C. Box - Nowhere to Run

“Get out,” Joe said. “You’re a damned idiot and an embarrassment.”

McLanahan’s eyes flashed and he started to come out of his chair. Joe didn’t back down. McLanahan apparently thought better of getting into a fistfight with a man in a hospital bed and said, “The easiest way to eat crow is while it’s warm. The colder it gets, the harder it is to swaller.”

Joe said, “It’s hard to believe the West was won with stupid sayings like that.”

“The only thing I don’t like about this whole deal,” McLanahan said, ignoring Joe, “is that I understand you’re coming back to Saddlestring. Everything else, though, just tickles me to no end.”

“Let me give you some of your own cornpone advice,” Joe said. “Never miss a chance to shut up. Now get out.”

“And give my best to the lovely Mrs. Pickett.”

As a result of McLanahan’s visit, Joe gripped the railings of his bed with both hands and stared at the blank screen of the television. There, he saw a distorted reflection of himself at what looked like the edge of an abyss.

How was it possible a team of eleven men couldn’t confirm his story? Where had the Grim Brothers gone? Was it possible they’d never been there at all? That everything Joe recalled was some kind of a fever dream?

A phone burred on a stand next to his bed. Until it rang, he hadn’t known there was a telephone there.

A crisp female voice said, “Hold for Governor Rulon.”

Joe closed his eyes. How much worse could this day get? he wondered.

“Joe! How in the hell are you?”

The governor’s voice was deep and raspy. There was heavy background noise, overlapping conversations, the bark of a laugh.

“Hello, sir. I’m fine.”

“Good, good. Can you hear me okay? I’m in Washington giving hell to these bastards, and I’ve got a few minutes between meetings. I don’t have long, so we need to get to the point.”

“Okay.”

“First, how is Marybeth? How are the girls?”

“Good all around. They’re here with me. ”

“Tell me straight: are you nuts? Did you go goofy down there in exile?”

Joe swallowed. “No.”

“I got part of the story from my chief of staff, who’s in touch with DCI. I’ve been anxiously awaiting news of a bloody shootout where two brothers are killed and two women are rescued in the mountains. Instead, I hear they can’t find anything or anybody.”

“I just heard from Sheriff McLanahan,” Joe said. “They must have been searching in the wrong places.”

“Hmmm.”

Joe asked, “Do you know a DCI investigator named Bobby McCue? He was in here earlier today asking me a bunch more questions about what I saw up there. Do you know why DCI is questioning my story?”

“What did you say his name was?”

“McCue.”

“The name is familiar somehow, but I can’t say I place him. You say he was with the state?”

“That’s what he claimed.”

“We have too many goddamned employees,” Rulon huffed. “I can’t know every one of ’em.”

Strike two , Joe thought.

Rulon said suddenly, “The Brothers Grimm?”

“They prefer the Grim Brothers.”

“Diane Shober?”

“I don’t swear it was her. I made that clear to the DCI. I said outright I may have been mistaken.”

“Wolves?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We don’t have wolves in southern Wyoming.”

“You do, sir. C’mon, governor. How can you doubt me? Have I ever lied to you? Or anybody?”

“Well, no,” Rulon said. “You haven’t. Sometimes I wish you would. An honest man can be a big pain in the butt to a politician, you know.”

Joe smiled.

“Have you been contacted by the press yet?” Rulon asked. “They’re going to eat this story up.”

“No.”

“Especially the Diane Shober angle. I know how those bastards think. They won’t care about Terri Wade or you. But they’ll be on the missing-runner thing like fat kids on a pie.

“Do not under any circumstances talk to them,” Rulon said. “Say ‘no comment’ and direct any inquiries to my office. We won’t talk to them either, but they don’t know that yet.”

“Okay,” Joe said.

“It’s gonna be damage-control mode. Luckily, we’ve had a little experience with that lately,” he said, almost wistfully. “How this plays out will be a reflection on me and my administration, since I hired you and tried to squirrel you away where you wouldn’t do any more damage. If this story gets out. ”

“It’s not a story,” Joe said, gritting his teeth. “It’s the truth. It’s what happened. I’m in a hospital bed because of those brothers.”

“That sheriff of yours calls you a fabulist,” Rulon said. “We won’t be able to keep him quiet.”

“No,” Joe agreed.

Rulon paused. “Okay, then. I’ve got two calls I need to return. They both have to do with you. The first is from Chuck Coon at the FBI. He says he wants to be briefed, but I think he may know something about those brothers that he doesn’t want to reveal. As you know, the feds always have something going on behind the scenes.”

Joe grunted. Governor Rulon was getting more and more disparaging of the federal government all the time. Joe used to think he did it to gain popularity with his constituents. In a state where more than 50 percent of the land was owned and managed by federal bureaucracies, the battles between locals and Washington were fierce. Rulon had recently been quoted in national newsmagazines calling the government “thieving, blood-dripping vampire jackals” and “jackbooted fascist thugs.” Joe was beginning to think Rulon believed every word he said.

“I’ll have my staff talk to Coon,” Rulon said. “We may find out something that way that could benefit us. I’m curious he called, to be honest. I’m guessing he did it on behest of his apparatchik superiors.”

Joe found it interesting that Coon had called as well.

Rulon said, “And then I have a harder call to return. It’s the kind of call I hate to make because it makes my stomach churn. Maybe I should have you do it.”

Joe said, “Who, sir?”

“Diane Shober’s parents. Somehow, they found out about your story. They want to find their daughter and bring her home.”

Joe felt his stomach clench.

“Look,” Rulon said. “I’m officially placing you on administrative leave until we can get a handle on all of this. So go home and close the curtains and don’t answer the door or the phone. The media can be tricky bastards and blunt objects, and I don’t want you talking to them. That’s an order. Stay inside and don’t come out until you hear from me or my chief of staff. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.” Joe swallowed. “But. ”

“No buts except that one you’ve got in a sling. I’m not hanging you out to dry because you’ve never lied to me, even when I wanted you to. Right now, though, we’ve got to go to ground until we can figure out the best course of action.”

Joe said, “I never got to thank you for letting me go home.”

“Oh, this is thanks enough.” The governor snorted, and laughed bitterly at his own joke. “And welcome home. It looks like you’re going to be seeing plenty of it in the next few days.”

Rulon punched off, and Joe lowered the phone to his lap, looked back up at the blank television screen, and clearly saw the abyss this time.

On the eastern side of the Sierra Madre, on the opposite side of the range where Joe Pickett had ascended days before, Dave Farkus crept his pickup along an overgrown two-track through the timber toward his fall elk camp. The afternoon was warm and still, the last gasp of summer, and the insects in the tall grass hummed and jumped with the manic passion of the soon-to-die. Farkus ran his windows up to prevent grasshoppers from jumping inside. Grasshoppers bugged him.