C Box - In Plain Sight

THERE HAD BEEN that morning two weeks ago, Keeley recalled, when he watched Joe Pickett through the scope of his rifle and nearly pulled the trigger. Hank had sent him out to drive the fence line and check the locks. The game warden was out counting deer when Keeley saw the familiar green pickup. Hunkering down in a tangle of brush, Keeley placed the crosshairs of the rifle scope on Joe Pickett’s nose.

The game warden seemed to sense he was being watched, the way he looked around. But he never saw Keeley.

It would have been simple. Easier than the cowboy. The game warden would never even know what hit him. Keeley had flipped the safety off, pressed his cheek harder into the stock of the rifle, and begun to squeeze the tigger…

Then he thought better of it. That was the problem; it was way too easy. He didn’t want to kill him from a distance, without Pickett knowing who had done it or why. The why was important.

Even the week before, when he had Joe Pickett down on the pavement behind the Stockman bar, it would have been easy to stomp him to death. Hank couldn’t have stopped him.

But he didn’t want to just kill the man. He wanted to destroy him first. That would take more time.

IT HAD BEEN quite a surprise to meet Joe Pickett’s daughter the night before, Keeley thought. She was kind of a little cutie, he had to admit. Too bad he couldn’t see her better, but she was all wrapped up in that blanket that way.

How old did Arlen say she was? Fourteen? That would be about right.

Then he thought: April Keeley would be twelve if she were alive today.

But she wasn’t.

And he knew who was responsible for that.

IT HADN’T TAKEN Keeley long to size up the situation on the Thunderhead Ranch. It was Hank versus Arlen, and Hank was hiring. Hank’s employees would be expected to do a hell of a lot more than ranch work if it came to it. There were standing orders to confront any of Arlen’s men if they were stupid enough to cross over to the east side of the ranch for anything. There had already been a few spitting contests of sorts, with Hank’s men threatening Arlen’s men and vice versa. Keeley had taken out some dumb Mexican irrigator who was working for Arlen. The Mexican never even knew what hit him. He just woke up in Twelve Sleep County Medical with a concussion from a two-by-four.

Keeley was lying low since he’d thumped the game warden. By working for Hank in the open and Arlen behind the scenes, Keeley had assured himself he would be in the middle of anything that happened between the two brothers, and he might be able to use his unique position to manipulate the outcome. He knew he had stumbled upon a great opportunity. And not only was he smarter than those dick-weeds down in Rawlins, Keeley thought, he was also smarter than those two brothers.

NATE ROMANOWSKI. KEELEY had heard the name spoken in quiet tones enough times around the ranch and in the bars in town that he was concerned. This Romanowski guy was a friend of Joe Pickett’s and he wasn’t someone to screw around with. He was rumored to be behind the murders of two men, one being the former county sheriff. Hank said he’d heard Romanowski carried a.454 Casull handgun made by Freedom Arms, the second-most-powerful pistol on earth, and he could hit what he was aiming at up to a mile away.

But Romanowski was nowhere to be found. No one had seen him in six months, and with the outlaw falconer gone or missing, Keeley knew it would be easier to get to the game warden.

KEELEY WAS RINSING off his knife and bone saw in one of the buckets when he noticed movement at the house on Bighorn Road. Yup, someone had turned on the porch light.

He put the saw and knife on the tailgate of his truck, wiped his hands dry on his jeans, and picked up the binoculars again. He focused on the front door.

AT THE SAME moment on the Thunderhead Ranch, there was a shout.

“Girls, time to get up,” Arlen called from downstairs. “What do you want for breakfast?”

Julie moaned and rubbed her eyes. “Are you hungry, Sherry?”

“No,” Sheridan said, rolling over, feeling the hardness of the steak knife under the sleeping bag where she’d hidden it the night before. “I had a really bad dream. I just want to go home.”

Which was true.

As Julie dressed, Sheridan peeled back the bag and looked at the knife in the morning light, feeling suddenly sick. She let the flap drop back over it before Julie could see what she had been doing.

“You don’t look good,” Julie said, looking over while she brushed her hair. “Your face is completely white.”

“I don’t feel very good all of a sudden.”

“What’s wrong?”

Sheridan hesitated. Should she tell her? She knew at that moment that no matter what, things would never be the same between her and Julie Scarlett.

No, she decided, she couldn’t tell her that the knife she’d taken from the kitchen matched the one that had pinned the Miller’s weasel to her front door.

“I’LL GET THE PAPER IF YOU’LL MAKE COFFEE,” JOE said to Marybeth as he yawned, snapped on the porch light, and looked outside through the window on the front door.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Marybeth said from the kitchen. Then: “You’re up early.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, sitting on a bench to pull on his boots.

“What were you worried about?” she asked.

He smiled. She knew him so well. If he couldn’t sleep it was because he was concerned about something. Nothing else ever kept him awake.

“I hope it wasn’t Sheridan’s sleepover,” Marybeth said.

Joe had to proceed cautiously here. In fact, it had been about Sheridan’s sleepover. He kept thinking his daughter was in over her head with the Scarletts, but that she would never admit it. Something was brewing besides coffee, he thought.

“Just a lot of things,” Joe said.

He clamped on his cowboy hat and cinched the belt on his bathrobe against the morning chill and was three strides down the cracked concrete pathway in his front yard when he realized he was being watched. He froze, and felt the hair on his neck stand on end.

He looked quickly at the road. There were no vehicles on it, and no one was parked. Wolf Mountain, still in shadow, loomed to the north, dominating the view. Then he felt more than saw something in his peripheral vision. Something big and black, hanging above the ground. Joe snapped his head to the side.

Then to the other side.

For a moment, he thought he was surrounded and he wished he’d brought his weapon.

He realized what it was, and his stomach surged and he felt sick.

Four elk heads-the Town Elk-had been mounted on the posts of his picket fence, facing inward toward his lawn. Toward him. The tongue of the big bull elk stuck out the side of its mouth, pink and dry. All eight cold black eyes were open.

Joe tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

Whoever had done this had hit him where he lived in more ways than one. Not only had he killed and beheaded four popular animals in Saddlestring that he was responsible for, but he’d brought the heads out to his own home and stuck them on posts to taunt him. To humiliate him. To frighten him and his family. He was telling Joe nothing was off-limits, and that he didn’t fear or respect him. He was bringing it right to him, and shoving it in his face in front of his family.

He was disgusted as well as angry. Who in the hell was he up against who would do something like this?

“Joe?” Marybeth was at the door.

His first impulse was to run back and physically turn her around before she could see the heads.

“Oh My God,” she whispered. “Joe…”

He was too late.

In the distance, above the thumping of his own heart and Marybeth’s gasps, he could hear an engine start up. They were being watched by someone, all right.