Shots Fired: Stories From Joe Pickett Country Read online

  “Thanks, I guess,” Kyle Jr. said, letting his eyes linger on Joe for a second before looking away.

  • • •

  THE SLEEK PIAGGIO AVANTI II twin-engine turboprop sliced out of the wide blue sky and touched down on the single runway with the grace of a raptor snagging a fish. It turned and roared and wheeled straight toward the FBO, then performed a quick half-turn so the door faced the building. Joe could see the outlines of two pilots wearing peaked caps in the cockpit, and once the aircraft was stopped one of the heads disappeared and ducked toward the back.

  A sliding door whooshed to the side and steel stairs telescoped to the surface. The copilot filled the open hatch for a moment, looking out as if to assess any threats, then retreated back inside.

  “Here he comes,” Kyle Jr. said solemnly.

  Lamar Dietrich, wearing a battered wide-brimmed hat and an oversized jacket, made his way slowly down the stairs. At the bottom he paused and reached back without turning his head, and the copilot scrambled down behind him and handed him a metal cane with three stubby feet on the bottom. Dietrich nodded toward the FBO but didn’t move. The pilot danced around the old man and jogged toward a golf cart, then drove it out so Dietrich wouldn’t have to walk.

  The old man seemed even smaller than Joe remembered him, as if he’d folded over even more on himself. His shoulders seemed narrower although the large jacket disguised how frail he’d become. He wore lizard-skin boots that poked out from baggy khakis and he braced the walker over his thighs as the copilot delivered him to the building. Joe caught a glimpse of an overlarge gargoyle-like head, swinging jowls, and a large, sharp nose when Dietrich glanced up to see where they were going.

  The electric cart made no sound as it approached the metal door of the FBO, but it obviously took a long moment for Dietrich to climb out. The copilot stepped inside sharply and held the door open for him.

  Joe stood and jammed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and braced himself.

  Dietrich entered slowly and bent forward, using the walker with each step. He had bowed legs, which made him even shorter, Joe thought. He wondered how tall Dietrich was if he could be stretched out.

  The old man paused and looked up, literally tilting his head until the back brim of his hat brushed his hunched shoulders. His eyes were hooded, and they took in Kyle Jr. still sitting in his chair and then Joe. When he recognized the game warden as the man who had testified at the hearing, his face hardened.

  “You,” Dietrich said. “I remember you. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Came to say howdy and welcome back,” Joe said. “I was hoping I could have a minute of your time before you head out to your place.”

  “I don’t have time for you,” Dietrich said. He spoke in a hard and flat Midwestern tone that seemed like steel balls being dropped on concrete, Joe thought. Then, looking around the room, Dietrich said, “Where’s Sandford?”

  “I’m Kyle Junior,” the boy said, leaping up. “My dad asked me to give you a ride to the ranch.”

  Dietrich’s eyes got larger as he assessed Kyle Jr. He obviously didn’t like what he saw.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Sandford sent a seventeen-year-old boy to pick me up?”

  “I’m a good driver,” Kyle Jr. said. “I’ve been driving since I was fourteen.”

  “This is unacceptable,” Dietrich said. “I said I wanted Sandford here. Not his boy.”

  Kyle Jr. obviously didn’t know what to say, and his face flushed red.

  Joe stepped in and touched Dietrich on the shoulder. “Please, I’d like a minute if I could.” Then to Kyle Jr.: “Why don’t you step outside, Kyle?”

  The boy was out the front door immediately, and Dietrich looked angrily to Joe for an explanation.

  “Look,” Joe said, “I know about you. You can’t be as mean as you come off. You run a tight ship and you’re a success in business, and I admire that. I disagree with your idea of building a game farm, but I admire your success and you’ve got a good ranch manager in Kyle Sandford. The decision on the game farm went against you. It wouldn’t have mattered—”

  Dietrich interrupted to say, “What a man does with his private property is his business. This isn’t Communist China—yet. No bunch of bureaucrats have the right to tell me I can’t do with my own property what I want to do.”

  “Actually, they do,” Joe said. “And it isn’t about what you do on your property, it’s what happens if those exotic species get off your property. But that’s only partially why I’m here—to tell you their decision face-to-face. I also need to let you know that the decision of the commission had nothing to do with Kyle. They liked him, and they thought the proposal he presented was as well done as any man could do. It was all based on the merits, not on the proposal.”

  Dietrich stared into Joe’s eyes so long, Joe thought he’d have to blink first. And he did.

  Dietrich said, “Merits. Merits. Do you realize how many times I’ve heard bullshit reasons like merits in my life? Nothing has to do with merits. Every decision has to do with respect and a little bit of fear.”

  Dietrich held up a thin bony hand and slowly clenched it. “Merits melt away when there’s a fist behind the proposal. Anything is possible if you know how to play the game. That’s the way of the world. Always has been, always will be. I need men who know how to play the game. I’d trade a thousand Kyle Sandfords for one Lamar Dietrich.”

  Joe said, “Maybe there is only one Lamar Dietrich. Did you ever think of that?”

  Dietrich beheld Joe and for a moment Joe thought the old man might smile. Instead, he quickly shook his head, as if purging an unpleasant thought.

  “I need men I can trust and who can get the job done. I surround myself with winners. That’s my secret. I don’t have time or sympathy for losers.

  “And I don’t have time for you,” Dietrich said, dismissing Joe with a wave of his hand.

  “Just give him some time to make it right,” Joe said to Dietrich’s shuffling back. “He’s putting roots down here and his son is in high school. It’s not Kyle’s fault you want something impossible to happen. Give him a reasonable project and he’ll get it done. He’s a good man.”

  “Losers stay losers,” Dietrich said over his shoulder. “They don’t ever make it right. Now where’s that stupid boy?”

  Joe stood in silence. He was played out. He watched Dietrich exit the building, wave his walker at Kyle Jr., and climb in the ranch pickup.

  • • •

  HE HEARD ABOUT THE ACCIDENT over the mutual aid channel of his truck’s radio. A pickup had plunged into the Twelve Sleep River off the one-car bridge at the Crazy Z Bar Ranch. There was one, and possibly two, fatalities. Joe tossed the sandwich he was eating out the driver’s-side window and put his pickup into gear. He roared up the hill and past the airport and hit his emergency flashers when he cleared town.

  • • •

  THE SCENE AT THE BRIDGE told him most of what he wanted to know: The Ford F-350 was on its side in the river and the current flowed around and through it, cables on the right side of the bridge had been snapped by the impact and dangled from the I-beams, a sheriff’s department SUV was parked haphazardly on Joe’s side of the bridge, Kyle Sr.’s personal pickup was parked on the other, and in the middle of the bridge itself was Sandra Hamburger’s Dodge Power Wagon.

  “Jesus, help us,” Joe whispered to Daisy.

  Deputy Justin Woods climbed out of his SUV as Joe pulled up behind it. His uniform was wet from the shoulders down and his eyes looked haunted.

  “You gotta help me, Joe,” he said. “I was able to pull the boy out of the truck but I can’t find the passenger down there.”

  “Is the boy okay?” Joe asked, swinging out of the pickup, followed by Daisy.

  “He says he is,” Woods sai
d, nodding toward a bundled figure in the backseat. “He says Lamar Dietrich was in the truck with him. Fuckin’ Lamar Dietrich.”

  • • •

  AS THEY DESCENDED through the brush toward the river, Joe looked across. Joleen and Kyle Sr. stood near their pickup. Joleen was consoling a wailing Sandra Hamburger, trying to hug her to calm her down. Kyle Sr. stood with his hands on his hips and a terrified look on his face.

  “Kyle Junior’s okay!” Joe shouted.

  “Thank God,” Kyle Sr. replied, his shoulders suddenly relaxing with relief.

  “So what did he say happened here?” Joe asked Woods.

  “He said he picked up old man Dietrich at the airport and he was bringing him out here. He said he was crossing the bridge when he looked up and saw Sandra Hamburger coming straight at him, going fast. It was either hit her head-on or take it off the bridge, and he took it off the bridge.”

  Joe winced. Sandra’s wails cut through the rushing sounds of the river.

  “I cut him out of his seat belt,” Woods said, “but I guess the old man wasn’t wearing his.”

  Joe nodded and they plunged into the river together. The current was strong and pushed at his legs, and the river rocks were round and slick. He slipped and fell to his knees and recovered. The water was surprisingly cold.

  “Maybe Dietrich is pinned under the truck,” Woods said. “I don’t know.”

  The windshield glass was broken out of the cab when they got there, and Joe confirmed that Dietrich wasn’t inside. The current flowed through the smashed-out rear window and through the open windshield. Anything inside would have been washed downstream.

  Joe balanced himself against the crumpled metal hood of the pickup and gazed down the river.

  “There he is,” Joe said. Twenty yards downstream, beneath the surface, Dietrich’s overlarge jacket rippled underwater in the current. His body had been sucked under and was wedged in the river rocks. At a distance downstream where the river made a rightward bend, his large straw hat was caught at the base of some willows.

  By the time they dragged the surprisingly light body to the bank, three more sheriff’s department vehicles had arrived along with an ambulance. Sheriff Reed dispatched his men to take measurements and photographs of the bridge and the vehicles, and statements from Kyle Jr. and Sandra Hamburger.

  • • •

  JOE LEANED AGAINST HIS PICKUP with a fleece blanket over his shoulders, next to Kyle Sr.

  “Sheriff Reed hasn’t said anything about any charges,” Kyle Sr. said. “I don’t know if he’s gonna file on Sandra, or Kyle Junior, or neither. It was a damn accident, plain as day. Anybody can see that.”

  Joe nodded.

  “That poor Sandra, you know how she is. If she’s running late there isn’t anything she’ll let slow her down. I don’t even know if she saw Kyle Junior coming across the bridge. I asked her but she just keeps blubbering about her schedule being screwed up.”

  Kyle Sr. sighed heavily. “That son of mine—I hope he’s okay after this. It’s a hell of a thing that happened.”

  “Yup,” Joe said, looking over at Kyle Jr. in the back of the SUV. When he did, the boy quickly looked away.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” Kyle Sr. said, nodding toward the ranch. “I don’t know if he had heirs or what.”

  “Whatever happens will take awhile,” Joe said. “You might as well hunker down and see where it goes.”

  “I guess.”

  “It might take years to straighten out,” Joe said. “These things take time to sort out.”

  Kyle Sr. looked over and closed one eye. “What are you getting at, Joe?”

  “Kyle Junior will be able to stick around. He might even graduate here.”

  “He’d like that.”

  “Yup,” Joe said.

  • • •

  LATER THAT NIGHT, after dinner, Joe told his wife, Marybeth, about the accident and the death. April listened in as well, and wondered aloud if Kyle would be in school on Monday.

  After April left the table, Marybeth looked hard at Joe and said, “What’s wrong? Something is bugging you.”

  He was astonished, as always, how she could read his mind.

  He said, “I don’t know for sure, I keep thinking about Kyle Junior. He’s an observer, you know? He kind of hangs back and just tracks everything around him.”

  Marybeth nodded her head, then gestured for him to go on.

  “He saw Sandra on her rounds on his way to the airport, just like I did,” Joe said. “He knows her schedule. He knows the rhythm of that ranch and when Sandra Hamburger is going to show up every day. And he knows how she is. He also knew old man Dietrich didn’t buckle his seat belt when he got in the truck.”

  Marybeth sat back and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Joe, are you saying . . .”

  “I’m not saying anything. But it sure was unique timing for him to just happen to be on that bridge going one way when Sandra was on it coming the other, driving like her hair was on fire.”

  “My God,” Marybeth whispered.

  “No way to prove a thing,” Joe said. “Not unless Kyle Junior decides to break down and confess, and no one is accusing him of anything. Heck, they might not even believe him if he did.”

  After a long pause, Marybeth asked, “Are you going to mention this to the sheriff?”

  Joe shook his head. “Nope.”

  Vladdy pressed his forehead against the glass of the van window as they drove. The metal briefcase was on the floor, between his legs. It was cold in Yellowstone Park in early June, and dirty tongues of snow glowed light blue in the timber from the moonlight. The tires of the van hissed on the road.

  “Look,” Vladdy said to Eddie, gesturing out the window at the ghostly forms emerging in the meadow. “Elks.”

  “I see ’em every night,” the driver said. “They like to eat the willows. And you don’t say ‘elks.’ You say ‘elk.’ Like in, ‘a herd of elk.’”

  “My pardon,” Vladdy said, self-conscious.

  “You going to tell me what’s in the briefcase?” the driver asked, smiling to show that he wasn’t making a threat.

  “No, I think not,” Vladdy said.

  • • •

  THE GIRL, CHERRY, would be angry with him at first, Vladdy knew that. While she was at work at the motel that day, Vladdy had sold her good stereo and DVD unit to a man in a pawnshop full of rifles for $115, less $90 for a .22 pistol with a broken handgrip. But when she found out why he had done it, he was sure she would come around. The whole thing was kind of her idea in the first place, after all.

  • • •

  THE DRIVER OF THE VAN was going from Mammoth Hot Springs in the northern part of the park to Cody, Wyoming, out the east entrance. He had told them he had to pick up some people at the Cody airport early in the morning and deliver them to a dude ranch. The driver was one of those middle-aged Americans who dressed and acted like it was 1968, Vladdy thought. The driver thought he was cool, giving a ride to Vladdy and Eddie, who obviously looked cold and out of place and carried a thick metal briefcase and nothing else. The driver had long curly hair on the side of his head with a huge mustache that was turning gray. He had agreed to give them a ride after they waved him down on the side of the road. The driver lit up a marijuana cigarette and offered it to them as he drove. Eddie accepted. Vladdy declined. He wanted to keep his head clear for what was going to happen when they crossed the huge park and came out through the tunnels and crossed the river. He had not done business in America yet, and he knew that Americans could be tough and ruthless in business. It was one of the qualities that had attracted Vladdy in the first place.

  “Don’t get too high,” Vladdy told Eddie in Czech.

  “I won’t,” Eddie said back. “I’m just a little scared, if that’s all right wit
h you. This helps.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t wear that hat,” Vladdy said. “You don’t look professional.”

  “I look like Marshall Mathers, I think. Slim Shady,” Eddie said, touching the stocking cap that was pulled over his eyebrows. He sounded a little hurt.

  “Hey, dudes,” the driver said over his shoulder to his passengers in the backseat, “speak American or I’m dropping you off on the side of the road. Deal?”

  “Of course,” Vladdy said. “We have deal.”

  • • •

  EDDIE WAS TALKING TO THE DRIVER, talking too much, Vladdy thought. Eddie’s English was very poor. It was embarrassing. Eddie was telling the driver about Prague, about the beautiful women there. The driver said he always wanted to go to Prague. Eddie tried to describe the buildings, but was doing a bad job of it.

  “I don’t care about buildings,” the driver said. “Tell me about the women.”

  • • •

  VLADIMIR AND EDUARD were branded “Vladdy” and “Eddie” by the man in the Human Resources office for Yellowstone in Gardiner, Montana, when they showed up to get their work assignment three weeks before and were told that there were no openings. Vladdy had explained that there must have been some kind of mix-up, some kind of misunderstanding, because they had been assured by the agent in Prague that both of them had been accepted to work for the official park concessionaire for the whole summer and into the fall. Vladdy showed the paperwork that allowed them to work on a visa for six months.

  He had not yet seen the whole park, and it was something he very much wanted to do. He had read about the place since he was young, and watched Yellowstone documentaries on television. He knew there were three kinds of thermal activity: geysers, mudpots, and fumeroles. He knew there were over ten thousand places where the molten core of the earth broke through the thin crust. He knew that the park was the home of bison, elk, mountain sheep, and many fishes. People from all over the world came here to see it, smell it, feel it. Vladdy was still outside of it, though, looking in, like Yellowstone Park was still on a television show and not right in front of him. He wouldn’t allow himself to become a part of this place yet. That would come later.