Below Zero jp-9 Read online

  “I remember when she lived with us,” Sheridan said, almost dreamily. “I came down the hall to get a drink of water at night and I heard you and Mom talking. I remember you saying you wondered if April was doomed.”

  “I don’t remember saying that,” Joe said, although he could vaguely recall similar conversations.

  “What if she heard you say that? What if it stuck with her? Do you think that would mess her up?”

  They crested a hill and the countryside opened up ahead of them. In the distance were the Pumpkin Buttes; four massive flat-topped cone-shaped land formations that dominated the southern horizon. They looked like crude sand castles formed by inverted God-sized buckets. Moonlight bathed the tops of the buttes, which shone like four blue disks.

  “Wow,” Sheridan said. “Those things are awesome-looking.”

  “I’ve been on top of them,” Joe said, grateful to change the subject.

  “What is it like up there?”

  He told her how he’d climbed to the top of the middle butte and walked around. The surface was as flat as a tabletop, covered with short grass. Chippings from arrowheads and other tools winked in the grass like jewels, and there were a half-dozen campfire and tipi rings where the Indians used to camp. The height of the buttes afforded them protection from other bands because the view was unparalleled: oceans of treeless prairie to the east, north, and south. He told Sheridan he could see until the land met the sky and vanished. To the west was the knotty blue spine of the Big Horn Mountains.

  “I’d like to climb them someday,” she said. “I’ve never found an arrowhead.”

  “Look,” Joe said suddenly, “I’ve done and said things in the past I regret. I wish I could take some things back. You’ll understand someday. But getting a second chance to save April means a lot to me right now. So let’s concentrate on that, okay?”

  Sheridan nodded. “Okay.”

  “No more speculating.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll shut up.”

  “You don’t have to shut up,” Joe said. “Just quit bringing up things that give me a stomachache. I’ve got to concentrate.”

  She laughed, “So what is your opinion about never listening to old music?”

  AS THEY DESCENDED on the two-track, Joe pointed out the windshield at a tight cluster of blue lights on the prairie floor to the northeast. “See that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s Savageton.”

  “That’s all there is?”

  “Yup.”

  Joe’s cell phone lit up and rang: Coon.

  “Yes, Chuck?”

  Joe could hear a roar in the background and recognized it as the ascending whine of helicopter rotors. He was surprised how quickly the FBI had located their pilots and fueled the helicopter. It sounded like they were ready to scramble.

  Coon had to shout: “Damn it, Joe. You’re holding out on us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Joe asked, wondering if Coon and Portenson had learned about April.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Coon yelled. “The subject fired up the cell phone a half hour ago. Are you telling me your daughter didn’t get a call or a text?”

  Joe slowed to a stop on the two-track and jammed the pickup into park. He glanced over at Sheridan, who’d heard Coon shouting.

  Sheridan shrugged and checked her cell, just in case. “No new texts,” she said, looking at the display, “and I still have a strong signal.”

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “We’ve heard nothing. Do your contacts say calls are being made?”

  “Yes, but we’re not sure which numbers were called. We don’t have that information yet,” Coon said. “The night staff at the phone company isn’t up on the tracing procedure, I’m afraid. But we do know the phone is on and starting to move.”

  Joe felt a tremor in his face muscles. So April had been at Savageton all this time? And was just now starting to drive away? He dug beneath his seat for his spotting scope while Coon said, “Yeah, we’re tracking it going south on Highway Fifty, which is the wrong way! They’re supposed to be headed north to I-Ninety, where we’ve got the roadblock set up!”

  Without consulting the map, Joe knew 50 would intersect with Wyoming Highway 387, which went southwest to northeast. On that road and several others, it would be possible for Stenko to access the Black Hills without ever putting his tires on the interstate. They’d all guessed wrong. He gave Stenko credit for being unpredictable in his movements.

  Sheridan said, “I wonder why she turned her phone on.”

  “Hold on a second,” Joe said to Coon and dropped his phone in his lap while he tightened the bracket of the spotting scope to the top of the driver’s side window. He leaned into it, focusing on Savageton.

  Savageton consisted of a single green corrugated metal building on a small rise a two hundred yards from Highway 50. The sides of the structure had been battered by snow and wind over the years and the words SAVAGETON LOUNGE AND RESTAURANT could barely be read in the moonlight. The large gravel parking lot where energy trucks and semis parked during the day was empty and lit by four pole lights. He could see fifty-gallon drums that served as garbage barrels and large wooden spools that were used as makeshift outdoor tables. Two abandoned cars sagged on the side of the building. All the interior lights were on, but as Joe focused on them they went off one by one, from the back of the building to the front. Ten seconds later, the front door opened and a single large man came out, turned, and locked the front door. He was alone and obviously closing the place for the night. Joe was sure he couldn’t be Stenko.

  “There!” Sheridan said. “I see a car.”

  Joe looked to his right. Sheridan was pointing far to the south, where two tiny taillights could be seen for a moment as the vehicle passed between to small hills. As the lights receded from left to right a brushy rise blocked them and they blinked out.

  Joe grabbed the cell and put the pickup into gear. “We have a visual,” he said to Coon. “A single vehicle headed south on Highway Fifty.”

  “Can you see who’s inside?”

  “No.”

  “Make or model?”

  “Too far,” Joe said. “And I’ve got at least two miles of rough road in front of me before I hit the pavement.”

  “Stay on them!” It was Portenson, who had apparently snatched the phone from Coon. “Don’t lose them!”

  “Hi, Tony,” Joe said.

  “Don’t ‘Hi, Tony’ me!” His voice was rapid-fire and angry. Joe could visualize Portenson standing in the dark on the tarmac with his salt-and-pepper hair flying in the prop wash and his scarred lip pulled back in a grimace. He shouted, “Catch up with Stenko and stay on him until we can get the chopper there or divert law enforcement from I-Ninety your way!”

  Joe said, “I’ll do my best.”

  But he’d lost the taillights. Sheridan had, too, and looked over with a palms-up gesture.

  “We can’t see the vehicle right now,” Joe said.

  “You can’t lose him!” Portenson said. “It’s impossible. Christ, there’s only one highway—”

  Joe said, “This whole basin is covered with roads, Tony. This is where all the energy development up here is. There are gravel roads everywhere going to oil rigs, wells, gas lines . . . and plenty of old ranch roads.”

  “JUST STAY ON HIM!”

  Joe wasn’t sure whether Portenson was yelling because of the increased motor noise from the helicopter or because his internal gaskets were blowing. Either way, Joe closed the phone.

  “It’s for his own good,” Joe said to Sheridan.

  She giggled as he tossed the phone aside and gripped the wheel with both hands. “Hold on,” he said to Sheridan, and gunned it down the hill.

  “WOO-HOO!” she howled, thrilled.

  18

  Powder River Basin

  BY THE TIME JOE LAUNCHED UP THROUGH A BORROW DITCH onto the stunning calm of the two-lane blacktop, he felt as if his bones had been rattled loo
se and his internal organs were sloshing around inside of him like loose pickles in a jar. He turned the pickup south on the highway and accelerated. The too-fast push down the butte and across the rutted steppe to the highway had been brutal, although Sheridan had shouted as if she were on a carnival ride.

  “I feel like I just got tumble-dried!” Sheridan said, laughing. “That was cool!”

  Unfortunately, the rough fast ride had jarred the glove box open and the contents—maps, papers, citation books, spent cartridges, spare handcuffs—had spilled all over the floorboards. As they sped down the highway, wind rushed in through the vents and sent papers flying through the air as if the cab of the vehicle were somehow gravity-free.

  Worse: they’d lost sight of Stenko’s car.

  The terrain was rolling hills and shallow arroyos, as if the high plains were severely wrinkled. Every time Joe topped a hill, they looked into the distance for red taillights before plunging back down into a low spot. Although there were plenty of static white lights on distant oil wells, there appeared to be no other traffic on the highway.

  As they shot past gravel service roads that cut to the right and left of the highway, Joe and Sheridan tried to peer out into the murk for a glimpse of the car. As the minutes went by, Joe knew the odds of finding Stenko’s car were tumbling. There were so many ways for them to get lost at night in terrain like this—taking an unexpected service road, pulling so far ahead that Joe simply couldn’t see a vehicle, or simply pulling off the highway into the shadows of a depression and turning off their lights. If Stenko suspected Joe was chasing him—he could have easily seen Joe’s headlights on top of the rise—he could be making evasive maneuvers.

  Joe scanned the night sky for a glimpse of the FBI helicopter and wondered how many minutes away from the Pumpkin Buttes it was . . .

  “I just saw car lights!” Sheridan shouted, her face pressed to the passenger-side window. “Back there—we went right past them.”

  Joe slowed and craned around, trying to confirm what she’d seen. They’d shot by at least two gravel exits on the right. Stenko could have taken either of them.

  “Where?” Joe asked, slamming the truck into reverse.

  “Out there,” Sheridan said, opening her window and waving generally to the west. “I saw taillights way out there, I swear . . .”

  He nearly backed off the highway from going too fast, but he corrected the wheel and stayed on the pavement. Then he saw something on the second access road—an almost imperceptible roll of dust that lit up in the headlamps. He never would have seen the dust as they sped by, but in his brights the settling dust bloomed like a wilting flower in the road.

  “They took this one,” he said. “See the dust in the air?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  He shut the lights off, and the gravel road vanished into darkness.

  “Hey,” she said. “How are we going to follow them in the dark?”

  “An old Indian trick,” Joe said while he reached under the dashboard and found the toggle switch for his sneak lights and turned them on. The sneak lights threw an orb of light down from under his front bumper into a pool immediately in front of the pickup. It was enough light to see to drive but because the beams pointed down into the dirt they were difficult to see from a distance. The sneak switch also disabled the taillights and brake lights, so that if he slowed or stopped, there would be no indication from flashing red.

  “Hey,” Sheridan said, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I’ve caught a lot of game violators over the years using these to follow vehicles or sneak up on poachers,” he said. “I’m sure Stenko probably saw us earlier when we were coming down that rough road with the brights on. But he’ll assume we went on down the highway, which is probably why he turned off here.”

  “Cool,” she said. “How come you didn’t ever tell me about these spy lights?”

  Joe said, “I keep some of my tricks in reserve. There are lots of tricks you don’t know about. You know, in case you ever decide to break any Game and Fish laws and I have to arrest you.”

  “Very funny,” she said. “You’d never arrest your own daughter.”

  “You know I would,” Joe said.

  She sighed, said, “Yeah, I guess you probably would. But Mom would be mad at you.”

  He smiled and reached over and squeezed her shoulder. Then he shoved the pickup into drive and turned off the highway onto the unpaved road. The truck vibrated and shook as it had before as his tires ground over egg-sized gravel.

  Sheridan said what Joe was thinking: “So what do we do if we catch them on this crappy road?” she asked.

  Joe said, “I’m not sure.”

  He could feel her staring at him, waiting for a better answer. But she wouldn’t get one. He didn’t dare approach Stenko’s vehicle too aggressively with Sheridan in his pickup and April with Stenko. The chance for a confrontation would be too great and he couldn’t risk their lives. He was sure Sheridan would object so he didn’t even want to discuss it with her.

  He said, “We’re going to maintain visual contact,” Joe said. “That’s all for now.”

  Sheridan didn’t respond. He glanced over to see her furiously tapping a message on her phone.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m asking April what’s going on.”

  “What if she can’t answer?”

  “Then she won’t,” Sheridan said, testy. “But if her phone’s on like that man told us, maybe she’ll get the text from me. She might be able to respond when Stenko or Robert aren’t paying attention.”

  “So what are you sending her?” Joe asked.

  “I’m asking her if they know we’re back here.”

  Joe nodded. “It would be interesting to know that.”

  “Yeah, and she can text back with just a ‘Y’ or an ‘N.’ Easy.”

  Because the sneak lights drastically cut down on his field of vision, Joe proceeded much slower than he would have preferred. He hoped that if Stenko saw no headlights in his rearview mirror, he’d have no reason to try and outrace him. He might even slow down or pull over to regroup. Joe and Sheridan topped a rise, and Joe saw the taillights ahead in the distance less than a mile away.

  “There they are,” he said. He couldn’t judge if Stenko had slowed or not before they plunged down into a hollow.

  Halfway up the next incline, Sheridan’s phone lit up and buzzed. Joe felt his stomach clench: April was responding.

  Sheridan read the message in silence and lowered the phone to her lap. When Joe looked over for clarification he could see moisture rimming her eyes.

  “What did she say?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “She said something bad,” Sheridan said, her mouth twisting into a pucker as if she was about to cry.

  “What?”

  “She said, ‘Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.’ ”

  Joe nearly drove off the road. He didn’t know if he was more shocked by what April had written or the fact that Sheridan repeated it verbatim.

  “Maybe somebody took her phone away from her and is using it to answer me,” Sheridan said weakly, turning her head away.

  And Joe was instantly enraged at the idea of April—or whoever—talking to his daughter like that and he thought: Things are going to get real Western here in a minute.

  IT WAS A CAR CHASE in slow motion: Joe fuming and driving under the duel handicaps of his anger and his sneak lights while the vehicle he was following ground on a half-mile ahead on the rough gravel road. Although they could only see Stenko’s vehicle in short glimpses as they drove on the tops of rolling hills or Stenko did, Joe started to discern that Stenko (or Robert) was driving erratically—racing ahead, sagging back, taking stretches of the road too fast and other stretches with ridiculous caution. He’d also noticed tire tracks meandering off the gravel road to both the right and left before correcting.

  His mind raced with scenarios to fit the facts as he knew them. Th
e scenarios made his heart race, and he didn’t want to share them with his daughter. She was smart, though, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was making the same speculations as well.

  Was the driver injured or hurt, he wondered? Was there a fight going on inside the car, causing the driver to veer off the road and over-correct? And he thought about that message Sheridan had received and he knew that whoever had sent it—whether it was a suddenly hostile April or someone who’d taken her phone away from her—the situation had changed drastically from what it was. He could only guess where it would lead, and he found it hard to imagine a narrative in which April would be perfectly safe.

  He located his cell phone on the seat next to him and handed it to Sheridan and asked her to speed-dial Coon. When she connected she handed it over.

  “Where are you guys?” Joe asked. “I’ve been following the subject vehicle for half an hour.”

  Joe could hear the roar of the props through the earpiece and he could barely make out Coon’s voice. He heard Coon shouting to Portenson that, “Pickett is still in hot pursuit.”

  Then: “Joe, can you hear me?”

  “Barely.”

  “I’d use the radio, but Agent Portenson thinks Stenko may have a scanner.”

  Joe shrugged.

  “Anyway, the pilot says we’re ten minutes from Pumpkin Buttes. That’s where the cell phone pings have been coming from. Does that make any sense to you? I don’t know the geography around here.”

  Joe nodded. “Yup. I’d be able to see the Buttes in my rearview mirror if the sun was up. Right now, we’re headed east on gravel roads through the oil field. I can’t tell you what road we’re on because I haven’t seen a number or a sign. But if you tell the pilot to head due east/southeast from the middle butte you should soon be over the top of us.”

  Joe could hear Coon yelling the directions. While he did, Joe checked the coordinates from his dash-mounted GPS and read those to Coon.

  “Okay,” Coon said. “We’ve got you located. We’re on our way.”