Endangered

14

On Saturday afternoon, Joe Pickett rumbled his pickup slowly down the muddy two-track that cut through the sagebrush toward the site of what had once been Lek 64. Daisy sat in the passenger seat with her front paws on the dashboard. The four inches of heavy spring snow that had fallen the night before had mostly thawed, but the moisture released a panorama of scents that kept his dog’s attention.

Clouds shrouded the summits of the Bighorns, parked there as if gathering strength before they loosened their grip and snow descended again. There was no spring in the Rockies, Joe knew. There was winter, summer, fall, and March-through-June, which was made up of various highlights of the other three.

While he often worked weekends in the summer to check fishermen and -women and in the fall to check hunters, he tried to take weekends off during the winter and March-through-June. But the night before, he’d received an email from his director, Lisa Greene-Dempsey, with the subject line “CRISIS.” Most subject lines on LGD’s emails were versions of “CRISIS” or “EMERGENCY.” The body of the email was written in her particular style: all capital letters and no punctuation except “. . .” between thoughts. To Joe, her messages all came across like shouted rants. She wanted him to “GET OUT TO THE LOCATION OF LEK 64 . . . RECOVER ANY SURVIVORS OF THE SAGE GROUSE MASSACRE . . .”

Apparently, the news of the slaughter had gone viral within the agency due to notices sent out from the Sage Grouse Task Force. LGD wanted to mitigate her report to the governor about the incident by saying that her man in the district, game warden Joe Pickett, had rescued the survivors.

Joe had groaned. He knew there would be no survivors because it had been more than a week since he’d discovered the killing field. The few cripples he’d seen darting through the brush would have long ago been eaten by predators, because they lacked the protection of the concentric circle of birds. On their own, they were history. It was the brutal but natural circle of life and death in the wild.

He knew LGD wouldn’t be satisfied until he assured her he’d returned to the scene and looked it over. Even then, he knew she wouldn’t be pleased with his report. She was a political animal and not a favorite of Governor Rulon, who had appointed her as a favor to his wife. There were rumors that LGD was positioning herself to run for governor once Rulon completed his second and final term. She was sensitive to anything that might cause her a public relations hit—especially from the feds and her environmental support groups. Being in charge of an agency that let dozens of potentially endangered sage grouse be decimated on her watch wouldn’t help her ambitions. Her email to Joe was carefully crafted outrage that she could later use as evidence of the immediate action she had taken. She even referred to the loss of Lek 64 as “SPECIES GENOCIDE.”

LGD had not asked about April’s condition but, to be fair, Joe wasn’t sure she knew about what had happened.

—

IF HE HADN’T known the country intimately, Joe thought, he could have easily driven right through the site of Lek 64 without recognizing it. The snows had smoothed out the tire tracks through the sagebrush, and predators had cleaned up the remains of the dead sage grouse. There were no longer feathers scattered everywhere on the ground, although there were a few pinfeathers caught in the brush. It was almost as if the birds had never been there at all.

This time, he let Daisy out. If there were any remaining grouse, she would find them. He let her work the brush, and he monitored her the way he did when they were bird-hunting. She flowed through the brush with her nose down and her tail straight up and wagging. For a minute, it appeared she had found something when her tail, like a supercharged metronome, suddenly picked up speed. Joe followed her, wondering how he’d catch a crippled grouse with his bare hands, where he’d store it for the ride down, and where he’d keep it.

Those thoughts vanished when a cottontail rabbit shot from the brush with Daisy in pursuit.

—

BEFORE JOE had put on his uniform and left for the breaklands, Marybeth had a long talk with the doctors in Billings. There was no bad news, but there was no good news, either. It was a miserable state of limbo.

The swelling on April’s brain had gone down slightly, but it was a difficult thing to test. It didn’t make Marybeth optimistic, but it confirmed that the hospital was doing all it could, she said.

Whether their insurance would pay for it all was also undetermined, despite daily calls Marybeth made to their provider.

Nate’s condition was a mystery. All they knew was that he probably hadn’t died. His wing of the ICU was locked down tight, per the orders of Special Agent Stan Dudley of the FBI. Dudley wouldn’t take Marybeth’s calls, and didn’t return them. Joe had tried with the same result, and a call to Coon in Cheyenne had resulted in no information because, Coon said, Dudley communicated only with Washington and he didn’t feel any obligation to let the locals in on Nate’s prognosis. Even Nurse Reckling confided that Nate’s condition was unknown to her and others she knew on staff. There had been more surgeries, but that’s all she knew.

—

MORE NAILS had been hammered into Tilden Cudmore’s coffin when it was learned by the sheriff’s department that he’d been charged ten years earlier in Illinois for aggravated sexual assault. The victim was found walking down a rural road, and she’d accused Cudmore of giving her a ride and then pulling over and assaulting her. Unfortunately, she died several days later in a car wreck, before she could provide testimony against him in court. Cudmore was in custody at the time of the accident. The case was dropped.

Dulcie told Joe it showed a pattern that had eluded them until they learned of the Illinois charges. Long before he moved to Saddlestring, Cudmore had haunted the rural highways and picked up hitchhikers and women needing a ride. Once they were in his vehicle, he assaulted them and dumped them to fend for themselves. Dulcie said she’d asked Sheriff Reed to initiate an investigation to find out whether there were other victims of similar crimes throughout the state and region. Perhaps, she’d told Joe, Cudmore had been operating under their radar for years. His political causes and eccentricities, she thought, had masked his obsession.

—

BRENDA’S STORY about Dallas’s journey home could not be disproved. He’d been thrown from the bull in Houston on Saturday, March 8. Brenda said he’d stayed in Houston most of Sunday as his pain got worse, then hit the road and drove twenty-two straight hours to arrive late Monday night. He was recovering at home and had been there for two days, she claimed, when April was attacked by Tilden Cudmore.

Unfortunately, Dulcie said, the Cateses could produce no credit card receipts for gasoline or food on Dallas’s long ride home. Dallas, like most rodeo cowboys, paid his entry fees in cash and was paid in cash when he won. He rarely used a credit card except for the rare plane ticket or rental car.

No one had come forward to dispute any aspect of Brenda’s explanation, Dulcie said. Until there was evidence otherwise, that line of inquiry was dead.

But Joe still had his doubts about Cudmore, and about Dallas.

—

AS HE TRAILED DAISY through the brush, he stopped and fixed his gaze on the southern horizon. He knew the Cates place was several miles in that direction. The bench he was parked on was flat, but a mile to the south it sloped down into a shallow valley. The BLM land abutted the twelve-acre Cates compound.

He turned slowly and studied the contours of the high bench. There were places, he thought, where the road he’d arrived on might be seen from below due to the high folds of the terrain. The angle might just be such that a vehicle on the road could be glimpsed from below in the valley in visual snapshots.

He called Daisy back and started his pickup and did a three-point turn, then slowly retraced his route.

At three different places along the two-track there were drainages to the south where he could see the valley below. At two of those drainages, he could see the distant cluster of buildings that belonged to the Cateses.

Joe stopped at the second swale, rolled his driver’s-side window down three-quarters of the way, and mounted his Redfield spotting scope to the top of the glass. Because the Cates place was two miles away, he turned off the motor to stop the vibration through his cab so he could focus.

There was no activity on the place. After all, he thought, it was Saturday. He scoped the main house, a double-wide trailer, a barn, and several outbuildings. In the opening of a metal building he could see the chrome snouts of two pump trucks Eldon used to pump out septic systems.

As he watched, he saw the front door of the main house open and Cora Lee, Bull’s wife, come out. She walked across the yard through a couple of old shacks. Her body language was surly, Joe thought, but then it always was. When Joe had arrested Bull for game violations, Cora Lee had called Joe every name in the book. She had a mouth on her.

Cora Lee stopped at what looked like a well, opened some doors, and tossed something down in it. A few minutes later, she pulled up a bucket and dumped it out near the opening. Then she threw the bucket back in, closed the doors, and returned to the house.

Could someone at the Cates place possibly have seen the vehicle of the person or persons who’d wiped out Lek 64? After all, if he could see the compound from where he was, they could see him.

Joe doubted it. Too much distance, and too quick of a look at a vehicle on the road.

But it gave him a pretense to pay them a visit. Director LGD would even approve of it.

Dulcie might be another story.

—

EVEN THOUGH the Cates compound was in plain view in the valley, it took twenty-five minutes for Joe to get there on ancient two-tracks that were barely roads at all. As the place got larger in his windshield and he bounced his tires over ruts and knee-high sagebrush, he thought that the family employed the same kind of defense sage grouse did: they hid in plain sight. The tough part wasn’t finding them. The tough part was getting there.

And it would be impossible to sneak up on them.

He circumnavigated the fence line that defined the Cates property from BLM land and passed under a hand-lettered sign that read:

DULL KNIFE OUTFITTERS

C&C SEWER AND SEPTIC TANK SERVICE

BIRTHPLACE OF PRCA WORLD CHAMPION COWBOY DALLAS CATES

Bull had emerged from inside the house and stood waiting for Joe with his hands on his hips outside the front door.

—

AS JOE SHUT OFF the engine and reached for the door handle, a pack of six big dogs thundered out, howling, from underneath the wooden porch Bull was standing on, and surrounded the pickup. They were mixed-breed short-haired mottled-color brutes with dark muzzles and flashing teeth. Joe guessed they were a mix of Rottweiler and Rhodesian ridgeback, a scary combination. One of them lunged at the passenger window and bounced off with a thump, leaving a smear of goo on the glass. Daisy cowered and backed up into Joe.

Bull whistled and called to them. The pack slunk back to the house. He opened the front door and one by one they went inside.

Joe told Daisy to get on the floor of the cab and stay. He shut off the engine and made a point of folding the seat down as he got out. Behind the seat, as always, was his 12-gauge shotgun.

Because if Bull opened the door and let the dogs out . . .

Bull rocked on the balls of his feet like a fighter in the ring and sneered at Joe.

“Hell of a brave dog you got there,” Bull shouted.

He had to shout because of the din of a loud motor—likely a generator or air compressor—racketing from the garage where the pump trucks were parked. The sound was distracting.

“Daisy loves everybody,” Joe shouted back. “She’s not used to being attacked for no good reason.”

“They got a reason,” Bull said. “They’re protecting their property from the man who dicked me around.”

Joe said, “Then I guess you know why I’m here.”

Bull’s eyelids fluttered. A tell. But of what? Joe wondered. He paused by the grille of his pickup and waited to see if Bull would spill something. There was no doubt in Joe’s mind he had something to hide.

Before Bull could respond, the screen door opened and hit him in the back.

“Move, son,” Brenda Cates said, annoyed. “Let me come out.” Behind her, the dogs barked to be let out.

Bull dropped his hands and stood to the side so his mother could come out on the porch. She squeezed out through the front door so the dogs were still inside.

Brenda emerged, wearing an apron embroidered with flowers, and she was in the process of cleaning her hands with a towel.

“You caught me in the middle of making some pies,” she said to Joe. “So what brings you out here?”

Joe couldn’t hear her well over the noise from the garage, but he could read her lips well enough to get the gist of what she was asking. He knew he’d lost his opportunity to get Bull to blurt something out or to come up with a lie. Brenda had saved her son whether she intended to or not.

“Can we get that racket back there shut off so we can talk?” Joe asked.

“Just say what you came to say,” Bull shouted.

“I was wondering who might have been home a week ago last Thursday, in the evening,” Joe said. “That would have been on March thirteenth.”

Brenda eyed Joe coolly. Her face was hard to read. But she’d stopped wiping off her hands.

Bull turned his head to her as if waiting to follow her lead.

Joe took a few steps forward until he stood directly beneath them on the porch so he could hear them better.

“A week ago Thursday,” she said. “Well, I was here. Dallas was here, of course. Bull and Cora Lee were out on a service call, right, Bull?”

“Yep,” Bull said. “We didn’t get back until late.”

“They take the second pump truck out if Eldon is already on a job,” Brenda said. “Sometimes when people call us, they can’t wait for Eldon to get there. You know, like if it’s a sewage emergency.”

Joe nodded like he understood.

She said, “Now, why are you asking about Thursday the thirteenth?”

Joe pointed to the north. “Someone was up there on BLM land causing mischief. I was wondering if you or anyone might have seen a vehicle or heard anything.”

Although Brenda had no reaction to the question, Joe saw Bull’s shoulders relax. He knew that whatever dilemma he might have been facing had passed. Yet Bull clearly felt guilty about something.

“What was I supposed to see?” Brenda asked. “I’m usually in the kitchen at night. The window looks out the front of the house, not the side. So I really can’t say I saw anything. Now, can I ask you a question?”

Joe nodded.

“What’s the real reason you’re here?”

“I just told you,” Joe said. But he was afraid his face might betray him.

“You’re here to see Dallas with your own eyes, aren’t you?” she said. “You still think my Dallas had something to do with what happened to April, even though he was here at home and they caught the man who did it and hauled him to jail.” She sounded both angry and disappointed with Joe. He felt a twinge of remorse.

A woman’s voice from inside the house called out, “Who’s out there, Bull?”

“Damned game warden,” Bull said without turning his head.

“The one who put you out of business? That motherfucker?”

Cora Lee, Joe thought.

“Yep, it’s him,” Bull said.

“Tell him to get the fuck off our property,” she said from inside. “Maybe I ought to let the dogs out to chase him away. He got no right comin’ on private property if we don’t invite him.”

Brenda’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Joe. “Is that true?” she asked.

“It is,” he said. “But I’m not here looking for any trouble. I’m here trying to get some information on an ongoing investigation.”

“An investigation of what?” Brenda asked, suspicious.

“I seen a truck up there,” Eldon said from behind Joe. It surprised him, and he jumped. Eldon had been in the garage working on one of the pumpers, judging by the grease and muck on his bib overalls. The whine of the motor in the garage had covered his approach. There was a long, heavy wrench in his right hand.

Joe said, “How long have you been behind me?”

“Long enough to hear what you asked,” Eldon said.

Joe nodded toward the garage. “Do you suppose you could shut that thing down so we can hear each other?”

“Naw,” Eldon said. “I’m usin’ it. I gotta power-wash them tanks out or they really start to smell rank. Especially now that it’s gettin’ warmer.”

Frustrated, Joe said, “You saw a truck up there last Thursday night?”

“I did,” Eldon said. “I got home in time for supper. I parked my pumper in the garage. As I was walkin’ to the house, I looked up there in the hills and saw it. Then I heard a bunch of shots. I didn’t think much of it at the time. People are always goin’ up there and shootin’ the shit out of things. There ain’t a BLM sign or marker that ain’t shot to shit.”

It was true. Joe asked, “What did the truck look like?”

“White, new. I thought it was one of them fed trucks. I see them all over.” He looked past Joe to Brenda. “Remember when those two federal knuckleheads came here last month asking about sage grouse? A man and a woman?”

“I do remember,” Brenda said. “They wanted to know if we had any sage grouse on our land. It seemed like a dumb question.”

Eldon said, “I told ’em if I did, I would have shot all them prairie chickens by now and roasted them. They didn’t like that one bit.”

Bull laughed at his dad’s humor.

Eldon said, “You can’t even eat the big ones, the bombers. They’re no good for nothin’ but jerky. But the young ones are pretty tender. Right, Brenda?”

“Right, they are,” she said.

Joe had been watching the two of them, back and forth, as if viewing a tennis match. He found it interesting how both of these big men deferred to Brenda at all times.

Joe said to Eldon, “Are you talking about Annie Hatch of the BLM and Revis Wentworth of the Fish and Wildlife Service?”

“That sounds like their names,” Eldon said. “They gave me their cards, but I used them to start a fire in the fireplace.”

Bull snorted again. He thought that was a good one.

In the distance, Joe thought he heard a high-pitched scream from the air compressor.

“Better shut that thing off,” Joe said.

“Why?” Eldon asked.

“Sounds like the bearings are going.”

Eldon shrugged. “It’s always something.”

Joe gave up.

“Are you sure it was their truck you saw?” he asked.

“No,” Eldon said. “I ain’t sure. But that’s what I thought at the time—‘Those sage grouse feds are back.’ But that’s a hell of a long way up there, and I just saw the white truck for a few seconds. Then I heard a bunch of shooting.”

Bull folded his arms over his chest and said to Joe, “There can’t be that many new white pickups in the county, can there?”

Joe was thinking the same thing. He asked Eldon what time he’d seen the white truck.

Eldon shrugged and said, “Six-thirty, maybe?” He looked to Brenda for confirmation.

“That sounds right,” she said. “We usually eat at six forty-five. We try to get done by the time Wheel of Fortune comes on.”

The timing worked, Joe thought. But it didn’t make sense—until he thought back on what Lucy had observed in regard to Hatch and Wentworth. Then it did.

“So,” Brenda said to Joe, “you want to see Dallas?”

The offer took Joe aback. “Yup,” he said.

“Come on in,” she said. “You’ll see that he’s as banged up as I told you he is. Then maybe you’ll finally believe us and leave us alone.”

Bull said, “He can come back, Mom. Just so it’s dark out and there’s no witnesses for when I whup his ass.”

“Damned straight, Bull,” Cora Lee laughed from inside the house.

As Joe mounted the peeling steps of the porch, he glanced over his shoulder to see if Eldon was coming in. The man was lumbering back to the garage, swinging the wrench back and forth at his side.

Joe heard the air compressor whine again. He hoped the bearings would burn out and disable the engine so he could think clearly without the background noise.

Brenda cracked the front door and leaned inside. “Cora Lee, put them dogs out back in their run. We’re comin’ in.”