Stone Cold

2

A month later, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett winced against an icy wind in his face as he stood with his hands jammed into his parka pockets on the top of a treeless mountain in the Bighorn Range.

“Come on,” he shouted to the tow truck driver, “you can do it.” He knew his words had been snatched away by the wind.

The driver was named Dave Farkus, and he’d had no idea when he took the part-time job at a local towing and recovery company in Saddlestring that it would mean taking his leased one-ton up a steep mountain switchback road to the very top as the first big snow of the winter rolled across the northern horizon, headed straight toward them. Farkus had managed to get his 1997 Ford F-450 truck turned around and had backed up to the edge of the snowfield, but he was obviously having second thoughts about trying to retrieve the vehicle that was buried deep seventy yards away. All that could be seen of the buried pickup — Joe’s departmental vehicle until he’d sunk it to the top of the wheel wells on an ill-fated run across the field two years before — was the dented top of its green cab and several radio antennas whipping back and forth in the wind. Farkus looked over at Joe through his closed passenger-side window and gestured with a what-can-I-possibly-do-now? shrug.

“Unwind the cable,” Joe shouted, using his hands to mimic the action so Farkus could understand. Farkus pretended he couldn’t and looked at Joe with the uncomprehending stare of Joe’s yellow Labrador, Daisy.

Joe and Farkus had spent the last hour digging with shovels through the hard crust of snow around the back of the pickup until they located the rear bumper. While Joe continued digging until he uncovered the rear wheel, Farkus had walked back to his truck to bring it closer. He had taken an inordinate amount of time while Joe labored. The snow beneath the crust was grainy and loose, and for every shovelful he threw out, a half-shovelful filled in the hole. Beneath his insulated Carhartt overalls, Wranglers, red uniform shirt, and parka, he was sweating hard by the time Farkus showed up. The wind was cutting through it all, though, and he was chilled as he waited for Farkus to do something. He was afraid the strong wind was sifting the snow back into the hole he’d dug and would fill it up, at the rate they were proceeding.

Joe groaned and made his way to the tow truck and climbed inside. It felt good to get out of the wind into the warm interior, although it smelled of fast-food wrappers, grease, diesel fuel, his own sweat, and Farkus.

The view through the windshield was stunning, now that he could look at it clearly without squinting his eyes against the wind. Frozen blue-black waves of mountain summits stretched as far as he could see at eye level. Many were topped with white skullcaps of snow that had not melted during the summer, and between the ranges were deep wooded ravines and canyons that dropped out of sight. They were at least nine and a half thousand feet in elevation, above the timberline, where the only life was the scaly blue-green lichen on the sides of exposed granite boulders. The approaching storm clouds, rolling from the north with black fists, looked ominous.

He pulled his parka hood back and said, “We’re going to need to take your hook and cable out there and wrap it around the rear axle. Then you can power up the winch to pull it out.”

“That truck is buried deep,” Farkus said, bugging his eyes with exasperation. “What if we try and it pulls my outfit into the snowfield with that storm coming? We might never get out.”

“There’s only one way we’ll find that out.”

Dave Farkus was fifty-eight and pear-shaped, with rheumy eyes, jowls, thick muttonchop sideburns that had birthed a full beard, and a bulbous nose. He worked hard at not working hard, but he’d shown an uncanny ability to get caught in the middle of several conflicts that had involved Joe as well. He wore a thick grease-stained down coat and a flocked bomber hat with earflaps that hung down on each side. Tributaries of frozen snot ran down his whiskers from his nostrils from helping Joe dig out the back of the truck.

“Joe… if I wreck this truck or leave it up here like you did…”

“No whining,” Joe said. “You owe me this, remember?”

“Aw, jeez,” Farkus said, sitting back and shaking his head. “That’s not even fair.”

Fifteen months before, Joe had helped Farkus by shepherding him out of Savage Run Canyon during an epic forest fire that had blackened thousands of acres of timber. Farkus had been injured at the time, and Joe’s actions had saved his life. Joe didn’t particularly like Farkus, and Farkus didn’t particularly like Joe. But in the hospital under sedation, Farkus had said to Joe, “If there’s anything I can ever do for you, just ask.”

And Joe had asked, once he found out Farkus had had to go back to work when his disability claims had finally been denied by the state workers’-compensation division.

“How long has the damn thing been up here?” Farkus asked.

“Two years,” Joe said. And one month.

“I’m sure the state has written it off by now. Who the hell cares if we even get it out?”

“I do,” Joe said.

Joe had been at the wheel, trying to drive across the perennial snowfield to connect with his friend Nate Romanowski when he’d buried his departmental vehicle. The ridge overlooked the South Fork of the Twelve Sleep River far below, where Nate was about to get into a gun battle that would change the course of his life. Joe had to abandon his vehicle and climb down the mountain on foot. The snows had come before he could convince a vehicle-recovery company to try and retrieve it. The summer before, another recovery company had made it as far as the summit before turning back, saying they couldn’t risk damaging their equipment on such a foolish mission. Joe had lost another entire year because the fire the summer before had blocked the access road and littered it with downed burned trees.

Joe wondered again, as he had constantly over the last year, where Nate was now, what he was doing. And whether he would ever see him again.

Farkus tried again: “Why don’t we say we tried and go home before this storm hits?”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“Why in the hell do you care so much about a wreck on top of a mountain?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Joe said. He wasn’t willing to tell Farkus that he was on very thin ice with his new director, Lisa Greene-Dempsey, who never failed to mention that Joe Pickett was responsible for more real actual property damage than any other employee of the agency. She’d soon issue another year-end report with his name at the top of the list unless Joe could mitigate the cost by bringing back at least the last of his wrecked pickups.

“I’ll go with you, come on,” Joe said. “Let’s go hook that cable on and get it out of here. Then we can get off the top before the storm hits.”

As he spoke, he felt the vibration of his cell phone deep in his breast pocket beneath the parka. Cell service was spotty in the mountains, and it surprised him. A few seconds later, there was another call. He didn’t want to take it, though, because he didn’t want to give Farkus another excuse to delay.

“If I wreck this truck, my boss will take it out of my hide,” Farkus said. “I could lose my job.”

“Since when have you wanted a job, anyway?” Joe asked. “Now, let’s go.”

“That was mean,” Farkus said.

It took nearly an hour of winching, digging, repositioning the tow truck, and reattaching the hook and cable to free the pickup and drag it out of the snowfield and position it on the wheel lift of the truck.

Joe’s satisfaction on getting his old pickup out sank by degrees when he watched it get winched through the snowfield. The pickup was a wreck. The windows had been crushed inward by the weight and pressure of the snow, and the cab was packed with it. He couldn’t even see the steering wheel inside. The sidewalls were dented and the rear left tire was flat. He could only guess at the condition of the motor and drivetrain after being encased in ice for two years. If anything, the pickup might provide some parts, but it would likely never be put into service again. Meaning he’d still top the list.

Farkus cursed under his breath as they cinched the nylon web ties on the rear wheels of the pickup.

“Okay,” Farkus hollered, when the straps were tight. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Give me a minute,” Joe said, stepping back to the cab and opening the driver’s-side door.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“Checking something,” Joe said, digging out handfuls of snow from inside until he could reach behind the bench seat and feel around. It was still there.

He closed the door and climbed back into the cab of the tow truck with Farkus.

“What was that all about?”

“Never mind,” Joe said, relieved.

“We’re getting off this damned mountain with our lives,” Farkus said.

“We’ve done it before,” Joe smiled.

“It’s barely November. And it’s snowing.”

“It always snows up here.”

“But I’m sick of it!” Farkus said, hitting the cracked dashboard with the heel of his hand in anger. “I want to move someplace where it’s warm and flat. I’m sick of mountains and this damned horrible weather. I want to see long-legged women in bikinis! Most of all, I’m sick of having guns pointed at me and animals falling out of the sky and nearly drowning. Do you know how much my hospital bills are?”

“No. But when did you start paying your bills?”

“Just stop it, Joe, goddamnit.”

As Joe scooped packed snow from his cuffs and the collar of his shirt, he remembered the calls he’d received earlier and dug out his phone.

One from Governor Rulon’s office. The other from his oldest daughter, Sheridan, a junior at the University of Wyoming. Rulon had left a message Joe wouldn’t be able to retrieve until they cleared the timber and got back on the highway, where there would be cell reception. Sheridan, typical of kids her age, hadn’t. In fact, Sheridan rarely used her phone as a phone. It was more of a texting device.

Both calls had come completely out of the blue.

The falling snow lightened in volume as Farkus maneuvered the tow truck down the mountain. Because the wreck on the back made the truck longer, Farkus had to carefully negotiate sharp turns in the burned timber to stay on the road. Twice, Joe could hear the body of the old truck scraping against tree trunks and damaging it further. Because many of the trees were standing dead, Joe feared the impact might knock them over and crush the cab of the tow truck. He told Farkus to slow down and be more careful. Farkus threw up his hands and complained that they may not make it to the highway before it got dark.

“That’s why you have headlights,” Joe said.

“Still…”

“Try not to beat up that pickup or knock down any trees until we get on the road, please.”

“If you think it’s so damned easy, you can drive,” Farkus huffed.

Joe dismissed him and thought about Sheridan. For the past two months, she’d been the resident assistant at her dormitory at UW and they hadn’t heard much from her. She claimed to be wildly busy with school, activities, and managing a coed floor of freshmen. Sheridan’s tuition was paid by a trust established under duress by her grandmother Missy — Marybeth’s mother — although there were additional expenses Joe and Marybeth were responsible for. Sheridan communicated primarily through cryptic texts and cell phone photos of herself at football games and parties, which made Joe wince every time. It was unusual for her to actually call, and more unusual for her to call him.

“Finally, thank God,” Farkus muttered, as they turned from the rough mountain trail onto the two-lane state highway. “Where do we drop off this wreck?”

“My house.”

Joe lived in a small state-owned home on Bighorn Road, eight miles from Saddlestring. It was en route from the mountains.

“So who is going to pay me for this?”

“Give me your bill and I’ll send it in,” Joe said, distracted. He was waiting for the NO SERVICE indicator on his phone to give way to cell phone reception.

“Shit,” Farkus groaned, “I have to wait for the state to pay me? That’ll take months.”

“Maybe. Sorry.”

“Do I at least get a tip?”

Joe said, “Never trust a man who wears white shoes. There’s your tip.”

“Very fucking funny.”

Joe nodded.

“At least say we’re square now?” Farkus said.

“We’re square.”

Joe waited, staring at his phone.

“I’ve got to get on the Internet and look for someplace warm to live,” Farkus said. “Someplace with sun and an ocean I can look at. Maybe I can hook up with a boat captain and take rubes out deep-sea fishing. I haven’t tied a fly in months, but I could learn some of those exotic patterns and—”

“Excuse me,” Joe said, turning away. Two reception bars had appeared on the display screen of his phone, and he called Sheridan first.

The message said, “Please enjoy the music while your party is reached,” and launched into a bad song from a bad group Joe had never heard before. He sighed, waited, and left a brief message that he was returning her call and that she should call him back or wait twenty minutes and call the house. She never answered her phone on the first attempt, and like every college student Joe knew, she didn’t have a landline in her dorm room.

As soon as he rang off, Farkus continued on as if he’d never stopped. “I’ve been reading about these bonefish out in the salt flats. They feed on little crabs, I guess, and all a man needs to do is learn how to tie an imitation crab on a big-ass number-two or — four hook. It looks easy to me, much easier than these complicated little trout patterns on a size-twenty-two—”

Joe said, “Give it a rest, Dave. I’ve got to check a message from the governor.”

Farkus shut up mid-sentence. “Our governor? Rulon?”

“Yup.”

“Well, ain’t you the big shot?” Farkus said, whistling. Then, as Joe punched in his message code, Farkus mocked him: “I’m Joe Pickett and I’m so important I’ve got to check a message from the governor—”

“Please shut up.”

Joe listened to the message.

“This is Lois Fornstrom from Governor Rulon’s office.” She was the governor’s personal secretary. “Governor Rulon requests the pleasure of your company — that’s how he put it — tomorrow morning in his office. He said to tell you he’s sending his plane to the Saddlestring Airport at nine with a return to Cheyenne tomorrow and he’d like you to be on it. He said the matter was important and he doesn’t really care if you don’t like flying. You’re to meet with the governor for twenty minutes and you’ll be flown back in the evening so you can pack.”

That was all. Pack? For what?

Joe said, “Uh-oh.”

“Sounds like trouble,” Farkus said with a wicked grin.

“Yup.”

Joe stared out the passenger window of the tow truck as Farkus drove down Bighorn Road. Small herds of mule deer looked back from just inside the trees as dusk melded into darkness, and for a quarter of a mile a coyote ran parallel to the truck in the borrow pit before veering off into the brush.

He’d been wondering when Rulon would call.

It had been over a year since he’d quit his job with a combination of anger and sorrow, thinking he could no longer work for the bureaucracy. That, and his new director, LGD, who had told him of her plans to modernize the agency and bring him in from the field to work at her side at a desk in Cheyenne. Leaving law enforcement had also allowed him to complete a case against a federal official who would have been tough to nail within the system.

When it was done, he’d looked up and considered his family finances — his wife, Marybeth, had just lost a business opportunity to renovate a grand old hotel in the heart of town and would return to her part-time job at the library; he had one daughter in college, and both their ward April and youngest daughter, Lucy, were on the way; their savings would last them three months at the most; and he couldn’t imagine starting over in a new career at his age. Joe refused to even consider public assistance of any kind, or unemployment benefits. Plus, he loved his job as a game warden — being out in the field every day in his pickup or on horseback or in a boat. He knew the land, the wildlife, and the rhythms of his district as if they were his second family. Every morning, he looked forward to pulling on his red uniform shirt with the pronghorn antelope patch on the sleeve, clamping on his weathered Stetson, and gathering his gear and weapons — and his dog — to take out to his pickup in the predawn light.

Luckily for Joe, Governor Rulon had always had a soft spot for him, even though he wasn’t sure why. And once again, the governor had slipped him his card in a moment of crisis and said, “Call me.”

Joe had. Within a week, he was a game warden again and had retained badge number twenty-one, meaning his seniority in the department was twenty-first of the fifty-two wardens working in the state. Over the objections of Director LGD (Joe had heard through the grapevine), Rulon instituted a fifteen percent salary increase for Joe from his own discretionary funds and added the title special liaison to the executive branch to Joe’s job description. He’d called the governor’s office at the time to ask what that meant. Joe recalled the conversation as if it had just happened.

“This new title—” Joe started to ask, but he was cut off by Rulon, who was doughy, red-faced, charismatic, unpredictable, and a year into his second and final term of office.

“Fancy, huh? Sounds official as hell, doesn’t it?” the governor said so loudly Joe had to move the phone away from his ear. Joe had learned years before Rulon didn’t simply talk. He boomed.

“But what does it mean, exactly?”

“Hell if I know. I’m still figuring it out.”

“Do I report to you, or to the director, or what?” Joe asked.

“You still report to your director. Nothing changes, except I’d like you to stay out of trouble with her so you don’t make me look like a buffoon for this. Can you do that?”

“I hope so.”

“Keep your nose clean, Dudley Do-Right,” the governor said, chuckling at his own joke.

“I do appreciate this.”

“You should,” Rulon said. “It’s one of those things I probably never should have done. But hell, I only have three years left and what can the bastards possibly do to me now?”

Joe didn’t know which bastards. Rulon faced lots of them, according to Rulon. Legislators, environmentalists, lobbyists, industry hacks, but most of all the Feds. According to Rulon, they were assaulting him in human-wave attacks, even though he was of the same party affiliation. Democrats were a rare breed in Wyoming, but Rulon was immensely popular.

“So,” Joe asked, “why me?”

“Ha!” Rulon laughed. “Why do you think? I’m a terrific judge of men and character. That’s how I got where I am. And you, Joe, have the uncanny ability to irritate the right people and cause havoc when you bore in like a pit bull. I want you to do that for me if I ask.”

Suddenly, it was clear.

“Think of yourself, once again, as my range rider,” Rulon said. “I’m the benevolent and kindly ranch owner, and you’re the hired gun I send out to solve my problems. You did it before, and you can do it again.”

Joe said, “You exiled me last time, if you’ll remember.”

“Had to!” Rulon said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “It was reelection time and you were stinking up the joint with your hijinks. We had to hide you for a while. But that’s behind us now.”

Joe was speechless.

“Just be ready,” Rulon said, already distracted with something else on his desk by the way his attention had flagged. “If I call, you need to respond. It could be anything and at any time. LGD will understand — sort of. So cowboy up and be my range rider and make me proud!”

With that, the governor slammed down his phone.

Joe had been waiting ever since.

They released the old truck on the side of Joe’s garage and Farkus roared away toward town on Bighorn Road. When he was gone, Joe opened the driver’s door again and dug out the frozen urn of his father’s ashes that he’d left behind the seat years before. He’d never known where to spread them — no place seemed right—and he’d stashed them behind the seat until he could figure it out.

It was his father’s last dirty trick, sticking his son with his ashes and not enough good memories to determine a proper place to leave them. Even so, Joe didn’t want the urn to be discarded or sold by a used-parts dealer somewhere.

He put the urn on his workbench in the garage to deal with later.

A gleaming black late-model pickup with Texas plates was in front of Joe’s house. He’d never seen the truck before, and his guard was up as he pushed through the front gate toward the door. All the lights were on in the house and Marybeth’s van and April’s new acquisition — a fifteen-year-old Jeep Cherokee — were parked on either side of the Texas pickup.

He never knew who might be waiting for him at his house because it also served as the local game warden station. Hunters, fishermen, and locals often simply dropped by, wanting him to personally explain regulations, mediate disputes, or lobby for some kind of action. It was a burden on Marybeth because she had to serve as a kind of unpaid receptionist and assistant, and something his girls had grown up with: having strangers — sometimes covered with blood — simply show up at their door.

There was an animated conversation going on in the living room when he entered the mudroom and hung up his parka and unlaced his Sorel winter pac boots. April was chattering away, and a male voice was laughing and urging her on.

Joe didn’t like that.

April had recently turned eighteen and was a senior at Saddlestring High. Despite a very troubled past and an antagonistic relationship with both Joe and especially Marybeth, she had turned a corner the year before and become… a cowgirl. She worked after school at Welton’s Western Wear, one of the oldest retail stores in operation in Saddlestring, selling hats, boots, belts, yoked cowboy shirts, jeans, and outerwear to locals and tourists alike. She’d gone from troubled Goth to bubbly cowgirl so quickly it’d left both Joe and Marybeth almost breathless. Joe had expected the phase to end, but it hadn’t. In fact, April had embraced the new April to the point that she now socialized almost exclusively with the cowboy clique at school and seemed to have withdrawn from the Goth and slacker cliques entirely. It was as if she’d stepped out of an old uniform and pulled on a new one, and her persona had changed as well. She had blossomed from a morose and bitter girl with black fingernails to one who wore Cruel Girl jeans, square-toed turquoise Fatbaby boots, bejeweled belts, and tight western tops that showcased her buxom figure in a way Joe found alarming. The young cowboys felt otherwise. They flocked around her at school and work and sometimes drove by the house at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of her through her bedroom window.

Warily, Joe entered the living room.

April sat sidewise on one end of the couch with her legs tucked under her, leaning forward attentively toward a compact young man in a black cowboy hat on the other end of the couch as if at any moment she might spring at him.

She looked at Joe and her eyes brightened and she said, “Daddy!”

April had never called Joe Daddy before in his life. He was taken aback.

“Daddy, this is my”—she giggled at her hesitation—“friend Dallas. Dallas Cates.”

She said the name with a triumphant whoop.

The young man jumped to his feet and turned with a practiced grin on his face. He was shorter than Joe but had wider shoulders and biceps that strained at the fabric of his snap-button western shirt. He was lean and hard, and his face looked to be constructed of a series of smooth, flat white rocks — sharp cheekbones, wide jaw, heavy brow. There was a two-inch scar on his left cheek that tugged at the edge of his mouth in an inadvertent sneer. His neck was as wide as his jaw and projected raw physical power.

Cates’s belt buckle was the size of a silver saucer, Joe thought.

The young man removed his hat with a graceful swoop of his left hand and pressed the brim to his breast while he reached out with his right to Joe.

“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pickett,” he said as he gripped Joe’s hand a little too hard.

Dallas Cates was a local legend, and Joe had run into him before. Cates had graduated from high school a few years before after winning the National High School Finals Rodeo three times in a row in bull riding. He was also a former state wrestling champion. An amazing athlete, Cates had had his pick of rodeo scholarships and had chosen the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he won the College National Finals Rodeo his first two years before quitting and going pro and moving to Stephenville, Texas, where so many other national rodeo cowboys lived. People in Saddlestring and throughout the state followed and tracked his weekly winnings the way southern NASCAR fans followed the Sprint Cup Series.

But that wasn’t all there was to Dallas Cates.

“What are you doing in my house?” Joe asked without a smile.

Cates’s grin didn’t lose its wattage, but something hardened in his eyes and he didn’t let go of his grip on Joe’s hand.

“Daddy!” April cried, jumping up to intervene as if she planned to wedge herself between them. “Don’t embarrass me like that. Dallas came into Welton’s this afternoon to say hello to everybody. Wrangler has him touring stores in the country for its boot-cut jeans. He stood right next to that life-size promotional display we have of him and took pictures with everybody. I told him about Mom’s horses and he said he’d like to see them someday, so I invited him out tonight. That’s all.” Somehow, she remained cheerful during the explanation, Joe thought. Where had the old April gone?

Joe said, “So if you’ve seen them, I guess you’ll be going.”

Cates looked to April and arched his eyebrows in a questioning way.

“Of course he won’t be going right away,” April said, playfully prying Joe’s and Cates’s hands apart. “He might even stay for dinner.”

“That sounds like a nonstarter,” Joe said flatly.

Lucy, their sixteen-year-old high school sophomore and a blond, lithe dead ringer for a younger Marybeth, appeared in the hallway with a textbook and her homework, likely on her way to ask Marybeth a question. When she saw April and Dallas Cates, she haughtily rolled her eyes, spun on her heel in a perfect one-eighty, and marched straight back to her room.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that, Lucy,” April called after her.

Lucy’s bedroom door slammed so hard, pictures on the walls jumped.

“She’s the annoying one I told you about,” April said to Cates, who shrugged. Joe noticed Cates’s eyes had lingered on Lucy for a beat too long.

April turned back to Joe, her face expectant: “And there’s something I need to ask you and Mom.”

“Now probably isn’t the best time,” Cates cautioned, turning his attention from the hallway to April.

“It’s about the NFR in Las Vegas next month…”

Before Joe could object or April could make her case for attending the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, Marybeth stepped into the kitchen doorway and said sharply, “Joe, can I talk to you for a minute?”

As he entered the kitchen in a dark rage, she kissed him on the cheek and said, “Welcome home.”

Joe grunted.

“The testosterone was getting so thick in there I could cut it with a knife.”