Off the Grid Page 8

  “Don’t describe it,” Marybeth said quickly.

  “I won’t.”

  “You went to his house?”

  Joe said he had. “Bub’s wife, Tracy, knew before we got there. She’d seen it posted on the Twitter feed of a department tech guy named Tyler Frink. He apparently live-tweeted the whole search and rescue. Next time I see him I’m going to pop him right in the mouth.”

  “What an awful way to find out,” Marybeth said, taken aback.

  Joe said, “I don’t know why she happened to be following Frink on Twitter, but she was. Sometimes these researchers get so focused on what they’re doing, they can’t see the forest for the trees. They forget real people are involved.”

  “April went to school with Bub’s son. She said he was a pretty nice guy. There’s a Beeman in middle school also. Now they’ve lost their dad. I’ll see tomorrow if there is a fund set up for them or anything we can do. Maybe I can set up a fund from the library.”

  Joe nodded. He appreciated how pragmatic Marybeth could be and how quickly she moved past emotion to action.

  “Of course, we won’t be able to contribute much,” she said.

  The massive hospital bills racked up by April’s injury and medically induced coma were staggering. Marybeth spent several hours each week battling with their health insurance company, which seemed to be just as confused about their coverage as Marybeth was. If it couldn’t be sorted out, the Picketts owed the hospital in Billings hundreds of thousands of dollars they didn’t have. It could bankrupt them, and it was something that kept both Joe and Marybeth awake nights. She’d even suggested reaching out to her mother, Missy Vankueren, who had last been seen on the run with Wolfgang Templeton. Missy was worth millions due to “trading up” over a series of seven husbands, each wealthier than the last.

  That Marybeth would even consider contacting her mother told Joe what desperate financial shape they were in. He wished he had a solution, or someone who could help.

  In the meantime, all he could hope for was that the insurance company would get its act together.

  • • •

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE how late we’re up,” Marybeth said, looking at the clock above the stove. Joe finished his pie and poured a little more bourbon over his ice. “We’re never up this late,” she said.

  “My fault.”

  “Of course it is. And don’t forget we’re going to that thing with Colter Allen tomorrow.”

  He moaned.

  “Governor Rulon is coming up with him,” she said. “That’s kind of unusual, don’t you think?”

  Joe shook his head. Even he knew that it didn’t make much sense for an outgoing Democratic governor to campaign with a Republican front-runner.

  “Rulon wants to see you,” she said. “I nearly forgot to tell you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “His office called. Apparently, they couldn’t reach you on your cell. Do you want to hear the message he left for you?”

  Joe indicated he did.

  Marybeth retrieved the phone from the wall and punched in the code for saved messages. A staffer in the governor’s office said, “Hold for Governor Rulon.” After an electronic click came Rulon’s distinctive growl: “Hope you’re ready for one last roundup, range rider.”

  The message ended.

  “That’s it?” Joe asked.

  “That’s it. Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

  Joe shook his head, puzzled. “Something to do with that bear? Maybe he heard about it and he doesn’t want any more hunters getting killed. But I just don’t know.”

  “You’re gonna miss him, aren’t you?” she said slyly.

  “Not when he does things like this,” Joe said.

  • • •

  LATER, IN BED, Joe turned to Marybeth a few minutes after they’d shut off their lights.

  “When I came in, you said you’d had a bad dream. What was it about?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “It must have been something. You looked a little spooked.”

  After a beat, Marybeth said, “It was a dream about Nate.”

  “Nate?” Joe said, propping up on an elbow.

  “I know. It doesn’t make sense that after not hearing a word from him for months, I’d have a crazy dream about him.”

  “Funny, I never dream about him myself,” Joe chided her.

  “It wasn’t that kind of dream,” she said defensively.

  “Then what kind was it?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “It was just strange, but it was very realistic. It was like I was there. In my dream, Nate was standing in the middle of a desert somewhere. You were there, too, but I couldn’t see you. I just knew somehow you were there.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “And there were three pickups driving right toward him. In the back of the trucks were a lot of men with guns. They were screaming . . .”

  9

  “So, Joe,” Governor Spencer Rulon said the next day as he leaned in closely at the back of the room in the Twelve Sleep County Library, “are you ready for your last roundup, range rider?”

  “Maybe if I knew what it meant,” Joe said, easing back a little. Rulon had a habit of moving into personal space when he meant to persuade. The idea was to get so close that whomever he was talking to would agree with him just to break up the situation.

  Rulon chuckled at Joe and looked around furtively. He had a politician’s ability to always be checking out the room around him to note who was talking to whom, who might be conspiring against him with a rival, or who might break away any second and approach him.

  Governor Rulon was a burly, red-faced man who walked with a forward tilt, as if he planned to open every door by butting it down with his head. He had a sly smile and a wink for everyone he met that seemed to suggest they shared a secret. Formidable and unpredictable were two adjectives often attributed to him.

  “I’ve got a couple of minutes because no one expected me here and I’m not speaking—Colter is,” Rulon said, nodding toward the candidate, who was working the room. Marybeth was in front, near the podium, reviewing the notes she’d made for the introduction in a few minutes.

  Joe wore a jacket and tie, and the minute he’d put them on that morning he was reminded why he didn’t like either. But because the event was political and he was a state employee, he didn’t want to show up in uniform. Without his red shirt, Stetson, and gun and badge, he realized, most of the people at the event didn’t even recognize him. Governor Rulon had, though, and cornered him at the back.

  As Joe looked over the small crowd, Allen was leaning over and grasping the hand of Sheriff Reed in his wheelchair. Allen looked sincere and affable. Joe picked up a few words of the conversation and decided that Allen was asking Reed about the dead hunter and the rogue bear. The story had made the wire services and had appeared everywhere, mainly due to Tyler Frink’s live tweets.

  Colter Allen was a tall man with wide shoulders, longish silver hair, a movie star jawline, and bushy eyebrows. He wore a yoked camel hair jacket, a string tie, and scuffed cowboy boots—practically a Wyoming uniform, Joe thought.

  Allen was being trailed through the crowd by the new managing editor of the Saddlestring Roundup, T. Cletus Glatt. Glatt was tall and stooped, his face and neck forested with skin tags, his glasses pushed far down on his nose. His reporter’s notebook was out in front of him, poised to jot down any comments by Allen that might prove to be controversial. It was a topic of conversation among the morning coffee drinkers at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant why the out-of-state publisher who owned the Roundup had hired T. Cletus Glatt as the new editor. Glatt’s résumé included stints as the editor of a large metropolitan newspaper in the Deep South, then as a columnist for a Chicago daily before he was fired along with most of the newsroom during staff reduction.
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  After that, Glatt had moved across the country to smaller and smaller newspapers, getting more and more bitter, until he ended up, literally, at the Saddlestring Roundup.

  Since his first weeks helming the small weekly, Glatt had made it clear that he despised both Saddlestring and Wyoming in general. Also on his hate list were politicians (especially Governor Rulon), teachers, law enforcement, the Mountain West, and anyone who pushed back against the imperial and acerbic viewpoints he espoused in weekly editorials. His most recent diatribe, aimed at paraplegic sheriff (and Joe’s friend) Mike Reed, was titled “Rolling Toward Incompetence?”

  Rulon turned to Joe and leaned back in. “I see Cletus Glatt over there. I used to get mad when I read his editorials, but now I just feel sorry for the guy. It must be tough when no one who reads what you write takes you as seriously as you take yourself,” he said, dismissing Glatt with a shake of his head. “He doesn’t realize people only subscribe to his rag for the obituaries, the police blotter, and high school sports. It’s pathetic, really.”

  Then: “Anyway, when I heard from Allen’s people that he was making a campaign swing through the Bighorns, I asked if I could come along. Hell, he has a better plane than I do and I wanted to ride in it. He’s going to miss it when he gets in office and has to use the state plane.”

  Rulon’s state airplane was a small Cessna jet with the state bucking-horse logo on the tail. It was known as Rulon One.

  “Sometimes, the best way to get your message across is to say nothing at all,” Rulon said. “I don’t need to speak, or to endorse him, or to do any damn thing. All I have to do is show up here with him and the message is clear. Anybody who cares will hear it. Even Cletus Glatt might get the message. I hope Colter appreciates it, and I think he does.” After a brief pause, he said, “We’ll see when I’m out of office.”

  Joe simply nodded. Rulon often said things that turned out to have several interpretations when heard from different angles. It was one of his gifts.

  “Look,” Rulon said, “remember when I sent you up to Medicine Wheel County to poke around for me? How we figured a game warden wouldn’t be suspicious in a county filled with paranoid lunatics who didn’t have the sense to vote for me either time I ran?”

  Joe said, “Of course I remember.”

  “Well, we know it didn’t work worth shit, but you still got the job done in the end. You possess special skills. Your talent for bumbling around until the situation explodes into a bloodbath or a debacle is uncanny. I don’t know how you manage to do it.”

  “Me either,” Joe said, flushing red.

  “I need you to do it again,” Rulon said. “Don’t worry, I’ll clear it with your director. Or better yet, you’ll go off and do it and I’ll just let her know later. That way, she’ll have something to remember me by.”

  Joe said, “Elk-hunting season just opened here and we’ve got a grizzly bear on the loose that killed a hunter. I’m sure you’ve heard about that. Are you sure this is the best time?”

  Rulon looked at Joe as if he couldn’t believe the naivety of the statement. “Who is to say that your hunt for the rogue killer grizzly bear might not take you out of your district to another part of the state? Would it be so unusual for you to show up in an unfamiliar place looking for your lost bear?”

  “I guess not, but it might be a waste of time.”

  “In all these years, you haven’t learned to be a state employee, have you?” Rulon asked, rolling his eyes. “Wasting time is part of the deal. But look, Joe, it’s two weeks until the election. After that, I’ll be in transition mode until Allen’s inauguration party. I don’t have that much time left.”

  “I see,” Joe said, not seeing at all.

  “It’s strange when you’re a short-timer in politics,” Rulon said. “Staff that used to snap to now kind of roll their eyes and grudgingly do what I tell them. All the sudden, people forget to stand up when I enter the room. It’s like they’ve already moved on to the next guy, who of course will be Colter. But I’ve still got juice and there are still a couple of things I want to get straightened out before I go.

  “I got this call from a donor of mine, Dr. Kurt Bucholz. Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a good man, a straight shooter. He hosted a couple of fund-raisers for me on his ranch even though he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Tea Party guy. You know, your typical Wyoming rancher. He lives down in the Upper North Platte River Valley between Saratoga and Encampment. You know that country?”

  “Well enough,” Joe said. He’d assisted the game warden down there on a poaching case. Joe thought the high-altitude valley with mountains on three sides was one of the most beautiful parts of the state. He’d always thought that if the Saratoga District warden retired, he might apply for it.

  “Do you know who was living on Bucholz’s ranch the last few months?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously, you don’t?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Your old pal Nate Romanowski and that hot little number of his.”

  Joe stepped back, startled. “Nate?”

  “The good doctor was hiding him from the feds. I didn’t know it either until he told me. Apparently, Romanowski didn’t let you know because of that stupid federal agreement he was forced to sign.”

  Joe rubbed his jaw, and while he did, he noticed Marybeth looking hard at him from across the room. At first he thought she was trying to figure out what Rulon was telling him. Then he realized she’d likely lip-read him saying Nate Romanowski.

  “So where is Nate now?” Joe asked.

  “That’s what I want you to find out.”

  Joe shook his head, confused. Why did the governor care about Nate Romanowski? As far as Joe knew, Nate had abided by his agreement not to commit any more crimes in Wyoming.

  Rulon leaned in even closer so no one could overhear him. Joe noticed in his peripheral vision that Allen and his small entourage were getting closer. The candidate was working his way to the back of the room one handshake at a time. He’d already mastered the politician’s skill of seeming to devote his entire attention to whomever he was meeting and then using the grasped hand to push away to the next person. His entourage consisted of a man and a woman in business clothes holding clipboards and with benevolent expressions on their faces.

  “It’s not just about your buddy,” Rulon said. “Bucholz told me he was visited by four mysterious federal agents who gave him false names and business cards. They were there for Romanowski. The agents sent the doctor away and spent a couple of hours with your guy. They sent the doctor out of the room in his own home. Think about the arrogance of that. The next day, Romanowski was gone. All he left was a thank-you note to Kurt for helping him and saying he hoped someday to return and repay the favor. The doctor said Romanowski had cleared out of his cabin and taken his falcons with him.”

  “What about Olivia Brannan?” Joe asked.

  Rulon shrugged. “He didn’t say anything about anyone else, so I assume she wasn’t there.”

  “But the feds didn’t arrest him?” Joe asked, surprised.

  “No. The doctor was taken by that, too. Lord knows they want Romanowski back in custody after what he pulled. We get inquiries from the FBI and the DOJ all the time asking if we know his whereabouts. No, the doctor thinks these guys recruited him to do something.”

  “Any idea what or where?” Joe asked.

  “Again, that’s what I want you to find out. You know how I am against the goddamned feds coming into my state and acting like they own the place. I’ve told them time and time again I want to be notified of what those spooks are up to. When I heard a team of them harassed a local rancher and called out one of my constituents it made my blood boil.”

  As Rulon spoke, his neck and cheeks reddened. Joe had heard versions of this rant before.

  “I had s
ome of my people check with Chuck Coon at the FBI,” he said, mentioning the name of the special agent in charge, whom Joe had come to like and trust, “and Coon honestly knew nothing about this. So that means an agency outside the FBI is strutting around my state, throwing its weight around. It’s just common courtesy and professional protocol to advise the local authorities when you come to town—you know that. And I’ve warned them time and time again not to bigfoot within our borders.”

  Joe agreed. Rulon had once threatened loudly to have federal employees arrested, but he’d never followed through with it.

  Rulon said, “We think we have a general idea where Romanowski went. It’s based on an uptick of unrelated crimes over the last few months along I-80. Missing eighteen-wheelers taken from truck stops, big-equipment thefts from the energy companies, things like that. The feds won’t say what they’re looking for and they’ve kept my guys frozen out of the investigation. When they act like that, I can’t help but think it’s terrorism-related.”

  “Really?” Joe asked. “Where on I-80?”

  Interstate 80 ran across southern Wyoming from border to border. It started in San Francisco and ended in Teaneck, New Jersey. Cities on the interstate included Sacramento, Oakland, Reno, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago, and Toledo. The Wyoming stretch included the highest elevation and the most brutal terrain, and it was often closed by blizzards in the winter. In the state, it connected Cheyenne with Laramie, Rawlins, and Rock Springs. Between those towns were thousands of miles of high-country desert and rough country. Joe always did his best to avoid it, but there were times it couldn’t be helped.

  Rulon said, “My DCI agents have heard through some of their CIs that there is unusual activity going on in the Red Desert.”

  “Really?”

  “I know—there’s not much there but sand and wind. But it’s right on the Colorado border, Joe. My first thought was that they were using the desert as a staging area for reselling legal weed from Colorado. But whatever it is seems to be more than that. I think that’s where you should start looking for Romanowski.