C Box - Trophy hunt

Joe sat in silence, letting Cam talk.

"Should I call a lawyer?" Cam asked. "Is it that bad?"

"Only you can answer that," Joe said. Man, he felt cruel.

Cam still didn't meet Joe's eye, but reached for his telephone. Joe noticed that the man's hand was shaking.

"Please cancel my 9:30," Cam told the temp, then listened for a moment. "No, I don't want to reschedule it right now." When he replaced the receiver, it rattled in the cradle.

"What do you want to ask me, Joe?"

Joe thought that Cam looked just about as pathetic-or guilty-as anyone he had ever seen. He was either about to nail a killer, or make a horrible, unforgivable mistake.

"Cam, we have a theory that the murders of Tuff Montegue and Stuart Tanner were connected. We think there is a possibility that they were killed because of something they-or one of them-knew about the sale of the Timberline Ranch."

"You're kidding me," Cam said. The flash in his eyes this time was of anger.

Joe plowed on: "I think Stuart Tanner was going to nix the drilling of all of the CBM wells because there was too much salinity in the water. Or maybe he found something else, like silica or something. His report would cost some people a hell of a lot of money. The company that holds the mineral rights would be out millions, and the realtor who didn't get his commission would be out thousands. I think somebody wanted him dead, and saw the opportunity to kill him in the same method as the cattle and the moose."

Joe tried to make his face and eyes go dead. "So who is the secret buyer, Cam?"

Slowly, the color returned to Cam Logue's face, and kept going. Now his face was turning red.

"Joe, I can't believe you just said that to me. You're so goddamned off base." Cam said it with enough passion that Joe nearly flinched.

"You knew Stuart Tanner," Joe said. "You hired him. He delivered the water report to you personally, right in this office. But when the news came out that he died, you said nothing. You didn't report it to the sheriff, or even mention it to me."

"You're right about that," Cam said, his voice back to normal. "You're absolutely right. I got the report, and I knew the guy. I paid Tanner Engineering for his work. And damn it, I didn't say anything because given the current market, the less said about any of this shit the better. Hell, Joe, I can't even sell a ranch with a willing buyer and a willing seller. Everybody's waiting for your stupid task force to make a conclusion, or arrest somebody. But I can see why you're getting nowhere, if this is the best you can do. If all you can come up with is to target a guy who's made a huge commitment to this community."

Cam looked up and shook his head. He was upset, and visibly tried to calm himself. "Joe, there's a couple of things really wrong with your theory, and it pisses me off that you would be going in this direction."

"What's that?" Joe asked.

"First, Tanner Engineering cleared the way for the CBM drilling. The water is fine."

Cam turned quickly in his chair and dug through one of the neat stacks of paper on his credenza. He produced an inch-thick report bound in plastic, and tossed it across the desk. Joe picked it up and thumbed through it until he found the summary page.

"Tanner concluded that there was no excess salinity, or anything else in that water," Cam said. "The water's good, Joe. It's perfect. It's the best damned water in the Twelve Sleep Valley."

Joe read enough to see that Cam was right.

"Second," Cam said, his voice rising, "the secret client is me. And Sheriff Barnum."

Joe was stunned. "What?" So this is where Barnum figured in, he thought.

Cam stood quickly, sending his chair to roll back until it thumped against the credenza. He glared down at Joe.

"Barnum's a year away from retirement, and he's got one hell of a pension after twenty-five-plus years as sheriff," Cam said. "He planned to borrow against it for a down payment on 360 acres of the ranch we'd buy together. He wants to retire on it. But with all of this bullshit going on, the bank's been holding back. It's only temporary, but they're dragging it out. I've always wanted the family ranch back. I grew up there, Joe. It's my dream, Marie's and my dream. We couldn't say anything, even to Marybeth."

"You want it even with all of those CBM wells all over it?" Joe asked.

Cam shrugged. "They won't be there forever. And they're bound by law to clean up when they're gone."

"But that could be thirty years."

Cam smiled, but not warmly. "I'm willing to wait. Land is always a good investment. Especially the land I grew up on and still love."

Joe felt as though he had had the rug, the floor, and the joists pulled out from under him.

"How in the hell are you going to buy it?" Joe asked.

Cam's eyes lit up. "Okay, since you're asking, since you've spent a good deal of the morning trying to fuck up my life, I'll tell you."

Joe winced at that.

"Real estate sales is sizzle, Joe. It's flash and sizzle. If the market is hot, the realtor is hot. Everybody wants to work with a winner, and that's me. Once I listed the Timberline Ranch, the landowners around here figured that if I could get a couple of old crones like the Overstreet sisters to sign, then I must be hot shit indeed. As you know, we now have exclusive listings on just about every available ranch in this part of Northern Wyoming. I did it by hard work, Joe, and by creating the sizzle of a winner." Joe still felt pole-axed. "You figured a couple of the other ranches would sell first. That you could use the commission money from those other ranches for the down payment on the Timberline Ranch." Cam opened his eyes in an exaggerated way, as if he were addressing a simpleton. "Right, Joe. There's not a single thing wrong with that. Not a single thing." "But no property is selling, because of the mutilations," Joe said. "Right again, Joe. Exactly what I've been telling you for a month. Nothing's selling because buyers think this county is spooked." "Man," Joe said. But Cam was on a roll. "Do you know who I'm not going to invite to the ranch when I finally own it?" Joe didn't guess. "My parents, Joe. Mom and Dad. The people who sold my birthright out from under me so they could devote more time and attention to sending my big brother, Eric, to medical school. You thought I was going to say you and Marybeth, didn't you?" Joe looked up. "Well, I probably won't invite you out, either. Not now." Cam's eyes had a fiendish intensity. Despite feeling bad, feeling stupid, Joe caught a whiff of something in the air from Cam. It was the desperation he had recalled earlier, the over- the-top intensity that seemed a notch or two higher than it needed to be. "Some day, all of you people are going to regret the way you treated Cam Logue," Cam said, his voice dropping but his face screwed up with rage. "You sit around and come up with some lunatic idea that it must be the new guy in town, it must be the guy who just moved here who's upsetting the sleepy little village by working his ass off and being aggressive." "It wasn't like that," Joe said lamely. Cam leaned across his desk, thrusting his face forward. "I know what it's like, Joe. I remember what you people are like, and I don't forget. I remember you all looking down at the ground when we left this place. You wouldn't even say good-bye when I stood there with my stupid parents as they drove around this town and canceled their utilities, and their post office box, and got the transcripts from my school."

We didn't even live here then, Joe said to himself but not to Cam. Joe simply watched and listened.

"You people never even thought about me at all, trying to go to a school in South Dakota that was half-Indian and half-white and all fucked up. If anything, you wondered about my brother, the genius, the future doctor who would make my parents so proud. You wanted to be able to tell people you remembered when he was a student here, going to sixth grade when he should have been in third grade, winning all of those science contests. If only you knew…"