Endangered

22

Kelsea, this gentleman has been waiting for you since we opened up the doors at nine,” the receptionist said the next morning.

Joe stood up, removed his hat, and thrust his hand out toward Kelsea Raymer, the chief forensics analyst of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Center, which was located in the National Wildlife Property Repository on the grounds of the old Rocky Mountain Arsenal facility near Denver. Raymer was a tall, trim, and comely brunette in her mid-thirties, with a wide, open face and curious blue eyes. She shook Joe’s hand and looked to the receptionist for an explanation.

“He says he’s a game warden from Wyoming,” the receptionist said with a shrug.

“We don’t get many actual visitors here,” Raymer said as she looked him over. “I’m surprised you found it.”

“Me too,” Joe said. It had taken him nearly thirty minutes of driving around to find Building Six within a compound of similar nondescript three-story brick structures that housed federal agencies and outposts.

She sized him up: studying his red uniform shirt, pronghorn sleeve patch, the badge that read GAME WARDEN 21, and the brass rectangular J. PICKETT nameplate over his breast pocket.

“What brings you to Denver?” she asked.

“I’m working on a case. I was hoping I could take a few minutes of your time.”

“Put your hat back on and follow me,” she said with a sly grin.

He followed.

When he looked over his shoulder at the receptionist, he could tell that she was puzzled by the warm reception as well.

—

“MY FATHER was a game warden in Montana,” Raymer said as she gestured toward an empty visitor’s chair in her office. There was no window, and the fluorescent lighting was harsh. The walls on each side of the room were lined with books and manuals. He noted a credenza filled with framed photos of her husband, her four towheaded children—two boys and two girls—and the entire family on a white-water rafting trip.

“I grew up moving around the state,” she said. “I was born in Choteau, went to grade school in Hamilton, middle school in Ekalaka, and high school in Missoula and Great Falls. We followed my dad from place to place. I don’t think he ever made more than twenty-four thousand dollars in a year, but I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything. Have you moved your kids around like that—provided you have some?”

“I do,” Joe said. “Three girls. My wife and I bounced around Wyoming until I got the Saddlestring District up in the Bighorns. I was stationed in Jackson and Baggs for a short time, but that’s a long story.”

“The Bighorns are nice country,” Raymer said. “They remind me of Montana. And what Colorado used to be,” she added with a gentle smile. He liked her.

“I’m surprised you just showed up,” she said.

He nodded.

“And what can I do for you?”

Joe explained finding the dead sage grouse—she cringed—and the gathering of the evidence. He left out the name Revis Wentworth but told her he had a suspicion the evidence had been tampered with or not sent at all.

She shook her head, puzzled.

“I know,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to believe. But I was hoping I could take a look at the package, provided it was received at all. I didn’t call ahead and make an appointment because I didn’t want to tip anyone off.”

“You want to take it out of our chain of custody?” she asked.

“That’s not necessary. I just want to see if it’s here and what’s inside. I don’t want to take it back.”

She closed one eye and said, “This is an odd request. No one has ever asked me to do this sort of thing before. We can’t just open up sealed evidence to the general public, even if you are law enforcement. I’m sure there are rules about this.”

“There probably are,” Joe said. “But I was kind of hoping we could stay out of the rule book on this. I know if you ask somebody in Washington, their first response will be ‘Don’t do anything until we get a ruling on it.’ That could take months. I don’t have months.”

She laughed. “You have some experience dealing with government agencies.”

“I’m in one myself,” he said.

She drummed her fingers on her desk for a minute and looked toward her bookcase, as if seeking an answer.

“I’m surprised you’ve gone to all this trouble,” she said.

He sighed. “It’s a high priority for my director and the governor. We’re talking sage grouse, remember?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. Then: “I don’t get involved with the politics of all this. But I do know there is some concern if this bird gets listed as an endangered species.”

“I try not to get involved, either, but I can’t help it. And when it comes to sage grouse, there’s a lot of concern,” Joe said.

Finally, she said, “I guess it won’t hurt anything to see if we even received it.”

“How could it?” Joe said eagerly.

She booted up her computer. While they waited for the ancient desktop PC to become functional, she said, “I used to ride around with my dad sometimes. It was interesting to see him interact with all kinds of people.”

“I’ve taken my oldest daughter out with me,” Joe said.

“He could have gotten other jobs that paid more and weren’t as dangerous. In fact, I know he interviewed for a couple in Helena after he was wounded in the leg by an elk poacher. But in the end, I think he decided he couldn’t sit at a desk all day. Like me.”

“He’s a man after my own heart,” Joe said.

“He died last year,” she said.

Her eyes filled and she looked quickly away.

Joe said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He had a heart attack riding his old mule, Blue. That’s the mule he used to patrol with before he retired.”

Joe nodded.

“I think he died happy,” she added ruefully.

“I’ll bet he was happy for you, being the director of this whole operation,” Joe said.

“He was,” she said with a chuckle. “He said I was the only fed he ever liked.”

Joe smiled.

—

“HERE,” SHE SAID, jabbing at the screen. “A package was sent from Agent Revis Wentworth in Saddlestring, Wyoming. It arrived over the weekend, and I assume it’s in receiving.”

Joe arched his eyebrows.

She said, “I suppose we can go look at it. But I don’t want you touching anything or contaminating the evidence in any way, even if it’s inadvertent.”

“I understand,” Joe said.

He stood up and stepped aside so she could pass.

“Receiving is in the basement,” she said over her shoulder as they made their way down the nondescript hallway. As she walked, she pulled on her white lab coat.

—

THE SMALL CARDBOARD evidence box was among several others in a canvas bag on a rolling cart. Joe recognized it as Raymer raised it out of the bag and placed it on a stainless-steel counter. The only other person in the receiving room was a Hispanic staffer who shot surreptitious glances at them over the top of his computer monitor.

“That’s it,” Joe said. “But it’s been opened and retaped.”

Raymer paused and said, “You’re sure?”

He nodded. “That’s my clear plastic tape under the new strapping tape he used. He must have cut it open and resealed it.”

“Who would have done this?”

“The man who sent it to you.”

“Why would he do that?” she asked. She was genuinely curious.

“Because I believe he is trying to contaminate the evidence so he can steer us away from who really did the shooting.”

She stood back and put her hands on her hips. She kept her voice in an urgent whisper so the staffer couldn’t overhear. “Are you telling me one of our own agents is trying to derail a case?”

“I’m not telling you that,” Joe said. “I’m following up a theory.”

She shushed him to keep his voice down.

“Maybe you could open it up,” Joe whispered. “I’ll know when I see what’s inside.”

She feigned impatience with him as she pulled on a pair of white rubber gloves from a dispenser of them and reached for a box cutter.

“Stand back,” she cautioned.

Joe didn’t approach her, but he did raise his height by balancing on the balls of his feet so he could see inside the box when she opened it.

“Shotgun shells,” she said, plucking several out and placing them on the counter. “A beer can. A CD. A bag of dirt and some sage grouse feathers.”

Then she looked up at Joe and said, “That’s all.”

He nodded and studied the items. He said, “These shell casings look weathered. They look weeks old—like they’ve been out in the sun and rain. I’m sure you can confirm that with testing. The ones I found were only a day or two old. The beer can and the feathers look like what I put in the box. No need to change them out. But who knows what’s on the CD? I still have the original photos on my camera, so we can compare what I shot with what’s on the disc.”

She hesitated, then said to the curious staffer, “Juan, I need to use your computer for a minute. Isn’t it time for your break?”

As Juan gathered up his things, Joe said to her, “You might want to dust that disc for prints just to see if mine are on it.”

She looked at him with a withering glance that said, I know how to do this job.

Joe responded by putting his palms in the air in an apology.

But she dusted the disc. There were no prints.

“He wore gloves,” Joe said. “I’m not that clever.”

—

THE PHOTOS on the CD of the tire tracks didn’t match the ones from the memory stick on Joe’s camera. Unlike the shots he had taken in the killing field, the ones on the CD were of tire tracks squished through a grassy bog.

“Now look at this,” Joe said, urging her to advance through the photos on his memory stick. She clucked her tongue while she toggled back and forth between the tracks on the sagebrush flat and the tread pattern of the tire on Wentworth’s government pickup.

“These appear to match up,” she said. “Further analysis is needed to confirm it, though.”

“And the photos on the disc are obviously not taken in the same location,” Joe said.

He pointed out the differences to Kelsea Raymer and she remarked on the disparity of the vegetation.

“He probably took those right off the edge of the parking lot of the Holiday Inn,” Joe said. “And the shells probably came from the back of some oil-field worker’s truck parked at the same hotel in Saddlestring. Believe me, I could wander through that lot myself and gather spent brass casings, shotgun shells, and beer cans out of twenty different trucks.”

“Oh my,” she said.

—

“THE TIRES IN MY PHOTO belong to a government truck,” Joe said.

She winced as if he’d poked her with a pin, then said, “I still don’t have enough evidence here to make any conclusions.”

“I agree,” Joe said. “But I can. I know what I packed in that box and I know that what was sent to you was tampered with.”

She rolled her chair back. “It’s not my job to investigate agency personnel,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to investigate,” Joe said. “In fact, you need to handle this the way you’re supposed to handle it. All I ask is that you lock this box away along with the memory stick for my camera. If a guy named Revis Wentworth wants it back, I hope you’ll throw up some bureaucratic roadblocks. You know, play dumb or tell him you’re researching his request.”

“That’s his name? The agent who did this?”

Joe nodded.

“I’ve heard of him,” she said. “He’s supposed to be a sage grouse expert.”

“Oh, he is,” Joe said.

“But why would he do something like this?” she asked. “His job is to protect the species, not endanger it.”

Joe told her Lucy’s observation. While he did, Raymer shook her head in disbelief.

“If he did this, I hope he gets arrested,” she said. “I don’t like the thought of people like that in our agency.”

“Good for you,” Joe said. “Now I have another request.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“I have his shotgun in my pickup and two spent shells I picked up out in the field that I didn’t put into the original evidence box. I had completely forgotten about them until this morning, when I saw them rolling around in the back of my truck. You might be able to pull a couple of prints, or at least partials, off of the brass of the two shells. I think you’ll find that the shotgun and the primer stamp on the spent shells match up. That will prove that he did the shooting.”

She shook her head. “It might prove it to you, but it doesn’t prove anything to me. All of this—all of it—is based on your assumptions.”

Joe said, “That’s right.”

Raymer’s phone chimed from a pocket in her lab coat and she instinctively drew it out and looked at the screen.

“How interesting,” she said. “I just got an email from Revis Wentworth.”

Joe smiled.

“He’s asking me to confirm that we received a box of evidence in an important case,” she said. “And he cautions me that, because of the magnitude of the crime, I may be contacted by local law enforcement attempting to influence our findings. I assume that would be you,” she said, looking up.

“Yup.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“Nope. He’s trying to run interference. He’s desperate.”

She dropped the phone back in her pocket and looked at Joe squarely.

“So you’re going to turn over every piece of evidence you have to me? The shells and the shotgun and the memory stick? How can you build your case if all of the evidence for it is here locked away in Denver?”

He said, “Because I trust you to keep it until we need it.”

She cocked her head. “Why?”

“Because you’re from Montana and your dad was a game warden,” Joe said.

—

JOE HATED DENVER TRAFFIC and he kept both of his hands on the wheel and his pickup in the far right lane as cars zipped around him. It was as if every driver on the five-lane freeway had just downed three shots of vodka and had been handed the keys to Daddy’s sports car. When his cell phone rang, he ignored it until he was nearly ten miles north of the city and the traffic finally eased up.

Marybeth.

She said, “The hospital called and the swelling on April’s brain has gone down.”

Joe blew out a breath of relief.

“They want to try and bring her out of it tonight or tomorrow. I need to be there, Joe.”

“Of course you do,” he said.

“I’m taking Sheridan and Lucy with me,” she said. “They want to see their sister. They want to be there when she comes out of it.”

Joe paused for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to frame his words, when Marybeth did it for him: “We talked it all out this morning. They know she may never be April again. They know that this may turn out to be one of the most difficult experiences of their lives, and so do I. But we have to be there, Joe.”

He said, “I’m on my way, but you should all go now. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

“I’ll keep you posted after I talk to the doctors,” she said.

Near Fort Collins, he called the governor’s office. He used the private number Rulon had given him and the call went straight to voicemail.

Joe said, “We’ve got the goods on Wentworth. He slaughtered Lek Sixty-four and tried to cover it up.

“On another matter, I might be out of touch for a few days. There’s news on my daughter’s condition. The news could be good or bad.”