Below Zero jp-9 Read online

  PORTENSON MADE CALL after call with a satellite phone. He was lit by the green glow of the instrument panel. He looked distressed and angry. The pilot sat silently next to him but made it a point to look away as if he found something out in the dark sagebrush worth careful study. The pilot wore sunglasses and headphones. Joe guessed he’d wear a grocery bag on his head if one were available.

  Coon stood for a long time looking at the body of Bo Skelton behind the wheel of the pickup and cursing. Joe asked Coon to watch his language in deference to Sheridan, who leaned against the grille of Joe’s pickup with her arms crossed. Her cell phone, as always, was in her hand. Joe felt the need every ten minutes or so to approach her and give her a hug or a squeeze until she finally asked him to relax. She insisted she was okay, that the events of the night hadn’t traumatized her in any way.

  “Don’t go near that SUV,” Joe cautioned. He’d caught a glimpse of Skelton’s body earlier. Machine-gun fire had practically gutted him and there were two bullet holes neatly spaced in his forehead like another set of eyes. Joe was thankful it had been a long time since he’d eaten anything or he likely would have lost it, like Coon had.

  “I’ll stay where I am,” she said. “Should I call Mom and let her know we’re okay?”

  “Yes, please.”

  THERE WAS A THUMP on the inside of the Plexiglas bubble as Portenson smacked it with the heel of his hand. Joe looked up from where he was with Sheridan. Portenson was obviously furious and sharing his frustrations with the pilot, who listened without removing his sunglasses or headphones.

  The FBI supervisor opened the hatch and climbed out. Joe said to Sheridan, “Hope he doesn’t scorch your ears.”

  Sheridan said, “You are so protective.”

  Portenson paced and spoke as much to himself as to Coon in the distance. “We have to stay right here and wait. So forget trying to find Stenko for the time being. The powers that be are sending up an incident team from Denver, and our orders are to stay right here and not touch anything. Like we’re a couple of suspects. Touch nothing! Hear that?”

  Coon grunted in the dark.

  “I think this was a righteous shoot,” Portenson said. “I think we did everything by the book. Why that son of a bitch started firing at us, I’ll never know. What the hell was wrong with him? Did he have a death wish or something?”

  From the tailgate of Joe’s pickup, Cyndi Mote said, “Bo was paranoid. But you didn’t need to kill him for that.”

  Joe said, “I’ll testify to what I saw. You guys handled everything the best you could. You had no reason to believe it wasn’t Stenko. And Skelton did shoot first.”

  Portenson looked at Joe as if he’d forgotten he was there. The FBI agent sized him up, waiting for another shoe to drop. It didn’t.

  “Your action was justified,” Joe said.

  “I appreciate you saying you’d be willing to tell them what you saw and heard.”

  Joe said, “Yup.”

  “Because I know if you wanted to, you could hang me out to dry.”

  Joe said, “I could and maybe I should. But I saw what I saw.” He put his hand on Sheridan’s shoulder. “We saw what we saw.”

  Portenson looked almost embarrassed. “Thank you, Joe.”

  TO THE EAST THE SKY took on a rosy cream color as dawn approached. Several Highway Patrol vehicles had found them and the troopers helped set up a perimeter. From whom, Joe wasn’t certain. Local police from Gillette, Moorcroft, and Hulett drove out to look at the pickup, Skelton’s body, and to count the bullet holes in the top of the SUV and whistle. Everyone waited for the FBI incident team to find them and clear the scene.

  Coon wandered over and joined Joe and Sheridan leaning against Joe’s pickup. He looked ten years older than when Joe had seen him the afternoon before.

  “You okay?” Joe asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Joe didn’t respond.

  “Man, oh man,” Coon said. “Why did that idiot shoot at us?”

  Joe said, “Meth. We’re drowning in it in rural Wyoming. Everyplace is.”

  Coon pushed himself up and away from the pickup. “I nearly forgot. There’s something I need you two to look at. Come on, follow me.”

  “Me, too?” Sheridan asked.

  Coon said, “Especially you.”

  COON OPENED THE passenger hatch of the helicopter and dug out his briefcase from under a seat. He unlatched it to reveal thick files and a sturdy government laptop. As he booted up the computer, he said, “I barely got a chance to see this before we took off. I downloaded it from the Carbon County sheriff’s department. From Rawlins, to be exact.”

  “What happened in Rawlins?” Joe asked.

  “A pharmacy got robbed and the pharmacist was killed in the robbery. We’re not sure what the bad guys took, but we’re guessing it was cash and drugs. The sheriff’s office is doing an inventory. The store had a closed-circuit camera, and they recovered the digital file. The quality’s not so good and the angle kind of sucks, but you can see the crime going down. The sheriff sent it to us to see if we could help identify the assailants.”

  Joe and Sheridan exchanged looks, thinking: “na. but he hurt some man 2day in a drug store.”

  The static image was in black-and-white and it showed four empty aisles stocked with packaging.

  “From what I understand,” Coon said, “the camera is mounted on the ceiling behind the pharmacy counter. The view is basically what the pharmacist sees when he looks out into the store. As you can see, the store’s deserted.”

  Joe felt Sheridan’s hand find his. He didn’t look down to draw Coon’s attention away.

  “Okay, here,” Coon said, pointing at the screen, which showed a tall man with thick wavy hair entering the store and milling in the aisles. The man looked to be in his early to mid-thirties. Despite the poor quality of the transmission, Joe could see the man was fairly good-looking, with a prominent jaw and straight nose. He looked to Joe like an actor or an anchorman. The man was studying everything on the shelves with great interest, which struck Joe as discordant. No one was that interested in every single item on the shelves. His behavior was suspicious. Although there was no audio, it was obvious that someone—no doubt the pharmacist, who was out of view—asked the man a question because the man looked up with wide eyes and mouthed, “No.”

  Then the man turned and walked swiftly down the aisle and back out the door. The exchange between the pharmacist and the shopper was brief and odd, Joe thought. He said, “We ought to have Cyndi take a look at this. She might recognize that guy. My guess is he’s Robert.”

  Coon nodded and reached for the laptop. “Okay, we will in a minute. But we’re pretty sure it’s Robert Stenson. The bureau has a few photos of him and we’ve got agents looking for more. But just a second while I advance this. See if you recognize someone else . . .”

  Joe felt Sheridan squeeze his hand.

  The door in the store opened again and a second figure came in wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up and cinched tight. There was enough shape to the profile to determine it was a thin female. A strand of light hair crept out from the hood, but because she kept her head down, her face couldn’t be seen.

  Joe watched transfixed as the girl dropped items into a shopping basket.

  “She looks like she’s really shopping,” Joe said. “She’s picking things out. It doesn’t look random.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Coon said. “Do you recognize her?”

  “Not yet. I can’t see her face.”

  “Sheridan?” Coon asked.

  “She could be somebody,” Sheridan said. “But I can’t tell for sure yet.”

  Said Coon, “Keep watching.”

  The girl went from one aisle to the next, dropping more items in the shopping basket. One package was large, flat, and square, the kind of packaging used for electronics.

  Joe said, “I think that’s a TracFone.”

  Coon stopped the tape and tried
to zoom in on the package in the girl’s hand. He couldn’t get the controls to work. “We need to examine this on our hardware in Cheyenne,” he said. “I don’t know how to look closer. But if she’s got a new phone, everything we’ve got goes out the window. We can’t find her again unless she calls or sends a text to your daughter.”

  Joe grunted. Sheridan looked at her cell phone as if willing it to ring.

  Coon gave up trying to zoom in on the package and let the tape roll. The girl got closer to the camera, to the counter. She flinched and Joe guessed the pharmacist had addressed her. She turned, and for a second she raised her head and he could get a glimpse of half of her face. The other half was still hidden in the hood.

  What he could see: her face was angular, smooth, pale, and there was a slightly Oriental cast to her eye, which was widened in alarm.

  He couldn’t be sure.

  Joe said to Sheridan, “Is that her?”

  “I can’t tell,” Sheridan said quickly.

  “Want to look again?” Coon asked. “It’s the best shot we’ve got of her face on here.”

  Joe asked why. Coon said, “Watch.”

  Two things happened at once on the tape. A white-sleeved arm reached out from the bottom of the frame and grasped the girl by the arm and pulled her closer. Unfortunately, it was too close to the camera for the lens to focus. All that could be seen was the top of her hood, which was dark and blurred. She appeared to be struggling. At the same time in the background, Robert threw open the door and strode toward the camera. His face was a snarling mask. He bent into the girl and out of view and emerged a second later with a gun in his fist. He pointed it below the eye of the camera and it bucked three times.

  Sheridan gasped, “Did he shoot her?”

  “No,” Coon said, “he shot the pharmacist. Killed him. And if you want to wait for a minute here, I’ll advance the tape to where you can see Robert and the girl leaving the store with the shopping basket and some rather large pill bottles. But their backs are turned to the camera, so we can’t see their faces.”

  Joe realized that Sheridan was squeezing his hand so hard his fingers ached. He asked Coon to rerun the glimpse of her face again. They watched it over and over. He wanted to recognize April, but he was overwhelmed with the dark feeling that he couldn’t remember her face except in abstract: a ghost at a trailer house window. He wished Marybeth were there to give her opinion.

  Was it her? She’d certainly look different six years older. But was it her?

  “I just don’t know,” Sheridan finally said. “It could be. But it might not be.”

  Coon sighed heavily, shook his head. “We can get that one shot blown up and printed. Maybe then?”

  Sheridan shrugged.

  “Man, I was hoping for better,” he said.

  Joe agreed. It bothered him immensely that April had been an eyewitness to Robert shooting the pharmacist to death. No matter what her role was, there was no reason for her to have to see that. She was fourteen. He despised Robert for what he’d done. Then: “What about April’s cell phone? Cyndi said she left it in Skelton’s truck. Let’s see if it’s the right phone.”

  Coon didn’t move.

  “What?” Joe asked.

  The FBI agent shook his head. “It got a direct hit. Maybe two. The pieces are there, but I don’t know if we can put them together to get anything out of it.”

  Joe said, “I’m sure there’s a computer chip or something with the call log on it. Can’t you guys find that and analyze it? Isn’t that what you do?”

  Coon nodded. “It may take a while.”

  “I’d suggest you speed it up.”

  Coon looked over at the SUV and his shoulders slumped. “If I’m not suspended.”

  THE FBI INCIDENT TEAM arrived in two helicopters an hour after dawn. Eight men in suits and ties and sunglasses, so crisply and icily efficient that they’d cordoned off the SUV and separated the witnesses within minutes of landing. After Joe gave his statement, he declared himself free to go and was surprised there was no argument from the sandy-haired special agent who’d interviewed him. He was in his pickup with Sheridan and pointed back toward Savageton before someone else decided they needed him again.

  In his rearview mirror, he watched as Cyndi gesticulated for three stone-faced men, giving her version of events.

  Sheridan was already sleeping hard, her head tilted back on the headrest. Joe reached over and gently lowered her to the bench seat and pulled his jacket over her.

  As he drove out of the basin, he scanned the landscape. Oil wells, gas lines, survey stakes, metal signs adorned with the company logos of international energy conglomerates. He was exhausted and there was too much swirling in his head to make sense out of anything. But as he beheld the magnitude of the basin, the multimillion-dollar efforts being undertaken to extract fossil fuel from beneath the earth’s crust in this particular place, he thought about energy, about power, about Cyndi’s statement in regard to being looked down upon by people with their lights on.

  He thought about the size of the carbon footprints in the basin from all that activity. Then something hit him.

  What had April written when Sheridan asked her why she was in Aspen? “Wedding & footprints.”

  Joe thumped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

  HOURS LATER, Sheridan moaned and woke up. “Where are we?” she asked. “I don’t recognize this.”

  Joe said, “Ever hear of a place called Hole in the Wall? This is it.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “We’re gonna need some help, I think.”

  She nodded, and realization crossed her face. “Nate. Where you brought the eagle.”

  “Yup.”

  “This is where he is?”

  “Not far from here. We’ll need to do some hiking. Are you up for that?”

  “Sure. What time is it?”

  “Almost ten.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where’s April?”

  20

  Bear Lodge Mountains, Wyoming

  SHE OPENED HER EYES AND TRIED TO REMEMBER WHERE she was. It was late dawn. They were parked off the road, hidden in a thick knot of pine trees on the side of a hill. It was cool and still in the dark rolling hills, but above in the big azure sky there was a lot going on, she thought, the way those clouds scudded across from horizon to horizon like traffic on a highway, like they were being called in for emergency duty somewhere else. Up there, things were happening.

  On the ground they were, too. Or soon would be. She just wasn’t sure about the details. Something about a ranch, a man named Leo, and the Talich Brothers. And about all that money.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE, outside the bar, she’d decided to text Sheridan again and ask her to come and get her after all. The horrible incident in the drugstore haunted her. Up until that moment she’d assumed Stenko was in charge, that he’d protect her as he promised he would and give her the money he’d offered. And she still believed that was Stenko’s intention. But when she saw that look on Robert’s face as he aimed the gun at the pharmacist and pulled the trigger, she realized Robert had changed in front of her eyes. He was taking control as he hadn’t before. She could see he was capable of anything, and Robert seemed to realize that as well. What had changed him so quickly? It was obvious: all that money Stenko had. That’s what did it. Robert had a mission. And she needed to get away from him.

  As she turned her phone on and waited for it to get a signal, she realized someone was standing outside the car in the parking lot watching her. For a moment she was terrified. Robert? If so, she didn’t know what she’d say, how she’d get out of it. Maybe she’d just start running away in the dark. But Robert was fit. He’d catch her.

  But it wasn’t Robert. It was some drunk who’d come outside. He’d grinned at her while he urinated, and she was both disgusted and scared. But he’d seen her using the phone—she was sure of it. What if he went back inside and told Robert and Sten
ko? So once the drunk was gone, she pitched the phone toward the garbage barrels. It was nearly out of power, anyway, and she had a fresh one still in the package from the drugstore. Robert hadn’t even looked in the basket. So if Stenko or Robert came out and asked her about a phone, she could honestly say she didn’t have one on her. If Robert wanted to search her, she’d let him. And the new TracFone would stay in the package until she had some privacy and could activate it and text Sheridan.

  ROBERT HAD TAKEN THE KEYS from Stenko once they’d finally come out of the bar at Savageton. She was worried about him driving drunk, but since Stenko was no better—in fact, he was sleeping— there was no choice. She kept quiet and pretended to sleep. It took two or three hours to get to where they were. Once the smooth road turned into dirt, Stenko awoke and gave Robert directions. She could smell the pine in the air. It had the same smell as that campground where Stenko shot the old couple, and that brought back bad memories. It was like they’d gone full circle and returned to the scene of the crime.

  She’d slept fitfully in the back seat. Stenko had slept on the front seat and his wracking snores often woke them both up. Robert had gone off into the trees with a sleeping bag and a bottle of whiskey. She’d watched him try to start a fire, but he had no talent in that regard and had given up and angrily kicked the pile of wood away.

  WHEN THE SUN CAME UP, she realized how hungry she was. They hadn’t eaten dinner the night before and now they were in the middle of nowhere. She wished she had grabbed snacks at the drugstore and had some in the basket with her TracFone. Her stomach growled so loudly Stenko stirred and grunted in the front seat. In a few seconds his hand, like a bear paw, flopped over the back of the front seat and he gripped the headrest to pull himself up into a sitting position. His hair was askew and his eyes were red.