C. Box - Endangered

Boner swept the beam of his flashlight from item to item.

“That’s her sweater,” Lucy said, pointing at a thick beige garment. “I know because I used to borrow it from her closet. She yelled at me when she found out, so I stopped.”

“What about the coat?” Reed asked gently.

He was referring to a multicolored leather jacket embroidered with NFR logos and insignias.

“I’ve never seen that in person,” Lucy said, “because I think it’s new. It looks new. I’m pretty sure there are a couple of photos on Facebook of her wearing it, though. That’s easy to check.”

Reed and Dulcie exchanged looks, and Dulcie nodded that she’d follow up.

“And there’s this,” Reed said, gesturing toward what looked like a leather shoulder bag with a western buckle strap on it. Joe recognized it himself from the last time he’d seen April. She had slung the bag into the cab of his truck when he’d picked her up after work at Welton’s Western Wear. All she could talk about that day as they drove home was having met Dallas Cates, who had been at the store that day to promote his line of denim jeans.

“That’s her purse,” Lucy said. Joe noticed her eyes were moist.

“We found a wallet inside with her Wyoming driver’s license,” Reed said to Joe. “There were no credit cards or cash, though. I assume she has a cell phone, but we haven’t found it yet.”

“She has a phone,” Lucy said.

Deputy Boner said, “We’re waiting for a generator and lights before we crawl back in the dumpster. There’s a lot of stuff in there, and heavier things like a phone or keys might have settled to the bottom. There may be other items in there, too. These things were obvious because they were on top.”

“Under the black cat,” Dulcie said, rolling her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am,” Boner said with what sounded like sincerity.

“Where’s this Tilden Cudmore?” Joe asked.

“He looks like our perp,” Boner said.

“Whoa there,” Reed said. “Who’s to say he didn’t find these things on the highway and bring them home to throw away after pocketing the credit cards and cash?”

Boner said, “He still looks like our perp. Especially since somebody saw him forcing April into his car.”

“There’s that,” Reed said.

“Again,” Dulcie said, raising her voice, “I want everyone here to proceed with caution. I’ll grant that it looks bad for Mr. Cudmore, but we only know what we know . . . about this son of a bitch .”

Joe almost smiled. Dulcie had revealed more about her thoughts than she had wanted to, he thought.

—

“HAVE YOU BEEN INSIDE?” Joe asked Reed, nodding toward the dark trailer.

“We’re waiting on a warrant from Judge Hewitt,” Reed said. “Dulcie put that in motion earlier, and we tracked him down having dinner at the Burg-O-Pardner. He signed it. We should have it within the half hour. The evidence tech is also on the way.”

Joe nodded. They were near Reed’s van. Boner and the other deputies were establishing a crime scene perimeter by threading yellow tape along the barbed-wire fence and entry arch. Lucy was in Joe’s truck on her cell, filling in her mother and Sheridan. Dulcie was leaning against her car, talking on her cell phone as well.

“I’ve got to admit this really surprised me,” Reed said. “He wasn’t on our radar at all. Maybe Brenda kind of had a point about going at this with blinders on.”

“I’m still not sold,” Joe said. “What can you tell me about Tilden Cudmore?”

“He’s a nut,” Reed said without hesitation. “I’ve had quite a few encounters with him over the years—enough that when we get that warrant I want everyone to take their time going through that trailer of his. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s booby-trapped. He’s probably got fragmentation grenades rigged up to trip wires and shotguns cocked and aimed toward the doors. I might even leave it alone for now and ask the state bomb squad to open it up as soon as they can get here.”

He looked up at Joe, and the ambient light from errant flashlights highlighted the spray of stress wrinkles that fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

Reed said, “Cudmore thinks of himself as a patriot and survivalist type, but he’s just a walking bundle of paranoid conspiracy theories. He moved here two or three years ago from southern Illinois, I think, hoping to find a bunch of like-minded individuals. For the most part, I think he was disappointed.

“I’ve heard him go on at city council meetings about the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, Agenda 21, all that crap. He’s a 9/11 truther who thinks Bush and Cheney brought down the towers so they could invade Iraq for oil. Cudmore’s politics are all over the map. We threw him out of the local Tea Party because he’s such a lunatic.”

“We?” Joe asked.

“I’m on board with my largest constituency,” Reed said, a little on the defensive. “You know that.”

Wyoming had a larger per capita membership in the Tea Party than any other state.

“What does he do for a living?” Joe asked.

“He can run a backhoe, I guess. But basically he does a whole lot of nothing,” Reed said, shaking his head. “He’s supposedly got some kind of disability and he lives off welfare payments.”

Joe said, “He hates the government but lives off welfare?”

“Yeah, I know,” Reed said.

Joe gestured to Reed to continue.

“You’ve never run into him?” the sheriff asked. “He drives an army-surplus Humvee. Bumper stickers and signs all over it?”

Joe now recalled the Humvee and some of the messages on it: KILL A COMMIE FOR MOMMY, 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB, THE TREE OF LIBERTY MUST BE REFRESHED FROM TIME TO TIME WITH THE BLOOD OF TYRANTS, RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT, ONE NATION UNDER CCTV, OBAMA LOVES AMERICA LIKE O.J. LOVED NICOLE. A miniature Gadsden flag flew from the radio antenna.

“That’s his?” Joe said. “Yeah—I’ve seen it around town. But I guess he’s not a hunter or a fisherman, because I’ve never run across him out in the field in my district. I’ll run a license check, but if he was a sportsman I think I would know it. I thought survivalists hunted at least. How else would they survive?”

“Some, like Tilden Cudmore, buy their five years’ supply of food and have it delivered by UPS,” Reed said. “We should assume Cudmore is armed and dangerous. He’s an open-carry type—wears a .357 revolver in a holster over his coat. He’s been thrown out of county commissioners’ meetings because he refuses to take it off.”

“Any sex crimes on his record?” Joe asked softly, looking over to make sure Lucy was still in his pickup. She was.

“No,” Reed said with a sigh. “No felonies at all. A few DUIs, resisting arrest, refusing to comply—that sort of thing. I think he’s in the middle of a tax dispute with the IRS, but they haven’t involved our department. So his misdemeanor convictions have been for civil disobedience stuff—except for the DUIs. But, as I told you earlier, we’ve had a few calls about him cruising way below the speed limit out on the interstate. He alarms people when they see him driving around in that Humvee of his. But we’ve never had a reason to arrest him for it.

“I sent an officer out here once to ask him why he drives around like that. Cudmore claimed he was looking for beer cans and bottles to claim the deposit on them. That doesn’t exactly square with his personality, but that’s what he said.”

“Is he prowling for hitchhikers?” Joe asked.

“That would be my guess,” Reed said. “But again, the first time we’ve ever received a report of him forcing someone into his car came a few hours ago. Thank goodness the RP put two and two together and let us know.”