C Box - Trophy hunt

"Cam Logue," Joe said. "And the sheriff."

"Maybe," Ike said, "but there's no crime here. There's nothing wrong with making a copy of a deed."

"What about taking the mineral rights lease terms?" Joe asked.

"Also not a crime," Ike said. "Why do you ask?"

As Joe got up to leave, he asked Ike to call him on his cell phone as soon as the fax from Cheyenne showed up. Ike followed him to the door.

Joe thanked the clerks again, and one of them actually smiled back.

"Joe, can I ask you a favor?" Ike said.

"Of course."

"It's going to take me a while to get the office cleaned up after all of this." He gestured to the table and the boxes. "I was going to give George a ride home from where he's fishing on the river. Would you mind taking him to the house?"

"Not a problem, Ike. I'm headed that way now."

Ike smiled, and looked over at his shoulder at the clerks, as if assessing the threat before returning to battle.

Marybeth didn't go to work at Logue Realty that afternoon, assuming she was no longer employed, and she felt guilty about it. She hated to leave a job unfinished, even if it were for someone like Cam. When she was through for the day at Barrett's Pharmacy, she used the telephone on the desk to call Logue Country Realty, and she asked for Cam. The temporary receptionist said Cam was out for the rest of the day. "Is he on his cell phone?" Marybeth asked. "He didn't say anything about that," the temp said. "He seemed a little mad about something, so I didn't even bring it up." "Can you please put me through to his voice mail, then?" After fumbling with the telephone system, the temp figured it out. Marybeth listened to Cam's recorded greeting, then spoke softly. "Cam, I talked with Joe about what happened and I'm sure we'll both agree that it's best if you find another bookkeeper. I just hope this won't affect the friendship between Lucy and Jessica. I hope we can both be better parents than that."

Marybeth paused. "And I hope Marie and I can still be friends. But you don't need to give this message to her. I'll go see her myself."

She hung up. After all, Marybeth thought, she now had the afternoon off.

Marybeth bought a quart of chicken noodle soup from the Burg-O- Pardner and chocolates from Barrett's Pharmacy and drove through downtown to the Logues'. This time, she anticipated the pickup and camper with the South Dakota plates, and swerved around it and parked near the front door. The house, she thought, looked lifeless, even though she knew there were people inside.

Carrying the bag with the soup and the chocolates, she rang the doorbell. She didn't hear it chime hollowly inside the house.

After a minute with no response, she rang it again. It was strange, she thought. She didn't hear rustling inside, or footfalls in response to the bell.

She knocked and waited, then knocked again hard.

Nothing.

Putting the bag down on the front step, she walked around the front of the house to the side. The garage door was closed, so she couldn't see if Marie's car was there. Maybe, Marybeth thought, Marie had taken her father- and mother-in-law somewhere for lunch. But Marie was supposed to be sick.

Maybe Marie was at the doctor's office, Marybeth reasoned, and for a moment her mood lightened. But if Marie went to the doctor, would she have taken her in-laws with her?

Puzzled, Marybeth found an envelope in the glove compartment of her van and scribbled a note to Marie, saying she was sorry she missed her and hoped she was feeling better. She wrote, "Please call me when you can." Marybeth left the note with the soup and chocolates on the front porch.

As she returned to the van, Marybeth took a last look at the house. Upstairs, in the second window to the right, she thought she saw a curtain move.

Marybeth stood stock-still, not breathing, and stared at the window. She felt a chill, despite the warm fall afternoon. But the curtain didn't move again, and she wondered if she had imagined it in the first place.

Then she had another thought: maybe Cam had already talked to Marie, told her what Joe had accused him of. Maybe, she thought with unexpected shame, Marie didn't want any part of Marybeth Pickett anymore.

The Wyoming Game And Fish Department had a successful program where the department leased land from ranchers in exchange for allowing public access for hunters. Joe had negotiated most of the deals in his district the spring before, and it was his responsibility to keep the "walk-in areas" clearly marked. Unfortunately, the brutal winter before had damaged and knocked down a number of the signs, and as he patrolled he was constantly finding the upturned signs. When he found them, he rewired them to posts from a roll of baling wire in the back of his truck.

He was twisting the wire tight on a walk-in sign when he heard his cell phone ring in his pickup. He leaned inside the cab and plucked the phone from its holder.

It wasn't Hersig, Ike, or Sheriff Harvey. It was Agent Tony Portenson.

"I tried your office but you weren't there," Portenson said as a greeting. He sounded weary, reluctant. "I'd rather this conversation was on a land- line so it was more secure."

"You FBI guys are a little paranoid, aren't you?" Joe asked.

"Listen," Portenson said. "We might have something."

"Go ahead. Thanks for getting involved."

"Fuck that," he said. "I just want to get this thing over with so I can go home. Get transferred, maybe. I hope."

"Anyway…" Joe prompted.

"Anyway, the Park County Sheriff's Office asked me to help them track down this Fort Bragg cell phone guy, as you know. It wasn't easy, and it should have been. This is what we're good at, you know."

Joe listened and watched the shadow of a single cumulous cloud move slowly across the sagebrush saddle in front of him.

"I had to call in the big guns in Washington to put pressure on the army down there to break through the wall at Fort Bragg. They just didn't want to talk. But we found out some interesting things. Just a second here…"

Joe heard papers being shuffled in the background.

"L. Robert Eckhardt was an army nurse. A real good one, according to his early evaluations. He was a combat guy. He was deployed in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. But he didn't go to Iraq. You want to know why?"

"Yes," Joe answered impatiently.

"This is why the army didn't want to talk to us," Portenson continued. "Eckhardt was suspected of being involved in the 'surgical mutilation' of enemy combatants. That's what it says here, 'surgical mutilation.' Some doctor was accused of it, and Eckhardt was his assistant. The whole incident was kept way under the radar, I guess, like a lot of things are in the war. It was an internal army investigation, and there's no press on it at all. These guys, the doctor and Eckhardt, were pulled out of the Philippines and sent home to Fort Bragg a year and a half ago to face court-martial."

Joe stared the cloud as he considered the information. "Does the report say what the mutilation consisted of?"

"No. Just 'surgical mutilation.' But that's where we might have a connection. Eckhardt and the doctor went AWOL before trial. They've been missing for six months. The army is pissed off about it, and they're still looking for these guys. They don't want to go public with it, and neither do we. But when we told them about Eckhardt's cell phone call reporting the body in the woods they went ape-shit. They're sending a couple of military cops to Wyoming as soon as they can get 'em here.

"Of course, it's possible that somebody has Eckhardt's cell phone, but that seems real unlikely. The army guys asked if the caller had a speech impediment, because Eckhardt has one, but I didn't know what to tell them. Anyway, we're running down other calls made from that number now, and we'll see if we can make any sense of them."