C Box - Blood Trail

“You may not have to,” Joe lied. “Lord knows you’ve got your reasons. Yours is a sympathetic case. This man assaulted you and then destroyed your reputation. Randy Pope will get what he deserves.”

She nodded as if acknowledging Joe’s words but discounting their meaning.

He hated himself.

“Just relax your hands, let the rifle drop.”

She did and it thumped onto the grass. Joe kept his shotgun on her as he walked around the root pan.

“Do you have any other weapons?” he asked.

She shook her head, then said, “I’ve got a skinning knife. I was going to cape him.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Joe said. “Now, ease out of your backpack and toss the knife aside.”

She slipped out of her pack and let it drop, then drew the knife from the sheath and tossed it a few feet away.

“Unlock me,” Pope said out of the side of his mouth as Joe passed the tree.

“Shut up,” Joe said. To Shenandoah, “Put your wrists together. You’re under arrest. I’ve got to take you in so we can sort this all out.”

He chose not to cuff her behind her back and humiliate her further. He slipped hard plastic Flex-Cuffs over her thin wrists and pulled them tight. She was small, almost delicate.

“I don’t want anyone to see me like this,” she said.

“Alisha doesn’t know, does she?”

“No.”

“You killed my friend Robey.”

“For that I’m eternally sorry,” she said, her eyes leaving Pope for a moment and softening. “That wasn’t meant to happen. It was an accident, and I’m so sorry.”

“Did Klamath kill Bill Gordon, or was that you?”

“It was Klamath. I’m very upset with my husband. I liked Bill very much.”

“Are you the Wolverine?”

She shook her head. “No. I think Bill was Wolverine. At least I always suspected he was leading Klamath on. I read the e-mail exchange and it inspired me.”

“Klamath is dead,” Joe said. “Those were the shots you heard. I’m sorry.”

She nodded, blinked. For a second the fire went out of her eyes.

“He was following you,” Joe said. “He ran into the sheriff’s men.”

“He knew it was me,” she said. “He never tried to stop me. I was accomplishing his goal while accomplishing mine.”

Joe couldn’t reply.

“I want Alisha to raise my daughter,” Shenandoah said.

“You don’t have to talk like that,” Joe said, feeling as if she’d kicked him in the gut. Her eyes were again fixed on Randy Pope.

She said, “Where is Nate?”

Joe chinned toward the granite ridge.

“Unlock me!” Pope shouted to Joe. “Get me out of here.”

Joe ignored him.

Shenandoah glared at Pope. “He was the worst of them all. He let his friends die. I need to finish this.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Joe,” Pope said. “This will ruin me if she talks, if she takes the stand. The girl was willing-more than willing. It happened years ago, the statute of limitations has passed. Why dredge it up again? Why let this woman bring it all back?”

It happened so quickly Joe could barely react. Like the point guard she once was, Shenandoah faked to her right, drawing Joe, then darted to her left under Joe’s outstretched hand. She ducked and snatched the knife from the grass at her feet and lunged at Pope.

Joe shouldered the shotgun, yelled, “Shenandoah, no ! No! ” but she sliced the blade cleanly through Pope’s throat at the same moment Joe fired, the buckshot hitting her full force in the neck and kicking her sideways. She landed in a heap like dropped wet laundry.

He was horrified by what he’d done.

JOE SAT on a downed log and watched Nate walk down the slope. He was numb. He didn’t feel like he was all there. His hands sat in his lap like dead crabs. They were bloody from turning Shenandoah over, hoping against hope she would somehow pull through, even though he was the instrument of her death. He wished she wasn’t gone because of his failed effort to save Randy Pope’s worthless life.

Her body looked so small in the grass, maybe because the life in her had been so outsized. Joe thought, Promise kept, Nancy.

But it didn’t make him feel any better.

AS NATE approached, Joe could see his friend take it all in-Pope’s slumped body still cuffed to the tree, every pint of his blood spilled down his shirtfront and pants and pooling darkly around his feet. Shenandoah’s broken body thrown to the side, the knife still in her hand.

Nate holstered the.454 as he got closer and dropped to his knees in front of her body. He took her lifeless hands in his, closed his eyes.

“I saw it happen,” Nate said. “There was nothing you could do.”

“Nate, I’m so sorry,” Joe said, his voice a croak.

“No words,” Nate said.

Joe couldn’t tell if Nate was asking him not to speak or if no words could express what he felt.

JOE STOOD up dully and changed the frequency on his radio to the mutual-aid channel, and as soon as he did he was awash in conversation from over the hill. He heard Sheriff McLanahan, Chris Urman, Deputy Reed, and others congratulating themselves over the shooting of Klamath Moore, the monster who’d killed the hunters. McLanahan was talking to dispatch, telling Wendy to contact the governor and tell him the state could be reopened for hunting.

“Sheriff,” Joe said, breaking in, “this is Joe Pickett. I’ve got the bodies of a couple more victims over the ridge.”

The chatter went silent.

“Come again?” McLanahan said.

NATE WALKED over to where Joe sat on the log and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“I feel so bad,” Joe said. “I mean, a woman. And not just any woman. Shenandoah .” He looked up. “Did you know it was her?”

“Not until the end,” Nate said, raising his eyebrows. “Justice was done-all around.”

“Here.” Joe handed Nate his keys.

Nate looked at him for an explanation.

“Take them and get out of here before the sheriff sees you.”

“I can’t.”

Joe shrugged. “Go. You don’t have that much time.”

“What about you?”

“I said I’d do what was right. The governor assumed I meant I’d bring you back.”

“Joe, I-”

“Git,” Joe said.

“BUY YOU A DRINK?”

Vern Dunnegan laughed, pulled the large woman with fire-engine-red hair on the next stool closer to him, said, “You bet. We’ll both have one.” And to the bartender: “Set ’em up, buddy.”

“Another Beam on the rocks?” the bartender said.

“ Double Beam for me and my lady,” Vern said, “thanks to my benefactor here.”

His benefactor was tall, rawboned, with piercing, ice-blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair. He had not taken off his bulky parka. Snow from the late November storm outside had melted into drops on the fur trim of his hood. The drops reflected the neon beer signs at the windows. Outside the glass, thick flakes blew by horizontally, looking like sparks from a fire.

“You just get out?” the man asked, leaning on the bar with his hands clasped in front of him.

“Yes,” Vern said. “About four hours ago, in fact. This is my first stop. I plan to drink until drunk, eat until sated, and maybe later”- he squeezed the overweight redhead hard around her waist, nearly toppling her from her stool-“some sweet romance.”

“Romance,” she scoffed, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke toward the back bar. The smoke curled around the framed front page of the Casper Star-Tribune with the headline KILLER OF HUNTERS SHOT DEAD and a photo of smiling anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore.

“That’s in a lot of bars around the state,” the man said.