C Box - Below Zero

Connelly hadn’t moved in or out an inch. He seemed to be weighing his options. Was his other hand gripping a gun?

“I said, show me your hands and climb out slowly,” Joe said. “You’re under arrest for skipping bond in Carbon County.”

Connelly smiled slightly, said, “Don’t you think this is excessive force? Since when is it okay for a damned game warden to injure a man and total his pickup for missing a hearing for a misdemeanor?”

Joe said, “Ever since you shot a dog with an arrow. Now shut up, get out, and get down on the ground.”

Nate emerged from the steam and aimed his.454 at the side of Connelly’s head. “Let me shoot him and tear his ears off, Joe. You know, for my collection.”

Joe stifled a smile and watched as Connelly leaped out of his pickup empty-handed and eagerly threw himself face down into the sand.

As Joe snapped handcuffs on Connelly’s wrists, Connelly said, “How in the hell did you find me all the way up here?”

Joe said, “Just good police work,” and winked at Sheridan, who had watched the arrest openmouthed.

WITH RON CONNELLY cuffed to the front strut of his dead pickup on the side of the highway, Joe called in the arrest to central dispatch. In the days since the Mad Archer had vacated Baggs, he’d obtained a new compound bow and a set of broadhead arrows, as well as a Ruger Ranch Rifle and a stainless-steel.45 semiauto. In the glove box were cartridges, a bloody knife still covered with deer hair, and plastic vials of crystal meth. Tim Curley, the game warden out of Sundance, heard the call and broke in.

“Joe, how the hell are you?”

“Fine,” Joe said, remembering Curley as a big man with dark eyes, impressive jowls, and a gunfighter mustache. “Can you come get this guy?”

“This is the one they call the Mad Archer?”

“Yup.”

“I thought I heard you already caught him and threw him in the pokey.”

“I did. But that was last week. You know how it goes sometimes.”

“What-a sympathetic judge who let him out on bond?”

“Tim, we’re on the radio.”

“Oh, yeah. Hey-you gonna stick around? It’s been a while since we got caught up. I want to hear your version of what happened to Randy Pope.”

“Nope,” Joe said in answer to both questions. “I’ll send you all the paperwork on Connelly later. You’ll need to send a tow truck to the scene.”

“Don’t tell me you wrecked another departmental vehicle?” Curley laughed. Joe was infamous for holding the record for the destruction of departmental vehicles. No one else was close.

“Not mine, this time.” But as he said it, he stepped away from the cab and gauged the damage he’d caused to the back of his pickup. Both taillights were smashed. The back bumper was curled under the frame. His trailer hitch was flattened to the side and his tailgate hung open and out like the tongue of a dead animal. “Not enough that I need a tow truck, anyway,” he said.

“What’s going on? What are you doing in my district? Last I heard you were sentenced to Baggs.”

Joe said, “I don’t have time to explain right now. This arrest cost us ten minutes. I have to go, sorry.”

Curley said, “Does this have something to do with that ranch deal that’s been all over the radio this morning?”

Joe said, “I’ll need to catch up with you later, Tim.”

Sheridan and Nate were already in the cab, and Joe swung himself in, hung up the mike, and gunned it.

“That was a good one,” Joe said to Nate and Sheridan as if they’d been privy to his earlier ruminations. He nodded at the view of Ron Connelly slumped against his pickup in his rearview mirror. “That was worth the time it took to get that guy back into jail where he belongs. Yup, that makes me feel real good. That’s one on the plus side, by golly.”

Nate chuckled as he replaced the two spent cartridges in his five-shot revolver with fresh rounds the size of lipsticks.

Sheridan glared at Nate. “Your collection?”

Nate winked at her.

In the distance, they could see the helicopter begin its descent.

“There’s the ranch,” Nate said, gesturing toward the cottonwoods marking the abandoned homestead. “You can let me off here. I’ll stay out of Tim Curley’s way and watch for you when you come back out.”

Joe said, “Do you finally have a cell phone so I can call you?”

Nate curled his upper lip. Nate hated cell phones. He once told Joe satellite phones were a necessity but cell phones made him feel that he was always on call.

“Here,” Joe said. “Take mine. I’ll let you know when we’re coming.”

Nate took it as if Joe was offering him a bar of feces. It was Sheridan’s turn to wink.

Bear Lodge Mountains

THE RANCH YARD WAS A HIVE OF ACTIVITY; SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT SUVs were parked at jaunty angles near the main house with their doors wide open, an ambulance driver was arguing with deputies to clear the way so he could back his vehicle in, and the FBI helicopter sat in a back pasture like a giant insect on a break. Joe drove his pickup to the other side of the yard near a Quonset hut filled with farm equipment.

“I want you to stay here,” he told Sheridan.

“What about April?”

“Believe me,” Joe said, “if April’s in there, I’ll come running.” Thinking, Unless she’s in bad shape.

“Why don’t you get your mother on the phone?” he said. “Let her know what’s going on and that we’re both okay. I’m sure she’s going crazy.”

“I’m sure she is.”

TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES stopped Joe from entering the house, saying they were under orders to keep everyone out. Joe asked who to talk to and one of the deputies said the FBI was in charge and both agents were inside. “When one of them comes out,” the deputy said, “you can talk to him.”

Joe considered rushing them, but they were both bigger as well as filled with the official hubris that always resulted when there was a multiple homicide in a single-digit crime rate county. Their blood was running hot with purpose. He knew better than to try and get through them.

Instead, he circled the house hoping he could see inside. If he saw April, he decided, he was going in even if he had to fight his way inside. He walked on the lawn around the left side of the house and saw a side door with another deputy stationed at it. Joe waved and kept walking, looking in every window and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He walked the length of the back of the house and around the side. He was noting a broken window to what looked like the kitchen when the tip of his boot ticked something metallic. He stopped and looked down. Spent cartridges from a handgun blinked in the sun. He counted eight before he stopped counting, then stepped back and away so he wouldn’t crush them into the ground. From the location of the spent shells, he could imagine a gunman standing just outside the kitchen and firing inside. It bolstered his theory when he noted there was no broken glass under the window in the flowerbed-the glass had been blown inside the house. He wanted to show the FBI agents what he’d found.

Coon was exiting the front door of the ranch house, struggling with the removal of a pair of latex gloves. As Joe approached, Coon held up a gloved hand made a sick yellow by the latex covering and said, “I’d suggest you stay where you are. Agent Portenson just gave the order to seal up the crime scene as soon as we get more photos of the victims taken out of there.”

“Who are the victims?” Joe asked, feeling his chest constrict.

Coon said, “An adult male DOA in the kitchen. Another adult male in critical condition. The EMTs are loading him on a gurney as we speak.”