The Disappeared Page 31
*
“WHAT THE HELL?” Kessel said as his rearview mirror reflected a blast of light and a siren whooped right behind him.
“Oh no,” Panos moaned. He pressed his hands to his face.
Kessel slowed to a stop. The burner glowed fifty yards ahead of them. Panos could see that idiot Frye walking away from the burner to the mill building.
“Get out and see what that stupid cop wants,” Kessel ordered.
“Why me?” Panos asked. “What if he wants to look in the back?”
“Let him,” Kessel said. “Now go.”
Panos was confused but he opened his door and jumped out.
“Remain in your vehicle,” the cop shouted. He was stepping out of his SUV as he did so.
“What’s the problem, Officer?” Panos asked while he forced a smile.
“I said, remain in your vehicle.” The cop was adamant, and as he gave the command he reached back and gripped his weapon on his hip.
Panos noticed that another set of headlights had flashed on across the road and a third vehicle was coming fast.
“We don’t want no trouble,” Panos said to the cop.
“Hey,” the cop said as he approached the truck, “are you guys with Buckbrush?”
Before Panos could respond, there was a heavy BOOM and a flash from the other side of the truck. The cop dropped without even stumbling and his arms flung out to the side.
“Get in or I’m leaving you here!” Kessel shouted at Panos. Kessel lowered the Bushmaster XM-15 rifle he kept behind the seat for finishing off wounded birds.
Then he suddenly raised it again and squeezed off five rounds at the pickup that was roaring at them from the dark.
“No!” Panos shouted, but the gunfire drowned out his plea.
*
JOE SAW IT ALL: the guy coming out of the passenger side of the company pickup, the officer ordering him to get back in, the driver hurtling out and firing from behind his open door, the cop going down.
Then Kessel raising the muzzle toward him.
There wasn’t time to stop or veer away, so Joe threw himself on the passenger seat as rounds snapped through his windshield and out the back window. Slivers of glass coated him.
And he was thrown to the floor when his truck crashed into the back of the stationary patrol SUV.
. . .
PANOS BROKE INTO A RUN just as the green Ford pickup slammed into the Encampment cop’s car. The collision was hard enough that the cop car lurched forward and nearly crushed the downed man.
He didn’t know where he was running, only that it was away from the mill and away from Kessel. His heavy coveralls didn’t help and he gasped for air. It was so cold that his lungs burned.
Then he heard footfalls behind him.
Kessel?
No.
A game warden in a cowboy hat.
*
JOE ALMOST THREW the shotgun aside, but decided against it as he chased the man who’d run from the scene. When he’d rolled out of the cab, the man was running away right in front of him, the glow from the burner on the back of his coveralls.
It was only after fifty feet that Joe realized he wasn’t chasing the shooter, but the passenger of the truck.
He glanced over his shoulder as he ran, hoping Kessel wasn’t drawing a bead on him.
Kessel was moving as well, loping toward the burner with the rifle swinging in his hand. He didn’t know that Nate was in the burner shack.
“Stop,” Joe wheezed at Panos. But it wasn’t really necessary. Panos had run across the packed snow of the mill yard and was now foundering knee-deep in powder.
It slowed him down like a fly lighting on flypaper.
Joe launched into him and both men went down. Joe flailed and managed to get on top and he covered the tip of Panos’s nose with the muzzle of his shotgun.
“Roll over and put your hands on top of your head,” Joe said. He was out of breath from running and his knees ached from banging them on the floorboards in the crash. He didn’t realize until that moment that he had a head wound as well. Blood ran from his chin into the snow and speckled it bright red.
“I might smother in the snow,” Panos wheezed back.
“You might,” Joe said.
Panos grunted as he rolled to his belly. Joe straddled him and located the cuffs on his belt. They were so cold the steel stung his fingers.
Joe cuffed the man and found a .45 derringer in his boot top. He pocketed the gun, then snapped the cuffs more tightly on Panos’s wrists.
*
KESSEL WAS REACHING for the door handle of the burner shack when Nate stepped around the side of the structure and thumbed back the hammer of his .454. He stood with his back to the open door of the burner so his form was silhouetted against the flames. The sharp metallic click cut through the roar of the fire in the burner.
The sound made Kessel hesitate and look over. When he did, Nate pointed the weapon at the man’s left eye. The reflection of the flames danced in that eye.
“Toss your rifle away,” Nate said just loudly enough to be heard over the fire.
Kessel froze in place.
“Or you can go for it,” Nate said. “I really hope you do.”
Kessel straightened up and let the rifle drop to the snow.
He said, “I think we can try and work this out. My employers have unlimited funds.”
“Of course they do,” Nate said. He pointed to Kessel’s vehicle. “What’s in the back?”
“That’s not important. You’re obviously not a cop. What will it take to let me drive out of here?”
“No, I’m not a cop,” Nate said. “I’m a master falconer.”
The realization of what Nate said dawned on Kessel’s face.
“So this is about those damned birds,” Kessel said.
“I’d trade one of them for ten of you.”
Nate stepped back and gestured for Kessel to return to the site of the crash. He said, “I have a friend named Joe who would like to meet you.”
Kessel rolled his eyes and said, “If this is just about birds, we can work this out.”
The man passed between Nate and the open doorway of the burner as he said it. Nate waited for midstride when Kessel was off balance before reaching out and shoving him inside.
It was quick. Kessel screamed and thrashed for a few seconds, but he couldn’t regain his footing. Then his body went still.
One of Kessel’s boots remained outside the doorway and Nate kicked it into the flames as well.
There was the strong odor of roast pork in the air.
*
JOE MARCHED PANOS toward the vehicles and confirmed that Officer Spanks was deceased from a bullet through his heart. He’d likely died before he hit the ground.
“It was Kessel,” Panos said through chattering teeth.
“I saw it all,” Joe said. Then: “Were you there when Steve Pollock’s files were taken?”
“Sort of,” Panos confessed.
*
“WHAT HAPPENED to the shooter?” Joe asked Nate after he’d guided Panos toward the burner shack. Nate had met them halfway.
“He fell into the burner.”
“He fell?”
“Tripped on his own feet.”
Joe took a deep breath and chose not to ask more.
Indicating Panos, Joe said, “I’m going to put this guy in the burner shack until the sheriff gets here.”
Nate nodded. “I’ll wait out here. But we need to check out the cargo.”
*
NATE REACHED UP and grasped the handle of the camper shell on Kessel’s pickup. He turned it and the hatch rose slowly in the cold air.
Joe flipped on his MagLite and shone the beam inside. The back was full to the top of the bed walls with dead eagles and eagle parts. The carcasses had been piled on a thick sheet of plastic that would also, he guessed, have been thrown into the burner.
“Damn them,” Nate said.
“Yup.”
“I wonder how many overall?”
“Maybe Ted Panos can help us with that,” Joe said.
. . .
IT TOOK NEARLY an hour for the small convoy of Carbon County sheriff’s vehicles to arrive. Sheriff Neal and his team started securing the mill yard and taping off access with yellow crime scene tape, despite Jeb Pryor’s protests that he had a business to run.
*
PANOS WAS TRANSFERRED to a sheriff’s department vehicle and Spanks’s body was transported to the Carbon County hospital.
Joe leaned inside the patrol SUV.
“Please close the door,” Panos pleaded. “I’m freezing here.”
“Tell me what you know about Kate Shelford-Longden.”
“I don’t know much. Gaylan thought she was out there somewhere screwing a young cowboy.”
“Did he tell you this?”
“Yes. I don’t know how he knew that, though. We even spent some time trying to find her, but we couldn’t.”
“Why?” Joe asked, puzzled.
“Because Gaylan didn’t like the attention her case brought to the valley. He said it attracted too many cops and reporters.”
Joe nodded. It made sense.
“Did he tell you about her a couple of months ago in the Rustic Bar?”
Panos shrugged. “Yeah, that’s probably when it was.”
Joe leaned back and closed the door. Panos stared straight ahead as if viewing the coming attractions of the rest of his life, starting with a long stint in the Wyoming State Penitentiary in nearby Rawlins.
. . .
JOE WAITED IN Pryor’s office to give his statement to Neal. Now that the adrenaline of the events had ebbed, he felt immensely tired and sad. Sad for the Encampment cop, sad for Sheridan, sad for the eagles, sad for himself.
Nate had slipped away. He was good at that.
Outside the room in the mill itself, he heard Sheriff Neal say, “Where do you think you’re going?” when the door opened.
A Wyoming state trooper filled it. He was beefy and his cheeks were flushed from the cold.
“Are you Joe Pickett?” the trooper asked.
“Yup.”
“I’ve been instructed to bring you in.”
Sheriff Neal shouldered his way into the room and turned on the trooper. “This man stays,” he said. “I need a statement out of him. In case you haven’t heard, a cop was shot here last night.”
“I heard,” the trooper said. “But the command came from the governor himself.”
*
JOE WATCHED out the side backseat window of the Highway Patrol cruiser as Encampment, then Saratoga passed by.
He was numb.
“I need to give my wife a call to let her know I’m all right,” he said to the trooper.
“When we get to where we’re going,” the trooper answered.
“Am I under arrest?”
The highway patrolman grunted. “I don’t know what you are.”
Joe drifted away and watched as dawn began to paint the east side of Elk Mountain in the distance.
He paid no attention when the trooper took a call on his phone in the front seat.
“It’s for you,” the trooper said as he passed his phone through the slider to Joe.
“For me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Joe raised the phone to his ear.
“I talked with Marybeth,” former governor Spencer Rulon said. “I hear you might need a lawyer.”
Joe smiled. “I think I do.”
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Acknowledgements
About C.J. Box
About the Joe Pickett Series
Also by C.J. Box
From the Editor of this Book
An Invitation from the Publisher
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the people who provided help, expertise, and information for this novel, starting with Corinne White, Michael Williams, Nora Asbury, Maria Peschges, and Ron Hawkins of the spectacular Lodge & Spa at Brush Creek Ranch outside Saratoga, Wyoming.
Thanks as well to Doug and Kathy Campbell of the Hotel Wolf in Saratoga. Readers can stay in Room 9, “The Joe Pickett Room,” if they choose.
I’m grateful for the extensive research and information provided by master falconers Mike and Jocelyn Barker, which proved to be the linchpin of the novel. And thanks to David Paddock for the tour of the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery and Mark Nelson for game warden assurance.
Thank you, Nic Cheetham of Head of Zeus for serving as my Brit consultant.
Special kudos to my first readers: Laurie Box, Molly Box, Becky Reif, and Roxanne Woods.
A tip of the hat to Molly Box and Prairie Sage Creative for cjbox.net and social media assistance.
It’s a sincere pleasure to work with professionals at Putnam, including the legendary Neil Nyren, Ivan Held, Alexis Welby, Christine Ball, Alexis Sattler, Mark Tavani, and Katie Grinch.
And thanks once again to my agent and friend, Ann Rittenberg.
About C.J. Box
C.J. BOX is the winner of the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, a Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award, a Edgar Award, a New York Times bestseller and an L.A. Times Book Prize finalist. He lives in Wyoming.
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About the Joe Pickett Series
JOE PICKETT:
ORDINARY MAN. EXTRAORDINARY HERO.
Joe Pickett is a game warden in the Bighorn Mountains, in remotest Wyoming. A trained and armed law enforcement officer, Joe patrols thousands of square miles of rough country. By necessity, he is a lone wolf. Often too far from town to call for backup in an emergency, Joe is forced to deal with situations with his experience, weapons and wits.
Deeply fond of his wife and three daughters, Joe is a decent man who lives paycheck to paycheck. He does not arrive with excess emotional baggage or a dark past that haunts him. He is not an action hero or a smooth operator or an actor. He works hard and tries, sincerely, to ‘do the right thing.’ He doesn’t talk much. He’s a lousy shot. He’s human, and real, which means he sometimes screws up.
Joe has been through some harrowing adventures and committed acts that continue to haunt him. But through it all, he has remained true to himself and his family.
Joe enters every fight with one agenda: to do the right thing. It’s his fatal flaw. Wish him luck.
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From the Editor of this Book
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First published in the UK by Head of Zeus in 2018
Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an
imprint of Penguin Publishing, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
Copyright © C.J. Box, 2018
The moral right of C.J. Box to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781784973179
ISBN (TPB): 9781784973186
ISBN (E): 9781784973162
Book design by Meighan Cavanaugh
Images: Woman: Arcangel. Others: Shutterstock.com
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