Breaking Point

ONE WEEK LATER
35

With Nate Romanowski in the passenger seat of the pickup, Joe turned from the interstate onto the state highway that led to the burning mountains. Joe wasn’t wearing his uniform anymore, which made him feel incomplete. Seven red shirts were in a pile in the corner of the bedroom, where he’d thrown them as if they were radioactive. Spare badges, name tags, his weapon and gear belt, and a dog-eared laminate of the Miranda warning had been tossed on top of the pile.

Joe glanced down. His personal Remington shotgun was muzzle-down on the bench seat between them. He’d loaded it with double-ought buckshot.

Nate was tall and angular, with piercing blue eyes and a hatchet nose, and a short blond ponytail since he’d grown his hair back from a year before. The leather strap of the shoulder holster that held his.500 Wyoming Express handgun stretched across a white T-shirt beneath his open pearl-button cowboy shirt.

As they climbed, Joe hit his headlights. Smoke was still heavy in the air, and he hadn’t seen the sun or blue sky for a week. It was as if someone had placed a lid over the valley to keep it from boiling over.

There were no living trees on either side of the road, just skeletons with crooked black limbs. The ground was scorched and there were places where it still smoked. The air was bitter and sharp, and Joe’s lungs ached from breathing it in.

“This reminds me of black-and-white footage from World War One,” Nate said. “It looks like a moonscape.”

Joe grunted.

“How big is the fire now?”

“Last I heard, it stretches a hundred miles to the north and sixty miles to the south. It moves about twenty to twenty-five miles a day depending on the wind.”

“Big,” Nate said.

“And getting bigger.”

The local news was dominated by fire reports and stories of cabins and ranches being burned down, communities evacuated, smoke jumpers killed or injured. People wore masks when they went outside, and public health authorities cautioned young parents to keep their children indoors. Most of the residents of the Saddlestring retirement home had been flown to other locations where they could breathe.

“Where did you say we were headed?” Nate asked.

“A subdivision called Aspen Highlands.”

“I hate cutesy names like that.”

Nate had simply shown up on their doorstep three nights before. He’d been sitting on the porch reading a book when Marybeth drove Joe home from the hospital after they’d treated and released him for all of his injuries. Joe had been injured many times before without three days of hospital care, and cynically figured he’d been stuck there to give affidavits and statements regarding Butch Roberson rather than for the severity of his wounds. Dave Farkus was in the next room and he was recovering well. Joe had overheard Farkus telling an attractive nurse how he’d escaped death by bullet, fire, and a whitewater river. How he planned to sell his story to Hollywood.

When Nate saw them drive up, he raised his head and smiled a goofy smile, for Nate.

Marybeth braked a little too hard for Joe and flew out of the van to hug the falconer. She didn’t even close her door.

Joe limped around the van and shut it, and turned to Nate and Marybeth. It was good to see Nate again, he thought.

Nate gestured toward the burning mountains and said, “Sorry. It looks like I’m too late.”

Nate said to Marybeth, “I leave for a year and look what happens. Your husband burns the entire place to the ground.”

“Actually,” Joe said, “you’re right on time.”

“You’ve got something for me to do?”

“Yup.”

“Now?”

“Give me a couple of days to sort it out,” Joe said.

Nate nodded. “Good. I hear Sheridan has a kestrel. I’d like to see it.”

Marybeth clapped her hands girlishly and said, “I know she’d love to show it to you, Nate.”

Joe had to slow down the pickup as a yellow roll of smoke blew across the road. As he peered into the gloom, he couldn’t see actual flames anywhere and he wondered what there was left to burn.

Nate said, “In the long run, the fire will be a good thing. New growth, aspen, all that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe said. “Like I haven’t heard that a thousand times in the last week.”

“You’re getting grumpy,” Nate said.

“I keep thinking about Butch. How he could be me.”

“Stop thinking so much.”

“I’ve missed that kind of brilliant advice. Wait, no, I haven’t,” Joe said with an edge.

“So what’s this guy’s name we’re going to visit?”

“Harry Blevins,” Joe said. “Harry S. Blevins.”

“And you learned about him how?”

“Matt Donnell, the real estate mogul,” Joe said. “When he came by the house to tell Marybeth he’d sold the hotel, I asked Matt to use his contacts at the county records department to do a title search. He’s the one who came up with Blevins.”

“Ah.”

Donnell had been practically bursting with the good news. He’d learned that the Bureau of Land Management was in the midst of a search for more space in the county because they’d outgrown their old building. Donnell had swooped in and offered the Saddlestring Hotel lot, and the supervisor in charge liked the location-right in the middle of town.

He’d get all his money back, Matt told Marybeth. There would be no profit and what he’d spent on repairs was lost, but the bulk of the investment would be returned. Joe had expected Marybeth to be pleased with the news, but she wasn’t.

“They’ll tear it down, won’t they?” she had asked Donnell.

“Most certainly,” he said, nodding.

“So they can throw up a perfect new nothingburger government office building,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Don’t you see the irony in this, Matt?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “But I’m not in the business of irony. I’m in the real estate business.”

“It’s a good place for you,” Marybeth said to him, doing a shoulder roll and climbing the stairs toward their bedroom.

“I thought she’d be happy,” Donnell said to Joe. He was obviously distressed.

Joe said, “Give her some time.”

“It wasn’t easy, convincing the BLM to buy that lot. What I’m saying is it cost me a little money, if you know what I mean.”

Joe understood.

That’s when he asked Donnell to do the title check.

“So you’re unemployed,” Nate said as they drove up Hazelton Road.

“Yup.”

“When do you have to move out of your house?”

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Joe said. “I think they’ll give me to the end of the month at least. The new director wants to spin it so it doesn’t look like I quit. The wheels of government turn pretty slow, you know.”

“Except when they don’t,” Nate said, and grinned. “So what are you going to do?”

Joe shrugged. “Something different. Something honest. I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’m figuring it out, Nate. Governor Rulon has called my cell phone twice in the last couple of days. He says he wants to offer me a job.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you haven’t called him back?”

“Not yet.”

Nate nodded and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then: “Since I’ve been gone, I’ve come up with a few projects of my own. It’s worked out pretty well. I’m in demand. Do you want to hear about it and maybe partner up?”

Joe looked over and squinted. “I don’t know. Do I?”

Nate smiled wolfishly. “It depends if you’ve completely shucked that Dudley Do-Right thing of yours.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then this is a subject best left for another time,” Nate said.

Joe was curious but not curious enough to ask. There was something disconcerting about Nate, he thought. Nate seemed too jolly, too devil-may-care, where in the past he’d been intense yet honorable in his way. Joe chalked it up to the terrible things that had happened to Nate in the past year, and understood how those tragedies could affect a man.

Still. .

County attorney dulcie schalk had come to their house two days before and had told Joe and Marybeth the governor was on a rampage against Batista.

It turned out rancher Frank Zeller had noticed an extra horse grazing in his pasture several days before that turned out to be Toby. Zeller had retrieved the digital recorder and delivered it in person to Rulon, who’d listened to it.

Although Dulcie said she didn’t know any of the details, Julio Batista had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of his actions-not the least of which was the unauthorized use of a Hellfire missile. The governor wanted Batista arrested and was making the case for it to anyone who would listen, including Dulcie.

Dulcie said she was pursuing charges against Juan Julio Batista for the murder of Jimmy Sollis. So far, the federal agencies were refusing to turn over the audio and video footage of the drone strike, but Dulcie was tenacious, and she was certain she’d receive it in the weeks ahead. When she did, she said, she’d file the papers to have Batista extradited to Twelve Sleep County.

Joe said, “The murder of Jimmy Sollis? That’s it? He’ll claim fog-of-war stuff. If you’re lucky, you’ll get him on manslaughter.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Dulcie said, defensive.

“There’s more,” Joe said, and waited for Marybeth to hand Dulcie the file she’d put together.

“And maybe,” Joe said, “we can get him to deliver himself.”

Joe had visited Butch Roberson in the county lockup the day before. Roberson wore an orange jumpsuit with TSCDC-Twelve Sleep County Detention Center-stenciled across his back and over a breast pocket. He was shaved and cleaned up, although his arms were covered with bandages from his wounds. He looked smaller through the thick glass of the visiting booth, Joe thought.

Joe asked Butch if he’d changed his mind about his confession.

Roberson said he hadn’t.

“I need to ask you about representation,” Butch said. “I don’t know anything about being a criminal. I’m supposed to show up tomorrow before Judge Hewitt for a charging ceremony or whatever they call it. I built an addition on Hewitt’s house. He knows me, so I think that’s good. The county has said they’d give me a lawyer free of charge.”

“Duane Patterson,” Joe said. “He’s the public defender. He hasn’t handled any high-profile cases like yours.”

“He seems like a nice guy, though.”

“He is,” Joe said. “You could do worse.”

“I got a call from some public defense firm,” Butch said. “They said they have a team of lawyers who want to screw the EPA. I’m fine with that. I was starting to wonder if there was anyone out there who cared at all what they did to us.”

“That’s good to hear,” Joe said.

Butch shook his head. “It’s kind of out of my hands now, isn’t it? Now I’m just a peon in the system.”

“There are some good people out there,” Joe said. “You should at least listen to them. Even if they take you on to prove a point, it’s your point.”

Then Joe asked him if he knew the name Harry S. Blevins.

It took a moment for Butch to understand. When he did, his face flushed and he said, “That son of a bitch. So it was him, huh?”

“I think it was,” Joe said.

“Then why didn’t he ever call me? Why didn’t he talk to me man-to-man?”

Joe said, “I don’t think they do that.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Nate asked as Joe turned past the half-burned sign for Aspen Highlands. “Do you want me to put him down?”

“No,” Joe said, not sure if Nate was kidding. “Just be scary. Follow my lead and be the scary Nate.”

“I think I can do that.”

A team of smoke jumpers out of Missoula had been dropped on the location and had saved the structures within Aspen Highlands by igniting a backfire around the perimeter of the subdivision that destroyed the dry fuel before the wildfire could get to it. The crowns of many of the trees had burned, though, as well as a buck-and-rail fence that marked the development. Aspen Highlands was an oasis of green within a desert of scorched earth. Joe credited the smoke jumpers, of course, but wondered who had the clout to convince them to divert resources to spare the development when the wildfire was threatening every town and city throughout the front range of the northern Rocky Mountains.

Joe eased to a stop adjacent to the Roberson lot. The tractor was still there, and the hole where the agents had been found hadn’t been filled in. The grass inside the perimeter tape was trampled down flat by so many law enforcement personnel.

“This is where it happened, eh?” Nate asked quietly.

“Yup.”

“I imagined more land. This isn’t much.”

Joe nodded. He left the truck running and opened the door and said, “I’ll be right back.”

He returned with the faded plywood target that had been nailed to a tree. He tossed it into the empty bed of his pickup.

“What was that about?” Nate asked.

“Nothing,” Joe said. Then he gestured toward the two-story log cabin above them with the green metal roof. He remembered looking at it the day the agents were found.

“That’s the retirement home of Harry Blevins,” Joe said.

“Nice place,” Nate said.

“Nice pension,” Joe said.

There was a new-model Jeep Cherokee parked beneath a carport on the side of the cabin.

“He’s home,” Joe said.

“Does he live alone?” Nate asked.

“As far as I know. From what Matt Donnell told me, he’s divorced. He splits his time between here and Denver, where he also has a house.”

“What’s he retired from?” Nate asked.

“Used to be a supervisor for the IRS.”

“Please let me shoot him in the head.”

Joe wasn’t surprised that Blevins knew they were there before he knocked. It was quiet in Aspen Highlands, and Blevins no doubt heard the pickup turn up into his driveway.

He opened the door as Joe approached carrying the shotgun. Nate was a step behind.

Blevins was stooped and slight with a wisp of gray hair. He had close-set eyes, a thin nose, and a small mouth offset by a prominent lantern jaw. Joe thought the man gave off a palpable aura of unpleasantness.

“Can I help you find something?” the man said. “Why are you armed?”

“You’re Harry S. Blevins?” Joe asked.

“Yes. And who are you?”

“I’m Joe Pickett. I used to be the game warden around here. You might have seen me wearing a red uniform shirt a week and a half ago. I was standing around on the Roberson lot with the sheriff’s department. I’m guessing you could see the whole thing from here.”

Blevins made a sour face and shook his head slightly, as if denying the premise of what Joe had said.

“I wanted to see what you looked like, once I figured it out. You look exactly like I thought you would.”

“I don’t hunt or fish,” he said. “There’s no need for a game warden to come to my place.”

“I’m no longer a game warden,” Joe said. “I’m here as a local.”

“You got fired?”

“I quit. Which means I don’t have to play by the rules anymore.”

Blevins studied Joe’s face. Joe didn’t flinch. He noticed that Blevins shot several cautious glances toward Nate as well. Nate had that effect on people.

Blevins said, “It’s nice to meet you, but I really don’t have time for this right now.”

Joe said, “When the investigation was going on, did you see me when I turned around and looked right at your nice cabin here? Did a little bit of fear go through you that I might figure it out?”

“Really, I don’t have time for this. .” Blevins said, and stepped back to swing the door closed.

Nate lurched over Joe’s shoulder and shot his arm out and stopped the closure with the heel of his hand. Nate said, “My friend is talking to you. Don’t be so fucking rude.”

For the first time, fear flickered across Blevins’s eyes.

“You didn’t want your view of the lake blocked by the Roberson home,” Joe said. “You got a call from a man who said he could help you if you agreed to keep him informed on the progress of the construction.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His voice was weak and small, Joe thought, and betrayed exactly the opposite of the words he spoke.

Joe said, “I wondered how you knew Julio Batista, but he actually contacted you, didn’t he? Because you had a mutual interest? Then you and Batista set things in motion and you just sat back here in your nice cabin and let the system destroy Butch.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Blevins said.

“Whatever. But there’s no doubt you lit the Butch Roberson time bomb.”

“I didn’t know he’d murder anyone. I honestly had no idea that could happen.”

Joe hesitated, then asked, “Did you see him pull the trigger?”

“No. I was in town the day it happened.”

“Convenient,” Joe said. Then: “You never spent a minute getting to know him, did you? As far as you knew, he was a redneck in a ball cap, right? You didn’t know he was a local contractor who had a family, did you? To you he was a stupid gorilla who fired up his loud tractor and wanted to screw up your perfect view of the lake. And when things got out of control, you didn’t do anything to stop it, did you? When Butch showed up here two weeks ago and started up his tractor after a year of leaving you alone, you got right back on the phone, didn’t you?”

Before Blevins could speak, Nate growled, “What an asshole.”

Joe said to Blevins, “Five men dead, one man in jail, a good family wrecked. Thousands of animals and birds burned to death. An entire forest incinerated. You’re quite a guy, aren’t you?”

“Look,” Blevins said, panic in his voice, “I’m not responsible for all the things that happened. I was just making a call.”

Joe said, “It’ll be interesting when Butch Roberson’s attorneys find out about you and put you on the stand. Once people find out what you did, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. Right, Nate?”

“And you might see me,” Nate said in a homicidal whisper.

“You can’t prove any of this,” Blevins said. Beads of perspiration sequined his upper lip. He swiveled his head toward Nate and said, “So who are you?”

Joe cringed because he’d seen raw red meat tossed to problem grizzlies before-and this was the same thing.

But there was a hesitation on Nate’s part. Then an explosion. Nate shot his hand out and grasped Blevins’s ear and twisted. The man cried out and bent forward. Nate leaned into him with his huge gun drawn and pressed the muzzle into Blevins’s temple.

“I can twist your ear off your head or blow your brains to Nebraska,” Nate said evenly. “Or I can do both, one after the other, which is my preference.”

Blevins mewled and choked, his head down. Joe considered stopping it, but he didn’t want to.

Nate leaned in closer to Blevins, and thumbed back the hammer of the.50-caliber revolver until it locked.

Nate said to Blevins, “I’ve torn apart men much better than you with my hands. I’ve twisted their noses and ears off and I’ve ripped their arms and legs out of the sockets and beat them over their heads with them. I like doing it to those who deserve it, that’s what you need to understand. You deserve it more than most. So if you don’t start singing right now to my friend Joe, you’ll be eating your own nuts in less than ten seconds. Got that?”

Joe was stunned. But he appreciated it.

Blevins mewled like a cat, then said, “I called Julio when Roberson showed up with his tractor. I never knew what would happen.”

“That’s why those agents showed up so fast,” Joe said. “It’s been driving me crazy. So when did you last talk to Batista?”

“Why is that important?”

Nate twisted the muzzle into Blevins’s temple, breaking the skin. Blevins cried out.

“Answer the question,” Joe said.

“A couple of days ago. He called me and asked if I knew anything about Pam Roberson giving a press conference today.”

Joe knew all about it because Marybeth had written the release and emailed it to every newspaper and electronic media outlet within five hundred miles.

“What did you tell him?” Joe asked.

“That it was scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Did he ask for directions to her house?”

After a beat, Blevins said, “Yes.”

Nate’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“Please, dear God, get him off me,” Blevins pleaded.

Nate looked to Joe and grinned. Joe was unsettled. Something had happened to Nate to drive him further over the moral line he’d always insisted was there. Joe had no doubt that if he said, “Waste him,” Blevins would be history. Headless history.

Instead, Joe drew his new digital recorder out of his breast pocket and checked it and showed it to Blevins.

“You’ll hear this again in court.”

Blevins, still in Nate’s headlock, looked up with equal measures of horror and confusion.

On their way back to Joe’s house, Nate said, “There are too many assholes like that. This is why we need a revolution.”

Joe didn’t respond. He’d been able to contain his red-hot anger at Blevins while he was there in order to get the evidence, but it had been tough work. Nate’s overreaction had skewed things.

“I’m worried about you,” Joe said, not looking over to Nate in the passenger seat.

“What? You thought I’d blow his brains out?”

“Yes.”

“You told me to be scary. You told me to be Nate,” he said angrily.

“Still,” Joe said. “I got the impression you really wanted to do it.”

“I did,” Nate said quickly. “There’s nothing worse on this earth than privileged bureaucratic assholes who work the system. They never get caught, and if they do, there are no real consequences. I wanted to show that asshole some consequences.”

“I understand,” Joe said. “But he’ll be shunned-or worse-when his name gets out and folks find out he’s the one who started all this. He’ll wish he was in jail.”

“Then we’re cool?” Nate asked.

Joe was unclear how to answer.

Nate said, “I saw Marybeth’s post on that website, asking me for help. You don’t understand or want to know my situation these days, but when I saw that she asked for help I dropped everything and showed up. So cut me a fucking break, Joe. I did it for you.”

“And I appreciate it,” Joe said.

“We can always go back,” Nate offered. “I could blow him away and burn his house down.”

Joe shook his head and said, “I’m tired of fires. Plus, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

He drew his cell phone out and called Marybeth at home.

“Honey, are Hannah or Pam Roberson still there?”

“Hannah is here, of course,” Marybeth said. “Pam’s going over her statement for the press conference later. I think there will be plenty of press, based on the calls we’ve received.”

“Good for her.”

Another call flashed on the screen of Joe’s phone, and when he saw who it came from, he said to Marybeth, “I have to take this-it’s Sheriff Reed.”

“Call later.”

“I will.” Then: “Sheriff.”

“Joe, you were right. We pulled him over as soon as he crossed the county line and he’s sitting in my interrogation room, demanding his lawyer.”

“Was he packing?”

“He had a loaded twelve-gauge shotgun in the backseat.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Joe said, and punched off.

Nate had an expectant look on his face.

“It worked,” Joe said. “The press conference flushed him out.”

Nate nodded with satisfaction. He said, “Drop me off at your place. As much as I’d love to go with you and brace that asshole, I can’t be seen by all the coppers.”

Joe agreed and smiled to himself.

It worked.