from opening a lot of beer bottles in her career, Joe guessed.
Joe sat across from Latta. They were far enough away from the bar and the NASCAR race was loud enough that they wouldn’t be easily overheard.
The bartender came out from behind the bar with four bottlenecks gripped between the fingers of her right hand and hanging down like sleeping bats. In her left she had a plastic basket of bright yellow popcorn. Her shirt read DON’T FLATTER YOURSELF, COWBOY, I WAS LOOKIN’ AT YOUR HORSE, and she wore a silver buckle the size of a dinner plate.
“Happy hour,” she said, placing the four beers down on the table with a thud. To Latta: “As if you didn’t know.”
Latta grinned. “Shawna, this is Joe. Joe, this is Shawna.”
By the way Latta and Shawna exchanged looks, Joe guessed there was some history between them. He said
, “Nice to meet you.”
“No problem,” she said, as if the pleasure was all his. She assessed Joe with a practiced eye from his boots to his hat. Her eyes caught on his wedding ring and hung there for a long second before regaining momentum and proceeding up his arm to his face. By the time she met his eyes she’d dismissed him.
“Shawna here was the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association barrel-racing champion of the world back in 1997,” Latta said.
“Back when I was younger and weighed less than my horse, anyway,” she said. “Give me a holler if you boys need a reride on them beers.” She didn’t look back over her shoulder at Latta as she returned to the bar and her high-backed stool to watch the conclusion of the race.
“Quite a charmer,” Joe said, sipping his beer. He hadn’t expected a glass, and it was the kind of place where they didn’t even ask.
“We kind of had a thing a few years ago after my wife left. You know what you hear about barrel racers in the sack? Well, it’s true,” Latta said with a defensive grin.
“I didn’t mean to insult her or you,” Joe said quickly.
“You didn’t,” Latta said. “She’s pretty rough around the edges. I get that.”
Joe didn’t know Latta was divorced. In fact, he didn’t know much about him at all. There were fifty-two game wardens in the state, and they were a different lot, Joe knew. Some kept in touch with other game wardens and worked shoulder to shoulder with them, some closely followed the goings-on at headquarters and reported back, and some kept completely to themselves. Latta kept to himself. Divorce was a common casualty within the profession, mainly due to wardens’ long hours, remote postings, and poor pay. Joe had expected Latta to make departmental small talk and ask him about their new director, LGD, and the changes coming at the agency, but he didn’t.