C. Box - Breaking Point

“Underwood is telling them they’re going to offer a reward-big money to anyone who can help nail Butch,” Joe said to Reed. “You’ve got trouble.”

“I know I do,” Reed said, rubbing his face with his hands. Then: “Have you ever seen anything like that before? Jesus.”

“You did well,” Joe said. “Your guys are proud of you for the line you drew in the sand.”

“I hope they’ll still be proud if I get buried in it.”

Joe chuckled.

“What’s with that Batista guy?” Reed said under his breath. “He seems to have it out for me.”

“Maybe he’s just caught up in the moment,” Joe said. “This isn’t the kind of situation he’s used to, and he did lose two people.”

“And what about Underwood? He seems to have it out for you .”

Joe nodded. “I don’t have a clue. I don’t think I’ve ever met him before. He’s not familiar to me.”

“You seem to be familiar to him .”

“Yeah, and I don’t get it,” Joe said. Then, to the darkening sky, “There’s a lot going on I don’t get, Mike.”

Inside his breast pocket, Joe’s cell phone suddenly vibrated with four incoming messages, one after the other. He turned and opened the phone to see who his new boss was.

Vehicles were coming up Hazelton road with their headlights on toward the Roberson lot as Joe drove back down the mountain, against the stream. More sheriff’s department vehicles, local cops, another highway patrolman, and pickups and SUVs from the Forest Service and BLM. Several of the units looked like rentals from Saddlestring Municipal Airport, Joe thought, and he guessed they contained EPA, FBI, and other law enforcement who had arrived on the 6:40 flight from Denver. The drivers of the rentals didn’t wave back as he passed them because, he assumed, they were unfamiliar with local custom where everybody waved at everybody simply as an acknowledgment for sharing the road. He couldn’t recall seeing such a massive assemblage of state and federal employees before on one road, even the year before, when Nate Romanowski was on the loose and the county was being littered with bodies.

He’d clapped Reed and Coon on the shoulder after he’d read his messages and told them to call him if he could be of any use. The scene was crowded and getting worse, and Joe could see no reason for staying around. The tent had been put up, and portable lights flooded the small lot. No additional bodies had been discovered in the hole, although the excavators did uncover a briefcase and the wallet badges of the two murdered EPA agents. Either the killer had removed the identification and tossed it into the hole with the bodies, or the agents themselves had pulled their IDs and died with them in their hands. The wallets confirmed the identification of the bodies even further.

The first message on Joe’s phone was from Marybeth, asking him to pick up April at the western-wear store on his way home. The second and third were from Biff Burton and Bill Haley from other corners of the state.

Burton’s message read: Lisa Greene-Dempsey. Calls herself “LGD.” Don’t know a damned thing about her or where she came from.

Haley’s said: Lisa Greene-Dempsey. The Gov has really lost it this time. Twenty-two weeks to my retirement. Counting the hours.

So Bill Haley knew of her, Joe thought. He planned to give the other game warden a call later that evening.

The fourth was from Lisa Greene-Dempsey herself, although the number was listed as “unknown.” It read: LGD here, Joe. I’m on my way up w/ Gov. Rulon. I look forward to meeting one of our colorful wardens. Call me.

“Colorful?” Joe said aloud.

He hesitated, then punched CALL. He was relieved that he got her voicemail. Her phone was out of range because she was likely in the state plane with the governor, flying up from Cheyenne. He haltingly said he looked forward to meeting her as well, and closed the phone.

Joe pulled into an empty space on Main in front of Welton’s Western Wear, one of the oldest retail stores in operation in Saddlestring. Because it was dark outside but all the lights were on inside despite the WE’RE CLOSED, PARTNER sign, the big display windows allowed anyone passing by to look over the jeans, boots, hats, and long-sleeved shirt display and into the store itself with the clarity of an aquarium.

He saw April right away, perched behind the counter, beaming at a couple of local boys on the other side. The boys were dressed identically in the unofficial uniform of Wyoming: T-shirts, baseball caps, faded jeans, belts with big buckles, and athletic shoes or scuffed boots. One of the boys said something, and April threw her head and hair back and laughed in what Joe thought was a provocative way. The boy who didn’t tell the joke punched the other one hard in the chest, so it wasn’t tough to figure out who the jibe had been aimed at.

Daisy spied April and whined, and her tail whumped the back of the truck seat.

“Okay, April,” Joe said, “come on,” hoping April would look out and see him waiting. He didn’t want to have to go inside and roust her and possibly create a situation with the two boys.

Joe knew why two teenage boys would be in the store after hours, and it didn’t have anything to do with perusing the Cinch shirts or Ariat boots. April was a stunner. She wore a short skirt with a tooled belt, tall red cowboy boots, and a top too tight to be subtle. And when she tossed her hair back that way. . Joe didn’t like it.

The week before, another boy who looked the same as these two had driven his pickup to their house to take April out to a movie. Joe had taken the boy aside and whispered in his ear: “I have a rifle, a shovel, and ten acres of land, son.” The boy had her back by ten.

Joe tapped on his horn, and the three teenagers inside glanced out. Joe flashed the boys with his cab-mounted spotlight and watched them recoil. April rolled her eyes and shooed them away, then gestured to Joe to wait for a moment while she closed down the store.

As the two boys walked past Joe’s truck, they looked over at him sheepishly.

“Naw, I haven’t met her,” Bill Haley told Joe, who was waiting for April to lock up and come out of the store. The cell connection between the two game wardens was scratchy and poor. “I’ve just heard things.”

“What things?”

“That she’s a do-gooder with grand ideas about, and I quote, ‘ dragging the agency into the twenty-first century. ’”

Joe paused. “That might not be all bad, Bill.”

“Hell, Joe,” Haley said, “I’m still struggling with the twentieth century.”

Joe laughed.

“Seriously,” Haley said, “I hear she considers herself progressive. She thinks the agency is a good-old-boy network, and she wants to shake things up.”

Joe shrugged. “We could use a little shaking up from time to time.”

“Maybe, but I’m too old and set in my ways for that. I’ve been around a while and I remember a couple of other bomb-thrower directors in the past. You weren’t around when there was a move to rename us ‘conservation officers’ or, worse, ‘resource managers.’ Back then, I just figured I could outlast them, and I did. This time, I’m tired and I just want out. Those types are wearing me down, Joe. I’m an old goddamned game warden and a good one, and that’s all I ever wanted to be.”

“Gotcha,” Joe said. “Where did the governor even find her?”

“I heard it was his wife,” Haley said slyly. “The First Lady has lots of friends in the smart set, I hear. The Gov owes her a couple, from what I understand.”

“Hmph.”

Joe wasn’t as plugged in to the gossip in Cheyenne as Bill Haley was, but he did recall phoning the governor’s office once and having the telephone answered by Stella Ennis, who had once tempted Joe himself. Stella had been named chief of staff, and she claimed she was sitting on the governor’s lap at the time. Stella compounded the problem when a reporter from the Casper Star-Tribune asked her about her qualifications to be chief of staff and she answered, “Have you seen these lips?”