Winterkill Read online

  Joe woke a few hours later, the remnants of another nightmare skittering in his head. He quietly slid out of bed and went to the window. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and wondered how everything had gotten so bad so quickly.

  Things are building up, Joe thought. His family was coming unhinged, and he was not blameless. Somehow, he thought, I need to do more. To try and fix things. Take some kind of action before everything explodes.

  Twenty-two

  The next morning, Joe was eating breakfast early and alone when Marybeth came down the stairs. He could tell by the way she walked that she was still angry with him, and he watched as she went silently into his office, and came out with something in her hand and a glare in her eyes.

  “You got a fax.” Her voice was not kind. “I heard it come in late last night.”

  Joe winced, and reached for the single sheet.

  “It’s from Elle Broxton-Howard,” Joe said, reading it.

  “I know.”

  “She wants to interview me. I invited her to dinner with us.”

  “I figured that out.”

  “This is a list of things she can’t eat. I guess she has a stack of these all made up and ready to send to people when she gets a dinner invitation.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Says here she doesn’t eat beef, poultry, pork, olive or canola oil, sugar, processed foods of any kind, or genetically enhanced products.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “She has a suggested menu here. Baked trout, steamed broccoli, and brown rice. Hell, we don’t have any of that stuff,” Joe said.

  “No, we don’t—although I’d be happy to get it for you and your friend for your little dinner.”

  “That’s not necessary, Marybeth.”

  Marybeth turned on her heel and went up the stairs to get dressed.

  Joe cursed, and crumpled the paper into a ball and flipped it toward the garbage can in the kitchen.

  In a foul mood, Joe left the house and drove into the mountains on the Bighorn Road toward Battle Mountain and the Sovereign Citizen Compound. Again, McLanahan’s Blazer blocked his path. Joe eased up to it and stopped, while the sheriff’s deputy slowly climbed out into the cold to greet him.

  “Still on roadblock duty, huh?” Joe asked, opening his window.

  “Yes, goddammit,” McLanahan said, his teeth chattering. Twin plumes of condensation blew from his nostrils.

  “Is there any traffic up here?” Joe asked. “Do the Sovereigns come and go much?”

  McLanahan shook his head. “Every once in a while there’s a truck or two. But they also use Timberline Road on the other side of the mountain, so I don’t see ’em all.”

  “Any activity this morning?”

  “Just you,” McLanahan said. “Things pick up at night. Those two FBI guys have been through here a lot. They had quite a bit of sound equipment with them, and I guess tonight they’re planning a new phase.”

  “A new phase?”

  McLanahan shrugged. “Don’t ask me. They don’t tell me anything, and I’m not here at night. All I know is that that Munker guy is a real prick.”

  Joe cocked his thumb toward the back of his truck. “I’ve got some clothes and toys to deliver to the compound for our daughter April.”

  Marybeth had packed the boxes early that morning, before it was light out. It must have been very hard on her, but she didn’t say anything about it. Marybeth was not talking with him, and neither was Missy, which Joe counted as a blessing.

  McLanahan shrugged. “I’m supposed to inspect all deliveries.”

  “Feel free,” Joe volunteered.

  McLanahan developed a pained look, and Joe could see him weighing the time it would take to search through the boxes in the bitter cold versus climbing back into his warm Blazer. He stepped aside and waved Joe through.

  At the gate to the compound, Joe stopped as he had before, and got out. A bearded man in a heavy army-surplus parka emerged from the nearest trailer and approached on the other side of the fence. He didn’t carry a rifle, but Joe guessed that he was armed. Joe stacked the boxes and suitcase near the barbed wire.

  “What you got there?” the man asked.

  Joe explained that it was for April Keeley. “Is she here?” Joe asked. “Is Wade Brockius around?”

  “I don’t give out that kind of information,” the man mumbled. “Is it important?” He reached through the strands and opened the top of the highest box to confirm that it was clothing.

  “It’s important.”

  The man lifted the top box over the barbed wire and carried it back to the large trailer that Brockius had come out of the last time Joe was there. “We’ve gotta go through all this stuff,” the man said over his shoulder. “Then I’ll be back for the rest. I’ll ask about Wade and Jeannie.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Joe turned to get back in his pickup, his eyes sweeping through the timber around him. Something seemed out of place, and he tried to figure out what it was.

  When he saw it, he was surprised he hadn’t noticed it earlier. Four silver speakers poked into the sky above the tops of the trees. Their fluted metal openings were aimed at the Sovereign Citizen Compound. The speakers were mounted on poles that were apparently secured to tree trunks within the forest. The speakers were silent, for now.

  Munker and Portenson had been busy.

  Wade Brockius emerged from the trailer and walked slowly down to the fence. His gait suggested arthritis, or a leg injury. Joe went out to meet him.

  “This cold weather stiffens me up,” Brockius mumbled. “The clothes are thoughtful. Thank you.”

  “There’s two more boxes,” Joe said. “Some of April’s toys, too.”

  Brockius nodded, and Joe thought he looked uncomfortable. “Thoughtful,” he said again.

  Joe looked into the compound at the trailers and RVs. He hoped to catch a glimpse of April, or even Jeannie Keeley, through a window.

  “Can I see her to make sure she’s okay?”

  “She’s with her mother right now, Mr. Pickett.”

  “Does she know I’m here?”

  Brockius sized up Joe from beneath his heavy brow. “No, she doesn’t.”

  “Can you tell her?”

  Brockius shook his massive head. “I’m sorry. I really don’t want to interfere.”

  Joe swallowed. “I want to let April know that we miss her, and that we love her very much.”

  Brockius appeared to think it over. Then he shook his head again. “No, I don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said with finality.

  “Just tell me she’s here and that she’s okay,” Joe asked. “It would mean a lot to my wife to know that.”

  “She’s here,” Brockius said, in a tone so low that Joe could barely make it out. Then Joe realized that Brockius didn’t want to be overheard by anyone in the RVs or hidden away in the brush. “And she seems fine.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said.

  “You best move on now, Mr. Pickett.” Brockius’s voice was raised back to normal now. “We’ll make sure the clothes and toys go to good use.”

  Obviously, the conversation was over as far as Wade Brockius was concerned. He handed the remaining boxes to Brockius, who took them. He and Brockius exchanged a long, silent look. Brockius appeared troubled by the situation with April. This is not the kind of thing, he seemed to be communicating, that I want to be involved in.

  “What comes out of those speakers back there?” Joe asked, as he prepared to leave.

  Brockius paused and looked up and over Joe’s pickup at the speakers.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said in a bass rumble. “But I suspect we’ll be finding out soon.”

  “Did your people have anything to do with that dirty trick down on the BLM land?” Joe asked, out of the blue.

  Joe wanted to see Brockius’s reaction to the question.

  Brockius’s face hardened, as it had before. He was not puzzled by the question, which to Joe meant th
at the Sovereigns were in communication with someone on the outside—or that they were involved with the ambush. Brockius turned to walk back to his trailer.

  “I’d suggest you look a little closer to home, Mr. Pickett,” Brockius said over his shoulder.

  The opportunity to look closer to home came almost immediately, as Joe descended from the snowy mountains. He was still in deep snow, with twenty miles of rugged BLM breaklands laid out in a vista below him. The town of Saddlestring, beyond the breaklands, glittered in the morning sun.

  His radio crackled to life.

  “I think I’ve got a situation out here.” The signal was strong, and the voice belonged to a woman. “This is Jamie Runyan calling BLM headquarters. Does anybody read me?”

  Joe heard a rush of static and assumed it was somebody trying to reply to Jamie Runyan from town.

  “I didn’t get that at all,” she said. “Try again.”

  There was another squawk.

  “Damn it,” she said. “I don’t know whether anyone there can hear me or not, but I’m out in the joint management unit and I see a light-colored pickup up on top of a hill. I think it might be the vehicle Birch Wardell described. I don’t know whether to pursue it or not.”

  Contact, Joe thought. He reached for the microphone, and waited for Jamie Runyan to repeat her message to the dispatcher once again.

  “This is game warden Joe Pickett,” he said when she was through. “I read you loud and clear. Please stay put. I’m about fifteen minutes away from you.”

  He increased his speed, and roared down the mountain as fast as he could without sliding off the road.

  Jamie Runyan’s tan pickup with the BLM logo was pulled to the side of the gravel road with its exhaust burbling. Joe stopped behind her and swung outside. While driving down the mountain, he had unfastened his Remington WingMaster shotgun from his saddle scabbard behind his seat, and he carried it to her vehicle.

  She was thick-bodied and plain, with a wide, simple face. She rolled her window down as he approached.

  “Where did you see the truck?” Joe asked, scanning the horizon. Because she had parked in a depression, her truck would be hard to see from a distance.

  She gestured up the road, over the hill. “I was going up that hill when I saw it. It was a light-colored, older-model pickup on the top of the next ridge. It looked to me like the guy was pulling our fence down with a chain.”

  “Did he see you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I backed down the road out of sight when I saw him.”

  “Has anyone from your office replied to you?”

  She shook her head. “I think I’m out of range in these damn hills. The only person I heard was you.”

  Joe nodded. “Do you mind if I borrow your truck? You can stay here in my truck and keep warm.”

  She searched his face while she decided. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’ve got a theory about what happened,” he said. “If you let me borrow your truck I’ll look like I’m BLM and I can test it out.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know. Only authorized government personnel are allowed to drive these vehicles.”

  “I’m authorized,” Joe lied. “The Game and Fish has an inter-agency agreement with the BLM.” He thought he sounded convincing, and it worked.

  She got out of the cab, remembering to take her sack lunch.

  Joe racked a shell into the chamber of his shotgun, then flipped the safety on and slid it muzzle-down onto the floorboards. He narrowed his eyes and gunned the truck up the gravel road.

  As he cleared the hill he could see the light pickup Runyan had described. And she was right—it was in the process of pulling a post-and-wire fence down with a chain attached to its bumper. The fence had been erected by the BLM and Forest Service to keep the public off of the management study area.

  The truck was about a half-mile from Joe. On his present course, he would soon be on the road beneath it. In his mind, he replayed the scenario Wardell had described to him that night in the hospital: how the truck took off out of sight over a hill while Wardell pursued. Joe wasn’t sure of the terrain over the hill, but he assumed it would be similar.

  Despite the cold, Joe rolled down his window so he could hear the other vehicle better as he drove. As his BLM truck bucked and pitched on the frozen gravel road, the light-colored truck dropped in and out of view. Soon, Joe could hear the motor of the light-colored truck grinding in the still morning air. In a minute, Joe would be close enough to look up and see the driver, he thought, or perhaps a license plate.

  But the next time the truck came into view, it was speeding away. Joe saw its outline against the deep blue sky as it crested the hill and went over it.

  Following Wardell’s script, Joe jerked the wheel and left the gravel road, pointing the squat nose of his BLM truck up the hill where he had last seen the other truck. He crashed through two crusty drifts, and nearly lost traction as he approached the top of the hill. His back wheels threw plumes of frozen gray dirt as the pickup fishtailed on dirt and ice, but then they caught solid rock and propelled him up and over the top.

  Joe’s heart pounded in his chest as he crested the ridge and plunged over it. The tire tracks from the other truck went down the hill and vanished into a wide, tall swath of evergreen brush at the bottom.

  Joe reached for the shotgun, which had slid toward the passenger door during the rough ride up the hill, and pulled it close to him as he descended.

  On cue, a light-colored truck emerged from the brush below and started climbing the opposite slope, directly across from him. The truck labored up the hill as well, sliding a little in loose shale and kicking out puffs of dislodged rock. At the rate Joe was flying down the hill and the other pickup was laboring up the opposite slope, he would be on it in seconds.

  Joe tapped the brakes to slow his reckless plunge and gripped the wheel tighter. The tracks he drove in would soon be swallowed in the tangle of ancient juniper.

  Suddenly, the brush closed over the top of his BLM truck and branches scratched the sides of his doors like fingernails on a chalkboard. A sap-heavy bough slapped the windshield, leaving needles and gray-blue berries smashed against the glass. He caught a flash of an opening through the branches ahead But then Joe did something Birch Wardell hadn’t done. He slammed on his brakes. Then, throwing the pickup into reverse, he floored the accelerator at the same time that he cranked the steering wheel to the right. The engine whined and the tires bit, and the vehicle flew back and to the side through the brush in a cacophony of snapping branches.

  BOOM!

  Joe hit something metal and solid so hard that his head jerked back and bounced off the rear-window glass. He slumped forward over the wheel as bright orange spangles washed across his eyes. Then smoke, or steam, enveloped the cab of the truck in darkness. Trying to shake his head clear, he looked up and smelled the steam. It was bitter and smelled like radiator fluid.

  The spangles had shrunk to the size of shooting sparks when he fell out of the door of the pickup and landed on his hands and knees in the dirt and snow. His hat was smashed down hard on his head, and he pushed it up so he could see.

  The twisted grille of the light-colored pickup furiously spewed green steam. A pool of radiator fluid smoked on the ground, and was beginning to cut its way through the snow toward him. Standing, Joe retrieved his shotgun from the seat. He walked around the back of the BLM pickup toward the vehicle he had smashed into.

  The windshield of the light-colored truck was marred by a single spidery star where a man’s head would have hit it. Joe skirted the steam and looked into the cab to see a man slumped over the steering wheel, a cap askew over his face and dark rivulets of blood coursing down from under the cap into the collar of his coat. Joe recognized the coat, and the logo that was painted on the truck’s door even though a thick smear of mud had been applied to obscure it.

  It was a flying T-Lok shingle with wings.

  Joe op
ened the door, and Rope Latham, the roofer, moaned and rolled his head toward him.

  “How bad are you hurt, Rope?” Joe asked.

  “Bad, I think,” Rope said. “I think I’m blind.”

  Joe reached into the cab and lifted the baseball cap that had fallen over Rope’s eyes. A three-inch cut ran along Latham’s eyebrows. The cut looked like it would require stitches, Joe thought, but it didn’t look much worse than that.

  “I can see!” Rope cried.

  “Climb on out of there,” Joe ordered, prodding Rope Latham in the ribs with his shotgun. “Turn around and put your hands on the truck and kick your feet out.”

  Moaning, Latham obeyed.

  Joe pulled each of Latham’s arms back in turn and snapped handcuffs on his wrists. Then he turned Latham and pushed him back into the truck. Joe saw a Motorola Talkabout hand-held radio on the seat that Rope had obviously used to communicate with the other truck.

  “Two trucks,” Joe said. “Two identical Bighorn Roofing trucks. One goes down the hill and pulls over at the last second into the brush. Another truck that looks just the same starts up the other side of the hill where it’s been parked out of sight. Looks like one truck that crosses the draw and goes on up the other side. Makes the poor BLM guy think he can cross the draw just like that other truck just did. Pretty good trick, even though he didn’t die out here like you two intended.”

  Latham grimaced. Blood was pooling in his eyes as it ran down his face.

  “There’s a six-foot drop down there once you clear the brush, isn’t there?” Joe asked.

  “Spud thought of it,” Latham said. “But we waited a couple days for that BLM guy to bite. It worked pretty good before.”

  Joe didn’t say that seeing twin antelope fawns had led him to think of how they’d pulled it off.

  Keeping Rope Latham in his peripheral vision, Joe stepped back and looked up the opposite slope. Spud Cargill, the other half of Bighorn Roofing, had stopped at the top of the hill and was looking back with binoculars. Joe grabbed the hand-held radio from Spud’s pickup and held it up to his mouth.

  “We’ve got you now, you son-of-a-bitch,” he said, then tossed the radio back inside. Joe raised his arm and pointed his index finger at Cargill, who was still looking back through binoculars, and pretended to shoot him.