NATE WAS VERY pleased with himself as he rappelled down the cliff face near the Staghorn Creek campground. He’d caught and hooded two young peregrines that had flown into his bow net traps during the day, and the birds lay calm and inert in a mesh bag attached to his harness. The hoods had calmed them down immediately, which was important, because they could have injured themselves or broken off feathers by thrashing in his hands.
He was interrupted when he felt the phone in his breast pocket vibrate with an incoming call.
Nate drew the phone out to see a square-jawed graphic of Dudley Do-Right on the screen. Dudley Do-Right had been depicted in the cartoons of his youth as conscientious, cheerful, and somewhat dim-witted.
“Hey, Joe,” he said.
“Hey, Nate. Where are you?”
“Staghorn Creek. I caught two peregrines today and Sheridan will be beside herself when she sees them. They are great young birds.”
When Joe paused too long, Nate said, “Don’t worry. I’ll file all the proper paperwork on them at some point. I always do.”
“You never do,” Joe growled.
“Anyway, you called for a reason,” Nate prompted.
“I did. Hey, I could use your help if you’ve got the time. I’m headed back to the Eagle Mountain Club and I’m waiting for Gary Norwood to get freed up so he can process the crime scene. I was hoping you could join me.”
“Is that where Judge Hewitt got whacked this morning?” Nate asked.
“Yup.”
“I’m not sure I can provide much help, to be honest. I don’t process crime scenes, Joe. I create them.”
“Very funny. We don’t know the current location of our bear right now and I could use your help keeping lookout. Plus, there are some strange things going on around here. Oh, and it was Marybeth’s suggestion,” Joe said.
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Nate asked while quickly freeing the climbing rope from the belay device and plummeting down the face of the cliff. “When do you need me there?”
“See you in an hour.”
*
IT WAS DUSK when Joe and Nate observed Norwood pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves before entering the hollow in the trees. Nate arrived after the others once he’d secured his two new acquisitions in the mews at his compound and fed them. Deputy Frank Carroll showed up last.
“There was just an arrest on that drive-by,” Norwood reported. “But it sounds kind of hinky to me.”
“Me too,” Carroll added.
“Why?” Joe asked. He’d heard nothing about an arrest on the mutual aid channel over his under-dash radio.
Carroll said, “The highway patrol spotted a white SUV with California plates on I-25 headed south with two subjects, a young male and female. The subjects refused to cooperate, and they were arrested for resisting. When the troopers searched the SUV they found twenty pounds of weed.
“But no gun,” Carroll added. “And no way to tie them to cruising around Saddlestring this morning. The troopers will sweat the suspects and try to get them to turn on each other. And we’ll check all the cameras in town to try and put them there, but I think it’ll all turn out to be a false alarm. Elaine and Ruthanne took off to Kaycee to help with the interrogation.”
“Probably not a good idea,” Joe said.
“Elaine Beveridge wants them to be the shooters so bad,” Norwood said. “She wants this thing to be over, but I think she’s in over her head.”
“Jackson Bishop tried to tell her to calm down and not make any announcements until we know for sure,” Carroll said, “but she wouldn’t listen to him. She was all over social media this afternoon saying we found the perps who did this.”
“Not good,” Norwood said. Then to Joe: “I think Bishop might actually be a good sheriff if he wins. He seems like a straight shooter.”
Joe nodded, acknowledging Norwood’s sentiment.
“But you’re not sure yet?” Norwood asked Joe.
“I’ve learned to wait and watch,” Joe said.
“Enough with the local politics,” Nate said. “Let’s get this over with.”
*
A FEW MINUTES later, Norwood entered the shadowed alcove with his evidence bag. Joe and Carroll watched from the cart path and Nate moved into the trees twenty yards north to watch and listen. The forensics tech stayed near the base of the tree trunks on the northern wall so he wouldn’t trample the soil in the middle.
As was his habit, Norwood called out what he saw into a digital recorder that hung from a lanyard around his neck.
“I’m entering the hole in the trees from the direction of the golf cart path,” he said. “The opening is about ten feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet deep.”
Norwood’s camera clicked and whirred as he snapped a stream of photos.
“I don’t see bear tracks on the ground at first glance,” Norwood said. “And I don’t see bear scat or hair, either. I need to comb every inch in here.”
Joe saw the interior of the alcove light up as Norwood turned on his headlamp.
“There appears to be some bark on the floor of the opening. That’s weird.” Then Norwood backed halfway out and rocked back on his haunches. He looked straight up. Joe followed his gaze and noticed an overhanging tree branch with damage to it. The branch looked partially skinned and pale on its underside.
“Bark is missing from the branch, but I don’t know whether the bear clawed it or what,” Norwood said. “I don’t see any claw marks.”
With that, Norwood photographed the branch from several angles, then squatted back down and lit up the floor of the hollow with a flashlight. Joe watched the beam move methodically across the surface of the mulch and he heard Norwood say, “Hmmm. This is goofy, too.”
“What’s goofy?” Joe asked.
“Like I said, I don’t see any signs of a bear. This ground is pretty soft and you’d think there would be impressions of its paws, right? But that’s not what I see.”
“So what do you see?” Carroll asked impatiently.
“Tire tracks,” Norwood said. “Two sets of fresh tire tracks that crushed down the pine needles. That, and boot prints.”
His camera clicked a few dozen times while Joe held his breath and considered the implications of what Norwood was reporting. It was mind-boggling.
“How do you know they’re boot tracks?” Carroll asked.
“Because the heels make deep impressions and the toes are squared off,” Norwood said. “You know, like the cowboy boots they wear these days.”
“This makes no sense,” Carroll said. “Are you saying somebody drove a bear here in the back of their truck and let it go on Judge Hewitt?”
“I’m not saying anything at all,” Norwood stated. “I’m just telling you what I see in here.”
Carroll turned to Joe and screwed up his face. “I’m totally confused,” he said. “What are we dealing with here? A man and his trained pet grizzly?”
“I don’t want to think that,” Joe responded.
“But he doesn’t see bear tracks,” Carroll said.
“I can hear the man.”
*
WHEN NORWOOD WAS through, he packed up his equipment in his evidence bag near the opening of the trees under the light of his headlamp.
“We need to check out the river road,” Joe said. “I’m guessing we’ll find similar tire tracks on it.”
“What river road?” Carroll asked, and Joe told him about it.
“Locals know about it,” he said. “But very few other people. I’m guessing that the vehicle you saw this morning used it to access the club and get away without being caught on any of the gate cameras.”
Carroll made a pained face. “We don’t know of any locals with a trained bear. I can’t wrap my mind around this.”
“Neither can I,” Joe said. “But we’ll go where the evidence leads us.”
“This is getting crazy,” Carroll said. “I’m gonna call Bishop and let him know what we found here. He’ll shit his pants. And I’m not going to call Elaine.”
*
A MOMENT LATER, Nate appeared from the line of trees fifty yards south of where he’d gone in. As he approached, Joe touched his hat brim to him, indicating that he wanted to speak to him out of the earshot of Norwood and Deputy Carroll.
“Did you hear or see anything?” Joe asked.
Nate shook his head. “Just you and the yokels yapping away like magpies.”
“We found no bear tracks,” Joe said. “But we did confirm that a truck was parked in the trees this morning and someone was walking around it before the judge got hit.”
Nate narrowed his eyes and leaned close to Joe. “I don’t know what it means that you found vehicle tracks, but that grizzly bear is still around.”
“You’re sure about that?” Joe asked. “Did you find sign of it?”
“No,” Nate said. “Don’t ask me to explain it, but your bear is still around. It’s just not here at the moment.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I can feel it.”
Joe didn’t know what to think.
“Do you need me to stick around?” Nate asked.
Joe thought about it for a moment. “Nope.”
“Call me if you need anything more,” Nate said, patting Joe on the shoulder.
“Will do,” Joe said. “I’ll head home myself as soon as Gary is done on the river road.” To Nate’s wide back, Joe said, “Thanks, Nate.”
Nate stopped and looked over his shoulder. “For what?”
“For watching our backs and then scrambling my brain and making me even more confused about everything than I already was.”
“My pleasure.”
*
THREE-QUARTERS OF A mile away, Dallas Cates made the turn on the river road toward the Eagle Mountain Club with his headlights off. Suddenly, he hit the brakes. Soledad reached out to brace himself against the sudden halt and Johnson cursed from the backseat as she was thrown to the floor.
“Christ,” LOR exclaimed from the back of the pickup through the open rear-window slider. “What’s going on?”
“Look,” Cates said, pointing through the windshield to the north.
In the distance up a long manicured slope, on the left side of the eighth fairway, was the location where they’d attacked the judge. It was bathed in light. Three vehicles were parked astride the cart path with their headlights aimed into the alcove. A figure passed through the beams, then another.
“They’re up there now,” Cates said. “Shit. They’ll be on to us.”
“I wonder who it is?” Soledad asked. “I can’t see them clearly enough in the dark.”
As he said it, a man wearing a red uniform shirt and a cowboy hat walked through a set of headlights and disappeared again in the gloom.
“That was the game warden,” Cates said. “Joe Pickett.”
“Well, that son of a bitch,” Soledad said. “I thought he’d be home by now.”
“I’ve learned not to underestimate him,” Cates said, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “But it looks like I did it again.”
Soledad took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. He said, “There’s no reason to panic. No reason at all. We’ll just have to change the order of things tonight.”
“Change the order?” Johnson asked from the backseat.
“We won’t go to his place first like we talked about,” Soledad said. “We’ll go there second.”
Cates saw the logic immediately. He turned in his seat and said to LOR, “Keep the compressor on and let me know when the cylinders are full.”
Then he carefully backed the truck up without using his brakes until it was fully hidden in the dense cottonwoods next to the bank of the Twelve Sleep River, where he did a precise three-point turn.
“They’ll probably find and study our tracks,” Soledad said. “Maybe take impressions. That’s fine—finding our tracks will slow them down. It’ll give us plenty of time to move to our alternate destination and get set up.”
Johnson said, “I’m confused about what’s going on. Aren’t we going to the game warden’s house?”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Soledad said dismissively.
*
AT THE SAME time, Marybeth swung into her van in the parking lot of Valley Foods with a grocery bag. She liked the idea of making a big pot of spaghetti with elk burger red sauce for dinner, along with garlic bread. That way, she could get it prepared and let the sauce simmer and they could eat at whatever time Joe got home.
She dug her phone out of her purse to call Sheridan to see if she’d like to join them for dinner when she got back to town from Walden. As she lifted the phone, it lit up in her hand. The screen read: WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.
“Yes? This is Marybeth Pickett.”
“Marybeth, Dick Weber from the DOC. We met last year, if you’ll recall. I’m sorry for calling so late.”
“Not a problem at all and I do remember meeting you. Thanks for calling me back.”
As she spoke to him, Marybeth pictured the man she’d met in Rawlins at the food bank: crew cut, square jaw, icy blue eyes, military bearing, no-nonsense.
“First, I really have to apologize to you,” Weber said. “I’ve been out on a two-week hunting trip in the Wind Rivers and I’d assigned a list of tasks to my staff, but it seems the ball got dropped around here. I really had to chew some asses today and it didn’t make me very popular, as you can imagine.”
“Really,” she said, “there’s no reason to apologize. I just left the message a few hours ago. I didn’t expect you to be at your desk.”
Weber hesitated before responding. “To be honest, I didn’t hear your message. But I understand that you’re probably pretty upset. It’s all my fault.”
“Now I’m confused,” she said. “The message I left was to ask if you could provide some background on the CO who was killed by the grizzly bear. His name was Ryan Winner, I believe.”
“Yes, Ryan,” Weber said with a note of sadness. “He’d been here as long as I’ve been around. It’s a real shame, and a terrible thing to have happen. I didn’t even know about it because I go radio silent when we’re in the elk camp. For two wonderful weeks, I’m away from the phone. And look what happened.”
“It was a tragedy,” she said.
“I mean, these guys face threats all the time,” Weber said. “They deal with some of the nastiest men in this state, and anything can happen if they let their guard down even for a second. In fact, Ryan worked in E pod, which is the worst of the worst. He was there for seven years, I think. But what happens to him? He doesn’t get shanked by an inmate or rushed by a gang. He gets attacked by a grizzly bear as he gets ready to come to work. It’s just insane.”
“It is,” she said.
“There aren’t supposed to be any grizzly bears in Rawlins. How did that happen?”
“A lot of people would like to find out,” she said. “Including Joe, my husband. He’s a game warden up here. I think I told you about him.”
Weber chortled. “Yes, I’ve heard of Joe Pickett. Everybody has by now, I think. All of us in state government get memos about him. He’s kind of the poster boy for what not to do with state property. Doesn’t he hold the record for the most damage done to state vehicles?”
“That’s him,” Marybeth said with a roll of her eyes.
“Winner will be a tough one to replace,” Weber said. “We’re chronically short-staffed down here as it is. I’m afraid that until we can get the legislature to offer significant pay raises, it’ll continue to be tough for us to hire new COs.
“I’m sorry,” Weber said. “I got off track completely. What was it you wanted to know about Ryan?”
“How well did you know him?” she asked.
Weber took a few seconds to reply. “Well, we got along pretty well, I’d say. I can’t think of any serious disciplinary issues, although a few inmates complained that he was too much of a hard-ass. But they say that about all the COs. In fact, if an inmate says nice things about a CO, I get suspicious, if you know what I mean. Yeah, Winner could be a little petty and vindictive and he had some feuds with a couple of guys, but nothing that was so serious that a disciplinary hearing was held. And I know a lot of the younger guys looked up to him.”
“Did you know him well outside of work?”
“Not really. I went to a barbecue out at his house once to celebrate his divorce, which I thought was kind of weird. This would be the house outside of town where the bear attacked him, by the way. For the barbecue he only invited prison staff. No neighbors or friends. He didn’t have any kids that I know of. I can’t say I knew very much about the man outside of his job. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” Marybeth said as she cleared Saddlestring and turned onto the state highway toward her home, “Joe’s investigating these bear attacks and I’m trying to assist him. There was another attack just this morning around here.”
“Another one?” Weber said. “Jesus. They’re happening all over the damned state.”
“Yes, they are, and no one can figure out why, how, or who might be next. And frankly, we’re grasping at straws at the moment. We’re wondering if there is any connection between the victims other than the fact that Joe and I knew three of them. But we didn’t know Ryan Winner at all. I guess I was hoping that you might know if he was connected in any way to the other people who were attacked. Specifically, I mean Clay Hutmacher Jr., from here, Dulcie Schalk from Laramie, or Judge Hewitt?”
“I really doubt that,” Weber said. “Winner came here straight from the pen in New Mexico, where his people are from. I don’t think he knew his way around this state and, like I said, he didn’t seem to have many friends. If he knew them, he never mentioned it to me, but I can ask around. It’s possible he might have said something to a couple of his coworkers, especially when those other attacks were in the news.”
“Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” Marybeth said. “I knew this was likely to be a shot in the dark, but I appreciate your time.”
“Are you saying this bear has a hit list?” Weber asked with a chuckle.
“I don’t know what I’m saying. I was just following up on a line of thought that I think we can now dismiss. So again, thanks for your time.”
“Of course,” he said. Then: “So you’re not upset with us?”
For the second time during the conversation, Marybeth was puzzled. “Why would I be upset with you?”
“Because we didn’t call you when Dallas Cates was released.”
“What?”
“It’s in the file that you were to be notified, but like I said, that ball got dropped while I was away.”
Marybeth pressed hard on the brake pedal and pulled her van to the side of the road. She was instantly furious and she couldn’t see straight. The road ahead of her seemed to tilt in her headlights.
“When did this happen?” she said through gritted teeth.
“Um,” he said, while audibly tapping at a keyboard. “It looks like October 15. I went hunting on the twelfth and—”
“I don’t care about your hunting trip,” Marybeth seethed. “You’re telling me that Dallas Cates, the man who has threatened my family’s life more than once, was released from prison twelve days ago?”
“I’m sorry you have to hear it this way,” Weber said. “I really am. But when we got to talking about Ryan Winner, it got me on the wrong track.”
She could barely hold the phone because her hand was trembling.
“Where did he go when he got out?” Marybeth asked. “Who picked him up?”
“I don’t know. Once they’re out, they’re out. And, like I said, it happened while I was gone.”
“What was the relationship between Dallas Cates and Ryan Winner?”
“Like I said, Winner worked E pod. That’s where Cates was housed last. I don’t think they got along, but Dallas didn’t get along with most folks. Cates was always trouble, with a capital T, and Winner didn’t coddle types like that. It probably didn’t help that Cates was one of the big WOODS guys.
“Hold it,” Weber said. “Are you suggesting …”
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Marybeth said, disconnecting the call. She angrily tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
She sat back and hugged herself while she looked around where she was parked. The highway was empty, and her headlights lit up the yellow grass in front of her on the side of the road. The only movement was the moonlit branches of the river cottonwoods swaying in the evening wind.
Beyond her headlights, all was dark and empty.
Twelve days. Twelve days. Her mind raced as she reviewed what had happened in the last twelve days.
She snatched the phone off the seat and called Joe. He answered on the first ring, which meant he was close enough to be in cell range.
“Joe—where are you?”
“About ten minutes from home.”
“Good. I’m less than that,” Marybeth said as she put the van in gear and floored the accelerator. The vehicle fishtailed in the loose soil of the borrow pit before her tires bit on the asphalt and launched her back onto the highway.
“Marybeth, are you okay?” he asked.
“No, I am not. Hurry home, Joe.”
*
HE FOUND MARYBETH at the kitchen table with her laptop open and a Wyoming Department of Transportation state road map unfolded on the surface. A plastic bag of groceries had been haphazardly tossed on the kitchen counter, its contents strewn across the Formica.
There was a frantic look on her face when she turned from the screen to greet him as he entered through the mudroom.
“Dallas Cates was released from the penitentiary,” she said.
The words stopped him cold. “When?” he asked. “They were supposed to notify us.”
“They didn’t, those bastards.” she said. Beneath the table, Marybeth shoved a chair free with her foot and it slid across the floor. “You had better sit down,” she said.
Joe did, although he felt like he’d had the breath knocked out of him. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen it coming at some point. For years, they’d both kept track of the ongoing incarceration of Cates. And since the offenses he’d been convicted of were flimsy at best, they’d known the time would come when the man was released.
Joe remained conflicted about the circumstances that had put Cates away, even though he firmly believed that the former rodeo cowboy had done much worse and deserved punishment. Cates was an evil man, the spawn of an evil family. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been convicted of the murders and kidnappings he was involved with because the evidence wasn’t there and they couldn’t pin it all on him. Dallas was diabolical and calculating and he had the ability to involve others in his crimes and insulate his own role in them. Since he was a youngster, he’d perfected the act of instigating wrongdoing and then stepping back when accused and claiming, “Who, me?”
The fact was that the combined law enforcement forces in Twelve Sleep County had overtly targeted Dallas, Joe included. He’d participated in a kind of conspiracy to get Dallas Cates off the streets. No one knew at the time that their effort would result in the deaths of the entire Cates family, one by one. Even Brenda, the matriarch and actual brains behind the malevolent actions of her clan, had recently died in prison.
No, it wasn’t a shock that Dallas Cates had been released. Joe just wished they’d had notice of the event and could have made efforts to track his movement.
The map was open in front of him and he saw that certain locations in the square state of Wyoming were marked with sloppy black marker. The circles, if joined, looked to Joe like a poorly rendered sketch of the Big Dipper, or a child’s drawing of a kite with a tail.
“What’s this?”
Marybeth took a deep breath to calm herself, then jabbed her finger at a circle around Rawlins in the bottom center of the map.
“Two things happened on October 15,” she said. “That’s the day you found Clay Junior’s body after he was attacked by a grizzly bear on the Twelve Sleep River. The second is that Dallas Cates was released from prison. No one seems to know who picked him up or where he was headed.”
Her finger slid eastward along I-80 and then north to Hanna. “October 16, a body is found at the scene of a local museum that was burned to the ground. The body is later identified as Hanna town marshal Marvin Bertignolli. That’s the same day Bill Brodbeck was attacked up here right in front of you and the Predator Attack Team.”
“How are they related?” Joe asked.
“I don’t think they are, on the surface,” she said. “Except the second attack in as many days made a lot of news, as you know. Everybody in the state went on high alert.”
“This museum fire,” Joe said. “Why bring it up?”
“At first, I didn’t see the significance of it,” she said. “But when I dug into it just a few minutes ago I found something really interesting.”
“What’s that?” Joe asked.
Marybeth called up a previous window on her screen and read from the Cowboy State Daily news item. “‘Another victim of the fire was the twelve-foot mounted grizzly bear known as Zeus that had been a prize in the collection for decades.’”
“I don’t understand,” Joe said.
“Just stay with me here,” she said, her eyes wild. He knew that when she looked like that it was best to listen and keep quiet, so he did both.
Marybeth ran her finger in a backtracking motion to Rawlins again.
“October 23, a full week later, Corrections Officer Ryan Winner is attacked by a grizzly bear outside his home. No one can explain how a bear got there or where it came from. You said that yourself.”
She slid to the right again along I-80 going east. “October 25, two days later and a hundred miles away, Dulcie Schalk is killed on her ranch.
“Then,” she said, drawing a long imaginary line to the north and west, “on October 26, yesterday, a high school student and part-time attendant is found murdered at Hellie’s Tepee Pools in Thermopolis. Again, according to the Cowboy State Daily, the murder appeared to be a random act and no suspects have been identified. The cash register was not looted, and the murder weapon appears to be some kind of long daggerlike knife.”
Joe sat back confused. He saw five hastily drawn circles with no obvious conclusion.
As if reading his mind, Marybeth’s finger landed north of Thermopolis on the town of Saddlestring.
“Seven violent incidents in a matter of days,” she said. “That alone is unusual in Wyoming and completely outside the norm.
“Which brings us to today,” she said. “This morning it was Judge Hewitt. All of these incidents in a row lead to here, Joe. We couldn’t see it or connect things in any logical way because we were blaming the mind of a grizzly bear. But what if it wasn’t a bear? What if it has been Dallas Cates all along?”
Joe felt the hairs prick on the back of his neck and on his forearms. His belly went cold.
“Dallas had a list, Joe,” Marybeth said. “We all know that. Dulcie was on that list, and so was Judge Hewitt. Sheriff Reed is out of the picture. But you’re not, and neither is Nate.”
“Clay Junior wasn’t on any list,” Joe said. “Brodbeck, either. And how does the CO fit into this? Or the pool guy?”
“Winner and Cates didn’t get along in prison,” Marybeth said. “Weber confirmed that. I think he was added to Dallas’s hit list recently.”
“What about the pool guy? And what about the marshal?”
“I’m not sure about the pool guy,” she said. “His murder may not be related at all except that it falls within the pattern of movement. He might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or seen something he shouldn’t have seen. Or somebody. But I think your other question shouldn’t be about the Hanna marshal, unfortunately. I think it’s about Zeus.”
“Clay Junior? Brodbeck?” Joe asked again.
“Think of Clay Junior and Bill Brodbeck as totally unrelated. Start with Hanna and Zeus instead, because I think that’s what Dallas did. I don’t know how he contrived this, but somehow he did.
“As you know,” she said, “the bear attacks up here generated a lot of attention. They were all over the television, statewide radio, and the internet. There is no way Dallas wasn’t aware of what happened, especially in his old hometown. We know how Dallas thinks and how cunning and opportunistic he can be. I think he saw the news about the bear attacks and somehow figured out how to take advantage of them for his own purposes. He had a week to prepare. I’m not sure how he’s done it, but I think Zeus figures in somehow.”
“Or Zeus’s teeth and claws,” Joe said.
They stared at each other for a moment, and both of them came to the same thunderous conclusion at the same time.
“Lock the doors,” Joe said. It was the first time he’d ever said it to Marybeth.
“You call Nate,” Marybeth said in a panic. “I’ll call Liv.”