C. Box: Free Fire

“Nothing wrong with being a cowboy,” Rulon said.

“Nope.”

“Hell, we put one on our license plates. Do you remember when we met?”

“Yes.”

“It was at that museum dedication last spring. I took you and your lovely wife for a little drive. How is she, by the way? Marybeth, right?”

“She’s doing fine,” Joe said, thinking, He remembered her name . “She’s got a company that’s really doing well.”

“MBP Management.”

Amazing , Joe thought.

“And the kids? Two girls?”

“Sheridan’s fifteen, in ninth grade. Lucy’s ten, in fourth grade.”

“And they say I have a tough job,” Rulon said. “Beautiful girls. You should be proud. A couple of real pistols.”

Joe shifted in his chair, disarmed.

“When we met,” the governor continued, “I gave you a little pop quiz. I asked you if you’d arrest me for fishing without a licenselike you did my predecessor. Do you remember me askingyou that?”

“Yes,” Joe said, flushing.

“Do you remember what you said?”

“I said I’d arrest you.”

Chuck Ward shot a disapproving glance at Joe when he heard that.

The governor laughed, sat back. “That impressed me.”

Joe didn’t know it had. He and Marybeth had debated it at the time.

Rulon said, “So when we were in the air on the way to Powell,I was reading through a file that is keeping me up nights and I saw the Bighorns and I thought of Joe Pickett. I ordered my pilotto land and told Chuck to go find you. How would you like to work for the state again?”

Joe didn’t see it coming.

Chuck Ward squirmed in his chair and looked out the windowat the plane as if he wished he were on it.

Joe said, “Doing what?”

Rulon reached out and took a thick manila file off one of the stacks and slid it across the table. Joe picked it up and read the tab. It read “Yellowstone Zone of Death.”

Joe looked up, his mouth dry.

“That’s what they’re calling it,” Rulon said. “You’ve heard about the situation, no doubt.”

“Everybody has.”

The case had been all over the state, regional, and national news the past summer-a multiple homicide in Yellowstone National Park. The murderer confessed, but a technicality in the law had set him free.

“It’s making me crazy and pissing me off,” Rulon said. “Not just the murders or that gasbag Clay McCann. But this.”

Rulon reached across the table and threw open the file. On top was a copy of a short, handwritten letter addressed to the governor.

“Read it,” Rulon said.

Dear Gov Spence:

I live and work in Yellowstone, or, as we in the Gopher State Five call it, “the ’Stone.” I’ve come to really like the ’Stone, and Wyoming. I may even become a resident so I can vote for you.

In my work I get around the park a lot. I see things, and my friends do too. There are some things going on here that could be of great significance to you, and they bother us a lot. And there is something going on here with the resources that may deeply impact the State of Wyoming, especially your cash flow situation. Please contact me so I can tell you what is happening.

I want to tell you and show you in person, not by letter. This correspondence must be held in complete confidence.There are people up here who don’t want this story to be told. My e-mail address is yellowdick@yahoo.com. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

It was signed Yellowstone Dick.

Joe frowned. He noted the date stamp: July 15.

“I don’t understand,” Joe said.

“I didn’t either,” Rulon said, raising his eyebrows and leaning forward again. “I try to answer all of my mail, but I put that one aside when I got it. I wasn’t sure what to do, since it seems like a crank letter. I get ’em all the time, believe me. Finally, I sent a copy over to DCI and asked them to check up on it. It took ’em a month, damn them, but they traced it with the Internet people and got back to me and said Yellowstone Dick was the nickname of an employee in Yellowstone named Rick Hoening. That name ring a bell?”

“No.”

“He was one of the victims murdered by Clay McCann. The e-mail was sent to me a week before Hoening met his untimely demise.”

Joe let that sink in.

“Ever hear of the Gopher State Five?”

Joe shook his head.

“Me neither. And I’ll never know what he was talking about, especially that bit about deeply impacting my cash flow. You know how serious that could be, don’t you?”

Joe nodded. The State of Wyoming was booming. Mineral severance taxes from coal, gas, and petroleum extraction were making state coffers flush. So much money was coming in that legislators couldn’t spend it fast enough and were squirreling it away into massive trust funds and only spending the interest. The excess billions allowed the governor to feed the beast like it had never been fed before.

Joe felt overwhelmed. “What are you asking me?”

Rulon beamed and swung his head toward Chuck Ward. Ward stared coolly back.

“I want you to go up there and see if you can figure out what the hell Yellowstone Dick was writing to me about.”

Joe started to object but Rulon waved him off. “I know what you’re about to say. I’ve got DCI and troopers and lawyers up the wazoo. But the problem is I don’t have jurisdiction. It’s NationalPark Service, and I can’t just send all my guys up there to kick ass and take names. We have to make requests, and the responsestake months to get back. We have to be invited in,” he said, screwing up his face on the word invited as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “It’s in my state, look at the map. But I can’t go in unless they invite me. The Feds don’t care about what YellowstoneDick said about my cash flow, they’re so angry about McCanngetting off. Not that I blame them, of course. But I want you to go up there and see what you can find out. Clay McCann got away with these murders and created a free-fire zone in the northern part of my state, and I won’t stand for it.”

Joe’s mind swirled.

“You’re unofficial,” Rulon said, his eyes gleaming. “Without portfolio. You’re not my official representative, although you are. You’ll be put back into the state system, you’ll get back pay, you’ll get your pension and benefits back, you’ll get a state paycheck with a nice raise. But you’re on your own. You’re nobody,just a dumb-ass game warden poking around by yourself.”

Joe almost said, That I can do with no problem , but held his tongue. Instead, he looked to Ward for clarification. “We’ll tell Randy Pope to reinstate you as a game warden,” Ward said wearily, wanting no part of this. “But the administration will borrow you.”

“Borrow me?” Joe said. “Pope won’t do it.”

“The hell he won’t,” Rulon said, smacking his palm against the tabletop. “I’m the governor. He will do what I tell him, or he’ll have his resume out in five states.”

Joe knew how state government worked. This wasn’t how.

“Without portfolio,” Joe said, repeating the phrases. “ Not your official representative. But I am.”

“Now you’re getting it,” the governor said, encouraging Joe. “And that means if you screw up and get yourself in trouble, as you are fully capable of doing based on your history, I’ll deny to my grave this meeting took place.”

Chuck Ward broke in. “Governor, I feel it’s my responsibility,once again, to advise against this.”

“Your opinion, Chuck, would be noted in the minutes if we had any, but we don’t,” Rulon said in a tone that suggested to Joe that the two of them had similar disagreements as a matter of routine.