Stone Cold

22

After finally locating the red baling twine ties, Joe secured the wires he’d lowered so he could pass through. That he’d located Nate disturbed him. Although he wanted to see his friend again, he didn’t want to encounter him, given the circumstances.

He was pleased he knew more about the Sand Creek Ranch itself, and wondered if the arrival of Templeton’s love interest would cause them to lower their guard for a few days. He doubted it. He wished that at least a few more of his shots had come out more clearly than they had, and he hoped the techs at the FBI could find something on them to help establish probable cause for a raid. But he doubted that, too.

The night cooled considerably as he rode the ATV back down the mountain, and he’d stopped to pull on his buckskin gloves and Filson vest. When he reached the Black Forest Inn, it was dark and quiet except for randomly lit windows and the thumping bass from the jukebox in the saloon.

Joe skirted the inn grounds and kept to the trails in the trees until he was halfway between the hunting lodge and the town of Wedell. He braked and shut off the engine and drank half of a bottle of water and looked at his watch.

Midnight.

He was surprised how much time his sojourn had taken. It was too late to do much more than text Marybeth that he was okay and would call tomorrow when he could. Obviously, if she’d learned more about Erik Young, there would have been a series of voicemails or messages.

With his thumbs punching the letters clumsily in the cold, he wrote to Chuck Coon: Templeton has thousands of acres to bury bodies. What do you need for PC to search it?

PC meaning “probable cause.”

He wondered if Coon would see the text before morning.

Joe parked the atv at the abandoned orchard and walked the rest of the way to the Whispering Pines. He was exhausted. His intention was to open the back window, retrieve Daisy and his packed duffel bag of clothes, and drive back to the Black Forest Inn to stay the night. He figured he’d have one day while the Game and Fish truck sat out in the parking lot before they’d realize something was off — maybe he was sick or injured or awaiting instructions in his room? — before trying to smoke him out. Joe wondered who they’d send to check on him and thought Anna would be the most likely.

By then, he hoped, Chuck Coon and his special agents would have enough background and probable cause to swoop northward to take over the investigation. As far as Joe was concerned, it wouldn’t be soon enough.

But there was a problem, and at first he thought his tired eyes were playing tricks on him.

Through the last trees and brush before he reached the back of his cabin, he could view his pickup parked by itself in the lot under the illumination of a single blue-white pole light. Someone was underneath it, on their back with arms extended, reaching up toward the engine.

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes and looked again. Yup.

Joe dropped to his haunches. He reached out and used the palm of his hand to bend a caragana bough down far enough to see over it. Not only was there one man beneath his truck, he could see the ankles and boots of another who was standing or squatting on the other side of his vehicle, as if keeping watch on Joe’s cabin. He could see neither man clearly enough to make an identification.

Joe heard the clink of metal on metal from beneath the undercarriage. The man underneath was using hand tools.

Why else would someone be underneath his pickup after midnight? They were obviously dismantling a part in his motor or drive-train… or installing something to his vehicle, whether a tracking device or explosives. He thought, They couldn’t burn me out like they did the DCI agent. It would be too obvious. So this time they were trying a new tack. Which meant his suspicions about the electronic surveillance in his cabin had turned out to be correct and had roused the attention of… somebody.

He shifted until he could see the whole of the parking lot. Anna B.’s Jeep was parked where it always was on the side of the office. No lights were on in her rooms. There were no other vehicles in the lot besides his. Yet…

Whoever it was doing something to his truck couldn’t have simply walked there, he thought. No one walked in Wedell. No one walked in Wyoming. Their vehicle had to be parked nearby.

Keeping low, Joe scrambled backward until he was sure he was out of view from the lot. Then he stood up and looked around. He cursed himself for leaving his shotgun in the scabbard of the ATV, and wished he hadn’t removed the .40 Glock he’d tucked into his belt on the small of his back earlier because it was uncomfortable to ride with.

He moved cautiously toward the access road to the motel, sidestepping from tree to tree. The brush on his side of the borrow pit was thick enough to keep him concealed from the road, although he feared the dry fall leaves would rattle as he pushed his way through them.

He could see a vehicle parked in the dark on the far side of the road. It was a blocky SUV pointed uphill. It was located in deep shadow under a canopy of pine so even the stars and moon couldn’t reach it. It was too dark to see if anyone else was inside, but he could tell it was light-colored and had a bike or luggage rack of some kind on the roof.

Joe waited, worrying about himself and his dog. If Daisy heard or sensed the men outside and started barking, it could scare them off and confirm in their minds he was inside. But he feared for her life if she barked. The men might panic and enter the cabin to shut her up. He couldn’t sit back and let them. If that happened, he knew he’d risk exposing himself — and his lack of weapons — to them.

There was a shaft of blue light from the pole lamp on his side of the borrow pit about seventy feet up the road where the turn-in for the motel was located. When the men at his truck were finished with whatever they were doing, he thought, they’d have to return to their SUV that way. He doubted they’d bushwhack their way back in the dark.

If they returned to the vehicle on the road, he’d see who they were.

Joe waited. Daisy didn’t bark.

Ten minutes later, Joe saw two forms enter the light shaft on their return to the parked SUV. He recognized the distinct brim fold in the taller man’s cowboy hat as the one worn by Bill Critchfield. He could see a three-quarter’s glimpse of Gene Smith’s profile as he entered and exited the light. Smith was carrying a small toolbox in his hand and swinging it slightly forward and back with each step.

Joe tried not to breathe as they neared him, and hoped they couldn’t somehow hear the beating of his heart, as he could.

Critchfield and Smith crossed over the road and surprised Joe by not opening the front doors to climb in. Instead, they split up at the front bumper of the vehicle and walked to the back doors and opened them. They’d used an unfamiliar vehicle to get to the Whispering Pines instead of Critchfield’s pickup.

When the doors opened, the dome light inside came on. In the near-total darkness, it was almost blinding.

But in the second or two it took for Critchfield and Smith to swing open their doors and slide in, Joe could see they weren’t alone.

Sheriff R. C. Mead sat behind the wheel. Next to him on the passenger seat was Jim Latta in civilian clothes. Latta’s expression was blank.

Joe closed his eyes and sighed. Latta.

Mead started the truck but kept his headlights off. Instead of pulling a U-turn, he backed into the road, bathing Joe in red backup lights, then cranked his wheel and rolled downhill. As he did, Joe heard muffled words being spoken from inside the vehicle but couldn’t make them out. Not until the SUV was out of sight below in the trees did its headlights flash on.

It wasn’t a luggage rack on top of the SUV, Joe realized, but the light bar of the sheriff’s department GMC Yukon.

First Nate, and now Mead and Latta, Joe thought. Who else would reveal he was on the wrong side tonight?

Joe was no mechanic, but it was obvious what they’d done to his pickup when he rolled under it with a mini Maglite in his teeth.

Smith had attached a cheap prepaid cell phone — the same make and model Joe had noticed at the Sundance convenience store — to the undercarriage of his pickup. It was secured with strips of electrician’s tape that had been rolled around the front axle. The phone was powered on but inert, and there were two wires — one red, one white — that snaked out from its plastic shell. Joe followed the wires from the phone as they looped around and through steel undergirders toward the mid-rear of the vehicle. There, they were jammed into what looked like a fist-sized lump of light gray clay that had been pressed against the outside sheet metal wall of the gas tank.

He stared at the assembly and thought about it. The clay was obviously plastic explosive, likely C-4 or Semtex. The wires fed into a thin silver tube — a blasting cap — inserted into the lump. The idea, he guessed, was to leave the bomb under his truck until they decided to trigger it with a remote call to the cell phone, which would activate the explosives in back and blow his truck in half using its own fuel. They wouldn’t even have to tail him — just be sure he was driving the roads of Medicine Wheel County, preferably on a series of steep switchbacks with cell reception — and hit the speed dial.

Then: Boom.

Conceivably, Joe would be injured or killed instantly or lose control of the vehicle and plunge off the mountain. The gasoline fire would consume the truck and melt away the components and render the cell phone unrecognizable.

Still, he thought, it was a sloppy and desperate act. There were holes in the plot. State and federal forensics units could determine the origin of the explosion, the specific brand of plastic, and maybe find the wires and cell phone detonator. The prepaid phone could possibly be traced to where it was purchased, and by whom.

Joe knew he’d gotten their attention. His first inclination was to go right back after them. Bill Critchfield and Gene Smith weren’t hard to find. But what would he do — arrest them and take them to the county jail, which was run by coconspirator R. C. Mead? Or in front of Judge Bartholomew, who also was likely in on the act?

And he didn’t dare try to call any backup. Latta was involved, and likely the town cops and sheriff’s deputies. A request made by dispatch through channels would be instantly heard by all the players.

In the past, he knew who he’d call for help: Nate Romanowski. But Nate had apparently crossed over as well.

Then he recalled his promise to Marybeth, and vowed to leave Medicine Wheel County the next day. The Feds and state boys could follow up.

The question, though, was whether he could keep himself safe until the big guns moved in to take over.

A thought hit him. What if the explosive had been planted not to kill him while he drove, but to be activated remotely to warn him off? And what if they decided to call the number on the cell phone at that moment, once the four men were far enough away not to be tied to the scene?

Joe felt his gut contract, and he stared at the cell phone, willing it not to light up with a call. He quickly scrambled back to the gas tank and reached up — his movements seemed incredibly slow in his mind — and pulled the blasting cap out of the lump. Then he switched ends and cut the cell phone loose from the tape and powered it off. If they tried to call now, he thought with relief, nothing would happen.

“Sorry, girl,” Joe said to Daisy on the bench seat of his truck as he drove out of the parking lot. “You’ve been cooped up all night. But you’re a lousy watchdog.”

She responded to the tone of his voice and not his words with a rhythmic thumping of her tail on the inside of the passenger door.

The bomb components were in a large plastic evidence bag on the floor of the cab. The cell phone was off and the wires and blasting cap weren’t attached to anything, but Joe was nervous about the lump of explosives. He drove extra-slowly to the apple orchard, avoiding potholes and rocks. He blew out a breath of relief when he reached his destination and killed the engine. But he made it a point not to slam his door shut, and eased it closed.

The move would puzzle his enemies, he figured. Anna would no doubt call them at dawn to report Joe missing, his pickup gone. A quick check of his room would reveal that he’d packed up and left during the night.

He wondered what they’d do. Would they try and locate him before calling the number on the cell phone under the pickup? Or would they panic and hold off until they knew it would be a clean kill? Either way, he figured, they’d be confused… and alarmed.

Joe convinced Daisy to hop up on the rear platform of the ATV. The key to his room at the hunting lodge was in his front pocket, and he couldn’t think of a better place to bunker in and get some sleep. He started the four-wheeler and began to pull away from his truck when a thought came to him that made him grin.

Then he cranked on the handlebars and returned to the pickup. If the C-4 was stable enough not to explode on the ride to the orchard, it was stable enough to survive a trail ride as well, he thought. But all the way to the Black Forest Inn he drove slowly and cautiously, avoiding rocks and bumps, in a cold sweat, despite the freezing air.

Overhead, a thick wall of storm clouds extinguished the stars as it advanced from the northwest.

There was no one at the front counter when Joe led Daisy into the lobby of the old hunting lodge, just as there had been no one about outside. He removed his hat and whapped it on his thigh to clear the half-inch of snow that had gathered on the brim. The door to the saloon was shut and locked, and the interior lights were muted. If the decades-old bull moose head on the wall could have seen through its dusty glass eyes, it would have beheld a dirty and disheveled man with a pair of ATV saddlebags over his shoulder, a shotgun in his hand, and a tired yellow Labrador on his boot heels.

Joe circled behind the lectern and checked the guest registry book. No Nate Romanowski. He saw where Alice had written Maint next to room 318, which corresponded to the key she’d given him. He guessed Maint meant “maintenance,” the reason she listed for not renting it out. All the other rooms in the lodge were full.

He nodded at his luck. For the hundred dollars cash that was now in Alice’s pocket, he had inadvertently gone off the grid.

Room 318 was small, dark, and smelled of carpet fungus and historic flatulence. The walls were fake wood-grain sheets of paneling that were blistered from a leaking roof or broken ceiling pipe. The double bed sagged in the middle and was lit by a naked low-wattage bulb that hung from a cord. The curtains were pulled across a tiny window, and they looked like they were made of lace. Obviously, Joe thought, Templeton’s men hadn’t renovated it yet.

Joe parted the curtains to find a view of the parking lot. The window opened roughly, but it was too small to climb through if it came to that.

The bolt on the lock didn’t fit snugly into the doorframe, despite Joe’s putting his shoulder to it. So in addition to attaching the chain lock — which was lamely held by two small screws to a three-quarter-inch strip of plywood — Joe wedged the top of the only hard-backed chair in the room under the knob. He dropped the saddlebags on the seat of the chair to give it some weight.

He plugged in his cell phone to recharge, then jacked a shell into the receiver of his shotgun and propped it in the corner near the headboard. The .40 Glock went on the floor on the right side of his bed so he could reach down in the dark and raise it quickly if necessary.

The bedsprings moaned as he flopped back on the bed fully dressed. It was two-thirty in the morning and the inn was quiet except for snoring sounds through the thin wall behind him.

If he was going to try to get some sleep, he thought, he had a three-hour window before hunters started getting up and pounding on one another’s doors and wrestling guns and gear down the hallways.

Joe shut off the light and closed his eyes but couldn’t will himself to sleep. Nate was in the hills, there’d been a bomb under his pickup, and in the morning Templeton’s minions would be looking for him.

He settled in for a short and miserable night.