C. Box - Breaking Point

Joe looked up. He said, “No, you don’t.”

“We heard they’re on their way now. A couple of Fed big shots from the regional headquarters in Denver and some folks from Washington, D.C. They want to get up here and make sure we know what we’re doing, I guess. They want to make sure I don’t botch the investigation.”

“You won’t,” Joe said, feeling bad for his friend.

“I should just tell them to turn around and go back. That we can handle it.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because they didn’t exactly ask my permission,” Reed said, narrowing his eyes in anger. “You know how they can be.”

One of the deputies digging into the mound gave a shout, and Gary Norwood jogged over to him. Joe and Reed saw the pops of a camera flash, then watched the evidence tech drop something into a paper evidence bag before he walked it over to show the sheriff.

Joe looked inside as the tech opened the top.

“One of our guys said it’s a.40 Sig,” Norwood said. “I sniffed it, and it doesn’t appear to have been fired. We’ll know for sure once we take it down to the lab and run it through tests.”

Reed sat back in his chair and whistled.

Joe said, “Hold it. These guys were armed? Armed EPA people?”

“We haven’t found any bodies yet,” Norwood cautioned Joe.

“Still,” Joe said, incredulous.

Ten minutes later one of the deputies with a shovel called out, “Got a body.”

Sheriff Reed pursed his lips and rotated back on his wheels, then set the chair down. It was an involuntary reaction, Joe thought, as if Reed were shuffling his feet after hearing bad news. Reed whispered, “Damn it.”

Another deputy said, “I’m pretty sure we’ve got two.”

Norwood hovered around the pit taking photographs, the flash popping.

Joe left Reed and walked to the mound, which was now a shallow pit. He saw a young, waxen, square-jawed face that appeared to be looking up and out of the ground, eyes open. There was a single black hole in the brow. Next to the face was the profile of another man, older, turned on his side, his eyes closed as if sleeping. The arm of the older man was flung over the chest of the first, as if trying to cuddle. Their skin was dirty, pale, and dry, as though it were made of plastic. Norwood’s camera exposed their dead white skin in bursts of flash.

Joe thought, So indecent. So obscene. So without dignity in death. Norwood retrieved two body bags from the back of Reed’s van and unfurled them on the grass.

“Keep digging,” Reed said from the perimeter. “Let’s hope there’s no more in there.”

Joe felt his stomach constrict. He turned and stumbled out of the lot, ducking under the yellow tape. He tried to hold in his nausea, and succeeded until he heard retching from one of the new deputies. Then he bent forward, his hands on his knees, until there was nothing left in his stomach.

He heard the heavy bass beat of helicopter blades before he saw the lights in the still dusk sky. From the cab in his SUV, Woods said to Reed, “It’s the Feds. They sent up a bird from Denver, and they want to know where they can land.”

“Tell ’em the airport,” Reed said sourly.

“Sir,” Woods said, holding the mic away from him and covering it with his palm as though he wanted nothing more to do with it, “I think they want to land here.”

“What, do they expect us to clear a landing zone like we’re in Vietnam?” Reed asked. “Tell them if they have to, they can land up on the road.”

“Will do,” Woods said, ducking back into his vehicle because the sound of the helicopter was filling the forest.

Joe looked up as the chopper appeared, hovering a hundred feet above the treetops. The wash of wind swayed the trees and caused clouds of pine needles to drop to the forest floor. A spotlight clicked on and bathed the lot and everyone within the tape in blinding white light.

“This is Special Agent Chuck Coon of the FBI. Clear the crime scene immediately ,” came the amplified voice from the helicopter, “and I mean immediately. Put those shovels down and step behind the tape until we give you the word.”

The deputies all looked toward Sheriff Reed, and Joe saw the man curse. Reed rarely cursed, so it surprised Joe. But the sound was so deafening he had to lip-read the words: “Fucking Feds.”

Reluctantly, Reed motioned to his men to step back away, and they did so, grumbling.

“Coon,” Joe said to Reed. “Remember him? He usually doesn’t come on so strong.” Thinking: Coon must have somebody senior to him up there in the chopper, barking commands.

Coon was Joe’s age, and he’d supervised the Cheyenne office of the FBI for several years. He was tightly wound and boyish-looking, with several children and a nice wife. Joe and Chuck Coon had been flung together on several cases, and despite the inherent bureaucratic tension, they’d gotten along well and Joe respected him.

The helicopter above them was still for a moment, then banked and flew above toward the road. As it did, Joe felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket, and he turned his back to the beating sound and opened his phone. He could barely hear what the dispatcher said, so he had to keep asking her to repeat the message.

“The governor’s on his way,” she said, practically shouting into the other end. “And he’s bringing your new director with him.”

“New director?” Joe asked.

“Oh,” the dispatcher said, “you haven’t heard?”

While Joe texted the question what’s this about a new director? to Wyoming game wardens Biff Burton and Bill Haley for some kind of clarification, Justin Woods escorted the occupants of the helicopter from where they’d landed on a wide spot on the ridge road down to the Roberson lot.

Joe looked up to see three men behind Woods. He recognized the last in the group as Special Agent Chuck Coon, who lagged suspiciously behind the first two. Joe dropped his phone into his breast pocket and reached down to help Sheriff Reed spin his chair around to face them.

“Got it,” Reed said impatiently, doing it himself.

Woods lifted the crime scene tape and stepped aside so the men could enter.

The EPA regional director-Joe would soon learn his name was Juan Julio Batista-ducked under the tape and halted, looking suspiciously from Reed to Joe to the body bags in the grass. He was slight, with a thick shock of jet-black hair and small eyes magnified slightly through rimless glasses. He wore a sport jacket over a light blue shirt with a button-down collar and pressed khaki trousers. Joe noted Batista’s fresh-out-of-the-box hiking shoes.

Batista’s eyes flitted from face to face and didn’t linger long enough to make a connection. To Joe, he sensed equal parts fear, indignation, and contempt. He pursed his lips before saying to Reed, “I’m Juan Julio Batista. People call me Julio. You’re the sheriff in charge?”

Reed introduced himself, then started to introduce his deputies, but Batista cut him off.

“Where are the bodies?”

“In the bags,” Reed said. “We left them open for your identification.”

Batista paused cautiously, as if sensing a trap.

“You assume I know them personally?” he asked.

Reed shrugged. “You don’t? I thought they worked in your shop.”

“The EPA is not a shop ,” Batista said. “We’re a very large agency with eighteen thousand full-time employees. So no, I don’t know each and every employee personally.”

“Sorry,” Reed said, “I just assumed. .”

“Let’s not do that,” Batista said, looking past the sheriff and toward the hole in the ground. He took a deep breath and turned to the man behind him, and said, “Bring the files.”