C. Box - Force of Nature

Joe looked confused.

“Alice promised me she would take a flight out,” Nate said. “But I could see her finding an excuse not to leave. The only thing I’ll ask you is to tail up and make sure she goes on vacation. Can I ask you that?”

“Done,” Joe said.

“What I couldn’t figure out,” Nate said, nodding, “is why. Why would three locals decide to try to rub me out? I didn’t even know them very well, and I’d never had any trouble with them. And I’m pretty sure the people I used to work with who want me dead wouldn’t associate with rubes like that. The Mad Archer and the Kellys weren’t professionals. They were rednecks with guns, and like everybody around here, they knew how to aim and shoot, but that didn’t qualify them as anything special.”

Joe said, “I might know something about it.”

Nate looked up, surprised. There was enough flickering orange light now that he could see Joe’s face.

“This afternoon, I went out to the Kelly place,” Joe said. “Two of the men you killed were Kellys-Paul the father and his son Ronald, better known as Stumpy.”

“The gargoyle,” Nate said with derision. “I’ve done it before, but I don’t take any pleasure killing the mentally or physically handicapped, even if they want to kill me.”

Joe hesitated, looking Nate over. Then he said haltingly, “No one I’ve ever known would make a statement like that.”

Nate shrugged, and Joe continued, “Yeah, him. Anyway, I talked to Paul’s wife and Stumpy’s mom, Pam Kelly. She’s in a state of rage because you took two of her men away, and it wasn’t a very pleasant conversation,” Joe said.

Nate asked, “You went and talked to her? Is this after the sheriff interviewed her?”

Joe shook his head. “McLanahan did a cursory call to her saying he was sorry for her loss. But he didn’t interview her.”

“But you did,” Nate said as a statement.

“She’s a piece of work, and I wouldn’t want to cross her. She’s mad at Paul and the world in general. She was literally tearing her hair out. I mean, she had strands of it in her fingers when I showed up.”

Nate said, “It didn’t have to happen.”

“I know,” Joe said. “But try telling that to Pam Kelly. The weird thing was I didn’t get the impression she was crazy from grieving as much as angry that Paul and Stumpy had let her down. Anyway, I asked her why she thought Paul and Stumpy went out in their boat with the Mad Archer. At first, she acted like she had no idea at all, but I could tell she was lying about part of it.”

“Which part?”

“I don’t think she knew anything about the boat trip in particular. For all she knew, they were going hunting. It took a while to get to the bottom of why they were with the Mad Archer. Apparently, they’d met him just a couple of weeks ago and he recruited them into some scheme that would make them big money. Pam Kelly didn’t know what it was, but she really liked the idea of big money and didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

Joe sighed and said, “It’s no secret that all the trouble Stumpy and Paul got into with their illegal guiding operation was all run out of Pam’s home office. She wants nice things but she was stuck with a loser. Paul’s disability checks didn’t go very far, I guess. I’ve heard it said that she wore the pants in that family, and my talk with her confirmed that.”

Nate said, “Someone was going to pay them to kill me?”

“That’s what I got out of it,” Joe said.

“Did she say who it was? It sure as hell wasn’t the Mad Archer, I’m sure.”

Joe said, “There are probably fifty-four game wardens across this state who aren’t very busted up about what happened to that guy. So at least you’ve got that going for you.”

Nate smiled.

“No, I don’t think it was Ron Connelly behind anything. He was a dupe just like the Kellys,” Joe said. “I asked Pam Kelly who might have been behind it and she said she saw a man with them a couple of weeks ago. She’d gone to visit her sister in rehab in Riverton and wasn’t expected back for a couple of days, but her sister had flown the coop. So she got home before she was expected back and apparently surprised them all-Paul, Stumpy, Ron Connelly, and a mystery man-when she walked into the kitchen and found them sitting at her table. The man she didn’t know got up and walked out and drove away and she never saw him again. When she asked her husband who the man was, he said he didn’t know his name but he was the one who had the big money. She called him the Game Changer. She said Paul seemed to be scared of this Game Changer guy and didn’t want to talk about him at all.”

“Did she describe him?” Nate asked.

Joe fished his small spiral notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Tall, pale, mid-fifties. Dressed well. Kind of handsome in a scary way, she said. He had ‘creepy’ eyes and a mouth like a girl model. That’s what she said, ‘a mouth like a girl model.’”

Nate shook his head in recognition.

“So you know about him?” Joe asked.

“Yes, and now it’s starting to make some sense. He also went to the school to ask about Alisha. What I don’t know is why he came himself, and why now.”

“Does this guy have a name?” Joe asked.

“John Nemecek,” Nate said.

Joe repeated the name phonetically, “John Nemma-check.”

“Yes. He was my master falconer. I was his apprentice. We used to work together. He saved my life more than once, and I saved his.”

Joe asked, “So he’s a friend?”

“He was once. But that was years ago.”

“Not anymore, then?”

Nate paused, then said, “Joe, he’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”

Joe simply stared. Then he asked, “Why would he pay the Kellys and the Mad Archer to take you down?”

Nate said, “Because that’s one of their tactics: recruit local tribesmen.”

Joe sat up straight and asked, “What?”

Nate said, “Even with the name, you’re not going to find out anything about him. Like me, he’s been off the grid for years. But unlike me, he’s been hiding in plain sight.”

Joe said, “Local tribesmen?”

Nate stirred the fire so the flames erupted and the dry pine lengths popped sparks. He said, “COIN. Counterinsurgency tactics. How much do you want to know? I’ve tried to tell you before, but you didn’t want to hear it.”

Joe cocked one eye. “And I’m not sure I want to hear it now. Just tell me: how much trouble are you in?”

Nate sat back on the cool ground and met Joe’s eyes. He said, “He’ll probably kill me. I’m just being realistic. He’s that good.”

Joe’s face fell.

“In a way, I deserve it,” Nate said. “In fact, I’m resigned to the fact. Considering what I carry around with me, it may even come as a relief. I’d welcome some kind of conclusion. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” Joe asked, almost in a whisper.

“John Nemecek deserves it even more than I do.”

Nate thought Joe looked like he was in physical pain, the way he kept writhing around while seated on the log. Nate could guess at the source: Joe wanted to know almost as badly as he didn’t want to know. And Nate understood. Joe was a sworn officer of the law. He took his oath seriously. He’d managed to stay just over to the right side of the line all these years because he wasn’t keeping Nate’s secrets-secrets that might lead Joe to turn his friend in or arrest him outright. Not to mention what Joe would think of him if he knew.

Nate said, “I’ll let you off the hook for now so you can relax.”

Joe looked up with the quizzical Labrador-type expression he sometimes had, even if he didn’t know it.