C Box - Trophy hunt

"I asked because I called the sheriff, and the dispatcher said the sheriff is out at some ranch investigating a mutilation. A horse this time, she said. Anyway, she suggested I call you. She said you were on the team." "What can I help you with?" "Well, it's not as bad as a murder or a mutilation," the man said. "I'm glad to hear that." There was a pause. "You ever heard of a crop circle?" It took Joe by surprise. He said, "I think so." "Well, I think I've got one out in my pasture. I found it this morning."

David Thompson, the rancher who called, had a 200-acre place adjacent to the exclusive Elkhorn Ranches subdivision in the foothills of the Bighorns. Like the Elkhorn tract, Thompson's "ranch" had been carved from the much larger V Bar U Ranch once owned by deceased lawyer Jim Finotta. By Wyoming standards, Thompson's place was not really a ranch, Joe thought as he drove there. It was a nice house with a really big lawn.

Nevertheless, Thompson had clearly paid a good deal of money for the knotty-pine sign that announced BIGHORN VIEW RANCH that Joe passed by. The road curved up and over a sagebrush hill and descended into a green, landscaped pocket where the newly built home had been nestled among pines and young cottonwoods.

On the drive out to Thompson's ranch, Joe tried to recall what he knew of crop circles, and concluded that it wasn't much. He remembered that when he was young, he'd read some kind of "Believe It or Not" book with blurry black-and-white reproductions of aerial photographs in England or Scotland of sites where the grass had been blown flat into perfect O's. There had also been photos of fields where intricately cut designs had supposedly appeared overnight, usually amid reports of cigar-shaped flying objects. Jeez. This made him grumpy, and anxious to discount whatever he found as quickly as he could. Joe pulled into the ranch yard to find David Thompson was waiting. Thompson was a dark, trim man in his early sixties who had supposedly cashed out of a dot-com in Austin months before the company had crashed. With his new fortune, he had purchased a home in Galveston, Texas, for the winter and the Bighorn View Ranch for the summer. He raised and showed miniature horses. Joe didn't like miniature horses. He thought they were silly, in the same way that hairless cats were silly. Thompson was wearing a crisp canvas barn coat and a cap that said BIGHORN VIEW MINIATURES. He opened the passenger-side door of Joe's truck and Maxine scrambled toward the middle to make room. "Want me to show you where it is?" Thompson said, swinging into the seat. "Might as well," Joe said, "since you're already in my truck." Joe's sarcasm didn't register with Thompson, who appeared flushed with excitement over his discovery. "Don't you want to ask me when I found it?" Thompson said. "You told me it was this morning." "I did?" "Yup." "Take that road," Thompson gestured, indicating an old two-track that ascended out of the pocket and over a hill. "I don't use this road very much. My corrals and miniatures are the other way. But when I got up this morning to feed the horses I just had this strange feeling urging me to go down the other road. Like a premonition, you know? Like somebody or something was willing me to take the other road." Joe nodded. "It's a lucky thing I found it," said Thompson. "Usually by this late in the fall I've already moved down to Texas. And especially this year, with all of the supernatural crap that's been happening around here, I had plenty of reason to leave early. But I wouldn't leave without my horses, and my goddamned unreliable horse hauler got waylaid up in Alberta somewhere. He should be here any day, and when he comes, brother, I'm out of here. I'll leave the aliens to the locals, baby."

"We thank you for that," Joe said, deadpan.

"I was thinking of selling the place anyway, you know? Moving back and forth to Texas with my minis is getting to be a drag. I might look for somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona, where it doesn't get so damned cold, you know? And where it isn't spooked. Problem is I'm not sure I could sell the place for what I've got into it, you know? I hear land prices are in the toilet, thanks to what's going on. I went to list the place at Logue Country Realty and the realtor there said appraisals are coming in at 20 percent lower than what they should be. Fire-sale prices, damn it."

Joe kept quiet. Thompson didn't seem to need a response in order to keep talking.

"When I saw that crop circle I thought to myself, why me? Why now? Why my ranch? But now when I hear that there was another mutilation last night, it all seems to make sense," Thompson said, talking fast. "Do you think it's all related?"

"I don't know," Joe said.

Thompson shot Joe a perturbed look. "Aren't you on the task force?"

"Yes."

"Aren't you intrigued by my discovery, then?"

Joe shrugged. "I don't know yet whether I'm intrigued. I haven't seen it."

"Well, it's just over this hill."

They cleared the hill and Joe stopped his truck.

" Voila!" Thompson said, sweeping his hand as if presenting what was behind door number three.

Joe looked. Below them, on a sagebrush flat, was a perfect circle cut into the buffalo grass. Joe estimated that it was eighty feet in circumference. Joe rubbed his jaw, ignoring the look of triumph on David Thompson's face.

"Just like I told you, eh?" Thompson said.

"It's a circle, all right," Joe agreed.

"A crop circle."

Joe continued to size up the scene. "Don't you need crops for a crop circle?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"I was just kidding."

"I," Thompson said slowly, "am less than impressed with your investigative technique, Mr. Pickett. Maybe I should have waited for the sheriff."

Joe arched his eyebrows. "Maybe. But let's go down there for a closer look."

He eased the pickup down the hill and parked it on the left side of the circle. Joe and Thompson climbed out. While Thompson leaned against Joe's pickup, Joe paralleled the ring on the outside, studying it. The ring cut through the buffalo grass turf to bare ground. It did not look singed on the edges, or ripped out. There were no pieces of broken-up turf along the edges. He was reminded of the ring of moisture a sweating, cold drink made on a countertop. He walked a full rotation around it until he was back at the truck.

Thompson looked expectant, his eyebrows raised as if to say, "See? What did I tell you?"

Joe turned, looked again at the circle, squinting.

"When was the last time you used that road we just took?" Joe asked.

"Oh, a few months, I suppose."

"Are you sure? Can you remember the last time you came down here?"

Thompson's eyebrows fell a little. "Why are you asking me this?"

Joe stuffed his hands into his Wranglers and rocked back a bit on his bootheels. "I'm trying to establish how long this thing has been here."

"I told you about that premonition I had…" Joe nodded. "But that doesn't mean that because you just found this thing it was made last night. You see, if you look close at the dirt in the ring you can see that it's been weathered. There's old pockmarks from rain in it. This circle has been here quite a while-at least a month, and probably longer than that." Thompson looked puzzled for a moment, obviously doubting himself, then rebounding, as Joe knew he would. "What difference does it make if the crop circle was made last night or a month ago? It's still a damned crop circle." Joe shook his head. "Don't you have caretakers who live here in the winter when you're in Texas?" "A woman stays here," Thompson said impatiently, trying to figure out where Joe was going. "Heidi Moos. She stays in the guest house and watches over the place." "I know Heidi," Joe said. She was an attractive, dark-haired woman who had moved to Wyoming from Alabama. "She moved here with her horse a few years ago. She's a horse trainer, right? I mean real horses." Thompson puffed up. "I resent that, mister. Miniatures are real horses." Joe raised his hand, palm up. "Calm down, that's not what I meant. I should have said 'full-sized' horses. My point is that she's a horse trainer. This is the only flat ground on this side of the hill. It's the best place to set up a portable round pen. You know what a round pen is, right?" "Of course I do," Thompson said. "I've got one by my corral." "My guess is that Heidi set up her round pen right here last winter and spring," Joe said, soldiering on. "I've seen how horses running in a controlled circle eventually cut right through the turf like this. I've got a couple of these 'crop circles' next to my own corral, where my wife, Marybeth, works our horses." Thompson's face was red. "That's how you want to explain it away?" "Yup." "You think I'm overreacting? That what we're looking at is where Heidi set up her round pen?" "Yup."