Blood trail

12

AT THE SAME TIME, Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope pulled his departmental SUV into the lighted parking lot of the Saddlestring Holiday Inn. He was both tired and anxious, and a little surprised he'd heard nothing from Buck Lothar over the radio. He checked his wristwatch: 10:15 P.M. It just seemed later. The wait was killing him.

He'd had an unsatisfying dinner by himself in that Burg-O-PARDNER restaurant on Main, finishing only half his steak, drinking only half his beer. The conversations at the tables around him among the locals were all about the murders of hunters in the mountains, how Governor Rulon may declare a state of emergency and lock all of them out of their own land, deny them their heritage and their rights. The word was out and it would spread like wildifire. There was no way to contain it, despite their best efforts. The news would be statewide quickly. Would it go national? These people, he thought. They had no idea what kind of pressure he was under. He'd kept his head down but was recognized nevertheless. When a fiftyish man who looked more like a bear than a human approached his table and asked him what the Game and Fish was doing to solve the crime, Pope said, "Everything we can."

"Then why in the hell are you sitting here eating a damn steak?" the local asked. ALTHOUGH HE could have used a side door and gone straight to his room, Pope used the main entrance so he could pass the front desk. He'd clipped the handheld to his belt in case Lothar or Pickett called him. The hotel had been built in the early 1980s when it must have made some kind of sense to put a huge fake waterfall in the cavernous lobby to simulate something tropical. The sound of stale rushing water struck him as incongruous. Rooms rose on three sides of the lobby for three floors. Most were empty.

"Any messages?" he asked the night clerk, an attractive, slim blonde with a mesmerizing New Zealand accent. She was the reason he came in through the front doors.

"Why, yes," she said, handing him a message. "You're to call the governor." Her eyes widened as she said it, which he liked. She was impressed with his importance, finally. The night before, when he had explained to her who he was, she didn't get it. After going over how many employees he had under him, how big his agency was and therefore how prominent he was, she told him how the pop star Prince had once been in the hotel and said she wished she'd had a chance to meet him.

"In fact," she said, "he stayed in the same suite you're staying in-the Hunting Lodge."

Which was the best room in the place: two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bar, a living room decorated with deer, antelope, and mule deer trophies courtesy of the owner of the establishment. The walls displayed photos of the owner on safari, in the mountains, smiling over dead animals. Pope approved of the decor since hunting meant revenue for his agency, and wondered what Prince had thought of it, whoever he was.

"The governor, huh." Pope took the message, saying, "I see he left his private number for me to call him back," and glanced up to gauge her reaction, hoping she'd be impressed.

"When Prince was here he left the housekeeper a one-hundred-dollar tip," she said.

He detected an amused sneer at the corners of her pretty mouth. THE CARPET in the hallways, like the rooms themselves and the stinking waterfall in the lobby, was tired, of another era, but this place was the best he could do in the sleepy little backwater town of Saddlestring. Pope dug his key card out of the back pocket of his jeans as he walked the length of the long hall, past the humming ice maker and vending machines, debating whether he should call the governor immediately or wait until he had something to report. He decided on the latter. The last thing he wanted was the governor to focus on and bring up the question of why he was back in town in his room instead of with his team at the crime scene.

He placed his left hand on the door while he bent to fit the key card into the lock with his right, and was surprised when the door swung open a few inches. Stepping back, he cursed housekeeping for being so careless. The last thing they would get from him, he thought, was a hundred-dollar tip.

Then he thought, What if it isn't housekeeping?

For the first time in his twenty-five-year career, Randy Pope drew his weapon from its holster somewhere other than the shooting range in Cheyenne. He'd fired the.40 Glock because of the departmental requirement to recertify, but it felt heavy and unfamiliar in his hand. He tried to remember where the safety switch was, and only then recalled it didn't have one. He simply needed to rack the slide and it was armed. He did so, loudly, signaling to whoever was inside his room that he meant business. He braced himself, and fought an involuntary quiver in his lower lip.

There was no sound, no reaction, from inside. Should he call the sheriff? Why should he, the head of an important state agency, a man whose hourly and daily decisions steered a multimillion-dollar department through the storm-tossed waters of state bureaucracy, risk his own life when he had dozens of less-valuable employees and local law enforcement available to do so on his behalf?

But what if it was nothing? Could he risk the embarrassment of calling the local sheriff if the housekeeper had simply forgotten to lock the stupid door to his suite? The gossip afterward would be vicious.

Damn it, he thought, and gently kneed the door open, both hands cradling his weapon in front of him.

The room looked to be in order. Nothing out of place. The garbage near the door had been emptied. A quick glance into his bedroom revealed the bed had been made, which meant the housekeeping staff had been there.

But had he left the light on in the sitting room? He couldn't remember leaving it on that morning.

He rounded the bar, his weapon out in front of him. There was a smell. Definitely an odor, he thought. Like something had died.

Then he saw it. The mounted elk head that had been over the fake fireplace was lying on the floor. The black glass eyes of the mount reflected the light from the hallway. Its mouth was pursed into a permanent, silent bugle. But why would it smell?

His eyes shot up the wall to where the mount had been, and Randy Pope screamed, dropped his gun, and backpedaled across the carpet until he tripped and fell backward onto the faux-leather couch.

Frank Urman's severed head was spiked into the wall where the elk head mount had been that morning.