C Box - Blood Trail

KM keeps in contact with like-minded organizations including PETA, the Animal Liberation Front, Earth First!, Animal Defense Alliance, and similar organizations around the world dedicated to animal rights and the anti-hunting movement (list attached).

JOE FLIPPED to the list and was shocked by the sheer number of animal rights organizations. He counted 248 groups in the United States and Canada alone, and thirty-six more in other countries. Most of the organizations stated that they were against “hunting, the fur trade, circuses, rodeos, and animal experimentation.” The names were all unfamiliar to him, but varied from the Animal Crusaders in Tucson to Action for Animals in Oakland to SKUNKS, an acronym for the Palmdale, California, Society of Kind Understanding and Not Killing Skunks.

He shook his head and read on:

KM travels with a laptop computer from which he manages his public website and the nonpublic websites. BG says KM claims not to need more than three hours of sleep a night, and spends countless hours communicating with followers.

KM told BG a week prior to the trespass and arson at a Texas hunting ranch near Waco that “something big is about to happen,” but KM could not be physically placed in Texas during the crime. BG didn’t know KM’s whereabouts during that week, but assumed he was involved.

KM was in nearby Wyoming when David Linsicomb, the most prominent of Idaho’s domestic trophy elk breeders, was run off the road near Driggs and killed when his vehicle rolled over. On the night of the accident, BG could not verify KM’s whereabouts.

KM’s wife, Shannon, and his infant daughter frequently travel with him. BG gets along well with Shannon, who is Native American.

At rallies, KM traces his hatred of hunting and hunters to his boyhood in Oregon’s Klamath Valley (hence the name he is known by, his actual name is Harold). KM’s uncle used to take him deer hunting. KM says his uncle shot and wounded two deer but didn’t pursue them because it was too much trouble. When he finally killed a large trophy near the road, his uncle stood by and watched the buck bleed out instead of putting it out of its misery. The instance so scarred KM that his life’s mission was revealed to him at that moment, he claims. BG says KM hinted that his uncle eventually “got what was coming to him” but didn’t elaborate. Bureau follow-up reveals that KM’s uncle, one Everett Dysall of Klamath Falls, OR, died in 1997 from food poisoning. No foul play was suspected at the time. A bureau review of the autopsy and interview with the attending coroner corroborates the cause of death but provided no solid link to KM.

BG says KM seems excited about something about to happen, something BG thinks will be bigger than anything else thus far. Says KM hints that “something is in the works that will blow everybody away.”

“GEE,” JOE said aloud, “I wonder what he’s referring to?”

He sat back and rubbed his chin. He was looking forward to talking with Bill Gordon. The hunting story concerning Moore’s uncle made him angry. Nothing made him angrier than cruel acts by thoughtless hunters.

“If the story is true,” Joe mumbled, “he deserved it.”

“Who deserved what?” Sheridan asked as she entered the kitchen. She’d just showered and she wore a towel wrapped around her head.

“Hey, nice hat,” Joe said.

She made a face at him because he’d made it a practice over the years to greet her that way when she was turbaned. Joe was surprised to see Sheridan.

“Why aren’t you at school?”

“In-service training day for high school teachers. We’ve got the day off.”

“Who deserved it?” she asked, sitting across from him at the table. “What are you reading?”

“Files on Klamath Moore,” Joe said.

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like him. He’s a bully.”

“You’ve met him?”

Joe was astounded by both the coincidence and the fact that a teacher had arranged for an in-school program by a man on the FBI’s domestic terror watch list.

She told him the story from her class the day before.

“This was your teacher’s idea?” Joe said, astounded.

“Mrs. Whaling’s kind of, well, passionate about some things. I don’t think she knew what kind of jerk he is. But I didn’t call him a jerk. I called him an asshole.”

Joe flinched.

“I liked his wife, though,” she said. “She was kind to me.”

“Shannon?”

“I didn’t get her name. He didn’t introduce her, which was just not cool. So,” she said, tapping the file, “what does it say about him?”

“I really can’t get into the specifics,” Joe said. “Sorry.”

“Do you think he has something to do with the murders?”

“I’m not sure,” Joe said, “but he may know something about them. But please, keep this between us. I can’t believe I’m even discussing this with you.”

“I’m interested in this kind of stuff,” Sheridan said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been around it all my life, you know.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Joe said, stung.

She shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“My, you’re philosophical these days.”

He could tell she had something on her mind, so he waited her out.

“What about what Klamath Moore says?” she asked. “I mean, he’s a jerk and all, but…”

“But what?”

“Do people really need to hunt? I mean, there’re easier ways to get food. Like go to the store.”

“Do you really think that?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. On the one hand I do. But on the other…” She reached for a banana from a bowl of fruit on the table and began to peel it. “In order to eat this I need to literally pull the skin off. That’s pretty gross if you think of it that way. And in order to get milk, some guy has to yank on the private parts of a poor old cow. I mean, yuck.”

Joe smiled.

She took a bite of the banana. “It’s too bad we can’t figure out a way to live without making other creatures give up their lives, is what I’m saying. Or something like it.”

“It’s a dilemma,” Joe said. “But let me ask you something. As people build more and more homes in places where wildlife lives, there are more and more encounters. Add to that the fact that the population of many species-deer, bears, mountain lions, elk-are increasing beyond carrying capacities. Is it better for that excess wildlife to starve to death, to be slaughtered by sharpshooters or hit by cars, or is it better for the animals to be harvested by hunters, who thank them for their meat and their lives? And you can’t not choose one of them. People can’t just say how much they love animals and turn their heads away and not have some kind of responsibility. My job as a game warden is to make that last choice-hunting-as efficient, biologically responsible, and sporting as possible.”

Sheridan nodded slowly.

“I talked too much,” Joe said, looking down.

“No, I appreciate what you said,” Sheridan mused. “And there’s another thing I think about. If I were given a choice to live in a world where some people still know how to hunt and survive in the wilderness or a world where it’s all been forgotten, I want to live in that first world. I remember watching television after nine/eleven when all the news people started praising those police and firemen like they didn’t even know those men were still around, like they’d sort of looked down on them for years and years. But all of a sudden, when people needed rescuing and somebody had to be physically brave, they were really glad those men were still around after all. It’s sort of like that.”

She said, “If something big happens and the electricity and Internet go out and we run out of gasoline and groceries, I’m not going to ask Ed Nedny next door or some computer game geek or Emo at school for help. I’m coming straight to you, Dad, because I know you know how to keep us alive.”