C. Box - Force of Nature

There was no answer.

“This reminds me a lot of the first time I ever met Nate Romanowski,” Joe said to Dulcie as they sped down the state highway in the midst of the sheriff’s department caravan of SUVs. “Nine years ago, different sheriff, similar situation.”

Joe recounted how Nate had been arrested for murder, beaten, and jailed. The former sheriff considered it a slam-dunk case, but Joe was able to prove Nate’s innocence, and the outlaw falconer had pledged to protect Joe and his family.

“Over the years,” Joe said, “we’ve been through a lot and he’s never broken his word. We’ve had our disagreements, and I don’t want to get into all the details, but he’s been there for us. So I hope you understand that it isn’t an easy thing to turn him over to the Feds. That’s where he comes from, and we’re not sure he’d make it out alive.”

Dulcie recoiled. “What do you mean, he might not make it out alive? This is our government you’re talking about, Joe.”

He nodded. Luke Brueggemann was in the caravan as well, his pickup hovering in Joe’s rearview mirror.

Joe recalled other incidents over the years, things he’d stored in his memory drawer but never reopened. When they’d first met Nate he mentioned he’d just come from Montana. Because of Nate’s sudden violent appearance and the way he’d said it, Marybeth was curious and did some research on the library computers, and keyed on a headline from the Great Falls Tribune that read “Two Dead in U.S. 87 Rollover.” The story said that a damaged vehicle with out-of-state plates had been called in to the Montana Highway Patrol twenty-one miles north of town near Fort Benton. The identities of the occupants were unknown at the time, but authorities were investigating.

On the next page, a smaller story identified the victims of a multiple-rollover accident as two men, aged thirty-two and thirty-seven, from Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., respectively. Both were killed on impact. The highway patrol suggested that judging by the skid marks, it was possible that the engine to the late-model SUV had lost power or died as the vehicle approached a sharp grade with several turns, and that the driver was unable to negotiate the sharpest of the turns and blew through a guardrail and rolled to the bottom of the canyon, flipping at least seven times. The passenger was thrown from the vehicle, and the driver was crushed behind the wheel.

“Witness Sought in Rollover Investigation,” the third, and smallest, headline read. In the story, the highway patrol reported that they were seeking a potential witness to the rollover on U.S. 87 that killed two men from out of state. Specifically, they were looking for the driver of an older-model Jeep with Montana plates that was seen passing a speed checkpoint near Great Falls. The authorities estimated that the Jeep may have been in the vicinity of the rollover near the time it occurred, and that the driver could have seen the accident happen.

Joe later learned that Nate drove a Jeep, and that his preferred weapon at the time, a five-shot. 454 Casull manufactured by Freedom Arms, in Freedom, Wyoming, was the only handgun designated a “car killer” by the U.S. Secret Service because the bullets had the power to penetrate the engine block of a vehicle and render it useless.

Several years later, a man named Randan Bello arrived in Saddlestring from Virginia and started asking around about Nate Romanowski. He found a source in the former sheriff, Bud Barnum, and the two became fast friends. One particular fall morning, a housekeeping employee at the Holiday Inn observed Barnum arriving at the hotel and waiting for Bello to join him in his SUV. The two left together and didn’t come back. The sheriff’s vehicle was never located, although two years later a couple of elk hunters reported that they’d seen wreckage deep in the bottom of Savage Run Canyon. Joe had investigated, but their directions were poor and he’d never spotted anything.

He remembered Large Merle, a restaurant owner who lived on the road that led to Outlaw Canyon, where Nate had relocated after federal warrants were issued for him, asking Joe, “Did Nate ever tell you about that time in Haiti? When the four drugged-out rebels jumped him?”

“No.”

Merle shook his head and chuckled, the fat jiggling under his arms and under his chin. “Quite a story,” Merle said. “Especially the part about guts strung through the trees like popcorn strings. Ask him about that one sometime!”

Joe never did. But he’d heard that Merle was missing as well. He’d simply not shown up to open his little restaurant in Kaycee one morning a month before.

JOE SAID, “I’ve never gotten the whole story from Nate, and I’ve never wanted to hear it. He’s tried to tell me a few times, but I shut him down because I don’t want to know. But it involves something he did in Special Forces. It’s one of the reasons he moved out here-to get away.”

Dulcie asked about Nate’s age and background.

“Late thirties, early forties,” Joe said. “I don’t know his birthday or where he grew up, but I’ve always been under the impression he was familiar with Wyoming and Montana from his youth because he seems to know his way around. He’s also familiar with Idaho.” Joe let that just hang there and hoped she wouldn’t ask about Idaho in particular.

She didn’t, but she asked how Nate supported himself. “From what you say, he seems to have no problem getting weapons and equipment.”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t think it’s criminal, but I wouldn’t swear to it. All I know is he’s never seemed to be hurting for money. He’s tried to tell me some things, but I wouldn’t listen.”

“You have a strange relationship,” she said.

“Yup.”

“Do you think he’s capable of something like what we saw back there in the garage?”

Joe didn’t hesitate. “Nate is capable of anything, but he’s not random. That’s the thing about him. He has his own code and he can be ruthless and cold, but he doesn’t do things like that unless provoked. Unless they drew down on him first. And presuming the sheriff is right, why would three low-rent characters like Connelly and the Kellys even want to tangle with someone like Nate? That’s why this doesn’t make any sense.”

She shrugged. “Maybe they were involved with him in some way? In the way he makes his mysterious money?”

“Not possible,” Joe said. “He wouldn’t associate with people like that. Not to say he doesn’t know some unsavory types-he does. But he operates on a whole different level.”

“Maybe they were after his money?”

Joe said, “In that case, they were even stupider than I thought. But as soon as we get clear of this, I’m going to go out to the Kelly place and talk to Paul’s wife and Stumpy’s mother. Pam is her name, I believe. She might know something, and I don’t trust the sheriff to follow up with her.”

Dulcie rubbed her chin. “Was there a federal reward out for him?”

“If there was, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said, tumbling that idea over in his mind.

She said, “And even if there wasn’t, one or all of these three might have trouble with the Feds over something or other. It’s possible they went after Nate as a bargaining chip.”

“It’s a possibility,” Joe said. “I never thought of that.”

“Let’s keep an open mind,” she said.

Joe eyed her skeptically and held his tongue.

“I learned a few things in Missy’s murder trial,” she said defensively. “One is never to fully trust McLanahan’s theories or judgment. The other is never to underestimate the depth of depravity of the criminal mind.”

“You’re being a little rough on yourself, Dulcie,” he said after a beat. “You’re young. Don’t get too hard.”