“I told you already,” Joe said. “I’m seeing if any of what I left on that message to you turns out to be true.”
“‘Lighting the match,’” Coon repeated.
“That’s what I do.”
“All the names you left on the recording may or may not be involved?”
“No idea,” Joe said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them were. And if I’m right about the cabin being bugged, this will smoke them out. It might start turning one against another.”
Coon said, “We could maybe send up one of our tech guys to check out the wiring in your room.”
“How long would that take?”
“A couple of days.”
“Forget it,” Joe said. “By then this will be over, one way or the other.”
“Joe,” Coon said, “you’ve implicated the local sheriff and the county judge. Not to mention your fellow game warden. And Templeton himself—his name came up. This is dangerous territory if that’s all you have on them.”
“It is,” Joe said. “But think about it. I haven’t made a single official charge at all. In fact, if that cabin isn’t bugged, I haven’t done anything but talk to myself and leave you a crazy phone message to the wrong person. What have I really done if I’m all wrong? Nothing, except to get you all hot and bothered.”
“This is not exactly by the book,” Coon said. “I’d never approve an agent in the field doing what you did.”
“I don’t work for you.”
“And thank God for that.” Despite Coon’s words, his voice had softened. Joe could almost visualize Coon’s mind spinning, taking in the implications of what he’d been told so far. Coon asked, “If your speculation is correct, how long do you think it will take to prove it true?”
“Fast,” Joe said. “I purposely left it hanging out there on that message to you that I should have what I need by tomorrow. So if they hear it, they’ll know they won’t have much time. They’ll either have to act or scatter.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Coon said. “What if the situation explodes?”
“Then I can get out of Dodge,” Joe said. “I don’t want to spend a single hour longer up here than I have to.”
He reminded Coon about his daughter at college, how he may have to react in an instant.
“I forgot about that,” Coon said. “Sorry. That name you asked us about. We’ve had a lot on our plate . . .”
“The Middle Eastern terrorists,” Joe said. “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
“We can’t call them that,” Coon barked.
“Gotcha.”
Coon said, “So do you really have a couple of informants, or was that your paranoia at work along with everything else?”
“I have no CIs,” Joe said. “I wish I did. There’s got to be somebody around here who doesn’t think Wolfgang Templeton hung the moon.”
“Another question,” Coon said. “What’s this about this southern gentleman you talk about? Where does he fit in?”
“Who knows?” Joe said. “But I couldn’t leave him out. He might be a guy you’ll want to talk to. There was something about him that gave me the willies, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to run into him like that. Both Latta and Templeton seemed worried about it.”
“And what about your pal Romanowski?”
Joe shook his head. “I’ve got zero leads on him.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Good, I guess,” Coon said. “Is there anything you’re holding back?”
Joe didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “I need your authorization to buy a used Polaris Sportsman. My Game and Fish budget is shot and I’m not authorized to purchase any more vehicles. I know you guys have slush funds for things like this. It’s a steal at five thousand dollars, at least according to the saleswoman. A drop in the bucket for a big-time Fed like you.”
“A what?” Coon asked.
“It’s an ATV,” Joe said. “An all-terrain vehicle.”
“Aren’t they dangerous?”
• • •
IN THE TINY OFFICE, Joe handed over his credit card to Fahey, who ran it through her machine. He hoped the FBI could reimburse him by the end of the month so the family finances wouldn’t go into the red, and he made a note to himself to warn Marybeth about the upcoming charge. Joe was grateful the governor had arranged for a bump in salary, but he knew the increase wouldn’t cover the cost.
“So where are you hunting around here?” she asked, although Joe got the impression she was just making conversation while she waited for the authorization.
“I have permission on the Sand Creek Ranch,” he said.
She looked up sharply. “Really?”
Joe nodded, hoping he hadn’t taken the conversation in a direction he couldn’t back out of.
She said, “It’s a huge place. The owner moved here five or six years ago and just started buying up everything. Other ranches, old buildings, you name it. Most of the people around here either work for Mr. Templeton or owe him.”
“That’s what I hear,” Joe said, hoping she would go on.
She said, “I was scared to death for a while, because there was a rumor he was going to put in a farm-and-ranch store that sold implements. Obviously, that would compete with me and drive me out of business. This isn’t exactly a booming economy around here.”
“But he hasn’t,” Joe said.
“Not yet, anyway,” she sighed. “I wouldn’t put it past him, though. He doesn’t look real kindly on independent people around here, and believe me, I’m an independent woman. I’m a single mom who raised two boys on my own and never took a dime of welfare.”
“So he doesn’t like you?” Joe asked.
She barked a laugh. “I’d guess he doesn’t even know I’m alive. But a couple of his flunkies do, and they might suggest to him that a nice new dealership would go real well in Sundance.”
Joe thought: Critchfield and Smith.
He asked, “What’s he like?”
“Mr. Templeton?”
“Yes.”
“He does a lot for the community,” she said without enthusiasm. “Very little happens around here that he doesn’t sponsor or fund in some way. So why do you ask? Do you know him? Are you on his payroll?”
The question surprised Joe. “No and no.”
“Just checking. If you’re not, you’re one of the few. You and me have that in common, I guess.”
“So he’s got his fingers into everything?” Joe said.
“Everything.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked. “It’s got to be a good thing to have a local philanthropist.”
She stared back, puzzled.
“A guy who pays for and sponsors things,” he explained.
“Yeah,” she said. “But honestly, sometimes I wonder. I guess I’m just a suspicious person, but I wonder if he does all these nice things for the county because he has a good heart and plenty of money or if he does them so he can be in control. I think I’m about the only one asking that question anymore. There used to be others that agreed with me, but he’s picked them off one by one and now they’re all on his side. That’s what money can do, I guess.”
The credit card machine came to life with an approval, and a length of paper rolled out of it like a tongue. She ripped it free and handed it over to Joe for his signature.
As he signed, he asked, “What does he do to make all this money when he flies off in his plane?”
Instead of answering, she laughed unconvincingly and shrugged. She was done talking.
• • •
A FEW MOMENTS LATER, Joe drove the ATV down a weedy alley to where he’d hidden his pickup. Using a pair of collapsible ramps he’d purchased from the hardware store earlier, he drove the four-wheeler up into th
e bed, lashed it down tight with straps to a couple of eyebolts on the interior walls, and shut the gate.
He wondered if he’d found his CI.
• • •
ON THE WAY OUT OF TOWN, he stopped at a convenience store to top off the gas tank on his truck and to fill the ATV. He wanted to make sure there was enough fuel in his new purchase to get him to the headquarters of the Sand Creek Ranch and back.
University of Wyoming, Laramie
Between classes, Sheridan Pickett rode the elevator alone to the fourth floor of White Hall. She stood in the corner of the car, clutching her textbooks—Introduction to Criminal Justice and Chemistry 1020—to her chest. She liked her criminal justice class as much as she hated chem. Criminal justice, she thought, was in her wiring.
Before the doors opened on four, she took a deep breath and put on her game face, which was a smile. Being the resident assistant meant she could no longer be anonymous, the way she had been her first two years of college. Now she knew all the students on her floor—and a few of the busybody RAs—kept an eye on her. Her residents followed her lead in regard to behavior, and she made sure she was never observed bending the rules.
She heard male voices down the hall as the doors hummed open, but no one was standing in front of her to get on. She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the voices as she made her way to her room and saw a pair of roommates at the end of the hall, gesticulating wildly. Sheridan paused.
Their names were Matt Nicol and David Hansard, both freshmen from Cody. They’d each started the year paired with a roommate they didn’t get along with and found each other. They occupied the corner room at the end of the hall, one of the larger dorm rooms, and they seemed to Sheridan to be normal, red-blooded Wyoming boys who wore hoodies, caps cocked sidewise, and baggy jeans. They liked to hunt, fish, and drink too much. And they were having a loud argument of some kind. She’d never heard them raise their voices before.
It wasn’t Sheridan’s role to intervene, but at the same time she didn’t want the argument to escalate. She thought that by standing in the hallway looking in their direction she would send the signal they were being observed. Often, that alone cooled things down.
Nicol saw her, mid-rant, and went suddenly quiet.
She waved at him.
Hansard, who had stomped away from Nicol into the room and couldn’t be seen, suddenly appeared around the doorjamb to see what had made Nicol stop speaking.
She waved at him, too. “You guys okay?”
Nicol looked to Hansard instead of answering, but Hansard grinned and said, “Oh, yeah. Everything’s fine,” and reached out and shut their door.
Sheridan gave it another half-minute. If they were still having a conflict, they were doing it quietly. That was good enough, she thought.
Then she heard a shuffle of feet directly in front of her. The sound would have been masked by the yelling if the yelling was still going on, and when she looked up she realized she was standing less than two feet from Erik Young’s door. There was a thin stripe of light beneath the door, punctuated by the shadows of two feet.
He was right there, she thought, standing on the other side of the door. Listening to her, listening to what was going on in the hallway. There were no other sounds from behind the door—no video games, no television, no music. If it wasn’t for the door itself, she realized, she’d be eighteen inches from him.
Quietly, she said, “Erik?”
No response.
A little louder: “Erik?”
The shadows vanished from beneath the door. He’d backed quietly away.
She shuddered and turned for her room, and it felt good to her to close and lock her door.
• • •
SHE DUMPED HER BOOKS on her desk and scrolled to a Pandora classic country channel she’d created on her computer. For reasons she couldn’t really explain—maybe it had to do with where she came from—the twang of George Strait, Chris LeDoux, and Patsy Cline always made her feel comfortable when she was trying to sort out her feelings. As if Pandora could read her mind, Chris LeDoux’s “Look at You Girl” came on. She never listened to that channel with anyone else around, though. Too uncool.
On her wall was a collage of framed photos, most of them selfies with her and her girlfriends mugging for a camera phone. Then there were family photos—a formal one with everyone wearing stiff clothing where she looked particularly photogenic—and an informal one taken two summers before by a friend near their corrals. Her dad, mom, Lucy, and she glanced toward the camera from where they perched on the corral rails behind their house on Bighorn Road. Her mom was in jeans—her riding outfit—and had just ridden Rojo. April stood off to the side, looking annoyed. And in the background, looking out from behind the barn like some kind of burglar, was Nate Romanowski. She loved this photo for its candid nature. No one was posing, and Nate had been caught by surprise. It was the only photo she had of Nate, her mentor in falconry. She was sure he would rather it had never been taken.
When there was a knock on her door, she quickly doused the music on her computer and leaned into the peephole. If it was Erik Young, she wasn’t sure what she would do.
But it was Matt Nicol and David Hansard, both with their hands jammed into their pockets, both looking at their feet.
“Hi, guys,” she said, opening her door.
They grumbled a hello.
“What can I do for you? I’ve got a few minutes before I head to lunch.”
Nicol looked to Hansard to take the lead, and Hansard did. “Can we talk to you for a minute?”
“Of course.”
“Can we come in and close the door?”
She hesitated for a few seconds, then backed up and stepped aside. Neither had been in her room before—they weren’t the type to share concerns with her. Both entered cautiously, looking around at the photos and decorations. She was glad she didn’t have any underwear lying around.
“We can trust you, right?” Hansard said. “Everybody says you’re cool.”
She shrugged and said, “It sort of depends. If it’s something really bad—”
“It is,” Nicol said gravely.
“Maybe,” Hansard countered, shooting a shut-up look to his roommate.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You said during orientation that your door was always open. I remember that. If we can’t trust you, we might get kicked out of school.”
It was a dilemma. She wanted to know, but she didn’t want to know something that would put her—and them—at risk.
“All I can tell you is I’ll be fair,” she said. “If you guys tell me you committed a felony or something, well, I can’t just not report it. But if it’s something else—”
“See?” Nicol said to Hansard. “I told you we shouldn’t have come here.”
Hansard said, “She isn’t a dorm Nazi, like some of the others.”
“What is it?” she asked.
Hansard and Nicol exchanged looks again, and Hansard said, “Our guns are missing.”
She gasped and covered her mouth with her fingertips. She didn’t want to, but she did. “What do you mean? From where?”
“We had them under our beds,” Hansard said. “We know you’re not supposed to have them in the dorm. We’re not idiots—we know how to handle guns, and they weren’t loaded or anything.”
“Mine was,” Nicol corrected.
“Except for his, I guess,” Hansard said, looking anywhere but at her face.
“Okay,” she said, leaning back on her desk. “You know you aren’t supposed to have them in university housing. You signed a resident agreement saying you wouldn’t bring any firearms into the dorm, and we talked about it at orientation.”
Nicol and Hansard grumbled in agreement. Guns were allowed at the university, but only if they were stored at the UW Police
Department. Every student was allowed up to three weapons plus a bow on campus as long as they were checked in and left in storage. A photo ID was required to store them or check them out.
“We screwed up,” Hansard said. “We went out target shooting a few weeks ago and got back late at night. We meant to take them to the station, but we never got around to it.”
“How many guns are we talking about?” she asked.
“Four,” Hansard said. “My 12-gauge shotgun and Ruger .357 Magnum revolver. Matt has a .223 Bushmaster and a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol.”
“The pistol was the one that is loaded?” she asked.
Nicol nodded sheepishly.
“How long have they been missing?”
“Who knows?” Hansard said. “Anytime in the last three weeks. Neither one of us even checked until just a few minutes ago—that’s what we were arguing about. I wouldn’t have even realized they were gone except I dropped a can of Copenhagen and it rolled under the bed. When I went down to get it, all I could see was dust bunnies.”
“I really need that pistol back,” Nicol said. “It belongs to my grandma.”
Hansard said, “The shotgun belongs to my dad. He’d kill me if he found out I lost it.”
“Does anyone have a key to your door besides you?” she asked.
They both shook their heads. Nicol said, “We thought about that. The thing is, as you know, our room is kind of a party room. We leave the door open all the time on Friday night and on the weekends. Sometimes we go to someone else’s room and just leave it open. Everybody knows we always have beer in our fridge, and people just go in and grab one. Anybody could have gone in there and taken them.”
Sheridan closed her eyes and tried to think of what to do besides the obvious: call the campus police. But that might trigger an overreaction. There had already been one all-campus lockdown earlier in the semester when someone reported an untended backpack in the commons. It turned out the backpack was full of textbooks and granola bars.
“What I hope,” Hansard said, “is that we’ve been punked. Maybe one of our friends took them just to watch us flip out.”