Force of Nature Page 24

  Brueggemann was of the age and station in life—single, barely twenty-two, and practically penniless—that he’d likely be vulnerable to an approach, Joe thought. If sex, a future, or money were offered, few boys that age would refuse. So maybe they got to Brueggemann once it was known he’d be assigned to Joe Pickett in Twelve Sleep County.

  Or maybe, Joe thought, she’d replaced the real Luke Brueggemann with a Luke Brueggemann of her own? If so, what happened to the real kid? Joe shivered at the possibilities.

  Or maybe, Joe thought, he should stop letting his imagination run wild until he knew more and could actually base his speculation on a foundation of facts.

  As he drove away from his home, he watched it recede in his rearview mirror. The house was lit up like Christmas, which was all the more striking because of the utter darkness all around. It looked like a beacon, every room lit up as Marybeth and Lucy and April packed for their early morning flight. The place looked so … inviting.

  He took his foot off the gas and coasted for a moment, thinking about turning around. It wouldn’t be that many hours before they’d need to gather up and go to the airport. If something happened while he was away, he’d never forgive himself.

  But …

  Mike Reed had agreed to stay until he got back. Reed could be trusted, couldn’t he?

  Joe swatted away his paranoia and drove on.

  _______

  AS HE LET the threads of speculation hang there, one item jolted him in another direction: Brueggemann’s girlfriend. All he knew about her, or thought he knew about her from Brueggemann, was that she lived in Laramie because she was a student at the University of Wyoming. And he thought about what Nate had said: a young female.

  Which made his mind leap and his scalp contract. Joe drew his cell phone out of his breast pocket and opened it and scrolled down the speed dial until he found Sheridan’s cell phone number.

  The call went straight to voice mail.

  “Call me the second you get this,” Joe growled, “and don’t turn your phone off at night.”

  He cursed aloud. One of the problems with every person having a cell phone instead of a landline was that if they turned their phone off, there was no way to contact them in an emergency. Sheridan was a serial offender, and like most girls her age, she was casual about keeping her phone on or properly charged up. To her, the phone was for her personal convenience—for calling or texting out. She needed her sleep, after all, and rarely considered the possibility of a worried father trying to call her in the middle of the night.

  Joe considered letting Marybeth know of his concern but decided to let it lie for now. Marybeth had enough on her plate that very moment. He’d tell her after he’d come up with some kind of plan. Meanwhile, he sent a call me text to Sheridan’s phone.

  Then he scrolled further down and found the name chuck coon and pressed send.

  Coon was the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Cheyenne in southeastern Wyoming, which was only forty-five miles from Laramie. Coon was approaching middle age but looked surprisingly youthful. He was upright, tightly coiled, and crisply professional. In a perfect world, Joe thought, Coon would be on track to move up in the Bureau to the top echelon. But in the bureaucratic and political world of the federal government, there was no assurance of his advancement. Coon, like Joe, didn’t do politics well.

  Luckily, Coon seemed to like the unique and sometimes bizarre challenges of living and working in a state with dozens of overlapping state and federal law enforcement agencies despite its tiny population of barely a half million residents. Joe had worked with—and against—Coon on several cases over the past few years. They respected each other. Joe had happily become a thorn in Coon’s side more than once, and Coon used Joe for background and as a sounding board for all things Wyoming. Since both were family men with young daughters, they had a common bond. Coon had asked Joe never to call him at home on his private number unless it was an emergency.

  Coon’s phone rang four times. Joe imagined the special agent plucking it from a nightstand, reading the caller ID, and groggily making a decision whether to take it or not.

  Then: “Joe, what do you want?”

  “Sorry to wake you up,” Joe said.

  “What makes you think I was sleeping in the middle of the night?”

  “You don’t sound very excited to talk to me.”

  “It’s”—Coon was likely fumbling around for his glasses before he said—“twelve thirty-five in the morning.”

  Before Joe could speak, Coon said, “Hold on a minute.”

  Joe waited, assuming the special agent was padding out of the bedroom and shutting the door behind him so his wife could go back to sleep.

  “Okay, what?” he asked.

  “I’m sure you’re tracking all the troubles up here,” Joe said. “The triple homicide, the missing residents, all that.”

  “Of course,” Coon said, instantly irritated. “Your sheriff asked for some technical help, but he won’t let me send in the cavalry.”

  “I know,” Joe said. “He’s funny that way. Anyway, I’m starting to believe everything is connected to one man. And I’m narrowing down his motives and location. I wish I could say he’s lying low, but I think he’s just taking a breather until the next shoe drops.”

  Coon didn’t speak for a moment. Finally, “You think one bad guy is responsible for all that?”

  “One guy and his team. He has others,” Joe said. “I don’t think I have enough time to lay it all out right now. But the bad guy I’m talking about has federal connections. He’s one of you—only on the special-operations side instead of the Homeland Security side.”

  “One of us?” Coon asked, doubt in his voice. “What’s his name? No, let me guess: Nate Romanowski.”

  Joe snorted. “Not this time.”

  “Then who?”

  Joe told him, and spelled out N-E-M-E-C-E-K so Coon could jot it down.

  “Never heard of him,” Coon said.

  “I’m not surprised. And you likely won’t find much on him, is my guess. But if you dig deep enough into the Defense Department or talk to some secret spooks, you might find out more.”

  “This is crazy,” Coon said. “This is too much for the middle of the night. Why are you calling me with this now?”

  “So you can start the process,” Joe said. “And I know you’ve got no reason to believe me yet. But just start the process, get things going in the morning with your guys. It’s Friday and you wouldn’t want to wait over the weekend to get started because it may be too late. I’m thinking if official inquiries are made it might get back to the bad guy that he’s got trouble. It might make him back off and we can save some lives up here.”

  Coon moaned the moan of a frustrated federal bureaucrat. Joe had heard it before.

  “I know,” Joe said. “But some of those lives might belong to my family.”

  “What?”

  Joe told him about the visit to Marybeth in the library.

  Coon was flummoxed. “But why would he do that? Was he trying to intimidate her?”

  “I guess,” Joe said. “Of course, he didn’t know who he was dealing with. But it did put the fear of God in her when she considered our daughters. We’re leaving for a few days in the morning.”

  Coon sounded genuinely concerned when he said, “You’re taking your family out of the state? Jesus—this is serious.”

  “I wouldn’t have called you otherwise,” Joe said. “But I need something else.”

  Coon’s concern turned quickly back to agitation. “What?”

  “It’s a personal request,” Joe said, “but it may connect with everything else. Do you remember I have a daughter going to school in Laramie? Named Sheridan?”

  “Yes,” Coon said. “I remember her.”

  “I’m asking you to drive over the summit tomorrow and wake her up in her dorm room. I’ll give you the hall and the room.”

  “Wake her up? Why?”

  “Ask
her about a new friend of hers from Maryland. A female. I’m sure Sheridan will give you her name and location. When you find this Maryland girl, check her out. Look into her background, then go see her. It should be you in your official capacity. You in your suit and tie and that FBI ID. If this girl from Maryland is who I think she is, you’ll get a whole different response than I would. And be careful—she might surprise you. And find out if she’s acquainted with a boy who just graduated named Luke Brueggemann. I’ll spell that …”

  “You can’t just throw this crap out there and expect me to jump,” Coon said. “Did you forget who I work for?”

  “Look,” Joe said, “trust me on this. Chuck, I wouldn’t call if I didn’t think it was important. This is my family and my daughter I’m talking about, plus who knows how many other innocent people will go down before this is over. I can’t prove a darned thing, but we can sort it all out later. I’m not asking you to do anything unethical or illegal. I’m just asking you to rearrange your morning and get your guys in the office to start an investigation of John Nemecek. If it all pans out, you and your office will be heroes. If it doesn’t, I’ll be the jackass.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” Coon chuckled.

  “Or the last. And as soon as I know more from my end, I’ll call you. I think the pieces will start to fall into place if we force it.”

  Another sigh.

  “I’d do it for you,” Joe said. “If you ask me a favor to help your family, you know I’d do it.”

  “I was waiting for you to play that card,” Coon said, defeated.

  “I would,” Joe said.

  “I know you would,” Coon said. “Now what was the name of this Luke kid?”

  AFTER JOE closed his phone and dropped it into his pocket, he looked up and the road was suddenly filled with mule deer. He weaved around a doe and two fawns—barely missing them—and stomped on his brakes inches away from hitting a five-point buck.

  Then something hit him.

  Over the last week, Brueggemann had made several references Joe found discordant, but he hadn’t placed any significance to them at the time. But now, in retrospect, they were odd things to hear from a Wyoming boy who claimed to have grown up in Sundance.

  First, Brueggemann had asked Marybeth for another soda, instead of a soft drink or pop. More significantly, now that Joe thought about it, was when Luke said he’d done a full head mount of an “eight-point buck” and that he liked his venison bloody. In the west, hunters classified deer by the number of antler points on one side, not both. Hence a buck with a set of four-point antlers was called a “four-point,” not an eight-point, like they said in the east. And no one used the term “venison.” Everybody simply called it “deer meat.”

  He sat motionless in his pickup, breathing hard, while dozens of deer flowed around him. They were moving from the mountains toward the valley floor in a thick, shadowy stream.

  JOE DROVE down dark and silent Main Street, noting that even the Stockman’s Bar had closed early, and turned left on First. A single set of tire tracks marked the asphalt. Light snow hung like suspended sequins from the streetlights.

  As he drove up the hill toward Brueggemann’s motel, he took a side street and turned up an alley toward the building. As if he were approaching potential poachers in the field after dark, he slowed down and turned off his headlights and taillights and clicked on his sneak lights. He crept his pickup up the alley and slowed to a stop at the egress where he could see the front of the TeePee Motel parking lot but remain hidden in the shadows.

  It didn’t take long.

  There was a sweep of headlights from the street that licked across the windshields of parked guests’ cars followed by the sight of a dark crossover Audi Q7. The vehicle paused near the front doors of the motel and the brake lights flashed. Because of the darkness, Joe couldn’t see the driver or any other passengers in the car.

  He dug for his spotting scope and screwed the base into a mini-tripod and spread the legs out on his dashboard. He leaned into the eyepiece just as a silhouette framed the left-front door.

  Brueggemann was looking out from the TeePee Motel alcove into the parking lot with a strained expression on his face. He’d changed from his uniform shirt into a dark bulky fatigue sweater, and he clutched his cell phone in his hand as if it were a grenade he was about the throw. Joe pivoted the scope until he could see Luke Brueggemann’s shadowed face in full frame. He adjusted the focus ring to make the image sharp.

  Then, apparently confirming who was out there, he pushed his way through the doorway.

  Joe sat back away from the scope and watched his trainee stride across the wet pavement toward the Audi. As Brueggemann neared the vehicle, he did a halfhearted wave, then paused at the passenger door. Apparently getting a signal from inside, Brueggemann opened the door without hesitation and swung in.

  The crossover sat there for a few moments, and Joe removed the spotting scope and folded the legs and tossed it on the passenger seat. He assumed Nemecek and Brueggemann were having a conversation, or outlining plans. After fifteen minutes, Brueggemann climbed out and went back into the building. The brake lights flashed on the Audi, and the vehicle pulled away and turned left on the street and was quickly out of view.

  Left was the way to get to the mountains.

  “Oh, Luke …” Joe whispered, shaking his head.

  _______

  JOE NOSED his pickup out of the alley and turned left and hugged the building he’d been hiding behind. He slowed to a crawl before turning onto the street to make sure the Audi hadn’t stopped or pulled over, but he saw no activity.

  With his sneak lights still on, he drove out onto the street to give chase. The TeePee was on a rise and the road ahead dropped out of view. At the crest, he slowed again before proceeding and saw the taillights of the crossover about a quarter of a mile away. He checked the cross-streets on both sides to make sure there were no other cars, then eased his pickup down the hill. Up ahead, the vehicle he was following turned right on Main Street. When it was out of view, Joe accelerated to close the gap, then slowed again as he drove through town, over the bridge, and onto the highway. At the entrance ramp he checked both directions, assuming Nemecek would drive toward the mountains but not positive of it, and waited until he could see the single set of red lights heading west. Then he gunned it so he could keep the vehicle in view.

  Because of the absolute dearth of traffic in either direction, Joe dared not turn on his headlights again. Instead, he used the faint reflections of his sneak lights from delineator posts along the sides of the road to keep himself in the center of it. He wished the snow had stuck to the pavement so he could simply use the tracks to follow, and as the elevation rose he began to get his wish. One set of tire tracks marked the snow, and far up ahead—so far he prayed the driver couldn’t detect him back there—the Audi continued toward the Bighorns.

  Elk and deer hunters longed for heavy snow in the mountains and foothills during hunting season. Joe knew that when local hunters saw what had happened during the night, they’d start gearing up in the morning. No doubt there were a few dozen men looking out their windows at that moment, planning to call in sick the next morning so they could get into the mountains and get their meat. As a game warden, Joe often did exactly the same thing and planned the next day accordingly. In this case, the elk and the deer and the hunters were off his radar. But he’d take advantage of the snow for tracking.

  He wondered what Nemecek and Brueggemann had discussed. After all, as far as his trainee knew, Joe would pick him up early in the morning. Brueggemann had no idea Marybeth had planned the Pickett family exit.

  As he drove, Joe wondered how many more operatives Nemecek had in the area besides his trainee.

  THE FALLING SNOW increased in volume as he rose in elevation. Joe ran his heater and windshield wipers, and the snow made it harder to see the reflector posts as he coursed along the highway in the dark. Luckily, the tires of the Audi had crushed the fl
uffy snow into the asphalt and the result was two dark ribbons. Easy to follow.

  He simply hoped Nemecek had no inkling he was being followed. If he did, he could simply slow down and pull over in a blind spot and wait. Joe could only hope that—as usual in his career—he was being underestimated. That Nemecek’s strategy and thinking was all about finding Nate Romanowski, and determining his whereabouts. That he’d never really consider that the local game warden was tailing them with his lights out.

  Joe weighed grabbing his mic and requesting backup from the highway patrol or sheriff’s office, but quickly dismissed the idea. The lone highway patrol officer stationed in Saddlestring would be asleep in bed, and wouldn’t be able to join in pursuit in time to provide assistance. McLanahan might have a man available on patrol, but because it was Joe making the request the call would be routed to the sheriff himself for approval. The delay and subsequent radio chatter could prove disastrous and tip off Nemecek. Brueggemann, after all, had a department-issued handheld radio and could follow the conversation.

  Besides, Joe thought, he had nothing on Nemecek except his odd visit to the library and the suspicious behavior involving Brueggemann. By following them and maintaining radio silence, he thought, there might be a chance to determine the location of Nemecek’s headquarters. Then, if there was probable cause, he could alert the cavalry….

  AS THE AUDI neared the turnoff to Bighorn Road and his house, Joe could feel his stomach clench and his scalp crawl—two sensations that always kicked in just before a fight. Instinctively, he reached down with his right hand and touched the stock of his shotgun, which was muzzle down on the floorboards.

  “You take that road, mister,” Joe said aloud, “and things are going to get real western real fast.”

  The crossover continued on without slowing down for the exit. Joe exhaled.