Blood Trail jp-8 Page 14

  But he still wondered why Randy Pope had brought Wally Conway into the mountains and left him to die.

  CHEYENNE WAS cool and windy and Joe clamped his hat on his head as he followed Pope down the stairs of the plane to the tarmac. A white Yukon with state license plate number one was parked behind the gate next to the general aviation building and he could see two forms inside the smoked glass. Joe recalled that the last white Yukon he’d been assigned from the state ended up a smoking wreck in Yellowstone Park. He doubted they would want him to drive this one.

  Whoever was at the wheel of the Yukon blinked the lights on and off to signal them. Joe followed Pope, who walked briskly as if to signal to the people in the car he wasn’t actually with his subordinate, but simply traveling in the same plane with him.

  A highway patrol officer, likely assigned to the governor’s detail, got out and opened the two back doors while a state aeronautics commission staffer unlocked the gate. Joe took a deep breath of the high-plains air. It was thin at 6,200 feet, and flavored with sagebrush and fumes from the refinery at the edge of the city. As he glanced to the south, the golden capitol dome winked in the sun over the top of a thick bank of cottonwood trees turning yellow and red with fall colors.

  As they approached the gate, Pope said, “Try to keep your comments to a minimum when we talk to the governor.”

  Joe said, “I work for him.”

  “You work for me.”

  Joe shrugged. He climbed into the backseat of the Escalade next to Pope and the doors shut, instantly killing the howl of cold wind.

  She turned around in the front seat, said, “Hi, Joe.”

  “Hello, Stella.”

  Stella Ennis was ivory pale, with piercing dark eyes and full dark lipsticked lips. She wore a charcoal skirt suit over a white top with a strand of sensible business pearls. Her hair seemed richer and even more auburn than Joe remembered, and he guessed she was coloring it to hide the strands of gray. She looked at him coolly, assessing him in one long take that seemed to last for minutes although it really didn’t, and he couldn’t read what she concluded.

  “I’m Randy Pope,” Joe’s boss said to her.

  “I know who you are,” she said, not looking at him.

  Joe saw Pope and the trooper exchange glances. Joe nervously fingered the wedding ring on his hand, something he’d done without realizing it the first time he met Stella in Jackson.

  Stella said, “The governor wants to see you two immediately. As you can guess, there’s going to be an investigation by DCI to determine what happened up there, and no doubt there will be questions by the media and some members of the legislature. Governor Rulon wants to make sure we’re all on the same page before the shit hits the fan. There may be charges brought, so be prepared.”

  “Charges?” Pope blanched.

  “One never knows,” she said. “When three people are killed in an operation, there are always those who insist on some kind of accountability, someone to blame. Not that we want any scapegoats. But we think we can head off anything like that happening if we can get out in front of it.”

  “We’ll work with you however we can,” Pope said, trying to get her eye. She finally broke her gaze with Joe and her eyes swept over Pope as if he were out-of-place furniture as she turned back around.

  “Let’s go, Bob,” she said to the officer.

  Stella said, “Word about what happened last night is tearing across the state like wildfire. We are very, very lucky the legislature isn’t in session, or it would be a sensation on the floor. This is the first time in the state’s history a governor has closed down state lands to hunting. And our understanding from the Feds is that they will follow suit this afternoon. We’re already getting e-mails and constituent phone calls saying Governor Rulon is a dictator and much, much worse.”

  “I can imagine,” Pope said, but the words just hung there when she chose not to respond to him.

  Stella said, “We called a press conference for three-thirty. The governor plans to let everyone know what’s happened and what measures he’s taken. It’s important that we have our story straight and our plan in place.”

  Joe checked his watch. An hour and a half before the press conference.

  As they traveled down Central to downtown, toward the gold dome, Joe looked out the window at the stately houses on the avenues.

  Stella Ennis was still attractive and sensual and familiar. But she was also still a murderer, and only Stella and Joe knew it. This time, unlike the first time he’d met her, there was no zing.

  For which he was grateful.

  16

  “PARDON MY FRENCH,” Governor Spencer Rulon said after Joe detailed the events of the day and night before, “but it sounds like a classic clusterfuck.”

  “It was,” Pope sighed, leaning away from Joe as if to distance himself both literally and figuratively.

  Rulon asked Pope, “Did you come to that conclusion from the comfort of your hotel room after you cut and ran like a rabbit?”

  They were crammed into Rulon’s small private office in the capitol building on Twenty-fourth Street, as opposed to the public office and conference room where Rulon could generally be observed by constituents and visitors touring the building. Rulon’s private office was dark and windowless with a high ceiling and shelves crammed with books, unopened gifts, and what looked to Joe like the governor’s eccentric collection of fossils, arrowheads, and bits of bone. Also in the room, in addition to Pope, who sat next to Joe facing Rulon across his desk, and Stella, who sat at Rulon’s right hand but managed to defer to him with such professional determination that she became an extension of him rather than his chief of staff, were Richard Brewer, director of the state Department of Criminal Investigation, and Special Agent Tony Portenson of the FBI. Joe and Portenson had exchanged scowls, and Rulon cautioned them, saying, “Now, boys . . .” They went back six years. Portenson was dark, pinched, and had close-set eyes and a scar that hitched up his upper lip so that it looked like he was sneering. The last time Joe had seen Portenson was in Yellowstone Park, as the FBI agent set up a scenario to betray Joe and lead Joe’s friend Nate Romanowski away in cuffs.

  Everyone was so tightly packed around Rulon’s desk that it was both intimate and uncomfortable in equal measures, and Joe guessed that was exactly the atmosphere Rulon wanted to create. The governor was the only one with room, with the ability to wave his arms or pounce across the desk like a big cat to make a point. To Joe, Stella’s silence and stillness only seemed to make her more conspicuous. Or at least it did to him.

  Pope was obviously flustered by Rulon’s question, and he once again withdrew his digital camera from his coat, turned it on, and handed it across the desk to the governor.

  “This was in my room,” Pope said gravely.

  Rulon leaned forward, saw the image of Frank Urman’s head, and winced.

  Pope handed the camera to Brewer, who turned white when he saw it. Portenson looked at it and rolled his eyes and shook his head, as if to say, “You people out here are savages.” When offered the camera, Stella shook her head quickly to refuse.

  “The shooter knew I was up there,” Pope said. “He wanted to send me a personal message.”

  “Looks like he did,” Rulon said. “Has the press gotten ahold of this yet?”

  Pope shrugged.

  “They will,” Rulon said, “and it will make a bad situation even worse.”

  “Expect to see it on the Internet,” Brewer said. “Somebody will post it.”

  Rulon sighed.

  Joe noted how skillfully Pope had steered the topic away from his leaving them on the mountain. He wanted to hear the answer. And he still wanted to know why Pope had brought Wally Conway.

  “What happened to your neck?” Rulon asked Pope, fingering his own.

  Joe thought, Uh-oh.

  “Just an accident,” Pope said quickly. “I walked into a branch up there in the mountains and nearly strangled myself.”

  Joe
stared at Pope, wondering why he was protecting him.

  “I feel really damned bad about Robey,” Rulon said to Joe. “He was a good man. He was a buddy of yours, wasn’t he, Joe? Please let me know about the funeral arrangements so I can be there, okay?”

  Joe nodded.

  Rulon said, “I’ve already alerted the AG to get ready for the civil suit from Buck Lothar’s family, assuming he has one. Even though it sounds like the guy screwed up, according to Joe, it’s gonna cost us millions, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure,” Brewer echoed, gesturing toward Joe. “The potential suit may hinge on my investigation of the incident, which I’m prepared to do immediately.”

  The governor waved him away, indicating there was no hurry.

  “What about this other guy, Conway?” Rulon asked Pope. “Should we expect something from his family?”

  Joe listened with anticipation.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Pope said, casually dismissing the notion out of hand. “That’s the last thing I’m worried about. We’ve got a lot bigger trouble brewing.”

  “No shit,” Rulon said.

  Joe wondered what had just happened, what he’d missed.

  “DO YOU BOYS remember the story of Eric Rudolph?” Governor Spencer Rulon asked in such a manner that it was clear he was going to tell the story no matter how Joe or Pope answered.

  “Eric Rudolph,” Brewer said, answering the governor’s question. “North Carolina. Rudolph—”

  Rulon proceeded as if Brewer had never spoken: “Eric Rudolph was and is a slimeball, a walking bucket of pond scum. But he may be relevant to our situation here. How? you ask. I’ll tell you.”

  Joe settled back in his chair, wondering where this was going.

  “Eric Rudolph was the miserable buckaroo who set off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 that killed two people and injured a hundred and eleven others. He also bombed an abortion clinic in Atlanta and a gay and lesbian nightclub in Birmingham, which killed a cop. Eric Rudolph was a true believer,” Rulon said. “The problem was he was a true believer in a horseshit set of beliefs that included the Christian Identity Movement—whatever that is—and what he called global socialism. He said he was an anti-Semite who was against homosexuality, abortion, globalism, et cetera, et cetera. The only thing I agree with him about is he thought John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was a despicable song.”

  Joe noted that Rulon’s last comment brought a hint of a smile from Stella.

  After a few beats, Randy Pope said, “Sir, I don’t see what Eric Rudolph has to do with us.”

  Rulon made a pained face. “You don’t?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You don’t see the similarities?” Rulon asked with incredulity.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Rulon heaved a sigh, leaned forward on his desk, and lowered his voice. “Director Pope, Eric Rudolph was on the run for five and a half years before he got caught. Everybody knew who he was, knew what he looked like, knew all about him. Everyone knew he was in Appalachia, and most likely North Carolina, the whole time. But despite the best efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement, he eluded them for five and a half years. Yes, five and a half years.

  “Finally, in May of 2003, a rookie police officer in Murphy, North Carolina, caught Rudolph Dumpster-diving outside a Save-A-Lot store. Rudolph was unarmed and clean-shaven, wearing new clothes and new shoes. They found his little camp, which turned out to be a stone’s throw from two strip malls and a high school. Apparently, the officers reported they could hear the highway traffic from where Rudolph’s camp was—it was that close to civilization.”

  Rulon paused again. When Pope shook his head to indicate he still didn’t get it, Rulon said, “For five and a half years, the top fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list lived and prospered in the hills of North Carolina and was finally captured wearing new clothes and with a fresh shave, despite a one-million-dollar reward. Everyone was astonished when it happened, but they shouldn’t have been. What those law-enforcement people should have been paying attention to was the fact that ‘Run Rudolph Run’ T-shirts and bumper stickers were damned hot sellers in the area, and that there were enough local sympathizers—true believers—to keep Rudolph fed, clothed, and well taken care of right under their noses. Despite a massive ground search and the best experts and high technology, this guy lived two hundred yards from a strip mall in a densely populated area.”

  Rulon slammed his desk with the heel of his hand. “The reason Eric Rudolph remained free was because of sympathizers who were true believers like him. Not the whole county, to be sure, but it doesn’t take a whole county—just a few true believers. They’d rather take care of him and give him food, shelter, and clothes than collect on a million bucks. They believed in him and his cause.

  “Right now,” Rulon said, “Klamath Moore is up there in Saddlestring with a bunch of followers. Most of his people have come in from other states, but some, no doubt, are local. Joe, how many people in your county would you guess are pro-hunting?”

  “It’s hard to say, but I’d guess sixty percent,” Joe said. “Maybe higher.”

  “What percentage just couldn’t care less?”

  Joe shrugged. “Twenty-five, thirty percent, I’d say.”

  “Which leaves us what—ten percent anti-hunters?”

  Joe nodded.

  “How many of them are true believers?”

  “I have no idea,” Joe said.

  “Even if it’s five or ten people,” Rulon said, “that’s enough to create a support network for the guy who is out there. And that’s all he needs. Plus, he’ll have a good percentage of the press and a lot of sympathetic elitists who despise hunting on his side. And make no mistake, there are more people in this country against hunting than for it. Right now, today, even in my own state, Klamath Moore is up there preaching to the converted and radicalizing maybe just a few more folks over to his cause. His aim is to build something that will last a long time. As hard as it is to believe, gentlemen, there are already people all across this country and the world who look to Klamath Moore and the killer as heroes. Some of the news coverage is already being spun that way—‘Neanderthal hunters in Wyoming are finally getting their comeuppance.’ The world is going mad, as we know, but all these years we’ve been isolated from that. Not anymore.

  “I predict there will be T-shirts and bumper stickers printed within the week. That unless we find this killer real fast, we won’t find him for years. And that for every week that passes, this murderer will grow in stature among the loonies until he’s a legend. And so will Klamath Moore.”

  Rulon turned his attention to Randy Pope. “Now do you see the connection? Do you follow?”

  “Yes, sir,” Pope said, unable to swallow. “My agency will be decimated by the lack of revenue from hunting licenses.”

  “Not to mention how it’ll kill sales tax revenue,” Rulon said. “But Director Brewer and Special Agent Tony Portenson have some information and a new theory,” Rulon said, leaning back in his chair, using the words Special Agent as if they were curse words. “Much of this was unknown to me until about an hour ago, and I’d very much like you to hear it.”

  Portenson glared at the governor with naked hatred. Joe thought, There’s something going on here.

  “KLAMATH MOORE really wasn’t on our radar screen until recently,” Richard Brewer said, withdrawing a file from his briefcase and placing it on the governor’s desk. “Not until Director Pope contacted us with his suspicions that the ‘accidental’ hunting deaths of John Garrett and Warren Tucker might be connected in some way. For that, we sincerely thank you, Randy, for your prescience in this matter.”

  Pope sat up and nodded to Brewer, obviously thankful for the compliment.

  “Most of what we know about Mr. Moore comes from his website,” Brewer said. “I put three of our best investigators on it. They’ve produced this report”—Brewer tapped the file he’d produced—“which is, f
rankly, very disturbing.”

  Brewer spoke formally with a deep, melodious voice. He sat ramrod straight in his chair. He had dark hair, a prominent jaw, and heavy eyebrows that conveyed his “I am a serious man” persona.

  Joe could hear shuffling and murmuring coming from the conference room next door where the press conference would be held. He checked his watch—ten minutes until the governor was scheduled to address the media.

  Brewer continued, “On his website, Moore stokes the fires of the extreme animal-rights movement. He makes no bones about the fact that he finds hunting abhorrent and hunters demented. He advocates interfering with hunters in the field, and sabotaging hunting seasons across the country and the world. He’s clever in how he does it, though, always couching his advocacy in phrases like ‘We’re not asking you to break the law, but . . .’ or ‘We don’t advocate violence or criminality in any shape or form, but . . .’ types of caveats. Obviously, he’s been advised by lawyers so that his words are clear but he covers himself so he can’t be held accountable for what happens.

  “The most interesting thing we found on his website is called ‘The Forum,’” Brewer continued, opening the file and pulling out a thick stack of printouts. “It’s where his followers can post messages and have discussions. Sometimes, Mr. Moore joins in. And in doing so, he is often not as careful about his words and meaning as he is in his more formal statements on the website.

  “For example, there was a post three weeks ago from a person who calls himself Wolverine. Rather than read it, I’ll let you,” Brewer said, handing copies to Joe and Pope.

  Joe glanced at the pages, recognized the comment format of a blog.

  I Had A Dream.

  Last night, I had a dream. In my dream, a brainless American hunter was struck down and his body mutilated in the same way he had been mutilating innocent animals all his life. When he was found, people were horrified at what had been done to him. And then they began to realize this is what millions of Mighty Men do all the time. And it made them think about the pathetically sad and disgusting people in their midst who derive pleasure from killing creatures who have just as much right to be on this earth as they do.