Blood trail

20

FOR THE REST OF Saturday and Sunday, Joe tried to reach Nate Romanowski while at the same time avoiding calls from Randy Pope. Joe tried Nate's home on the river and his cell (both long disconnected) as well as Alisha Whiteplume's home (no answer, but Joe left repeated messages) and her employer (Wind River Indian High School), who said she'd called in sick both Monday and Tuesday. As each hour went by with no contact from Nate, Joe knew he was digging himself deeper and deeper into a professional hole he may never be able to climb out of. He considered calling Bud Longbrake, Marybeth's stepfather, to see if the rancher could use a ranch foreman again, but decided to wait.

There were no more murders.

Joe's only progress, and it was minimal, was to learn via Deputy Mike Reed that Klamath Moore's followers were staying at the Blue Moon Motel, an ancient but clean twenty-room throwback to the 1950s at the edge of town. The motel was a favorite of budget-minded fishermen because it catered to weekly rentals and had kitchenettes. During hunting season, the owners allowed hunters to hang antelope and deer from a huge cottonwood in the courtyard. Joe wondered how Klamath's people would react to that-until he remembered that the state was all but shut down for hunting while the shooter remained free, so there would be no hunters.

He assumed that Bill Gordon would be at the Blue Moon Motel, and planned to contact the informant that evening after he'd checked in with the FBI and was notified of Joe's assignment.

Joe and Reed had agreed to meet for breakfast Wednesday morning at the Chuckwagon Diner to compare notes and catch each other up on new information or lack thereof. Maybe, Joe thought, Reed or someone in the sheriff's department had seen Nate. JOE WAS downtown early to exchange the Yukon for his repaired pickup and to meet Reed for breakfast. As he drove to the Chuckwagon he happened on a spectacle taking place in front of the county building, something out of an old western movie, as the sheriff organized a posse to search for the shooter in the mountains. Each team consisted of at least four men, all heavily armed and recently deputized. Joe recognized many of the volunteers from out in the field or at high-school sporting events or simply around town. These were not the small-town elite, the city council types or the lawyers or cronies of the politicians or business leaders who met each morning at the Burg-O-Pardner to drink coffee and plot how to run the town. These men were the blue-collar guys, the ones who fixed cars and dug septic systems and stacked hay and kept Saddlestring operating. The men who worked hard so they could go hunting for two weeks out of the year, the men who asked, "Get your elk yet?" to one another by way of greeting. Joe knew them, liked them for the most part, respected them for both their work and their outdoor ethic, and wondered if the sheriff had any idea what he was doing.

The sheriff had assigned each team a sector and given them radios to check in with his dispatcher on the hour. McLanahan milled among them, slapping backs, shaking hands, asking if they wanted any of the coffee or doughnuts that had been donated to the cause by a bakery.

Joe pulled over to watch the assemblage and recognized Chris Urman lining up to be one of the volunteers. Leaving his truck running, he approached Urman and tried to keep out of McLanahan's view.

"How are you doing?" Joe asked. "Is your family okay?"

Urman shrugged. "My aunt is a mess, of course, but we're hanging in there."

"Be careful up there," Joe said. "It could be chaos."

Urman nodded toward the sheriff. "I get that impression. We're not exactly being organized here with military precision. But I've got to do somethimg to redeem myself."

"You are blameless for what happened."

"I wish I felt that way," Urman said. "I mean, I killed a man. It's the worst feeling in the world. I hope you never have to experience it."

Joe looked down at his boots. "I have and you're right."

"It changes you."

"Yup." A SMALL GROUP of Klamath's followers stood to the side of the volunteers, jeering them. One of the protesters saw the same similarity to a western Joe had noted and started humming the theme to the old western television program Bonanza, and the rest eventually joined in… Bum-duh-duh-Bum-duh-duh-Bum-du-duh-Bum BONANZA! Bum-duh-duh-Bum-duh-duh-Bum-du-duh-Bum BONANZA!

… until the theme got stuck in Joe's head like musical peanut butter and he couldn't get rid of it the rest of the morning. AT BREAKFAST, Reed shook his head and looked down at his uneaten eggs. "I felt real sad when those boys roared out of here all full of piss and vinegar. They'd love to find the shooter and bring him back so the moratorium will be lifted and they'll be a bunch of heroes. But I don't see it happening."

Joe said to Reed, "I don't think our shooter is just roaming around up there waiting to be caught. I doubt he's still up there at all."

Reed looked over the top of his coffee cup at Joe.

Joe said, "I would speculate that the shooter was there on the street this morning singing the theme to Bonanza."

Reed snorted.

"I didn't see Klamath Moore or his wife in that assembly this morning," Joe said. "Did you?" Or Bill Gordon or Alisha Whiteplume or Nate Romanowski, Joe thought.

"Nope," Reed said.

"I wonder where he is."

Reed shrugged. "I hear the guy keeps on the move."

Joe hoped Gordon was still around.

Reed sat back and put his coffee cup down. He looked like a man with a pain in his stomach. "I just wish Klamath Moore and his ilk would go away," Reed said. "When they're around it's like I don't know this place anymore. Everything seems off-kilter, if you know what I mean. We've always been sort of insulated from all of that activist crap here in our nice little town."

Joe said, "Yup."

"Maybe this is the beginning of the end," Reed said. "Maybe all that stuff from the outside about animal rights and such has found us." JOE PARKED his pickup at the side of Nate's house near the Twelve Sleep River and got out. It was high noon, still, cloudless, in the forties but dropping by the minute. He could hear the gossipy murmur of the river as he circled the house and the empty falcon mews. There was no point knocking on the door because there was obviously no one inside. And there were no birds in the sky.

What he noted, though, was a set of tire tracks coming in and going out. And the footprints-at least five sets-in the mud and dust near the front door. They'd been there, the whole carload of them, Joe thought. Nate, Alisha, Klamath Moore, Moore's wife, Bill Gordon. The footprints led to the threshold and came back out again.

So Nate, Mr. Neighborly, had invited them inside, Joe thought. Perhaps they'd all taken chairs around Nate's old dining table and sipped cocktails? Maybe Nate baked them a cake? Maybe they laughed and joked about how it had all come together as planned and Nate was now free to move about the country.

Just to make himself feel a little better, Joe kicked Nate's door with the toe of his boot before leaving.

Hard pellets of snow strafed the ground and bounced off the hood of his truck. He was glad he'd thrown his thick Carhartt jacket into his vehicle that morning because, blink, it was winter. THE SNAP winter storm roared through the Bighorns throughout Wednesday and into Thursday. Sheriff McLanahan's search for the killer was postponed indefinitely Wednesday night when one of his volunteers-Joe and Marybeth's plumber-was mortally wounded by another volunteer who mistook him for someone suspicious and shot him in the chest in close to zero visibility conditions.

That night, Joe reread Bill Gordon's files and tried to watch television with Marybeth and Lucy but found himself wondering when, and if, Nate Romanowski would appear.