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  Rulon looked up at Joe and shook his head, exasperated. He loved giving it to the Feds. And the voters loved when he did it.

  “That’s right,” Rulon said to whoever was on the other end, “and don’t start with the ‘gun culture’ canard. We don’t even have a gun culture in Wyoming. It’s just part of who we are. Our murder rate is damned low, too. You folks might learn something from that where you are. So spare me your lectures.”

  Joe could hear a raised voice on the other end of the phone, and Rulon rolled his eyes and studied the ceiling. Joe looked up, too, and for the first time saw the dozens of pencils stuck into the ceiling tile. They looked like icicles hanging there. No doubt the governor had tossed them up there over the years, and many stuck.

  “Our time is up,” Rulon said, suddenly impatient. He leaned forward in his chair, and the person on the other end continued to make his case.

  “Tell you what,” Rulon said, “send them up here. Try me out to see if we’re serious. How about that?”

  The governor slammed down the phone and said to Joe, “ATF bastards.”

  “Ah,” Joe said.

  “The damned Cowboy Congress hung me out to dry with this one. Sure, I signed it. But the Feds aren’t pleased.”

  Joe knew Rulon’s description of the Wyoming legislature was Cowboy Congress. But he said it with some affection.

  The moment the phone was cradled, Rulon had punched the DO NOT DISTURB button. And just that fast, the issue with the man from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was behind him.

  “Good to see you, Joe.”

  “Thank you, Governor.”

  Rulon asked about Marybeth, about Saddlestring, about Sheriff Reed in a perfunctory manner. It was how he always established common ground. Wyoming had so few residents the governor practically knew them all, and familiarity was essential to his success and popularity, Joe knew.

  “How are you getting along with your new director?” Rulon asked, probing Joe’s face with intensity.

  “Fine, I guess. She picked me up at the airport this morning.”

  “Really?” Rulon asked, immediately suspicious.

  “She asked me to relay a message—”

  “Auuugh,” Rulon groaned, cutting Joe off. “Is it about those damned Bambi-hugging stations of hers?”

  “She called them Wildlife Appreciation Centers.”

  Rulon rolled his eyes. “She thinks I’m made of money. Everybody does. I wish I could relive the day I let the fetching Mrs. Rulon convince me to name her good friend and fellow rabble-rouser Lisa Greene-Dempsey as the Game and Fish director. It was kind of a difficult time in our marriage, and . . . enough about that. We all make mistakes. Even me, as surprising as that may sound.”

  Joe bit his tongue.

  “Okay, to the business at hand,” Rulon said, shooting out his sleeve to check the time on his wristwatch. Joe knew it to be a signal to be quiet and listen.

  “We have ten minutes before we’re interrupted,” Rulon said.

  “Okay.”

  “How much do you know about Medicine Wheel County?”

  Joe’s heart sank. For a game warden, it was a district that was assigned as punishment.

  “Am I being sent there?”

  “So you’ve been there?”

  “Passed through it on the way to South Dakota years ago,” Joe said.

  Rulon said, “Those people up there . . . are peculiar. I don’t say that about many places in this state, and what I say in this room stays in this room, right?”

  “Right.”

  The governor swiveled in his chair and addressed the top right corner of a huge framed state map on the east wall.

  “Those people up there are insular, inbred, cranky, and they didn’t vote for me in the last election. So to hell with them, I say. They remind me of hill people from somewhere else. More of them are on welfare and assistance per capita than any other county in the state. I don’t like them, and they don’t like me.”

  Joe nodded that he understood what Rulon was saying even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it.

  “It’s a shame, too,” Rulon said, “because that country up there is damned beautiful. It’s just too bad those cranky bastards live in it, collecting government checks. I’d just ignore them the best I could, except there’s a problem up there.

  “Have you ever heard the name Wolfgang Templeton?”

  Joe felt a twinge. He had heard the name, but he wasn’t sure he could recall the details. It wasn’t an easy name to forget. Rulon didn’t wait for Joe to conjure up his recollection.

  “Templeton is a mystery man, an enigma,” Rulon said. “Nobody seems to know where he came from or where he got his money. But six years ago, he bought this magnificent old place—the only way I can describe it is as a castle—deep in the heart of Medicine Wheel County. It’s called Sand Creek Ranch. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard plenty. You can research the history of it later. We don’t have time for that now.

  “Anyway, this Templeton has bought up most of the private holdings up there. He’s got his own little fiefdom, but he keeps completely to himself. No one up there—those cranky bastards—will say much about him other than they seem to revere the guy. Or they’re scared of him—one of the two.”

  Joe was intrigued. Not that large landholdings weren’t often purchased by wealthy out-of-state owners—they were. But an extremely wealthy man buying up most of an impoverished county—that was unusual. Then it came to him, what he’d heard . . .

  “The Feds suspect Templeton of being involved in organized crime,” Rulon said. “Actually, that’s not exactly right. They have suspicions that Templeton is operating some kind of extremely high-end murder-for-hire business. They’re very vague about what it is they think he’s involved in or what he’s under suspicion for. But for the last three years, they’ve been sniffing around and asking questions and bothering me. They assume since he lives in Wyoming that we must know about him, and they wonder why we don’t cooperate.”

  Rulon let that hang there for a moment.

  “So why don’t we cooperate?” Joe asked.

  Rulon whacked the top of his desk with his open hand. “Because we don’t know a damned thing about him other than what I just told you. This Templeton pays his property taxes, licenses his vehicles, and minds his own business. No complaints have been brought against him, so there’s been no reason to investigate the guy. Apparently, he has an airstrip and his own plane, and he leaves for days and weeks on end—but we don’t know what he does. Normally, I wouldn’t care. Wyoming citizens can do whatever the hell they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone else, as far as I’m concerned. But you know how it is here. There is just enough talk—and these federal suspicions—that I’m getting a little nervous about it.”

  Joe was surprised. He said, “I thought you were generally at war with the federal government.”

  “I am,” Rulon said emphatically, “and that isn’t going to stop. It’s one thing to be independent and tell them to leave us the hell alone and to go piss up a rope because we have plenty of mineral wealth. I have no problem doing that. But I have to pick my battles, you know? I can’t let it be insinuated that we’re harboring some kind of criminal threat, or that I’m letting this state be used as the base of operations for organized crime. We can’t give those bastards any more reason to go after us.”

  Rulon sighed and leaned forward and lowered his voice. He said, “The theme out of Washington these days is ‘reward your friends and punish your enemies.’ I give them fits on all kinds of issues, but I do it to protect the citizens of this state. I can’t give those bastards a justification or excuse to marginalize us any further, or punish us. We’ve got to make sure our own nest is clean, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  Joe thought he did. He said, “Where do I come in?”


  The governor steepled his fingers together and peered at Joe over them. “You’ve always had this ability to get into the middle of things. And when you do, you look at the situation in a clear-eyed way. At times, it’s annoyed me and I just wished you’d gone on with your business. But it is a unique gift, and I recognize that.

  “Joe,” Rulon said, “you’re my range rider—a seeker of truth. You’re my man on the ground, like before. Only this time, you can’t get directly involved in the situation and you need to be wary not to embarrass me.”

  Joe felt himself flush.

  Rulon said, “To be honest, Joe, you weren’t my first choice.”

  “Oh?”

  The governor’s face was grave. “Two weeks ago, I asked my Division of Criminal Investigation to send a man up there to gather information. Not to storm the castle or throw his weight around—just to get the lay of the land and report back. It was done on the sly, but my guess is it didn’t take long for those cranky insular hill people up there to figure out there was a stranger in their midst. It didn’t work out, and now I have blood on my hands.”

  Joe sat up. A state DCI agent had been murdered?

  “We can’t prove anything,” Rulon said. “But the poor guy burned to death in a motel fire.”

  “Okay, I read something about that,” Joe said. “A fatality in a unit of some mom-and-pop motel. But no mention that he was with DCI.”

  “It took some real arm-twisting to contain that story,” Rulon said. “We wanted to wait on revealing his identity until it was proven the fire was arson or an arrest could be made. We even asked the FBI for help with the investigation, but they couldn’t determine any kind of foul play. It was a fire caused by our man smoking cigarettes and falling asleep in bed, they said. Nobody up there talked, and there is nothing to go on to prove it wasn’t a stupid tragic accident.”

  “But you don’t believe that?” Joe said.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Rulon said. “I just know I don’t think the best way to find out about Templeton or what’s going on up there is to walk around with a state DCI badge, asking questions.”

  Joe said, “Ah, now I get it.”

  “Thought you would. Do you know the game warden up there?”

  Joe said, “Jim Latta. I don’t know him well.”

  Said Rulon, “No one in Medicine Wheel County will suspect anything if Jim Latta gets some help from a fellow game warden. Happens all the time, as you know. That way, you can get access to that county in a way no one else could.”

  “Do we let Latta know what’s going on?” Joe asked.

  “Your call. I’d suggest you wait to see if you can trust him. I’ll let Lisa know that you’re being sent up there to give a hand to Jim Latta, and she can let him know to expect you.”

  Joe was taken aback. Was Latta under suspicion as well?

  Rulon said, “I’ve asked our man at the FBI to fill you in on all the details of what they’ve got, and he’s supposed to be here any minute.”

  “Your man?” Joe prompted.

  “Special Agent Chuck Coon. I believe you know him.”

  Joe smiled. He’d worked for years with Coon.

  “He thinks you can be a loose cannon,” Rulon said. “I couldn’t disabuse him of that notion with a straight face.”

  “He’s a good man,” Joe said, and meant it.

  “Too damned tightly wrapped, if you ask me. But a lot of those lifers are like that. Anyway, he said he’d brief you on what they know and establish some kind of line of communication and support if you need it.”

  Joe nodded, then asked, “If the FBI has these suspicions, why don’t they send one of their own?”

  Rulon snorted. “If those cranky hill people up there identified my undercover DCI guy, how long do you think a Fed in sheep’s clothing would last? Those guys might as well have FBI tattooed on their foreheads.”

  “I see your point,” Joe said, slightly overwhelmed with the implications of his assignment.

  But this was Rulon’s way: he was to work for the governor but through the FBI, with his own agency director providing bureaucratic cover without even knowing it. Thus, several layers of deniability were established if the situation went sour.

  Rulon said, “For damn sure don’t clue in the sheriff up there. That might have been the DCI agent’s first mistake.”

  Joe nodded and gulped.

  Rulon again shot out his sleeve. “And we’re out of time.” He stood and shrugged on his suit jacket. He said, “Thanks, Joe.”

  “Hold it,” Joe said, standing. “I have a hundred questions.”

  “I’m not surprised. Maybe somebody can answer them for you.”

  “Governor . . .”

  Rulon turned as he reached for the door handle. He said, “Joe, you know how this works. I smoothed the way for you to come back and even goosed your salary. And I left you completely alone. Now I need your help.”

  He narrowed his eyes and said, “I’m not asking you to get involved in anything up there, and I damned sure don’t want you risking your life. I can’t have any more casualties on my conscience. But find out what the deal is with Templeton, and let us know. Stay in the shadows, or the sagebrush, in your case. Just report back. Don’t let things get western, okay?”

  With that Rulon left Joe in his office, clutching the brim of his Stetson. He could hear the governor booming welcomes and homilies to a group of visitors in his larger office.

  As he turned to exit, Lois Fornstrom stuck her head in the doorway and said, “Mr. Coon of the FBI is waiting for you.”

  • • •

  JOE CLAMPED ON HIS HAT and shook Coon’s hand in the anteroom, careful not to make eye contact with the citizens and lobbyists still waiting for a session with the governor.

  Coon had aged since Joe last saw him. His chest and neck were thicker and his boyish face was cobwebbed with stress lines. He wore a dark blue suit, a red tie, and loafers.

  He said, “Long time, Joe.”

  “Yup.”

  “Even longer would have been better.”

  “Good to see you, too, Chuck.”

  “Follow me. I have a feeling you’re not going to like what I’m about to show you.”

  Who is Wolfgang Templeton?

  Joe and Special Agent Coon spent the ten minutes it took to drive from the capitol to the Federal Building updating each other on their families. Although he was the same age as Joe, Coon had started his family later in life and was going through situations Joe found strangely nostalgic. Coon’s oldest daughter was in her second year of high school and had turned sullen, spending all of her time with her friends or texting with them in her room. Joe laughed, saying it sounded familiar. Coon’s son was in the eighth grade and was a struggling point guard for the McCormick Warriors.

  “He assumes he’ll get bigger, faster, and quicker,” Coon said. “How do I tell him it may not happen?”

  Joe shrugged. “Just go to the games and cheer him on. Believe me, he’ll be the first to know.”

  Joe outlined what was happening with Sheridan, Lucy, and April. As he did, Coon shook his head.

  “Three teenage girls,” he said. “And I thought I had trouble.”

  “They’re not trouble,” Joe said. “But they’re weighing on my mind right now.”

  • • •

  INSIDE THE UGLY FEDERAL BUILDING in central Cheyenne, Joe surrendered his weapon, cell phone, badge, cuffs, and bear spray, and argued with the officer to keep his hat. Coon intervened and told the security officer it was all right. Joe traded his possessions for a VISITOR laminate that he clipped on the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. They rode the elevator together—Joe’s normal life was without elevators—and he followed Coon through a large room filled with cubicles and out-of-date computers to the supervisor’s corner office.


  Joe liked Coon, and they’d been involved in several situations over the years, although from different angles. Coon was professional, straight-up, and generally by-the-book. He’d chosen to stay and work in the Mountain West and not use the smallest state FBI office as a stepping-stone to a more high-profile post, unlike his predecessors. When Joe sat down, Coon outlined the agreement he’d reached with the governor’s office: Joe would go to Medicine Wheel County and report directly to Coon, and he’d advise Rulon; Joe’s role was not law enforcement or investigation but information gathering; Joe was not to represent himself as either an agent of the FBI or the governor’s office; Joe was to extricate himself immediately if the situation turned dangerous.

  Joe raised both of his hands shoulder height and dangled them and said, “Do I look enough like a puppet to fit the bill?”

  “Very funny,” Coon said. “The idea here is Medicine Wheel County locals are used to seeing their game warden poking around. Your presence won’t stir them up. And if they get an idea to check out your credentials, they’ll find out that you are indeed a Wyoming game warden of many years.”

  Joe lowered his arms to his lap. “This is unusual,” he said, “you working with the governor instead of against him.”

  Coon said, “I know it appears that way sometimes, and believe me, I have higher-ups who don’t exactly like your governor. But I’m trying to mend some fences here. This antagonism between the national government and the states out here can’t last forever. And if we can work together on this, everybody wins.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “So, who is Wolfgang Templeton?” Coon asked rhetorically from behind his desk. “Answer is: we’re not sure.”

  • • •

  FOR THE NEXT HALF-HOUR, Chuck Coon leafed through a file on his desk and hit the highlights. When Joe reached for his spiral notebook to take notes, Coon said it wasn’t necessary, that the file in front of him was a redacted copy and that he’d give it to Joe to take with him to study when they were done. Joe sat back and listened, shaking his head several times.

  Wolfgang Peter Templeton was born on a country estate between Porters and Pickerel lakes in eastern Pennsylvania to a father who was a college dean and a pediatrician mother. He’d been sent to private schools and appointed to West Point. Templeton had served as an officer in the army and was decorated for heroism for acts during the invasion of Grenada in 1983 when he was a commander in the army’s Rapid Deployment Force, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions and the 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers. His niche was Special Ops. After twenty years in the service, Templeton had retired from the military and founded one of the first hedge fund companies in New York City and was wildly successful and an influential leader in global high finance and an annual participant in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Templeton had married Hillary (Rothschild) Swain of Sagaponack in the Hamptons, New York—she was one of two heirs to the Allegheny Group, a consortium of defense contractors. The wedding had taken place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with a massive reception at Tavern on the Green that was covered by the New York Times. He was a Republican and rumored to have political ambitions and had given the green light to an exploratory committee in his home state of Pennsylvania, with his eye on the U.S. Senate.