Savage Run (16 page)

He was not very good about letting things drop, Joe decided. It wasn't as if elk were an endangered species. There were tens of thousands of elk in the state, and probably more than there should be. Elk were killed every day by cars, disease, and predators. Hunters harvested thousands every fall. Other elk would replace dead elk.

But a huge bull elk had been killed out of season by a man who simply wanted the head of the animal on his wall. The elk's headless, massive body was left where it fell, and seven hundred pounds of meat left to rot. And nobody, it seemed, was as outraged about the crime as Joe Pickett was. For reasons he had trouble defining, he had taken this particular offense personally

It wasn't that Jim Finotta was a millionaire lawyer, or a rancher, or a developer. Joe didn't harbor any ill will toward successful men. What outraged Joe was the casualness of the crime and Finotta's reaction when accused.

Most poachers Joe caught lied about their crime when confronted. But Finotta lied with contempt and a haughty arrogance that suggested that it was somehow beneath him to have to waste his good,

valuable lies on the likes of Joe. Jim Finotta didn't need a trophy head on his wall for any other reason than to impress his guests and boost his own sense of worth. He certainly didn't need the meat, like a lot of poachers and hunters, but instead of giving it away or donating it to a shelter in town, he left it. If it was just a trophy Finotta had wanted, he could have hired a guide and hunted the elk in season like a sportsman. Instead, Finotta chose to shoot the bull elk offseason, when no one else could hunt it, order his lackeys to behead it, cover up the crime when accused, and use his influence and connections to discredit his accuser. As Robey Hersig had put it, the assholes usually won. But Joe had more than just Jim Finotta on his mind.

Two DAYS BEFORE, "Stewie" had called again. This time Sheridan had answered the telephone. When she asked who was calling, the caller had, at first, refused to tell her. But when Sheridan said she would have to hang up, the man identified himself as Stewie Woods and said he would be calling back when her mother was home. Sheridan wouldn't tell him when that would be.

Marybeth confided that evening when they were in bed that she had a strange feeling about this. If it were some kind of joke, there was nothing remotely funny about it. She said it didn't make sense that even the most dogged reporter would call twice using the same ruse. It had to be someone else, she said, calling for some other reason. She hoped it wasn't some morbid follower of One Globe.

But it couldn't actually be Stewie Woods. That was one thing both Joe and Marybeth left unsaid. There wasn't any reason to speculate further.

Whoever it was, Joe was irritated by the calls. They had requested

Caller ID in the hope of tracing the number, but it not yet been installed. He hoped he would be there the next time a call came so that he could snatch the telephone away and try to determine what was going on. It offended him that a stranger would call his wife, and it

offended him even further that the reason they were calling was because of her past relationship with another man. As innocent as Marybeth made it out to be, it made him grit his teeth when he thought about it. It was hard to imagine her in her high school and early college days laughing and trading jokes with two guys like Stewie Woods and Hayden Powell. Both of those men would later become well known, at least in the environmental community They were semi famous and charismatic. And both of them had loved his wife. However, Marybeth had chosen Joe and opted out of her potential life of excitement and notoriety He hoped like hell she didn't regret the path that she had chosen. Instead of hanging out with two big-shot environmentalist celebrities, Marybeth got to move around the state of Wyoming with Joe Pickett from one falling-down state owned house to another. Choosing Joe had resulted in discontinuing her legal career and adopting severe month-by-month budgeting to make ends meet, not to mention getting shot in her own house and being left for dead.

Joe sighed, smiled grimly to himself, and tried to calm down. But he vowed that when he found out who was calling Marybeth he would punch him right in the nose.

leading lizzie down to the stream so she could get a drink before he continued his ride up the summit, Joe marveled at the very bad run of luck the environmental community was having of late. First there was Stewie Woods, right here in his own district, blown up by a cow Then their champion, Rep. Peter Sollito and his scandalous death. Then Hayden Powell is killed in a house fire in Washington State. Powell's publisher claimed that Hayden had been two weeks away from delivering his book but no trace of the manuscript could be found.

Joe climbed back into the saddle and clucked at Lizzie to go. The string of bad luck had been capped this last week by the discovery of

the body of wolf advocate Emily Betts. Her small private airplane had crashed in the Beartooth Mountains southwest of Red Lodge, Montana. Hikers found her body They reported that upon approaching the wreckage they had seen two wolves emerge from the cockpit and flee. Emily Betts, likely dead on impact, had been partially devoured by her cargo.

Joe Pickett was not the only one to wonder if this series of deaths had a common thread. Speculation ran rampant in both the environmental community and over coffee in Saddlestring's local diner. But each incident was vastly different from the others. If there was a pattern it was incomprehensible. There was nothing about any of the deaths that suggested murder, except perhaps for Rep. Sollito's, and Joe had read that a prostitute had recently been arrested who was accused of the murder--although she was denying it and had hired a celebrity lawyer.

Now Emily Betts had joined the list; a wolf advocate who died while trying to illegally transplant wolves into Wyoming.

But even devoted conspiracy theorists could not connect the deaths in any way other than the fact that they were recent and all involved high-profile environmental activists. And that most of the deaths were, in some way; humiliating to talk about.

Joe had heard stories, though, of locals high-fiving each other in the bars. Apparently there were allegations being made on a national level within the fringe environmental groups, accusations of conspiracies, calls for a congressional and FBI investigation into the string of deaths.

Reining Lizzie to a stop, Joe pulled his notebook from his shirt pocket, and flipped it open to a fresh page. He drew a crude outline of the United States. Then he drew stars and dates at four locations: Saddlestring, Wyoming, June 10; Bremerton, Washington, June 14; Washington, D.C." June 23; and Choteau, Montana, June 29. There were four days between the deaths in Saddlestring and Bremerton; nine days between Bremerton and Washington, D.C; and six days between Washington, D.C. and Choteau.

If a killer or killers were responsible, Joe thought, then they had been crisscrossing the country by air or road for almost a month. And there could possibly be two, three, or even four of them, each with a separate assignment. That seemed unlikely he thought, simply because it was too complicated, with too many factors and possibilities where something could go wrong. But if it were one killer or a team of killers, they were having a hell of a busy month. He thought about the time lapses between the incidents and concluded that it was possible, although unlikely that one team could have done all of the killings. The longest span of time between incidents was between Bremerton and Washington, D.C." which was also the longest distance by car, which meant it was possible the killer or killers were traveling by car.

He stared at the drawing, thought about the dates.

He was getting nowhere.

joe turned lizzie back into the trees. He planned to work his way up to the summit and back down toward his pickup and horse trailer through a drainage on the other side of the mountain. He expected to find, and count, additional elk calves. He might find some fishermen as well near the road, or campers setting up early for the weekend. He would take the long way

He remembered to lean forward in the saddle and stroke Lizzie's neck and tell her what a good horse she was. He didn't used to do that.

Sheridan pickett ANSWERED the telephone Thursday during breakfast, listened for a moment, made an unpleasant face, and then handed the receiver to Marybeth.

"It's that man again," Sheridan said with distaste.

Joe and Marybeth exchanged worried glances and Joe mouthed, "Keep him on the line." He pushed back from the table to go upstairs to get on the other extension.

"Can I talk to him?" Lucy asked through a mouthful of breakfast cereal. Lucy wanted to talk with anyone who called.

Joe bounded up the stairs and closed the door in the bedroom. He sat on the unmade bed and gently lifted the receiver to his ear. The conversation had already begun. The connection was poor and filled

with static. The baritone voice of the man sounded drugged-out, slurred. The words came slowly as if through a mouthful of pebbles, the tone distorted.

"This is Stewie again, Mary," the man said. "Please don't hang up again."

"Who is this really?" Marybeth demanded.

Through Marybeth's phone in the background, Joe could hear Lucy asking again as if she could talk on the telephone and Sheridan telling her to be quiet.

"Stew
ie.
Stew
ie.
Come on, Mary you know who it is." He paused for a long beat. "I'm trying to think of how to prove it to you."

Her name is MaryfeetA, Joe thought.

"That would be a good idea," Marybeth said, "since Stewie Woods is dead."

The man chuckled. "The old Stewie might be dead, but not the new one. Hey ... I know I wish I would have practiced for this quiz, but it looks like I have to do it off the cuff." His words tumbled out and ran into each other. Joe guessed that the caller would be easier to understand if he could see him gesticulate. He imagined hands and arms flying through the air, the telephone pinned in place between jaw and shoulder, and determined pacing.

"Anyway in high school you drove a yellow Toyota. Whenever it got cold, it wouldn't start, and I figured out how to get it going by taking off the air cleaner and opening up the intake valve with a screwdriver. Who else could possibly know that?"

Joe felt his face go slack.

"Just about everybody in high school," Marybeth answered, but her voice was tentative. "And it was a Datsun, not a Toyota."

"Whatever," the caller said, then bulled ahead with the confidence of a telephone solicitor trying to get as much across as possible before the phone went dead in his ear: "Okay, here's another one. Our football team, the Winchester Badgers, once played in Casper and you and

Hayden Powell drove down on a Friday to see the game. After we won--I think the score was 27 to 17 and I intercepted a pass and ran it in for a touchdown--the three of us drove up on top of that hill on the east side of Casper and pulled up all of the survey stakes for their new mall. Remember?"

Marybeth was silent. Joe could hear Sheridan and Lucy squabbling at the kitchen table, and Marybeth's breathing. "Who would possibly know that happened except you, me, and Hayden?"

"Maybe you told someone about it," Marybeth said, her voice weak. "Or you wrote about it in your newsletter or something."

Joe, Marybeth, and the caller all realized at once that Marybeth had said "you." Joe was stunned.

"Did you just hear yourself?" the caller asked.

"I ... I did," Marybeth answered.

"Do I need to go on?"

"I'm just too shocked to answer right now," Marybeth said. Joe wished he were with her. He hoped she wouldn't hang up the telephone.

"Mary, I just want to see you again," his voice was kind.

"I'm married," Marybeth stammered. "I have three children eating breakfast at the table right in front of me."

"Everyone's married," Stewie said slyly, "but the big question, the one I've learned to ask is: are you happily married?"

You bastard, Joe thought. I can't wait to punch you right in the nose.

"Of course I'm happily married. To a wonderful man named Joe Pickett."

Stewie sighed. His voice changed. "I kind of figured that would be the case but I guess I hoped it wasn't."

Stewie was distancing himself. Now Joe hoped Stewie wouldn't hang up. Joe quickly buried the receiver in blankets from the bed so Stewie wouldn't hear the click of him hanging up, and scribbled a note

in his spiral pad. He descended the stairs and handed it to Marybeth. Her face was pale and her eyes were vacant.

Joe had written: Keep him talking--Ask him where he is.

Marybeth read the note and frowned, and looked to Joe for confirmation. Joe nodded yes. Faintly, Joe could hear Stewie talking to Marybeth again.

"How can it possibly be that you're still alive?" Marybeth asked.

Now Joe could only hear one side of the conversation.

"What do you mean when you say that?"

The school bus honked outside the house and all three girls scrambled as if an electric current had been simultaneously shot through their chairs.

They were suddenly grabbing backpacks, sack lunches, jackets, shoes. Joe signaled to Marybeth that he would take care of things. He opened the front door, waved at the driver, and shooed his girls toward the front gate. Sheridan gave him a look to indicate that she was getting a little old for shooing. The driver, a retired lumberjack named Stiles, leaned out of the door and asked Joe about the mule deer count in his hunting area.

"I'll have to talk with you tomorrow," Joe said, trying not to dismiss Stiles out of hand. "I've got a little bit of a situation inside I need to handle."

Stiles waved him off and Joe literally ran back to the house. Marybeth, with wide, disbelieving eyes, was gently replacing the receiver on the cradle.

Joe and Marybeth simply stared at each other.

"Did that actually happen?" joe asked.

Marybeth shook her head, stunned.