C Box - Below Zero

• Who is Robert?

• What is the name of Robert’s father?

• Are there any others with you?

• What kind of car are you in?

• What do you mean when you say people died? How? When? Why?

• Where are you now?

• What is your destination?

• How did you get away from that compound six years ago?

• Are you willing to meet with me?

Through the door, he heard Missy say, “… and you need to quit telling people in town we’re estranged. I hate that word. It makes it sound like I’m strange or something. It’s not a good word.”

Then, and he could visualize her gesturing toward his closed door, “Him I wouldn’t mind being estranged from. But not you, Marybeth. You’re my daughter.”

He smiled grimly to himself. Sheridan had the right idea, he thought. He clicked on the radio to the local country station. Brad Paisley. He turned it up loud.

HIS FIRST CALL was to Duck Wallace, chief investigator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Cheyenne. Wallace was good, and he was sometimes loaned out to other agencies, departments, the Division of Criminal Investigation, and local police departments because of his skill, knowledge, and rock-solid reputation. Duck was a Shoshone from the reservation, and so dark-skinned he was sometimes mistaken for black.

“Wallace,” he said, answering on the first ring. He sounded bored and bureaucratic.

“Duck, Joe Pickett.”

“Ah, Joe,” he said, the inflection indicating he was already interested in what Joe would have to say and a little cautious because Joe only called when a situation was critical.

“Duck, I’ve got a situation. Without getting into specifics, can a text message be traced?”

“You mean to a certain number? That’s easy. Look at the message, Joe.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What I’m wondering is can a phone be traced to a physical location from a text message? Like a voice call can?”

Duck was silent for a long time. Joe knew it meant he was thinking, and he had no need to make conversation while he was thinking.

Duck said, “We can’t take an old text message and determine what the location was it was sent from. That just can’t be done, I don’t think. Of course, the feds have all sorts of tricks these days, especially Homeland Security, so I can’t completely rule it out.

“Now if we’re talking about tracing a phone to its geographic location when it’s turned on or while it’s being used, yes, that’s possible.”

Joe sat up. “How?”

“It’s not easy. There’s a way to do it, but it’s beyond my capacity, Joe. I don’t have the expertise. You need to go to the feds with this one. The FBI.”

Joe winced. The agent in charge of the Cheyenne office, Tony Portenson, was still furious at Joe for letting Nate walk the year before. Portenson had threatened federal charges against Joe and would have had him arrested if the governor hadn’t personally gotten involved and recruited the state’s U.S. senators and congresswoman to lean on Homeland Security.

“Yeah, I know about your relationship with the FBI,” Duck said. “But if you want this thing figured out, you’ll need to go to them. They’re the only ones with the expertise, equipment, and ability to get a quick subpoena from a judge to make it happen.”

“Crap.”

“Well put.”

“Is there any way to do this, um, unofficially? Any equipment I can buy, anything like that?”

A long silence. “The only way to do it unofficially is to get many billions of dollars and buy up all the cell phone companies. That’s the only way I can think of.”

“Gee, thanks, Duck.”

“You asked.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask why you’re being so close to the vest with this? If it’s an official investigation, I can run interference for you, maybe.”

“It’s not official, Duck. I really don’t want to say any more than that.”

“Okay,” Duck said. Joe could almost feel the shrug through the phone. “I won’t ask any more because I don’t think I want to know.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Why is it I get the feeling that I may see the name Joe Pickett in the newspaper again? Why is it that I have that feeling?”

This time, Joe shrugged. Then Duck asked: “How’s Marybeth and the girls?”

Joe said fine and asked about Duck’s four kids. After ten minutes of trading family information, debating how well the Wyoming Cowboys football team would do this year (not well, they agreed), and discussing where and when each planned to hunt elk in a month, Joe hung up.

He sat back, tried to think of a way around the FBI to get what he needed. But there was no choice.

“Crap.”

HE GOT UP and cracked the door. Missy was still out there, and Sheridan had joined them, standing in a robe with a towel on her head and looking uncomfortable. Missy was explaining, in the sweeping but definitive generalizations she used whenever she visited a new city or country and took a two-hour scenic motor coach tour given by a guide in native dress, everything there was to know about Bali. How the people were simple, content, and spiritual, telling them it was beautiful and the food was good and the staff at the hotel treated her like she was royalty, “like a real Duchess.”

When Missy unveiled the painted skirts, Sheridan saw them and scowled, but Joe shut the door again and called the FBI office in Cheyenne.

He’d met Special Agent Chuck Coon several months earlier, when Coon was in the Little Snake River Valley investigating a cattle-rustling operation. Over beers in the cinder-block saloon once frequented by Butch Cassidy, Coon told Joe that since food prices had skyrocketed so had incidents of large-scale cattle rustling. “And this isn’t like Western movie rustling,” Coon explained, “where a couple of local outlaws change some brands. In terms of dollars, this is like stealing a whole damned street of houses.”

The rustlers specialized in isolated areas like south-central Wyoming, where cattle were grazed on forest service and Bureau of Land Management land far from any town or highway where suspicious activity might be seen. Using eighteen-wheelers and commercial cattle movers, the rustlers stole entire herds, hundreds of thousands of dollars of beef, in quick nighttime strikes. Coon was new to the job, new to Wyoming, boyish but enthusiastic. He wasn’t aware of Joe’s history and apparently had not been briefed about his supervisor Tony Portenson’s animosity to Joe.

A few nights after meeting Coon, Joe was doing an antelope count in the Sierra Madre foothills when he saw a semi-truck on a remote two-track road in the distance, heading toward a series of forest service mountain meadows where cows grazed on leased grass. It seemed an odd time of year to move cattle, he thought, since the summer grass was lush and bad weather was still months ahead. Using his spotting scope, he was able to get the make and model of the truck as well as a partial plate. He called Coon with the info, and Coon was able to track the vehicle down to a used-truck outfit in New Mexico, who provided the name of the purchaser, who turned out to be an undocumented Mexican national suspected of cross-border rustling. The case was made, six men and two women were arrested, and Chuck Coon was responsible for nailing his first major case.

Coon was at his desk, and Joe ran through the same scenario he had with Duck.

Coon said, “Yeah, we could do it. We’d have to get subpoenas for the cell phone providers, and we’d have to move fast because the companies only keep texts on their servers for a few days before they delete them because the volume is unbelievable. Blame teenagers. But yes, we could do it. When I say could that means we have the capability. That doesn’t mean we will.”