Off the Grid Page 17

  “What?”

  “I said, guess who changed their status to ‘In a Relationship’ at two-thirty in the morning.”

  “Who?”

  Lucy sighed, rolled her eyes, and lowered her phone. “Who do you think? April. Your daughter. One date, and . . . boom.”

  Now Marybeth understood and she winced.

  “You know what happened the last time she fell so hard so quick,” Lucy said.

  “You don’t have to remind me.” Dallas Cates.

  Lucy said, “Let’s hope she has more sense now. Nobody wants to go through something like that again.”

  Marybeth placed her hand on Lucy’s shoulder and nodded her head.

  “I kind of thought there would be a bigger reaction from you,” Lucy said.

  “She’s nineteen. She’s old enough to make her own decisions.”

  “But they’re nearly always wrong.”

  “She’s older now. Wiser.”

  “If you say so,” Lucy said with an unconvinced sigh. She placed her phone on the table and rose to take her dish to the sink.

  As she rinsed it, she said, “So what’s going on?”

  Marybeth knew she’d need to answer. Lucy was intuitive and rarely wrong. She’d spent her life as the youngest, carefully observing every member of the family. She was the holding tank of her siblings’ emotions and aspirations. If Marybeth wanted to know what was going on with either Sheridan or April, she asked Lucy. Lucy also had a special understanding of her mother.

  “When I talked to your dad last night, he sounded so . . . forlorn. He was by himself in the middle of the Red Desert. I know he tried to sound cheery for me, but I could tell he had a lot on his mind.” Marybeth sighed. “I know he’s often in the field by himself, so I guess I shouldn’t worry.”

  “But . . .” Lucy interjected.

  “But he sounded lonely, I guess. I tried to give him a call this morning on his cell phone, but he must be out of cell tower range. When I called the satellite phone, I got an error message. Then I contacted dispatch in Cheyenne and they haven’t been able to reach him. The thing is, he promised to keep his phone on.”

  “Hasn’t this happened before?” Lucy asked.

  “Only a hundred times,” Marybeth said.

  “So why is this different?” Lucy asked sincerely.

  “I’m really not sure, but it is,” Marybeth said. “I’ve just got a bad feeling and I’m not sure I can say why.”

  Lucy seemed to understand. “I hope he’s okay,” she said.

  Marybeth said quickly, “Oh, I’m sure he is. I didn’t mean to upset you for no good reason. It’s just that being the wife of Joe Pickett is sometimes . . . trying.”

  “Imagine being his daughter,” Lucy said.

  • • •

  WHILE DRIVING toward Saddlestring after Lucy had left for play practice at school, Marybeth flipped through the contacts on her cell phone and placed the call.

  “Governor Rulon’s office, this is Lisa.”

  Lisa Casper was Rulon’s administrative assistant, but she was more than that, Marybeth knew. Casper was Rulon’s gatekeeper and quasi-bodyguard. She looked out for the governor when he refused to look out for himself, and she diverted problem people away from him before he knew they were even around, and therefore he couldn’t engage with them and get himself in trouble. She probably knew more about Rulon than he knew about himself. Mrs. Rulon trusted Casper to keep her husband in line and out of the newspapers. Mostly, Casper succeeded.

  “Lisa, this is Marybeth Pickett, Joe Pickett’s wife.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Pickett.”

  They’d met once at a reception, but Marybeth couldn’t be sure Lisa actually recalled her.

  “And how are the girls?” Lisa asked.

  So she did.

  “They’re fine. Thanks for asking.”

  “And Joe?”

  “That’s what I’m calling about. I was hoping I might be able to speak to the governor.”

  Casper paused. “I’m afraid the governor is in a meeting with some federal officials right now. I can take a message and get it to him when he’s through. And this is regarding?”

  Marybeth said, “This is regarding the fact that Governor Rulon sent Joe on an assignment and now I can’t reach him.”

  “I see,” she said. Marybeth could hear a keyboard clacking gently in the background. She hoped Casper was messaging Rulon and not simply typing up a request.

  Marybeth found it telling that Rulon had chosen to keep Casper unaware of Joe’s special assignment. That meant something. Rulon was a superior political practitioner when it came to preemptively establishing deniability if something he’d ordered—or suggested with emphasis—went horribly wrong. Because Lisa Casper was a straight arrow, he wouldn’t want her implicated in something sensitive where she’d be forced to choose between loyalty to him and honesty.

  Before Marybeth could give Casper any more information, Rulon broke into the call.

  “Thanks for the distraction,” he said in his booming voice. Then to someone else in his office: “I’ve got to take this call. It’s important state business and I’m still the governor. It doesn’t concern you people”—he was now addressing someone else in his office—“even though you think everything concerns you. So why don’t you folks go out and wander around town and target some people to fine and regulate? There should be some honest, hardworking citizens you can find to shake down. Maybe someone has an oversized toilet tank or they’re using the wrong kind of dishwasher soap. That’s what you do, right?”

  Marybeth heard grumbling, then a door shut harder than it probably needed to be.

  Rulon came back on the line and said, “It’s the fetching Mrs. Pickett. I hope you’re doing well. I will never understand how a guy like Joe married so above his station.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “So what is the nature of this very pleasant interruption?”

  She paused for a moment, then said, “Right now, I’m worried about my husband and his friend. They’re very important men in my life.”

  20

  The worst aspect of the long trek for Joe wasn’t his sore feet and burning calves or the sheen of cold sweat that bathed his entire body or the heavy daypack on his back as he walked in a northerly direction toward the interstate highway, it was that damned song that kept running through his head like an earworm:

  I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name . . .

  His breath pounded out the melody and his cadence supplemented it, and the most miserable aspect of the whole experience was he’d never liked that old song by America in the first place. He’d thought it too clever and morose.

  So why was it there?

  It felt good to be out of the rain . . .

  • • •

  THIRTY-EIGHT MILES. At four miles an hour by foot, that meant he might reach the highway in nine and a half hours. If he could hitch a ride with a trucker into Rawlins or use the driver’s cell phone, he might be able to convince a tow-truck operator or Phil Parker to drive out into the middle of the Red Desert to retrieve his vehicle. And he could touch base with Marybeth and Governor Rulon to let them both know that he was alive and well and what was going on.

  As if he knew what was going on or what had happened, he thought.

  He replayed the incident over and over as he walked. Joe could still hear the crackle in the air and he could still feel the truck—and his cell phone—go dead. Whatever had been in the back of that other pickup had caused it to happen, he was sure.

  But was it? What kind of weapon could do such a thing?

  And how many damaged trucks was he up to now, he thought. How many state vehicles he was responsible for had been burned, wrecked, shot up, or destroyed in his career? He knew he held the record within the state government agencies in W
yoming for the number of ruined trucks, although a bulldozer operator near Cody still claimed the largest monetary loss after he’d accidentally driven his heavy equipment over the Buffalo Bill Reservoir dam. Still, Joe’s record was an embarrassing and dubious honor. He knew there was a pool of Game and Fish administrative employees at the headquarters in Cheyenne who actually bet real money on how long each truck assigned to him would last. This one: four months, assuming they couldn’t get it going again.

  Most of them had not been his fault, a point he’d made in futility to the agency’s director when she’d shown him a list someone had compiled. How could he be blamed for the fact that once, while he was in Yellowstone Park on an assignment from the governor, the asphalt melted away under his parked vehicle and a hot new geyser had erupted through the undercarriage?

  But he’d never had to walk this far out of anyplace he’d been stranded.

  • • •

  HE DECIDED TO CARRY his .308 M14 carbine with a peep sight instead of his shotgun, which was a hard choice for him to make. The rifle had a shoulder sling while the shotgun did not, plus he figured if he had to further defend himself it would be better to have long-distance capability. After all, he could see for miles in every direction. He doubted that if he got into another situation, he’d be close enough to the bad guy to use his shotgun.

  The pack he carried contained two gallon jugs of water, a water filter he hoped he’d have the opportunity to use if he found a source, Steiner binoculars, flex-cuffs, year-old energy bars, a first-aid kit, a length of parachute cord, his Filson vest, matches, bear spray, and his .40 Glock. The cooler was too large and heavy to carry, so he reluctantly left it behind. There was no reason to bring essential gear like a radio, GPS, digital camera, phone, or digital recorder. None of them worked anymore anyway.

  He already wished he’d left his handgun behind. It was heavy and he preferred his shotgun or carbine.

  • • •

  AT FIRST, Daisy had enjoyed the hike. She caromed around in the predawn, in front and back of him like a cream-colored ghost. He told her to calm down, to save her energy, but she didn’t obey. For a quarter of a mile, she loped a circle around him, the leathery remains of a dead mouse she had found sticking out of her mouth like a half-smoked cigar.

  About three hours from the truck, Joe realized Daisy was lagging farther and farther behind and her tongue hung out of her mouth. Her gait was labored, so he paused to let her catch up.

  While waiting, he looked around, scanning the horizon in all four directions. If he hadn’t been so miserable and worried, he thought, he would enjoy the view. The sun brought out the colors of the orange and yellow rocks, and it lit up the spikes and needles of the mean and stingy desert scrub into something almost benign. In the western distance, soaring turkey vultures rode thermal currents and tracked across the front of wispy clouds.

  Deserts held a particular kind of cold, distant beauty he knew was there but had never been able to fully appreciate. He doubted his trek would bring out that appreciation. Joe much preferred the foothills country leading up to his Bighorn Mountains, and even the dark and tangled timber itself to desert landscape. It had always bothered him that tracks in the desert stayed there for years and that the terrain was so bereft of moisture that something that was dropped carelessly—like a gum wrapper or a beer bottle cap—would remain where it fell for seasons. The desert, he decided, was dirty.

  Of course, there were advantages as well. He could see and hear forever. No one could sneak up on him or spring from behind a tree. If his situation got desperate, there was game to kill and eat, and water—somewhere—to drink.

  Joe took off his hat and bent down to one knee. Inside his stained and weather-beaten Stetson was a satin depiction of a 1940s cowboy giving his horse a drink out of the upside-down crown. He mimicked the scene by pouring half a gallon of water into his hat and putting it down for Daisy. She eagerly and sloppily lapped at it, almost as if she were eating it, until her belly was full. All that remained when she was done was a frothy viscous stew that he poured out into the dirt.

  Joe stood and drank from the jug, nearly emptying it. He tried to remember how long the water jugs had sloshed around in the back of his gearbox and decided it had been more than a year. Despite that fact, and the mild taste of plastic, he couldn’t recall drinking anything better.

  His wet hat felt wonderfully cool on his head when he clamped it back on. His pack was lighter because a gallon of the water was gone, but that was a mixed blessing.

  Although it was nice to stop and rest, he could feel his muscles start to stiffen and the chill set in from the early-morning cold, so he turned and continued on. The water brought Daisy back to life, and she padded along beside him, her tail wagging in the air from side to side like a metronome.

  A metronome keeping the beat of . . .

  I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name . . .

  • • •

  AN HOUR LATER, as Joe labored up a long sandy rise toward the northern horizon, he heard gunfire in the distance. Instinctively, he dropped to his haunches and pulled his carbine off his shoulder. Daisy was alarmed by his reaction and huddled with him.

  It sounded like popcorn popping. Twenty, thirty rapid-fire shots, then a long automatic burst that ripped through the morning like fabric being torn into strips. Obviously, there were multiple shooters and multiple weapons.

  And whatever they were shooting at was being hit, at least occasionally. He could tell by the way some gunshots ended abruptly in a closed-off way and didn’t sing or echo over the landscape.

  Pow-THUNK. Pow-THUNK.

  There was no doubt the fire was coming from the north, from somewhere over the top of the sandy hill. It was impossible to discern the distance, but he knew it wasn’t close. At least a mile away, maybe two.

  With the carbine in his right hand, Joe scrambled the rest of the way up the hill. He kept low, bending at the waist. The footing was loose and his boots kept slipping in the sand as he climbed. He avoided clumps of cactus.

  As he approached the top, he hunkered down lower until he was on his hands and knees. His destination was a gnarled ancient one-foot-high greasewood shrub that clung stubbornly to the sand. He would use it to peer through toward the flat below. Although whoever was shooting might be friendly, he thought, he didn’t want to show his head or his hat. Yet.

  Not to someone—or a group of people—with automatic weapons.

  It wasn’t unusual, he knew, to hear shots at any time of the year or in any place away from towns or roads. It could be target shooters, sportsmen sighting in their rifles, locals with illegal automatic firearms testing them out where there was no law enforcement presence, or predator hunters going after coyotes.

  “Daisy, get away,” he ordered when she assumed that because he was on all fours he’d like to have his face licked. She shrunk away.

  • • •

  THE SHOOTING HAD STOPPED by the time Joe parted the thick dry shrub with the barrel of his carbine so he could see through it. The fabric of his red shirt clung to his back from sweat, and he felt a trickle of it through his scalp. The morning was heating up in more ways than one.

  What he could view through the opening would determine whether he would stand and wave for rescue or stay put, as miserable as that sounded.

  There, over a mile and a half away on the desert floor, were four parked white pickup trucks in a tight circle surrounding something of great interest to the people inside the cabs and in the back of the vehicles. None of the pickups had a topper on it like the truck he’d encountered the night before that knocked out all of his electronics, so he assumed the men below weren’t involved in that event. He was too far away to hear voices or see clearly, but he guessed there were at least ten figures milling around, maybe eleven.

  Eleven men with automatic weapons?

  He opted
to stay where he was.

  Then he heard two point-blank kill shots, which justified his decision even more.

  • • •

  JOE SHINNIED A FEW FEET back down the rise and dug the binoculars out of the pack he’d dropped. When he returned to the brush, he jammed the barrels of the lenses through the scrub and focused.

  It was still too far to make out any faces or the license plates of the pickups, but he could see that the figures all appeared to be men in dark clothing. Most of them were bent over an object in the middle of where the trucks were parked. A couple of them pranced about in a kind of celebratory dance. He noted that the doors of the pickups had been left hanging open, as if the drivers had stopped to jump out in a hurry.

  He speculated as to what they had shot up. A lost cow? A wild horse? A desert elk? He hoped it wasn’t a human being.

  Joe lowered the field glasses and scanned the desert floor as far as he could see. If their target had been a horse or elk, he thought he would see signs of a retreating herd. But he saw nothing.

  And when he pressed the lenses to his eyes again, he could see that the figures were climbing back into the cabs and beds of the trucks. The doors closed and the men in the truck beds settled in with their backs to the walls. He could see the glint of the sun from rifle barrels of weapons that were pointed upward.

  They were finished with whatever it was they had done.

  One by one, the pickups left the scene in a southeasterly direction. He could hear snatches of engines as they departed. The trailing vehicles hung back from the dust kicked up by the first.

  Joe kept his focus on the trucks as they drove away, hoping he could make out a license plate or at least a distinctive color or design of one. Joe was a student of out-of-state plates.

  Before the last rear bumper vanished in a roll of dust, he thought he caught a glimpse of black lettering on a pure white background without colored highlights or a colored border. So, not Wyoming with its iconic bucking-horse logo. Maybe Texas?

  Texas trucks were common in the energy-producing parts of the state. But four of them with armed men in the back? Not even in the Red Desert . . .