C. Box - Endangered

Liv nodded. “Aren’t you coming down?”

“Naw,” Bull said sullenly. “I ain’t supposed to anymore. Cora Lee, she . . .” He let his point trail off. But it had been made.

Liv reached up and grasped the bottom of the bucket with both hands. The plastic was warm to the touch.

“Besides,” Bull said, “what do you care if I come down there or not?”

Liv pretended she was thinking long and hard about what she was about to say. Then she said it.

“Because it gets kind of lonely down here.”

Bull was silent. She looked up. He seemed to be frozen there. She couldn’t see his face well because the sun was behind him, but she thought he might be blushing.

He closed the doors, locked them, turned, and went back toward the house.

Liv ate, but not because she was hungry. She ate because she needed fuel to survive.

As she did, those words came back.

I ain’t never had a daughter before. It chilled Liv to the bone.

But the trap was set.

16

After his encounter with the Cates family, Joe drove on the highway toward his home. He knew Marybeth was planning a big dinner with all the items Lucy liked best—pasta, garlic bread, green salad—as a way to atone for the time she’d been in Billings and for Joe’s food, and he wanted to be home for it. As he drove, a window opened in the storm clouds and he found himself suddenly bathed in warm yellow afternoon sun. The beam was small and concentrated, and the pool of light was no bigger than a half mile in every direction. It was as though he were the subject of some kind of cosmic spotlight. It felt good— Summer was on the way —although he was disappointed no revelation came along with it. It was just sun.

When his cell phone went off, he expected to see Marybeth’s name on the screen. That wasn’t the case.

“Governor,” Joe said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you on a Saturday evening.”

“Damn, I’m so jet-lagged I don’t even know what day it is,” Rulon said. Joe imagined the governor pacing back and forth in his home office as he’d seen him do—one hand holding his phone to his face and the other gesticulating and wildly punching the air as he talked.

“I just got back from a two-week trip to Asia,” Rulon said. “I was over there selling Wyoming coal—or trying to. We produce more coal than any other state, and the feds are shutting us down so they can stop global warming. The Asians want to grow so someday they can have First World problems like us. They want our coal, and as much of it as they can get. So we’ll shut down our coal-fired utilities over here and pay higher utility bills while they build them up over there and provide power and air-conditioning to their people so they can make things and get wealthy. You know, like Americans used to do.”

Joe smiled to himself. Rulon liked to rant. The governor said, “Somehow, we’re going to stop global warming by shutting down our clean power plants so the Chinese can burn our coal in their dirty power plants. Ah, the geniuses in Washington! They never fail to constantly lower the bar on common sense. Anyway . . .”

“Anyway,” Joe repeated.

“What’s this I hear that our precious sage grouse are being wiped out in your district?”

Joe sighed. “It’s true. I found an entire lek that had been—”

“I know all about it,” Rulon said, cutting him off. “I read the report from the Sage Grouse Task Force.”

Joe grunted.

“They’re required to keep me informed of their activities. And it’s attracting plenty of attention in the usual quarters, as you can imagine: ‘Wyoming Neanderthals Fail to Protect Endangered Species . ’ That’s not the actual title, but it sure as hell is the tone.”

Rulon paused, then said, “Joe, I need you to clear up this sage grouse thing. I know you can’t bring those birds back to life, but if you find out who did it and throw the book at them, it’ll show the feds we aren’t complacent. Plus, it will set an example for other yahoos who might have the same idea.”

Before Joe could tell the governor what he’d learned, Rulon said, “The damned problem is the feds create reverse incentives and they don’t even realize they’re doing it. If you tell landowners that all their grazing land will be put off-limits for energy exploration or anything else if sage grouse are found up to two miles away, the incentive will be to get rid of the damned birds . Ranchers can’t make money ranching anymore, so they have to make deals for wind towers, or solar, or some damned thing Washington loves. So where does that leave a guy who wants to use his property?”

“I considered that,” Joe said. “The location where the grouse were shot is on BLM land.”

“Is it two miles away from anyone?”

“Well,” Joe said, “there’s one family.”

“Start with them.”

Joe knew Rulon fancied himself an amateur detective. He said, “I did that.”

“And?” Rulon prompted, ready to declare victory.

“They don’t have enough land for wind towers or fracking, so I doubt they’d have any lease opportunities. That’s not to say they might not be ornery enough to do something like this, but in this case I don’t think so. But they gave me a lead I’m going to track down,” Joe said. “If it goes where I think it could, we might have a bigger mess than we’ve got right now.”

Joe could hear Rulon take a breath, ready to continue with one of his rants. Then he paused. Joe understood why. Cell phone conversations could be monitored.

Rulon said, “Let’s meet tomorrow in my office. My afternoon’s free and I’ll try like hell to be lucid. Maybe I’ll send somebody out to get me one of those energy drinks, I don’t know. It’ll take me a couple of days to get back on track, I’m afraid.”

“I can drive down there tomorrow,” Joe said.

Saddlestring to Cheyenne was four hours. Denver was two hours beyond that. He could kill two birds.

“I’ll see you then,” Rulon said. “My antennas are up now.”

—

TWO MINUTES LATER, Joe’s phone lit up again. Rulon again.

“Joe, I heard about what happened to Romanowski and to your daughter. I meant to say how damned sorry I am, but I completely forgot when I called you the first time. Anyway: I’m damned sorry.”

“Thank you,” Joe said.

“Are they connected somehow?” Rulon asked, once again playing amateur detective.

Joe said, “No, sir. At least I don’t think so.”

“Two things like that happening in the same week in the same place,” Rulon said. “It just seems hinky. But you’re on the ground there, and I’m not. So how is your daughter doing?”

Joe told him.

“But they got the guy who did it?”

Joe hesitated before he said yes. Rulon had jarred him with his speculation.

“And the guy killed himself in his cell?”

“Yup.”

“That’s why I think we should issue nooses or electrical cords to every slimeball brought in on a nasty felony,” Rulon said. “Maybe with a little instruction book on how to do yourself in. It would save us a lot of money and time if we did that.”

Joe didn’t comment.

“What about Romanowski? I give him a conditional deal and he goes out and gets himself shot the very next day. That guy is something else.”

“As far as I know, he’s alive,” Joe said. “But the FBI has him under wraps. I can’t get anything out of him.”

Rulon cursed. He said, “I’ll talk to those bastards tomorrow. This is that Dudley guy, right?”