The Disappeared Page 13

  “Tell you what,” he said, finally letting go. He reached behind him for his wallet and withdrew a fifty-dollar bill from it and placed it on the counter. “You take the cost of the groceries out of that and keep the rest. That way we’re square.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said.

  “Sure you can,” he said, gathering up the items. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d please unlock the door so I can get out of your store. I can tell you’re quite rattled and I’m sorry I’m responsible for that.”

  She could barely feel her legs as she walked from behind the counter to the double doors. He was right behind her. She expected a blow to the head any second. The key rattled around outside the lock until she finally got it in and turned the bolt.

  A gust of freezing air washed over her as the door opened.

  “You have a pleasant night, Mrs. Schmidt,” the man said as he passed by her. “Remember: mind your own business and everything will be fine.”

  She watched his wide back as he walked toward the pickup. There was no one else in the cab.

  Before he opened the door and the dome light came on, he turned and looked at her and gestured for her to turn around. She did.

  As she locked the door from the inside, she glanced up to see the truck back up and turn for the highway.

  Schmidt didn’t have a cell phone. She had to go all the way to the rear of the store to the manager’s office to call 911 and report what had just happened.

  *

  SHE WAS STILL SHAKING and she was angry with herself as she drove toward Encampment on the dark highway. She was extra-cautious, as always, because there was ice on the road and the eighteen-mile distance was famous for deer, antelope, and elk at night.

  The dispatcher had been alarmed at first when Schmidt told her someone had been in the store after hours and refused to leave. But with every question the dispatcher asked, Schmidt’s confused answers made the situation sound more and more benign.

  “Did he actually threaten you?” the dispatcher asked. “Or did he say the two of you had a problem because he wanted to buy some items and you didn’t want to turn the register on?”

  “Both,” she’d explained. “But it sounded like a threat. It felt like a threat.”

  “Did he grab you physically or just reach out and hold your hand?” the dispatcher had asked.

  “When he was standing there in front of me, I remembered that smell, all right. The same smell as my daddy’s field that time.”

  The dispatcher said, “What smell?”

  “From the mill burner.”

  “Now I’m really confused,” the dispatcher said. “I thought this was about someone in the grocery store after hours.”

  Her words came rushing out. “My daddy was a cattle rancher over by Yoder and I grew up on the ranch. When I was little—maybe ten or eleven—he discovered a dead body out in the irrigation ditch.

  “You see, there used to be a lot of hobos around in those days. We didn’t call them homeless like we do today. They were just hobos who would show up at the front door and work a day or two on a ranch and then go on their way. My daddy recognized that dead hobo as one who had worked on our place the week before. Daddy figured that hobo had taken the money we paid him and bought cheap alcohol and stumbled into the irrigation ditch.

  “Daddy didn’t trust the local sheriff and he didn’t want any of us involved in finding a dead body on our place. Especially because it would raise suspicion and questions, I guess. So Daddy pulled that body out of the ditch and built a big pile of branches and boards. Then he put that hobo on top and lit it up.

  “I’ll never forget the smell of that burning hobo, but it didn’t come back to me until he was standing there in front of me. It was the same smell that came from the mill burner that night.”

  “That’s quite a story, Mrs. Schmidt,” the dispatcher said.

  By then, Schmidt knew she’d lost the conversation. That everything she said made her sound more batty and disoriented.

  “Come in tomorrow and talk to one of the officers,” the dispatcher counseled. “Maybe after some rest you’ll be able to make a little more sense.”

  *

  WHEN HER REAR WINDOW suddenly filled with headlights, Schmidt naturally eased over to the side of the highway so the speeding vehicle could pass her. She clicked her tongue at whoever would drive so fast and so recklessly on a snow-packed roadway with deer and antelope lurking just off the shoulder in the dark brush.

  When she glanced up, there was a pair of headlights so close to her Toyota she could actually see the bulbs and the license plate.

  Six-zero-zero.

  The impact was bone-jarring.

  12

  “SO YOU CAME ALL THE WAY DOWN HERE TO ASK ABOUT... FALCONRY permits?” Joe asked Nate and Jeff Wasson with suspicion at breakfast at the Saratoga Hot Springs Resort. He looked at Nate. “Why didn’t you just call me?”

  “There’s not a lot going on in the nuisance bird abatement business in January,” Nate said. “Besides, I have other business here.”

  Joe waited for more that didn’t come. Nate was like that. Joe had long given up trying to penetrate his cryptic pronouncements.

  Wasson said, “Nate told me you’d want to hear my story. When he said he was driving down here, I figured I’d come along for the ride and meet you in person.”

  Joe shot Nate a disapproving glance, and Nate smiled back with mischief.

  Serious master falconers were a different breed, Joe knew. They ate, drank, and slept falconry. Their lives were shaped around it and their outlook on life came from a severe perspective in which the practice of falconry was tantamount to everything else. When they had problems or disagreements, falconers often had a tough time believing that their concerns wouldn’t be shared by those outside their world if just given enough explanation. Falconers were passionate, willful, and obstinate.

  “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now,” Joe said to Wasson.

  “Nate said you always do, but I was hoping you’d give me a few minutes. This is important.”

  They were in a high-backed booth in a space just off the darkened bar-and-lounge area, where the barstools were metal saddles with pointing six-guns for armrests. The sprawling complex on the bank of the North Platte River featured private hot springs and had been known as the Saratoga Inn for so many years that locals still referred to it as “the Inn.” They were the only guests in the restaurant and even a crackling fire in the fireplace couldn’t warm it up yet.

  Joe had slept in his bed, and Nate and Wasson had unrolled sleeping bags on the floor of his room. Joe recalled that he hadn’t been in a similar situation since college when friends and acquaintances had crashed in his dorm room for the night. This was nothing unusual for Nate, who sometimes slept in the crook of a tree or in a cliff-side cave while waiting for raptors to return to their nests. But Joe thought, I’m getting too old for this. Wasson snored, and Joe didn’t get much sleep because of his guests as well as the incidents the night before. While he hoped that he could make more sense of the situation in the morning, he found that his head was fogged up.

  A waitress wearing a down vest and fleece-lined boots approached the table and asked for their order. As they studied the menu, she said, “Did you hear about that accident on the highway last night?”

  “What accident?” Joe asked.

  “A dear old lady who works at the grocery store slid off the road into a deep ditch. They found her this morning and from what I hear she’s probably not going to make it. Can you imagine being trapped in a wrecked car all night with it this cold outside? It’s really awful.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Joe said.

  “Mrs. Schmidt,” the waitress said, shaking her head. “I’m in the garden club with her. She was, I mean is, such a sweetheart.

  “Let’s hope she makes it,” the waitress said.

  *

  WASSON WAITED IMPATIENTLY for the waitress to take their order to the
kitchen and then he leaned across the table toward Joe, his eyes lit up from the inside.

  After explaining that both he and his wife were former schoolteachers who’d recently been laid off due to budget cuts in Riverton, he began: “I’m one of a handful of falconers in the country who is licensed to possess and hunt with a golden eagle. My wife and I both have federal permits we obtained years ago through the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. We used our eagles to hunt jackrabbits, showshoe hare, and pheasants, but we knew our birds were capable of much, much more. It was like taking an F-16 fighter jet out to hunt deer, you know?”

  Joe knew. Male golden eagles weighed up to ten pounds and had wingspans exceeding eight feet. The gripping strength in their talons could bring a strong man to his knees.

  Wasson said, “Do you know that falconers in Mongolia use eagles to hunt fox, wolves, and deer? It’s amazing. It’s like the kind of falconry you’re used to but blown up to a whole different level. You can find clips of it on YouTube.”

  Joe nodded. His longtime friendship with Nate had taught him plenty about the lethal capabilities of falcons and hawks. He was aware that falconry was the sport of kings in the Middle East and that American and British falconers had adapted the practice to better suit the more egalitarian cultures of the Western world.

  “Mongolian falconers sometimes use two birds in tandem to take down large prey,” Wasson said. “So we know it’s possible. But as far as I can tell—and believe me I’ve talked to every falconer in the country with an eagle permit—it’s never been done over here. But even though I have the license and I’ve studied falconry with eagles for thirty years, I can’t get permission to try it here.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Nate said to Wasson. “He won’t understand what you’re asking unless you go back to the beginning.”

  “The beginning?” Joe said with caution. He figured he only had enough time for them to have breakfast together before he resumed his investigation into Kate’s disappearance.

  Wasson said, “You probably know about the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act that was passed in the 1940s to save both birds. It was a, quote”—Wasson made quote marks with his fingers in the air—“good thing, but like all good things there were unintended consequences when politicians and bureaucrats with no wildlife experience decide to play God. Think about when the feds introduced Canadian gray wolves into Yellowstone where Canadians had never been before. Or...”

  “Stay on topic,” Nate commanded.

  Wasson blinked from the rebuke, but didn’t take offense. Joe assumed Nate often had to ask Wasson to get to the point. Falconers did tend to go on.

  “Anyway,” Wasson said, “the eagle population increased at the same time herds of sheep were growing across the state. That’s when the prices of wool and meat were high—before the Australians entered the picture. Eagles figured out that lambs were really good to eat. Lambs are easy prey. They have lots of meat, and ewes don’t try very hard to defend them. Sheep ranchers all over the West were getting hammered by eagles, and a few bad ranchers tried to fight back by poisoning eagles, hunting them from the air, and cutting off their legs and letting them fly away.”

  Joe nodded. He’d heard the stories.

  “In 1972, the Act was amended. The fines for unlawfully killing an eagle were increased significantly and the law specified that ranchers could lose their federal grazing leases if they got caught killing an eagle. At the same time, the Act was fixed to allow falconers to obtain eagles associated with depredation of livestock or other wildlife. Eagles are great creatures, but they’re eagles. In addition to killing lambs, they also like to kill bighorn sheep lambs. Oh, and golden eagles are the number one aerial predator of adult sage grouse.”

  The mention of sage grouse made Joe sit up. Sage grouse were radioactive when it came to state politics and policy. The survival of the chicken-sized bird was a massive topic of controversy in Wyoming and other Western states and it affected energy exploration and land use regulations in general. He’d been involved with a case in which someone had slaughtered an entire population—called a lek—and the incident’s far-reaching consequences had swept in multiple federal agencies and nearly shut down the energy economy in northern Wyoming.

  “Now I’ve got your attention,” Wasson said with triumph. Nate looked on with an amused expression. Joe ignored his friend.

  Their breakfasts arrived. Three orders of biscuits and gravy with bacon on the side. Joe dug into his, while Wasson ignored his plate and continued on.

  “After the falconry amendment was added to the Act, it took a typically long time—about twenty years—for the feds to finally write the regulations for it. Finally, finally, falconers like me who’d obtained a license could hunt with an eagle. We’re not talking about hundreds of birds, either. We’re talking about just a few one-tothree-year-old eagles. It was an absolute win-win-win for all concerned,” Wasson said. “If woolgrowers were getting their lambs slaughtered, they could call the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services agency and the state would allow falconers like me to go to the ranch and trap the birds for hunting. That saved lambs. It also saved countless sage grouse and other wildlife. And it allowed me and other master falconers to advance the art of falconry with eagles.

  “That lasted until 2009,” Wasson said. “That’s when the last administration suspended the program without any notice. We could no longer trap and fly eagles. So unless you had a pre-2009 eagle in your mews, you were shit out of luck.”

  Joe was puzzled. “Why did they do that?”

  Wasson slammed the table with both open hands and did it hard enough that the silverware danced. “Someone needs to find out,” he shouted. “Someone needs to rattle the cages of those federal bureaucrats to start up the program again. If you’ve noticed, ranchers are raising sheep again and lambs are getting killed again. And who knows how many of the state’s precious sage grouse are getting slaughtered?”

  Before Joe could respond, Wasson gestured to Nate. “We all look up to this guy, as you know. Some of us falconers have been involved with some kind of shady stuff in the past, like growing premium weed or selling trapped peregrines to Arab interests and things like that...”

  Joe narrowed his eyes and Wasson backed away from the topic so quickly it was if his hands were singed. Joe figured Wasson must have been warned by Nate that he was a bythe-book law enforcement officer who wouldn’t hesitate to arrest Wasson. And it was true.

  Wasson said, “I could have gone back to that after the school district let me go. But I saw how Nate went legit. He left his old life behind and he’s raking in money hand over fist with Yarak, Inc., helping out farmers and ranchers with problem birds—many of them invasive species. In a lot of cases, all he has to do is deploy his Air Force and the problem birds see what they’re up against and just go away.”

  Nate referred to his growing arsenal of red-tail hawks, prairie falcons, peregrine falcons, and gyrfalcons as his “Air Force,” Joe knew.

  “So I contacted half a dozen sheep ranchers a while back,” Wasson said. “They told me coyotes had replaced eagles as the number one killer of their lambs. Coyotes are exploding in numbers, as you know. My idea is to hunt two eagles at a time to take out coyotes on the ground, the same way the Mongolians use two eagles to kill wolves. These ranchers will hire me directly to trap eagles that are killing their lambs and use them to kill coyotes that are doing the same thing. Another win-win-win. But it’s January and spring is a few months away. I can’t get anyone in D.C. on the phone to help me get permission to trap an eagle or two. And I’m not the only one.

  “No licensed falconer has been allowed to trap an eagle to fly since 2009,” Wasson said again. “It’s not against the law. It’s not wrong. It helps ranchers and saves sage grouse. Coyotes are predators and they breed like rabbits. The eagles aren’t harmed. But I can’t get permission to hunt with an eagle.”

  “Which is where you come in,” Nate said to Joe. “
You can do the right thing and get involved.”

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t have any connection with the feds in D.C. who could issue the permits. That’s above my pay grade.”

  “Which is where you come in,” Nate said again, this time emphasizing every word.

  Then Joe got it. “You want me to talk to Governor Allen.”

  “Bingo,” Nate said.

  Joe sat back. “I’m not sure I have any influence with him.”

  Nate said, “You know him. You work for him. He’s the reason you’re down here.”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m here,” Joe confessed. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “But if you manage to do whatever it is he’s asked you to do, won’t he owe you a favor?” Nate asked.

  “Nate, he’s the governor.”

  “He’s a politician,” Nate said. “And I think he’s a certain kind of politician. The kind who operates in the world of favors.”

  “Maybe,” Joe said. “But that’s not the kind of thing I want to get involved in. I don’t do political.”

  Nate smirked and Joe felt his face get hot. He hated the idea of feeling compromised, but he wasn’t sure he could make a cogent argument to the contrary.

  Nate said, “I took a job this fall around Big Piney and I learned a few things about our governor. I think that if you pull this assignment off, he’ll owe you in spades.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look,” Nate said. “I have nothing to do right now. Liv is back in Louisiana visiting relatives for the month. Yarak, Inc. is dormant until spring. I can help you out with your assignment and maybe the governor will owe you one.”

  Wasson kept nodding his head and looking between Nate and Joe. It was obviously going the way he wanted it to go.

  Joe thought about it. “I’ve got a lot of ground to cover in a short time. Not to mention that someone stole the case file from my room last night and whoever it was knows why I’m here.”

  “Nowhere to go but up,” Nate offered. “Give me the names of the people you want me to talk to. As you know, I can be persuasive when it comes to getting information.”