Winterkill

PART ONE

Severe Winter Storm Warning One Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming Astorm was coming to the Bighorn Mountains.

It was late December, four days before Christmas, the last week of the elk hunting season. Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett was in his green four-wheel drive pickup, parked just below the tree line in the southern Wolf range. The terrain he was patrolling was an enormous wooded bowl, and Joe was just below the eastern rim. The sea of dark pines in the bowl was interspersed with ancient clear-cuts and mountain meadows, and set off by knuckle-like granite ridges that defined each small drainage. Beyond the rim to the west was Battle Mountain, separated from the Wolf range by Crazy Woman Creek, which flowed, eventually, into the Twelve Sleep River.

It was two hours away from nightfall, but the sky was leaden, dark, and threatening snow. The temperature had dropped during the afternoon as a bank of clouds moved over the sky and shut out the sun. It was now twenty-nine degrees with a slightly moist, icy breeze. The first severe winter storm warning of the season had been issued for northern Wyoming and southern Montana for that night and the following day, with another big Canadian front forming behind it. Beneath the high ceiling, clouds approached in tight formation, looking heavy and ominous.

Joe felt like a soldier at a remote outpost, listening to the distant rumble and clank of enemy artillery pieces being moved into place before an opening barrage.

For most of the afternoon, he had been watching a herd of twenty elk move cautiously from black timber into a windswept meadow to graze. He had watched the elk, then watched the sky, then turned back to the elk again.

On the seat next to Joe was a sheaf of papers his wife Marybeth had gathered for him that had been brought home from school by his daughters. Now that all three girls were in school-eleven-year-old Sheridan in fifth grade, six-year-old Lucy in kindergarten, and their nine-year-old foster daughter April in third grade-their small state-owned house seemed awash in paper. He smiled as he looked through the stack. Lucy consistently garnered smiley-face stamps from her teacher for her cartoon drawings. April wasn't doing quite so well in rudimentary multiplication-she had trouble with 5's, 8's, and 3's. But the teacher had sent notes home recently praising her improvement.

Sheridan's writing assignment had been to describe what her father did for a living.

MY DAD THE GAME WARDEN BY SHERIDAN PICKETT MRS. BARRON'S CLASS, 5TH GRADE.

My Dad is the game warden for all of the mountains as far around as you can see. He works hard during hunting season and gets home late at night and leaves early in the morning. His job is to make sure hunters are responsible and that they obey the law. It can be a scary job, but he's good at it. We have lived in Saddlestring for 3 and one-half years, and this is all he has done. Sometimes, he saves animals from danger. My mom is home but she works at a stable and at the library… Joe knew he wasn't alone on the mountain. Earlier, he had seen a late-model bronze-colored GMC pickup below him in the bowl. Swinging his window-mounted Redfield spotting scope toward it, he caught a quick look at the back window of the pickup-driver only, no passenger, gun rack with scoped rifle, Wyoming plates with the buckaroo on them-and an empty truck bed, indicating that the hunter hadn't yet gotten his elk. He tried to read the plate number before the truck entered the trees, but he couldn't. Instead, he jotted down the description of the truck in his console notebook. It was the only vehicle he had seen all day in the area.

Twenty-five minutes later, the last of the elk sniffed the wind and moved into the clearing, joining the rest of the herd. The elk seemed to know about the storm warning, and they wanted to use the last hours of daylight to load up on food in the grassy meadow before it was covered with snow. Joe thought that if the lone hunter in the bronze pickup could see the meadow there would be a wide choice of targets. It would be interesting to see how the scenario would unfold, if it unfolded at all. There was just as much chance that the hunter would simply drive by, deep in the trees, road-hunting like 90 percent of all hunters, and never know that an entire herd of elk had exposed themselves above him in a clearing. Joe sat in his pickup in silence and waited. With a sharp crack, then three more, the calm was shattered. The shots sounded like rocks thrown against sheet metal in rapid succession. From the sound, Joe registered at least three hits, but because it often took more than a single bullet to bring down a big bull elk, he couldn't be sure how many animals had been shot. Maxine, his yellow Labrador, sprang up from where she had been sleeping on the pickup seat as if she'd gotten an electric shock.

Below, the herd had come alive at once and was now running across the meadow. Joe could see that three brown dots remained behind in the tall grass and sagebrush.

One hunter, three elk down. Two more than legal.

Joe felt a rush of anger, and of anxiety. Game violations weren't uncommon during hunting season, and he had ticketed scores of hunters over the years for taking too many animals, not tagging carcasses, having improper licenses, hunting in closed areas, and other infractions. In many cases, the violators turned themselves in because they were honorable men who had lived and hunted in the area for years. Often, he found violations as he did random checks of hunting camps. Sometimes, other hunters reported the crimes. Joe Pickett's district took up more than 1,500 square miles, and in four years, he had almost never actually been present as a violation occurred.

Snatching the radio transmitter from its cradle, Joe called in his position over a roar of static. Distance and terrain prohibited a clear signal. The dispatcher repeated his words back to him, Joe confirmed them, and he described the bronze pickup and advised that he was going to approach it immediately. The answer was a high-pitched howl of static he was unable to squelch. At least, he thought, they knew where he was. That, unfortunately, hadn't always been the case.

"Here we go, Maxine," Joe said tersely. He started the motor, snapped the toggle switch to engage the four-wheel drive, and plunged down the mountain into the dark woods. Despite the freezing air, he opened the windows so he could hear if there were more shots. His breath came in puffs of condensation that whipped out of the window.

Another shot cracked, followed by three more. The hunter had obviously reloaded, because no legal hunting rifle had more than a five-shot capacity. The lead bull elk in the herd tumbled, as did a cow and her calf. Rather than rush into the trees, the rest of the herd inexplicably changed direction just shy of the far wall of trees in a looping liquid turn and raced downhill through the meadow, offering themselves broadside to the shooter.

"Damn it!" Joe hissed. "Why'd they turn?"

Two more shots brought down two more elk.

"This guy is nuts!" Joe said to Maxine, betraying the fear he was beginning to feel. A man who could calmly execute six or seven terrified elk might just as easily turn his weapon on a lone game warden. Joe did a quick mental inventory of his own weapons: the.308 carbine was secured under the bench seat, a.270 Winchester rifle was in the gun rack behind his head, his twelve-gauge Remington WingMaster shotgun was wedged into the coil springs behind his seat… none of them easily accessible while he drove. His side arm was a newly issued.40 Beretta to replace the.357 Magnum that had been destroyed the previous summer in an explosion. He had barely qualified with the Beretta because he was such a poor pistol shot to begin with, and he had little confidence in the piece or his ability to hit anything with it.

Using a ridge line as a road, he found an old set of tire tracks to follow as he descended. Although the forest was criss-crossed with old logging roads, he didn't know of one that could take him directly to where he needed to be. Plus there was the fairly recent problem of the local U.S. Forest Service closing a number of the old roads by digging ditches like tank traps across them or blocking access with locked chains, and Joe wasn't sure which ones were closed. The track was rough, strewn with football-sized boulders, and he held the wheel tightly as the front tires jounced and bucked. A rock he had dislodged clanged from beneath his undercarriage. But even over the whining of his engine he could hear still more shots, closer now. The old road was still open. There was an immediate presence in the timber and a dozen elk-all that was left of the herd-broke through the trees around him. He slammed on his brakes as the animals surged around his truck, Maxine barking at them, Joe getting glimpses of wild white eyes, lolling tongues, thick brown fur. One panicked bull ran so close to the truck that a tine from his heavy spread of antlers struck the pickup's hood with a sharp ping, leaving a puckered dent in the hood. A cow elk staggered by on three legs, the right foreleg blown off, the limb bouncing along in the dirt, held only by exposed tendons and a strip of hide.

When they had passed him, Joe accelerated, throwing Maxine back against the seat, and drove through the stand of trees much too quickly. The passenger-side mirror smacked a tree trunk and shattered, bent back against the door.

Then the trees opened and he was on the shooter.

Joe stopped the truck, unsure of how to proceed. The hunter was bent over slightly, his back to Joe, concentrating on something in front of him, as if he hadn't heard Joe's approach, smashed mirror and all. The man wore a heavy canvas coat, a blaze-orange hunting vest, and hiking boots. Spent brass cartridges winked from the grass near his feet, and the air smelled of gunshots.

Out in front of the shooter, elk carcasses littered the slope of the meadow. A calf bawled, his pelvis shattered, as he tried to pull himself erect without the use of his back limbs.

Joe opened his door, slid out of the pickup, and unsnapped his holster. Gripping the Beretta and ready to draw it if the shooter turned around, Joe walked to the back and right of the man, so that if he wheeled with his rifle he'd have to do an awkward full turn to set himself and aim at Joe.

When Joe saw it, he couldn't believe what the shooter was doing. Despite violent trembling, the man was trying to reload his bolt-action rifle with cigarettes instead of cartridges. Dry tobacco and strips of cigarette paper were jammed in the magazine, which didn't stop the man from crushing another cigarette into the chamber. He seemed to be completely unaware that Joe was even there.

Joe drew the Beretta and racked the slide, hoping the sound would register with the hunter.

"Drop the weapon," Joe barked, centering his pistol on the hunter's upper torso. "DROP IT NOW, then turn around slowly,"

Joe hoped that when the hunter turned he wouldn't notice Joe's hands shaking. He gripped the Beretta harder, trying to still it.

Instead of complying, the man attempted to load another cigarette into the rifle.

Was he deaf? Joe wondered, or crazy? Or was it all a trick to get Joe to drop his guard? Despite the cold, Joe felt prickling sweat beneath his shirt and jacket. His legs felt unsteady, as if he had been running and had just stopped for breath.

"DROP THE WEAPON AND TURN AROUND!"

Nothing. Shredded tobacco floated to the ground. The mortally wounded elk calf bleated in the meadow.

Joe pointed the Beretta into the air and fired. The concussion was surprisingly loud, and for the first time the hunter seemed to wake up, shaking his head, as if to clear it after a hard blow. Then he turned.

And Joe looked into the pale, twitching, frightened face of Lamar Gardiner, the district supervisor for Twelve Sleep National Forest. A week before, the Gardiners and the Picketts had sat side by side and watched their daughters perform in the school Christmas play. Lamar Gardiner was considered a dim, affable, weak-kneed bureaucrat. He wore a wispy, sandy-colored mustache over thin lips. He had practically no chin, which gave him the appearance of someone just about to cry. Locals, behind his back, referred to him as "Elmer Fedd."

"Lamar," Joe yelled, "What in the hell are you doing? There are dead elk all over the place. Have you lost your mind?"

"Oh, my God, Joe…" Gardiner whispered, as if coming out of shock. "I didn't do it."

Joe stared at Lamar Gardiner. Gardiner's eyes were unfocused, and tiny muscles in his neck twitched. Even without a breeze, Joe could smell alcohol on his breath. "What? Are you insane? Of course you did it, Lamar," Joe said, not quite believing the situation he was in. "I heard the shots. There are spent casings all over the ground. Your barrel's so hot I can see heat coming off of it."

In what appeared to be a case of dawning realization, Gardiner looked down at the spent cartridges at his feet, then up at the dead and dying elk in the meadow. The connection between the two was being made.

"Oh, my God," Gardiner squeaked. "I can't believe it."

"Now drop the rifle," Joe ordered.

Gardiner dropped his gun as if it had suddenly been electrified, then stepped back away from it. His expression was a mixture of horror and unspeakable sadness.

"Why were you putting cigarettes into your rifle?" Joe asked.

Gardiner shook his head slowly, hot tears welling in his eyes. With a trembling hand, he patted his right shirt pocket. "Bullets," he said. Then he patted his left. "Marlboros. I guess I got them mixed up."

Joe grimaced. Watching Lamar Gardiner fall apart was not something he enjoyed. "I guess you did, Lamar."

"You aren't really going to arrest me, are you, Joe?" Gardiner said. "That would mean my career. Carrie might leave me and take my daughter if that happened."

Joe eased the hammer down on his Beretta and lowered it. Over the years he had certainly cited people he knew, but this was different. Gardiner was a public official, someone who made rules and regulations for the citizens of the valley from behind a big oak desk. He wasn't someone who broke the law, or, to Joe's knowledge, even bent it. Gardiner would lose his job, all right, although Joe didn't know his family situation well enough to predict what Carrie Gardiner would do. Lamar was a career federal bureaucrat, and highly paid compared to most residents of Saddlestring. He probably wasn't many years away from retirement and all of the benefits that went with it.

The bleating of the wounded calf, however, brought Joe back to the scene in the meadow. The calf, its spine broken by a bullet, pawed the ground furiously, trying to stand. His back legs were splayed behind him on the grass like a frog's, and they wouldn't respond. Past him, steam rose from the ballooning, exposed entrails of a cow elk that had been gut-shot.

Joe leveled his gaze at Gardiner's unfocused eyes. "I'm arresting you for at least a half-dozen counts of wanton destruction, which carries a fine of a thousand dollars per animal as well as possible jail time, Lamar. You may also lose your equipment and all hunting privileges. There may be other charges as well. Given how I usually treat slob hunters like yourself, you're getting off real easy."

Gardiner burst into tears and dropped to his knees with a wail that chilled Joe to his soul.

And just like that, the snow began to fall. The barrage had begun. Walking through the heavy snowfall in the meadow with his.270 rifle and his camera, Joe Pickett killed the calf with a point-blank head shot and moved on to the other wounded animals. Afterward, he photographed all of the carcasses. Lamar Gardiner, who now sat weeping in Joe's pickup, had shot seven elk: two bulls, three cows, and two calves.

Joe had locked Gardiner's rifle in the metal evidence box in the back of his truck, and he'd taken Gardiner's keys. In the bronze pickup were a half-empty bottle of tequila on the front seat and several empty Coors Light beer cans on the floor. The cab reeked of the sweet smell of tequila.

Although he had heard of worse incidents, this was as bad as anything Joe had personally witnessed. Usually when too many game animals were shot, there were several hunters shooting into a herd and none of them counting. Although it was technically illegal for a hunter to down any game other than his or her own, "party" hunting was fairly common. But for one man to open up indiscriminately on an entire herd… this was remarkable and disturbing.

The carnage was sickening. The damage a high-powered rifle bullet could do when badly placed was awful.

Equally tragic, in Joe's mind, was the fact that there were too many animals for him to load into his pickup to take back to town. The elk averaged more than 400 pounds, and even with Gardiner's help, they could only load two of the carcasses at most into the back of his vehicle. That meant that most of them would be left for at least one night, and could be scavenged by predators. He hated to see so much meat-more than 2,000 pounds-go to waste when it could be delivered to the halfway house, the county jail for prisoners, or to people on the list of the county's needy families that his wife Marybeth had compiled. Despite the number of dead elk to take care of, the sudden onslaught of the storm meant one thing: get off the mountain.

By the time he got back to his pickup and Lamar Gardiner, Joe was seriously out of sorts.

"How bad is it?" Gardiner asked.

Joe glared. Gardiner seemed to be asking about something he wasn't directly involved in.

"Bad," Joe said, swinging into the cab of the pickup. Maxine, who had been with Joe and was near-delirious from sniffing the musky scents of the downed elk, jumped reluctantly into the back of the pickup, her regular seat occupied by Lamar Gardiner.

"Help me field-dress and load two of these elk," Joe said, starting the motor. "That'll take about an hour, if you'll help. Maybe less if you'll just stay the hell out of the way. Then I'm taking you in, Lamar."

Gardiner grunted as if he'd been punched in the stomach, and his head flopped back in despair. Joe's hands were stained red with elk blood and gore, and he scrubbed them with handfuls of snow to clean them. Even with Lamar's help, field-dressing the elk had taken over an hour. The snow was coming down even harder now. Joe climbed back in the truck and drove slowly out of the meadow toward the logging road Gardiner had used earlier. Joe tried to connect with the dispatcher on his radio, but again all he got was static. There was nothing for him to do but try again when he reached the summit.

Joe was acutely aware of his situation, and of how unique it was in law enforcement. Unlike the police or sheriff's department, who had squad cars or SUVs with back doors that wouldn't open from the inside and cage-wire separating prisoners in the backseat from the driver, Joe was forced to transport violators in his pickup, sitting right next to him in the passenger seat. Although Lamar hadn't threatened Joe in any way, Joe was acutely aware of his proximity within the cab of the truck.

"I just can't get over what I've done," Gardiner moaned. "It's like something took over my brain and turned me into some kind of a maniac. A mindless killer… I've never done anything like that before in my life!"

Gardiner said he had hunted elk for sixteen years, first in Montana and then as long as he had been stationed in Wyoming. He whined that when he saw the herd of elk in broad daylight, something inside him just snapped. This was the first year he'd actually got one, and he guessed he was frustrated.

"Lamar, are you drunk?" Joe asked, trying to sound understanding. "I saw the bottle and the empty beer cans in your truck."

Gardiner thought about it before answering. "Maybe a little," he said. "But I'm sort of over that now. You know, I see elk all the time when I'm not hunting." It was a familiar complaint. "But when I'm hunting I can't ever seem to find the bastards."

"Until today," Joe said.

Gardiner rubbed his face and shook his head. "Until today," he echoed. "My life is ruined."

Maybe so, Joe thought. Lamar would certainly lose his job with the forest service, and Joe doubted he'd find another in town. If he did, it would most likely offer only a fraction of the salary and benefits that cushioned a longtime federal employee. On top of that, Joe knew Saddlestring's local newspaper and the breakfast coffee gossips would tear Lamar Gardiner apart. Never popular, he'd now be a pariah. Unlike other crimes and criminals, there was no patience-and virtually no compassion-for game violators. The elk herds in the Bighorns were considered a community resource, and their health was a matter of much concern and debate. A large number of local residents endured Twelve Sleep County's low-paying jobs and dead-end prospects primarily for the lifestyle it offered-which in large part meant the good hunting opportunities. Nothing provoked more vitriol than potential damage to the health and welfare of the big game habitat and population. While it was perfectly permissible-even encouraged-for hunters to harvest an elk each year, the stupid slaughter of seven of them by one man would be an absolute outrage. Especially when the guy at fault was the federal bureaucrat who was in charge of closing roads and denying grazing and logging leases.

Joe couldn't comprehend what could have come over Lamar Gardiner. If that kind of rage lurked under the surface of a Milquetoast like Gardiner, the mountains were a more dangerous place than Joe had ever imagined. The two-track road to the summit was rugged and steep, and the buffeting waves of snow made it hard to see it clearly. The pickup fishtailed several times on the wet surfaces. It might be difficult to get back into the bowl even tomorrow if the snow continued like this, Joe thought They were grinding through a thick stand of trees when Joe remembered Maxine in the back with the elk. In his mirror, he could see her hunkered against the cab, snow packed into her coat and ice crystals around her mouth.

"You mind if we stop and let my dog in?" Joe asked, pulling over on a short level stretch that led to another steep climb.

Gardiner made a face as if this were the last straw, and sighed theatrically.

"Everything in my life is completely and totally destroyed," he cried. "So I might as well let a stinking wet dog sit on me."

Joe bit his tongue. Looking at Gardiner, with his tear-streaked face, bloodshot eyes, and chinless profile, he couldn't remember anyone quite so pathetic.

When Gardiner turned to open his door to let Maxine in, his knee accidentally hit the button for the glove box and the latch opened, spilling the contents-binoculars, gloves, old spare handcuffs, maps, mail-all over the floor. Maxine chose that moment to bound into the truck, tangling with Gardiner as he bent to pick up the debris.

Gardiner cried out and pushed the dog roughly into the center of the bench seat.

"Calm down," Joe said, as much to Maxine as to Gardiner. Shivering, Maxine was ecstatic to be let in. Her wet-dog smell filled the cab.

"I'm soaked, my God!" Gardiner said, holding his hands out in front of him, his voice arcing into hysteria: "Goddamn it, Goddamn YOU! This is the worst day of my entire life!" His hands swooped like just-released birds and he screeched: "I'm cracking up!"

"Calm down," Joe commanded.

The human desperation that filled the cab of the pickup, Joe thought, contrasted bizarrely with the utter and complete silence of the mountains in the midst of a heavy snowfall.

For a moment, Joe felt sorry for Lamar Gardiner. That moment passed when Gardiner leaned across Maxine and snapped one of the handcuffs on Joe's wrist and the other on the steering wheel in a movement as quick as it was unexpected. Then Gardiner threw open the passenger door, leaped out, and was still running with his arms flapping wildly about him when he vanished into the trees. The handcuffs had been an old set that required a smaller type of key than the set he now used. Joe tore through the glove box, his floor console, and a half-dozen other places where he might have put the keys, but he couldn't find them. Like every game warden he knew, Joe practically lived in his vehicle, and it was packed with equipment, clothing, tools, documents… stuff. But not the right key for the old handcuffs.

It took twenty minutes and his Leatherman tool to pry the cap off the steering wheel and loosen the bolts that held it to the shaft. Maxine laid her wet head on his lap while he worked, looking sympathetic. Thick falling snow from the still-open passenger door settled on the edge of the bench seat and the floorboard. A hacksaw would have cut through the wheel, or through the chain of the cuffs and freed him, but he didn't have one.

Seething, Joe strode through the timber in the storm. He carried his shotgun in his left hand while the steering wheel, still attached by the handcuffs, swung from his right.

"Lamar, damn you, you're going to die in this storm if you don't come back!" Joe hollered. The storm and the trees hushed his voice, and it sounded tinny and hollow even to him.

Joe stopped and listened. He thought he had heard the distant rumble of a motor a few minutes before, and possibly a truck door slamming. He guessed that whoever drove the vehicle was doing what he himself should be doing-retreating to a lower elevation. The sound may have come from beyond the stand of trees, but the noises were muffled, and Joe wasn't sure.

Tracking down Lamar Gardiner should go quickly, he thought. He listened for branches snapping, or Gardiner moaning or sobbing. There was no sound but the storm.

He sized up the situation he was in, and cursed to himself. Lamar Gardiner wasn't the only one having a miserable day. Joe's prisoner had escaped, he was out of radio contact, it had already snowed six inches, there was only an hour until dark, and he had a steering wheel chained to his wrist.

He thought bitterly that when he found Gardiner he would have the choice of hauling him back to the truck or shooting him dead with the shotgun. For a moment, he leaned toward the latter.

"Lamar, YOU'RE GOING TO DIE OUT HERE IF YOU DON'T COME BACK!"

Nothing.

Gardiner's tracks weren't hard to follow, although they were filling with snow by the minute. Gardiner had taken a number of turns in the trees and had been stymied several times by deadfall, then changed direction. He didn't seem to have a destination in mind, other than away from Joe.

The footing was deteriorating. Under the layer of snow were crosshatched branches slick with moisture, and roots snatched at Joe's boots. Gardiner had fallen several times, leaving churned-up snow and earth.

If he's trying to get back to his own vehicle, Joe thought, he's going the wrong way. And what was the chance that he had a spare set of keys with him, anyway?

A snow-covered dead branch caught the steering wheel as Joe walked, jerking him to a stop. Again he cursed, and stepped back to pull the wheel free. Standing still, Joe wiped melting snow from his face and shook snow from his jacket and Stetson. He listened again, not believing that Gardiner had suddenly learned how to move stealthily through the woods while Joe crashed and grunted after him.

He looked down and saw how fresh Gardiner's tracks had become. Any minute now, he should be on him.

Joe racked the pump on the shotgun. That noise alone, he hoped, would at least make Gardiner think.

The trees became less dense, and Joe followed the track through them. He looked ahead, squinting against the snow. Gardiner's track zigzagged from tree to tree, then stopped at the trunk of a massive spruce. Joe couldn't see any more tracks.

"Okay, Lamar," he shouted. "You can come out now."

There was no movement from behind the tree, and no sound.

"If we're going to get to town before dark, we've got to leave NOW."

Snorting, Joe shouldered the shotgun and looped around the spruce so he could approach from the other side. As he shuffled through the snow, he could see one of Gardiner's shoulders, then a boot, from behind the trunk. Steam wafted from Gardiner's body, no doubt because he had worked up a sweat in the freezing cold.

"Come out NOW!" Joe ordered.

But Lamar Gardiner couldn't, and when Joe walked up to him he saw why.

Joe heard himself gasp, and the shotgun nearly dropped out of his hand.

Gardiner was pinned to the trunk of the tree by two arrows that had gone completely through his chest and into the wood, pinning him upright against the tree. His chin rested on his chest, and Joe could see blood spreading down from his neck. His throat had been cut. The snow around the tree had been tramped by boots.

The front of Gardiner's clothing was a sheet of gore. Blood pooled and steamed near Gardiner's feet, melting the snow in a heart-shaped pattern, the edges taking on the color of a raspberry Sno-Cone. Joe was overwhelmed by the pungent, salty smell of hot blood.

His heart now whumping in his chest, Joe slowly turned to face the direction where the murderer must have been, praying that the killer was not drawing back the bowstring with a bead on him.

Joe thought:

… His job is to make sure hunters are responsible and that they obey the law. It can be a scary job, but he's good at it. We have lived in Saddlestring for 3 and one-half years, and this is all he has done. Sometimes, he saves animals from danger… Two Sheridan Pickett, eleven years old, slung her backpack over her shoulder and joined the stream of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders out through the double doors of Saddlestring Elementary School into the snowstorm. It was the last day of school before the two-week Christmas break. That, coupled with the storm, seemed to supercharge everyone, including the teachers, who had dealt with the students' growing euphoria by simply showing movies all day and watching the clock until the bell rang for dismissal at three-thirty P.M.

A dozen fifth-grade boys, her classmates, surged through the throng. They hooted and ran, then squatted in the playground to try and gather up the winter's first good snowballs to throw. But the snow was too fluffy for packing, so they kicked it at the other students instead. Sheridan did her best to ignore the boys, and she turned her head away when they kicked snow in her direction. It was snowing hard, and there was already several inches of it on the ground. The sky was so close and the snow so heavy that it would be difficult, she thought, to convince a stranger to the area that there really were mountains out there, and that the humped backs of the Bighorn mountain range really did dominate the western horizon. She guessed it was snowing even harder up there.

Free of the crowd, she turned on the sidewalk at the end of a chain-link fence and walked along the side of the redbrick building toward the other wing of the school. It was a part of the school building she knew well. Saddlestring Elementary was shaped like an H, with one wing consisting of kindergarten through third grade and the other fourth through sixth, two classes of each. The offices, gym, and lunchroom separated the two wings. Sheridan had moved into what was known as the "Big Wing" the previous year, and had once again been in the youngest group of the crowd. At the time, she thought fifth graders were especially obnoxious; they formed cliques designed solely, it seemed, to torment the fourth graders. Now she was in fifth grade, but she still thought it was true. Fifth grade, she thought, was just no good. There was no point to fifth grade. It was just in the middle.

The sixth graders, to Sheridan, seemed distant and mature, and had already, at least socially, left elementary school behind them. The sixth-grade girls were the tallest students in school, having shot up in height past all but a few of the boys, and some were wearing heavy makeup, and tight clothing to show off their budding breasts. The sixth-grade boys, meanwhile, had morphed into gangly, honking, ridiculous creatures who lived to snap bra straps and considered a fart the single funniest sound they had ever heard. Unfortunately, the fifth-grade boys were beginning to emulate them.

As she had done after school every afternoon since September, Sheridan went to meet her sisters when they emerged from the "Little Wing" and wait with them for the bus to arrive. She was torn when it came to her sisters and this particular duty. On one hand, she resented having to leave her friends and their conversations to make the daily trek to a part of the school building that she should have been free of forever. On the other, she felt protective of April and Lucy and wanted to be there if anyone picked on them. Twice this year she had chased away bullies-once male, once female-who were giving her two younger sisters a hard time. Six-year-old Lucy, especially, was a target because she was so… cute. In both instances, Sheridan had chased the bullies away by setting her jaw, narrowing her eyes, and speaking calmly and deliberately, so low that she could barely be heard. She told them to "get away from my sisters or you'll find out what trouble really is."

The first time, Sheridan had been mildly surprised that it worked so well. Not that she wasn't prepared to fight, if necessary, but she wasn't sure she was a good fighter. When it worked the second time, she realized that she could project the determination and strength that she often felt inside, and that it unnerved the bullies. It also thrilled Lucy and April.

While she waited for the doors of the Little Wing to open, Sheridan tried to find a direction to stand where the snow wouldn't hit her and melt on her glasses. Because the snowflakes were so large and light and swirly, she had no luck. Sheridan hated her glasses, but especially in the winter. Snow smeared them, and they fogged when she went indoors. She planned to lobby her parents even harder for contact lenses. Her mom had said that once she was in junior high they could discuss it. But the seventh grade seemed like a long time to wait, and her parents seemed overly cautious and more than a little old-fashioned. There were girls in her class who not only had contacts, but had asked for pierced navels for Christmas, for Pete's sake. Two girls had announced that their goals, upon entering seventh grade, were to get tattoos on their butts!

Sheridan searched the curb for her mother's car or her dad's green pickup, hoping against hope that they would be there to pick her up, but they weren't there. Sometimes, her dad surprised them by appearing in his green Wyoming Fish and Game Department pickup truck. Although it was tight quarters inside with all three girls and Maxine, it was always fun to get a ride home with her dad, who would sometimes turn on his flashing lights or whoop the siren when they cleared Saddlestring and drove up the county road. Generally, he would have to go back to work after unloading them all at home. At least, she thought, her mom would be home from her part-time jobs at the library and the stables when the three girls got off of the bus. Arriving home in this storm, on the last day of school for the calendar year, had a special, magical appeal. She hoped her mom would be baking something.

The street where the bus parked beside Saddlestring Elementary was also marked as a secondary truck route through town. It shot straight through town, merged with Bighorn Road, and, eventually, curled into the mountains. So the heavy rumble of motors and vehicles on the street wasn't, in itself, unusual enough for Sheridan to look up.

But when she did, tilting her head to avoid falling snow, she recognized that this was something strange: a slow but impressive column of rag-tag vehicles.

They passed her one by one. There were battered recreational vehicles, old vans, trucks pulling camping trailers, and school buses that didn't look right because they were full of cardboard boxes. Four-wheel-drives pulled trailers piled high with crates, and the arms and legs of furniture poked out from water-beaded plastic tarps. It was as if a small neighborhood's residents had gathered their possessions before a coming threat and fled. Sheridan thought of the word she had learned in social studies. Yes, the caravan reminded her of refugees. But in Wyoming?

The license plates were from all over: Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, North Dakota, Georgia, Michigan, and more. This in itself was odd, especially in the winter, when most people avoided traveling long distances because of the weather. Many of the drivers seemed rough and woolly; the men had big beards and they were bundled in heavy coats. Some of them looked at her, others looked away. One bearded man rolled down his window while he passed and shouted something about "government schools." He didn't say it in a nice way, and she instinctively stepped back toward the building and the chain-link fence. There were more men than women in the vehicles, and Sheridan saw only a few children, their hands and faces pressed against the windows as they passed. It was then that she noticed Lucy and April. They were standing on each side of her in their coats, hats, and mittens, watching the transient convoy rumble by. Under her coat, Lucy wore a dress and shiny shoes, fashionable as always. She was undeniably cute. April wore more practical corduroy bib overalls, the legs of which poked out from a hand-me-down parka that used to be Sheridan's.

Sheridan noticed the regal, dignified profile of a big man at the wheel of a newer-model Suburban. The man turned his head as he passed, and he smiled. For a moment, their eyes locked. There was something kindly about him, and Sheridan picked him as the leader of the group simply by the way he sat up straight. He had confidence.

"Where's our bus?" Lucy asked.

"Probably behind all of these cars and trucks," Sheridan answered, looking for the end of the procession to see if the familiar yellow bus was there. She couldn't see beyond the end of the block through the snow, and her wet glasses didn't help.

"Who are all these people?" Lucy again.

"I don't know," Sheridan said, reaching back for Lucy's and April's hands. "One of them shouted at me."

"If they yell again, let's go in and tell the principal!" April said with some force, gripping Sheridan's hand in its red cotton glove.

The three girls stood and waited while the parade slowly passed. They all had blond hair and green eyes. It would take a discerning observer to notice that April didn't share Lucy's and Sheridan's rounded features and big eyes. April's face was angular, and her demeanor stoic and inscrutable.

A battered blue Dodge pickup, the last of the caravan, swerved slightly and slowed as it approached. The back was piled high with bulky shapes covered by a soaked canvas tarp. Behind the pickup, Sheridan could see the red lights of the bus approaching, and Lucy pointed at it and yelled "Yay! Here it comes…"

But the Dodge stopped in the street directly in front of the three girls. Sheridan watched as a water-streaked window rolled down. A tiny, pinched-faced woman looked out at them. Her hair was mousy brown and had blond streaks in it, and her eyes were piercing and flinty. A cigarette hung from her lips, and it bobbed as she rolled the window down all the way.

Sheridan stared back, scared, squeezing tighter on her sisters' hands. The woman's look was meaningful, hard, and predatory. It took a moment for Sheridan to realize that the woman was not looking back at her, but lower and to the side. She was staring at April.

The truck started to roll again and the woman swung her head inside and barked something at the driver. Again, the pickup stopped. The school bus was now right behind it, crowding the blue Dodge, the bus driver gesturing at the stopped vehicle in front of him and the faces of children filling the windows to see what the problem was.

The woman continued to look at the three girls. Slowly, she reached up, pulled the cigarette from her mouth, and tapped the ashes into the snow. Her eyes were slits behind the curl of cigarette smoke.

The bus driver hit his horn, and the moment was over. The pickup lurched forward and the window rolled up. The woman had turned her head to yell at the driver. The blue Dodge raced off to join the rest of the caravan, and the big school bus turned into the bus stop.

As the accordion doors wheezed open, Sheridan could hear the raucous voices of children from inside the bus, and feel a blast of warm air.

"That was creepy," Sheridan said, leading Lucy and April toward the door.

"I'm scared," Lucy whined, burrowing her face into Sheridan's coat. "That lady scared me."

April stood still, and Sheridan tugged on her arm, then turned. She found April pale and shaking, her eyes wide. Sheridan pulled harder, and April seemed to awaken and follow.

On the bus, April sat next to Sheridan instead of Lucy, which had never happened before. She stared straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of her. She was still shivering. The bus driver had finally stopped complaining about the "gol-danged gypsy hoboes" who had blocked his route all the way into town.

"Where in the heck is that group headed?" the driver asked no one in particular. "No one in their right mind camps in our mountains in the middle of the gol-danged winter."

"Are you cold?" Sheridan asked April. "You're still shaking."

April shook her head no. The bus pulled onto the road. Long windshield wipers, out of sync, painted rainbows across the front windows against the snow.

"Then what is it?" Sheridan asked, putting her arm around her foster sister. April didn't shrug the arm away, which was unusual in itself. Only recently had April started to show, or willingly receive, real affection.

"I think that was my mom," April whispered, looking up at Sheridan. "I mean, the mom who went away." Three With the storm moving in, Joe found himself with no backup, no ability to communicate, and a dead district supervisor of the Twelve Sleep National Forest. Standing in the timber with Gardiner's body pinned to the tree and fresh snow quickly covering their tracks back to his pickup, Joe needed to make some decisions and he needed to make them now.

He had just returned from the stand of trees where he assumed the arrows had been fired, assured that the killer was gone. Enough snow had fallen that the tracks left by the killer, or killers, were already filling in.

Joe looked skyward into the swirl of falling snow. He wasn't sure what to do. Of course he should leave a crime scene undisturbed.

Suddenly, Gardiner's body shivered and a fresh hot gout of blood coursed down his chest between the arrows. Joe leaped back involunarily, his eyes wide and his breath shallow. He pulled off a glove and felt Gardiner's neck for a pulse. Amazingly, there was a tiny flutter beneath the cooling skin. Joe shook his head. He hadn't even considered, given the wounds, that the man could still be alive.

Joe tried to pull one of the arrows out. He grunted with effort, but it was stuck fast. He tried to break off the back end of the arrow, but the graphite shaft was too strong. Finally, he lifted Gardiner from beneath the arms, Joe's face pressing into Gardiner's bloody parka, and pulled him free, sliding his body up and over the arrows' fletching.

Fueled by adrenaline and desperation, Joe heaved the body over his shoulder, still dragging the steering wheel at the end of the handcuffs. He turned clumsily and started back toward the truck. Snow fell into his eyes as he walked, melting into rivulets that ran down his collar. He realized belatedly that moving Lamar this way might do more damage than good, but he didn't see an alternative.

Despite his own heavy breathing, Joe tried to listen for signs of life from Gardiner. Instead, as Joe staggered through a stand of shadowed saplings, he heard the sound of death. A deep fluttery rattle came from Gardiner's throat, and Joe felt-or thought he felt-a release of tension in the body. Now Joe had no doubt that Lamar Gardiner was dead.

Joe finally reached his truck on the road. A layer of snow had already covered the roof and hood. Leaning Gardiner's body against the front wheel with as much dignity as he could, Joe opened the passenger door. He dragged the body around the open door, then tried to lift it into the passenger seat, but Lamar's long legs had stiffened with cold and death and would not bend. The body maintained the posture it had assumed over Joe's shoulder, with Gardiner's outstretched arms parallel to his legs and his head turned slightly to the side, as if sniffing an armpit.

For a brief, horrifying second, Joe pictured himself as if from above, struggling to bend or break a body to make it fit into the cab of his truck while the heavy snow swirled around him.

Joe gave up, and dragged Gardiner's body to the back of the truck and unlatched the tailgate. To make room, he hauled one of the still-warm elk carcasses out of the back, and it fell heavily to the ground. Then he lifted Gardiner's body into the back of the truck next to the remaining carcass. Gardiner's eyes were wide open, his mouth pursed.

Joe's muscles quivered and burned with the effort. The steam of his sweat curled up from his collar, head, and cuffs. He closed the tailgate. He covered the body as well as he could with two blankets and a sleeping bag. He searched through the toolbox in the bed of his pickup. Finding a set of bolt cutters he wished he had thought of earlier, he severed the chain between the handcuffs. Then he reattached the steering wheel to the column. Finally, utterly exhausted, he sank back against the driver's seat and started the engine.

By the time he got to the summit, it was dark. He drove down the mountain with the body of Gardiner and the remaining elk carcass in the back of the pickup, stopping several times to scout the road ahead. In the back, blood and ice from both Gardiner's body and the elk had melted and mixed and had filled the channels of the truck bed. The reddish liquid spilled from under the tailgate to spatter the snow each time he stopped.

As he drove, he thought of Mrs. Gardiner-how she might feel if her husband's body had been simply left where it was for the night. The forest was home to coyotes, wolves, ravens, raptors, and other predators who could have found the body and fed on it. This is best, he thought, despite the gruesome circumstances of carrying the body out. The storm obscured the outside view as he labored to stay on the road. The swirling snow, lit up in his lights, was mesmerizing. Beyond the illuminated flakes, he could see nothing beyond. With no posts or road markers to guide him, Joe turned off his lights, extinguishing the pinwheel of snowy fireworks, and drove by feel. When he felt the dry crunch of sagebrush under his tires, he would search again for the road, saying a prayer each time his wheels again found the two-track.

Normally, in the distance, he could have seen the lights of Saddlestring in the river valley, looking like sequins flung across black felt. But he could see nothing. He could hear the fluid sloshing against the cab now that he was driving downhill.

The situation he was in was maddening, and frightening. For the first time, he realized that he still wore one blood-soaked glove and that his bare, thawing hand was red with dried gore.

"Damn you, Lamar," he said aloud, "damn you." Maxine looked to him with her condolences.

Now that he should be within radio range, Joe reached for the mike and tried to put together the words he would use to report what had happened. O.R. "Bud" Barnum, Twelve Sleep County's longtime sheriff and a man Joe had tangled with before, was livid when Joe brought Lamar's body to the hospital.

As Joe backed into the lighted alcove of the hospital emergency entrance, Barnum stepped out of the well-lit lobby through the double doors and angrily tossed a half-smoked cigarette in the direction of the gutter. Two of his deputies, Mike Reed and Kyle McLanahan, followed Barnum. Joe and McLanahan went back four years, ever since McLanahan had carelessly wounded Joe with a poorly aimed shotgun blast.

"Tell me, Warden Pickett," Barnum drawled, his voice hard, "why is it that every time someone gets murdered in my county, you're right in the middle of it? And how are we supposed to investigate this murder when you've destroyed the crime scene by bringing Lamar down in the back of your truck?"

Barnum had obviously been rehearsing his opening remarks for the benefit of his deputies.

Joe climbed out and glared at Barnum, who was harshly lit by overhead alcove lights that made his aging face and deep-set eyes look even more severe than they really were. Barnum glared back, and Joe saw Barnum's eyes narrow at the sight of Joe's appearance.

"He was alive when I found him," Joe said. "He died as I carried him back to my truck."

Barnum harrumphed, not apologizing, and shined his Maglite flashlight into the back of the truck. "I see a big elk," he said, and then the ring of the beam settled on the snow-covered blanket. Barnum reached in and peeled back the fabric.

"Jesus, somebody butchered him," Barnum said.

Joe nodded. The gaping wound on Lamar's neck looked savage and black in the harsh white light of Barnum's flashlight.

Deputy Reed told Joe that the county coroner was on his way, fighting through the snowdrifts on the road to the hospital.

Joe and the sheriff's team stepped aside as hospital orderlies pulled Gardiner's body from the back of Joe's pickup and strapped him onto a gurney. The four of them followed the gurney into the building, then waited in the admissions area. As the orderlies rolled the body down the hallway, McLanahan said it reminded him of the elk he had brought down from the mountains during hunting season.

"Seven-point royal," McLanahan boasted. "Just shy of the Boone and Crockett record book. We had to quarter him just to get him to fit into the back of the truck."

At this, Barnum turned, smirking, toward Joe. "Well, Warden Pickett," he said, "I'm surprised you didn't gut Lamar before you brought him in." Joe drove to the Gardiner house to break the news to Mrs. Carrie Gardiner. He had volunteered for the job, tough as it would be. He was grateful to get away from Barnum and McLanahan. Even in the cold, his cheeks burned. He stung from Barnum's comments, and fought his welling anger at them. As he drove, however, thoughts of what had happened that afternoon, and what he was going to tell Carrie, crowded out Barnum's words. He still couldn't believe Gardiner had used the handcuffs-or that Gardiner had gone on his shooting rampage in the first place. Or that he had been randomly murdered in the middle of a forest during a snowstorm.

As Joe pulled up in front of the Gardiner's house, the realization of what he was about to do hit him, and he sat in the truck for a moment, working up his courage before pushing himself out into the cold and up the front steps of the house. When Lamar Gardiner's daughter opened the door in her nightgown, Joe felt even worse than he had before.

"Is your mom home?" Joe asked, his voice stronger than he expected.

"You're Lucy's daddy, right?" the girl asked. She had sung next to Lucy at the Christmas play. Joe couldn't remember her name. He wished he were anywhere other than where he was at the moment, and felt ashamed of his wish.

Carrie Gardiner emerged from the kitchen wiping her hands in a towel. She was a heavy woman with an attractive, alert face and short dark hair.

"Let Mr. Pickett in and close the door, honey," she said. Joe stepped in and removed his Stetson, which was soaked through and heavy.

The door closed, and both Carrie Gardiner and her daughter waited for him to speak. The fact that he didn't, but simply looked at Mrs. Gardiner, said enough.

Her eyes moistened and flashed.

"Go watch TV, honey," she told her daughter in a voice that would be obeyed.

Joe waited until the girl had left the room and took a deep breath. "There is no way to tell you this other than to tell it straight out," he said. "Your husband Lamar was murdered in the mountains while he was elk hunting. I found his body and brought him down."

Carrie Gardiner looked both stunned and angry, and she almost lost her balance. Joe stepped forward to steady her but she refused his hand. She let out a yelp, and threw the hand towel she was clutching at his boots.

"I'm so sorry," Joe said.

She waved him away, excusing him as the bearer of bad news. Then she turned and walked back into the kitchen.

"Please call me or my wife if there is anything we can do at all," Joe said after her.

She came back into the living room.

"How did he die?"

"Somebody shot two arrows into him." He chose not to mention the cut throat.

"Do you know who did it?" she asked.

"Not yet," Joe admitted.

"Will you find him?"

"I think so. The sheriff is in charge."

"Is that Lamar's blood on you?"

"Yes," Joe said, flushing, suddenly aware that his coat was blackened with blood, and profoundly angry with himself for not realizing it earlier. He should have taken it off in the truck before he knocked on the door. "I'm sorry," he said. "I…"

She shook him off, bent and picked up the towel, and touched her face with it.

"I was afraid something like this would happen," she said, and again walked away. She didn't elaborate, and Joe didn't follow up.

Joe let himself out and stood on the porch for a moment. Inside, a wail began and grew louder and louder. It was awful. At the sheriff's office, Barnum was already giving assignments for the coming day. Joe stood uncomfortably in the back of the briefing room. He had been asked to give a statement earlier, but had insisted on going to the Gardiner house first, promising to return later. Barnum told his deputies to forget whatever they were doing and to focus entirely on Lamar Gardiner's murder. He explained that he'd already called the state Division of Criminal Investigation, and notified the Forest Service. As soon as they could, he said, they would follow Joe Pickett to the crime scene to retrieve the arrows and any other kind of evidence they could find. Gardiner's staff would be questioned, as would his wife and friends, "… if he had any." This brought a muffled guffaw from someone. Gardiner's office would be searched, with the goal of gathering credible evidence of threats or conflicts. The records and sign-in sheets of the public meetings Gardiner had recently held about road closures, lease extensions, and other access issues would be gathered. Barnum wanted the names of everyone in Twelve Sleep Valley who had confronted Gardiner or expressed disagreement over public-policy decisions that had been made by the forest service. Joe had attended the meetings, and he knew that Barnum was likely to end up with a lot more names than he wanted.

"I want this investigation to proceed quickly and I want somebody rotting in my jail by Christmas," Barnum barked. "Pickett, we need your statement."

The deputies in the room, many wearing the sloppy civilian clothes they'd had on when they were abruptly called into the department, turned and looked at Joe, seeing him back there for the first time.

"You're a damn mess," one of them said, and somebody else laughed. It was two-thirty in the morning before Joe got home, and he drove by his house twice before seeing the yellow smudge of the porch light that looked like an erasure in the storm. The wind had come up, turning a heavy but gentle snowfall into a maelstrom.

After bucking a three-foot snowdrift that blocked the driveway and sent him fishtailing toward the garage, he turned off the motor and woke Maxine. The Labrador bounded beside him through the front lawn, leaping over drifts. Joe didn't have the energy to hop, so he plowed through, feeling snow pack into the cuffs of his Wranglers and into his boot-tops for the second time that day. Snow swirled around the porch light like smoke. Christmas decorations, made by the girls in school, were taped inside the front window, and Joe smiled at the Santa drawing that Sheridan had done the previous year. Unnoticed by most, Sheridan had added a familiar patch, with a pronghorn antelope profile and the words WYOMING GAME AND FISH DEPARTMENT, to Santa's red coat-sleeve.

The small house had two storeys, with two small bedrooms, a detached garage, and a loafing shed barn in the back. Forty years old, the house had been the home and office of the two previous game wardens and their families. Across Bighorn Road was Wolf Mountain, which dominated the view. In back, beyond rugged sandstone foothills, was the northwest slope of the Bighorn range. He could see none of it in the dark and through the snow.

The people he met in the field were mostly hunters, fishermen, ranchers, poachers, environmentalists, and others Joe lumped into a category he called "outdoorsmen"-but his home was filled with four blond, green-eyed females. Females who were verbal. Females who were emotional. He often smiled and thought of this place as a "House of Feelings." If the expression of feelings produced a physical by-product, Joe could imagine his house filled with hundreds of gallons of an emotional goo that sometimes spilled out of the windows and doors and seeped from the vents. But his family was everything to him; this place was his refuge, and he wouldn't have had it any other way.

He shut out the storm as he closed the door, and he clumsily peeled off his first layer of clothing in the tiny mud room. He hung his bloody parka on a peg and unbuttoned his green wool Filson vest. He stamped packed snow out of his trouser legs, then left the Sorel pak boots on a bench to dry. His wet black Stetson went crown-down on an upper shelf.

Sighing, wondering why Marybeth still had her light on, he entered the living room in the dark, banged his shin on the foot of the fold-out couch bed, and fell on top of his sleeping mother-in-law. She woke up thrashing, and Joe scrambled to his feet.

"What are you doing, Joe?" she asked, her tone accusatory.

Up the stairs, another light came on. Marybeth had heard the commotion, Joe hoped.

"I didn't want to turn on a light," Joe answered, sheepishly. Not adding: I forgot Marybeth told me you'd be here.

When Joe had called home earlier from the sheriff's office, Marybeth had said that her mother, Missy Vankueren, might be staying with them tonight. Apparently, Missy had been flying to Jackson Hole to go skiing with her third husband, a wealthy and politically connected Arizona real estate baron, when the weather diverted the plane to Billings. So Missy had rented a car, driven the two hours to Saddlestring, and arrived just as the storm moved in. Mr. Vankueren was to meet her in a couple of days, after some important meetings in Phoenix. And now Joe Pickett, the man her favorite daughter had chosen despite Marybeth's incredible potential and promise, had just awakened her in a half-dressed state by falling on her bed.

"Hi, Missy," Joe grunted. "Nice to see you." Missy clutched her blankets to her chin and peered over them at him. Without the expertly applied mask of makeup she usually wore, she looked all of her sixty-two years. Joe knew she hated being seen when she wasn't prepped and ready.

Marybeth came down the stairs tying her bathrobe, instantly sized up the situation between her mother and her husband, and forced a smile. Joe wanted to mouth help me, save me, but he didn't dare for fear Missy would see. The small front room was filled not only with the length of the couch bed but the seasonal addition of the Christmas tree that stood silent and dark in the corner. Floor space was at a minimum, and Joe had to scuttle sidewise like a crab to cross the room.

"Sorry, Mom," Marybeth said, tucking the disturbed sheet corners back under the mattress. "Joe's had a very bad day."

"And I'm having a bad night," Missy said, averting her gaze from Joe. "I'm supposed to be in our condo in Jackson Hole."

"But instead you're on our crummy couch bed in our lousy living room," Joe finished for her, deadpan as he headed for the stairs. Marybeth shot him a look over her shoulder as she finished re-tucking her mother. He listened as Marybeth calmed Missy, told her that it was still snowing, asked her if she was warm enough, asked her… something else, which he didn't pay attention to.

Missy Vankueren was the last person Joe wanted to see in his home right now. The day had been a nightmare. Now this, he thought, as he slowly climbed the stairs. Marybeth looked tired and worn out, but she had listened in wide-eyed silence as he told her everything. When he came to how he had found the body, she had pressed her hands to her mouth and winced.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked in a whisper when he was through talking.

"Yes," Joe said, but really wasn't sure about that.

Marybeth held him and looked him over. "I think you should take a shower, Joe." He nodded dumbly.

In the shower, he wanted to see blood wash down the drain so he could feel clean. But the blood from Lamar Gardiner had been on his coat and clothes, and it had not seeped through to his skin. Joe dried and slid into bed next to Marybeth. Her bed lamp was still on, and he asked her about it.

"It's been a bad day for the girls and me as well," she said, turning to him. "Jeannie Keeley is back in town."

Joe ran a hand over his face and rubbed his eyes. Now he understood why Marybeth looked so drawn and tired. He had originally thought she had been worried about him, or because of the unexpected visit by her mother. It was those things, he realized, and more.

Marybeth told Joe what the girls had seen after school-the procession of vehicles and particularly the one that stopped. She said April had described the woman who stared as "the mom who went away."

"Joe, why do you think Jeannie Keeley is back?" Marybeth asked.

Joe shook his head, not knowing. He was too tired to think clearly.

Waves of exhaustion washed over him, pounding at him. He moaned at the possibility of further delays, or a fight for April.

The hard fact was that April's situation was precarious. Although she had been with them for four years and was as much a daughter as Sheridan or Lucy, April was not legally theirs.

April's biological mother, Jeannie Keeley, had dropped two things off at the local branch bank when she left town after her husband Ote had been murdered: her house keys and April. Marybeth had heard about it and immediately offered to keep the girl until the issue could be resolved.

Eventually, they had petitioned the court for consent to adopt, and Judge Hardy Pennock had started proceedings to terminate Jeannie Keeley's parental rights. But then Pennock had been hospitalized with a brain tumor, and the proceedings languished in his absence. Finally, the matter had gone to another court-but the original paperwork had been lost. Another delay had resulted when the new court received a letter from Jeannie Keeley saying she was coming back for her daughter. But that was six months ago now, in the summer, and Jeannie Keeley had never come. A technicality in Wyoming law stated that parental rights couldn't be terminated if there had been contact from the birth parent at least once a year, and the letter qualified, which again delayed the proceedings. Judge Pennock was now back on the bench, but hopelessly backlogged. Joe had tried to expedite the case, with some success, but the rights hearing had not yet been held.

The legal proceedings had been frustrating and endless, but Marybeth and Joe had remained optimistic that a resolution would come.

"As soon as you can, you need to look into this," Marybeth said.

"I will," Joe said.

"That woman scares me, Joe. If she's back, we've got real trouble on our hands."

"That we do," he said, and put his arm around her, pulling her close.

"I've got to lead the sheriff to the crime scene first thing tomorrow," Joe said. "Then I'm sure they'll want to get rid of me, so I should have some time."

"Wherever it stands, when school starts back up, we've got to try and pick up the girls ourselves after school," Marybeth said, her voice rising. "I don't want to take the chance that something will happen to April."

Joe nodded, trying to fight sleep. He knew Marybeth needed him, that she'd been worried about this all afternoon with no one to talk to about it. He wanted to say something that would make her feel better, that would calm her, but his tongue felt thick and heavy and his eyes kept dropping shut. He felt immensely guilty about not being able to emerge from the problems and horrors of the afternoon and night he had just experienced, because he knew that her concerns were real. But he was slipping away, into unconsciousness. Two hours later, Joe awoke sweating. He had dreamed that he was back in the timber, suffering under the weight of Lamar Gardiner. The wounded man's coat had been caught in the branch of a tree, and Joe had swung his shoulders to tear it free. A spatter of bright red blood had flecked the snow…

He rose quietly and went to the window. An icy breeze flowed under the sill-he would need to pack it with insulation tomorrow, he thought.

It was still dark, still snowing, and the wind was still blowing.

He turned and looked at Marybeth, who had finally fallen asleep under the quilts. Then he tiptoed downstairs and looked in on Sheridan-Maxine was asleep at the foot of her bed-and on Lucy and April, who shared a bunk bed. He could not see their faces, only tangles of blond hair. After gazing at them for a moment, he returned to his bedroom.

He stared out at the storm, mesmerized. The wind had increased. There was now a bare spot on the front lawn where the brown grass showed through. It was never just the snow in Wyoming that caused problems. It was always the snow plus the wind that sculpted it into something hard, shiny, and impassible. A foot-high stream of blowing snow, like cold smoke, coursed across the ground.

It struck Joe as he stood there, the floor cold beneath his bare feet, that Lamar's murder had an oddly personal feel to it. Saddlestring was not a violent place, and murders were almost unheard of, yet someone had hated Lamar Gardiner so much that he not only shot him with arrows but slashed his throat open, bleeding him like a wounded deer.

Joe wondered if the killer was still out there, caught in the storm. Or if the killer, like himself, had made it off of the mountain. And he wondered if the killer was also standing at a window somewhere, his gut churning, his mind replaying what had happened that day, as the storm pummeled Twelve Sleep Valley. Four Joe was being gently shaken awake by Marybeth, who held a telephone out to him.

"It's Sheriff Barnum," she said, cupping her hand over the phone. He sat up quickly in bed, rubbed his face hard, and looked around. Marybeth was fully dressed. The curtains were drawn, but on the ceiling and walls were blooms of muted light. The digital clock radio showed that it was 8:20 A.M. That's impossible, Joe thought.

His immediate fear was that Barnum had assembled his deputies, the state Division of Criminal Investigation unit, and the county emergency team, and that they were in town-all waiting for him.

Marybeth read the panic in his eyes, and shook her head. "Don't worry," she said, her hand still covering the telephone. It was his cell phone, instead of the handset to the telephone near the bed. "You won't believe the snow outside."

"Why didn't you wake me up earlier?" Joe asked, groggy. "I can't believe I slept this late."

"You needed the rest. And I don't think anybody is going anywhere this morning."

Joe took the phone while he swung out of bed. "Sheriff?"

Barnum's voice was gravelly. "Have you looked outside?"

"I'm doing that now," Joe said, opening the curtains. The blast of pure white light temporarily blinded him. For a moment, he got a sense of vertigo. There was no sky, no grass, no trees or mountains. Only opaque white.

"I can't even see the road," Joe marveled.

"Neither can the snowplow drivers," Barnum grumbled. "We've got thirty-six inches of snow and the wind's supposed to hit fifty miles per hour this afternoon. Everything's closed-the highways, the airport, even our office officially. The phone lines are down again, and half the county doesn't have power. The DCI boys started up here in a state plane and made it as far as Casper before they turned back. The storm was right on their ass, so they had to outrun it and ended up somewhere in Colorado."

Joe squinted. He could make out ghostly shapes of his pickup, and a snow-covered pine in his yard below.

"So what's the plan?" Joe asked.

"Shit, I don't know," Barnum sighed. "I'm trying to get ahold of a Forest Service Sno-Cat to take up there. But I can't reach anybody who can find the keys."

Joe thought briefly about using snowmobiles but it was too far.

"Keep your cell phone on," Barnum barked. "As soon as we can move around here we'll try to assemble and get up there. You'll have to get to town when that happens so you can show us where Gardiner got rubbed out."

"I'll chain up all four tires," Joe said, ignoring the "rubbed out" comment. "I'll be ready when you are."

"You've got power, then?" Barnum asked.

"For now."

"Keep that cell phone charged," Barnum said again. "Who knows when they'll get the lines fixed."

"Sheriff?" Joe asked, before Barnum hung up.

"What?"

"Good thing I brought him down, wouldn't you say?" Joe turned to Marybeth, who had a satisfied look on her face.

Barnum hung up.

"Are you up for making pancakes?" Marybeth asked. "The girls want to know."

Joe looked again out of the window. What little he could see looked like a freeze-frame of a storm at sea, with bucking waves of snow and ground blizzards instead of spray.

"You bet," Joe said, smiling. "I'm not going anywhere for a while."

"The girls will like that."

Then he remembered: "Your mother."

"What about her?"

"Oh," Joe moaned, "nothing." Joe stood at the window after he dressed, blinking at the whiteout, a combination of feeling the frustration and dread churning within him. His thoughts from the night before still haunted him. He fought a wave of nausea as he recalled the brutality of Lamar's murder. The fact that the murderer had sliced Gardiner's throat-and while Gardiner was still alive and pinned to the tree-was particularly hideous. Whoever had done it was unimaginably brutal, and Joe couldn't help but think that there wasn't any randomness about it. He assumed that the killer had known Gardiner, or at least known who and what he represented. The longer it took to begin the investigation, the more time the murderer would have to get rid of evidence, wipe out his tracks, and build his alibi. The crime scene itself was inaccessible, with potential evidence-hair, fibers, blood-being pummeled and scattered by ice and wind.

Joe felt that, unlike hunters, who often policed themselves, whoever had killed Lamar Gardiner was not wracked with guilt. The killer was likely local, possibly someone Joe knew, possibly someone who would not stop with killing Lamar Gardiner if he felt threatened. Someone without a conscience.

And the murderer was out there, shielded by the fury of the storm. Before breakfast, Joe retreated to his office to type up the report on Lamar's murder for his supervisor, Terry Crump. He wouldn't be able to e-mail it to him until the phones were back up, but he wanted to get the details down while they were still fresh in his mind. As a game warden, one of only fifty-five in the entire state of Wyoming, Joe Pickett had unique duties and obligations. Within his district, he worked virtually alone. His office was in a small anteroom off the living room in his house, and he had no administrative or secretarial staff. Marybeth, and sometimes Sheridan, took messages and served as unpaid assistants. The job of a Wyoming game warden was supposed to consist of one-third public contact, one-third harvest collection, and one-third law enforcement-with no area to exceed 35 percent. Supposedly, the percentages would balance out over the year. The hours ranged from 173 to 259 per month. Joe was paid $32,000 per year in salary by the state of Wyoming and provided with housing and a vehicle. He was supervised, sort of, by District Supervisor Terry Crump, a game warden as well, who was 250 miles away in Cody. Crump's supervision consisted of an occasional telephone call or radio dispatch, usually after Joe had sent in his monthly report via e-mail attachment. Generally, Terry simply wanted to bullshit or trade departmental gossip. He had never called Joe to task, even when Joe's activities had enraged the bureaucrats in Cheyenne, where the headquarters were. Although Joe sometimes worked in tandem with the county sheriff's office or the Saddlestring police department, and even with federal agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the BATF, and the FBI, he was almost always on his own. He liked the autonomy, but there were problems inherent in it that came up when he encountered situations like he had the day before.

Joe was just finishing up his report when he looked up to see Sheridan, April, and Lucy crowding the door. They were still wearing their pajamas and slippers.

"If we don't eat breakfast soon, I think I shall faint," Lucy said dramatically. Breakfast actually went quite well, the euphoric mood of his children carrying them all through it. Joe flipped pancakes to them from the stove, and they caught them on their upraised plates while squealing. For Marybeth and Missy Vankueren, Joe delivered pancakes to the table. Missy picked at her breakfast, foregoing both bacon and syrup.

"Do you have any idea how many fat grams there are in these pancakes?" she asked Joe. The three girls looked up, waiting for his answer. He didn't disappoint them.

"Ten thousand apiece?" Joe speculated. Even Marybeth laughed at that. Missy made a dismissive face.

For his girls, a storm that forced all the adults to stay inside, play with them, and cook for them constantly was the best of all possible worlds. With the mood created by the Christmas decorations and the wrapped packages under the tree-as well as the unexpected visit by their grandmother-there was simply no better time. Sheridan said she loved storms. She declared that the worse the storm, the better she liked it.

As the girls ate, Marybeth did an inventory of her cupboards and the refrigerator, and declared with obvious relief that they had enough food and milk to last for several days without a trip to the grocery store. Joe added that the freezer in the garage was filled with elk and pronghorn antelope steaks, roasts, and burger.

"We can't just eat red meat!" Missy protested.

"Why not?" Joe asked. The three girls laughed.

"He has a captive audience," Marybeth observed to her mother.

"I see that," Missy said, sipping her coffee Although it looked impossible, Joe wanted to see if he could get his pickup running and free of the drifts. Wearing insulated Carhartt coveralls, a knit cap and facemask, and knee-high boots, Joe turned away from the wind and let the snow hammer his back. Despite the heavy clothing, the pure relentless ferocity of the storm chilled him. He'd had to dig into a drift that had formed around his pickup to find the tires before he could even start putting the chains on them. It had taken an hour on his hands and knees to slide the chains over the rear tires and secure them, and the icy steel links had frozen his fingers through his thick gloves. Two tires down, two to go. He kicked through the heavy snow until he found his already covered shovel.

As he dug out the front wheels, he looked up at the house. Lucy and April were watching him through the window. They were still in their pajamas, and both had candy canes stuck jauntily in their mouths like cigars. They waved, and Joe waved back. They watched him for a while as he put the remaining snow chains on. When he finally stood up and knocked packed snow from his clothes, they were gone.

Joe found himself staring at the window even though they were no longer there, specifically the spot where April had been.

April had appeared after Marybeth had been shot in the stomach, and their own unborn baby lost. There would be no more children. If Jeannie Keeley was in town and wanted April, there would be a battle. Marybeth wouldn't stand idly by. Neither would Joe. Shaking his thoughts aside, Joe climbed into his pickup and started the engine, slamming the truck forward, then back, letting the chains bite into the drifts. Gradually, he was able to maneuver around so that the truck faced the road. In an emergency, it would be easier to go forward than to try to back out. That was as much as he could do for a while, he thought, until the road was cleared. No one was going anywhere today.

Lumbering through the drifts like a monster, he fought his way back to the house.

Inside, after shedding his outer clothing, he found Marybeth, Missy, and the three girls crammed into the small room that housed the washer and dryer.

"Dad, you've got to see this," Sheridan called out.

They parted to let him look.

The dryer's door was open, and snow filled every inch of it. Apparently, the swirling winds outside had forced snow up through the outside wall vent, packing it inside.

"This is amazing," Marybeth laughed.

Joe smiled-it would be a day of playing board games, baking cookies, and unusual proximity in their small house. As much as he felt he should get back out to the mountain, he simply couldn't. He listened on his radio as one of Barnum's deputies tried to reach the mountain by snowmobile, only to get lost in the blizzard, clip a tree, and turn back. All Joe could do was to stay in contact with dispatch and wait out the storm like everyone else.

He finally resolved to embrace his immobility, and he changed from his uniform to sweat clothes and made chili for everyone for dinner. He cubed elk steaks to brown with diced onions and peppers in his cast-iron pot. As the chili simmered, he added more ingredients and the aroma of tomato sauce, garlic, and meat filled the house. It was a good smell. Cooking also meant he got to stay in the kitchen while Marybeth and Missy visited in the living room, which was fine with all of them. That evening, the girls cleared the chili bowls and silverware from the table while Missy tried in vain to call her husband on her cell phone.

"He never leaves it on," she said angrily as she sat down at the table. "He only turns it on when he wants to tell somebody something." Her tone was bitter, and Joe exchanged glances with Marybeth. Neither really knew Missy's third husband well, but there had been rumors lately about the possibility of his indictment for land-use fraud. Missy had said little of this, except that the impending "issues" were one of the reasons they'd wanted to get away to their condominium in Jackson Hole in the first place.

"I guess you're stuck with us," Sheridan said as she opened the box of a Monopoly game.

Missy patted her on the head. "I enjoy being with you, darling." Sheridan rolled her eyes as soon as Missy looked away.

"Sit with me, Princess," Missy directed Lucy, who gladly did as she was told. Missy liked Lucy's sense of style, and Lucy liked Missy's huge traveling bag of makeup and hair-spray.

After a protest from April, Sheridan returned to the table with Pictionary instead of Monopoly. They divided up into teams. Joe was on Missy's team, which meant that he gave himself permission to have another bourbon.

During the game, while the sand ran through the one-minute timer and the designated "artists" drew frantic sketches on pads for their teammates to guess at, Joe found himself paying special attention to April. She was the most determined artist on his team, and she drew very deliberately. When her pictures were complete, she was deliriously happy with herself, and she beamed. Joe had noticed before that April didn't have the lively features and sparkling eyes that Sheridan and Lucy had. Marybeth had said that "the sparkle got beaten out of April early on." He remembered that phrase as he watched her now.

After a round that Joe and Missy won by correctly identifying April's drawing, April whooped and punched the air with pure joy.

"I like it that you're getting more normal," Lucy said to April. "You're not so weird anymore."

"Lucy!" Marybeth said, alarmed.

But April didn't explode and start swinging, or withdraw and freeze her face into a pinched glare, as she had in the past. Instead, she smiled and reached across the table and mussed Lucy's hair. Both girls laughed. Joe thought April seemed flattered. Sheridan beamed with relief, her eyes sliding from her mom to her dad.

During the second game, with Joe about to draw and Sheridan poised to flip the timer over, Joe suddenly looked up. "Listen," he said.

"What?" Missy asked, alarmed.

"Do you hear that?"

"I don't hear anything."

"That's right," Joe said. "The wind stopped."

"Too bad," Sheridan chimed, turning the timer over and setting it down. "This is fun."

"Sherry's right," Lucy smiled, her eyes wide. "Storms are good for our family."

Joe smiled and sipped his bourbon, enjoying the moment despite the ticking of the timer. April tugged on his sleeve, her face was urgent.

"Draw something!" April pleaded. "We're running out of time!" Five It was two days before they could get back onto the mountain, and they needed three borrowed Sno-Cats to do it. The meeting point was at a clearing outside Winchester where the road ascended into the mountains. There were more people in the assemblage than Joe expected.

After the weather delay, the DCI agents had arrived in their state plane at the Twelve Sleep County Airport with two additional passengers, a U.S. Forest Service official and a female journalist. The Forest Service official had also brought two small dogs with her, a Yorkie on a leash and a cocker spaniel that she clutched to her breast. Joe noticed an attractive, dark-haired woman with the official who seemed to be keeping a close eye on the proceedings. A lone Saddlestring Roundup reporter, a twenty-three-year-old blonde wearing a Wyoming Cowboys basketball parka and driving a ten-year-old pickup, approached the gathering carrying a notebook opened to a blank page.

The Forest Service official intercepted the reporter in mid-stride, and an interview was begun. Joe was helping a deputy hook his snowmobile trailer to the back of a Sno-Cat, and he was close enough to overhear their exchange.

"My name is Melinda Strickland," the Forest Service official said. She spelled her name for the benefit of the reporter.

"I'm here on special assignment on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service as the head of a special investigative team that needs to remain classified and off of the record for the time being."

"Why?" the reporter asked vacantly. Joe wondered the same thing. The Forest Service was not a law enforcement agency, although individual rangers had some regulatory responsibility within their jurisdiction, and while Joe assumed it was possible, he had never before heard of a "special investigative team" sent by the agency. He thought it more likely that the agency would ask the FBI to intervene.

"You'll be told in due course, if we confirm some of our suspicions," Strickland said.

The reporter obviously didn't know how to react. The woman sounded so… offical.

The Yorkie pulled at Melinda Strickland's pant cuff, but was ignored.

"You'll be the first to get the information when we decide to release it, but if you burn me by printing something before that, I'll have your ass," Melinda Strickland said, her eyes narrowing.

This got Joe's attention, and he watched the reporter nod meekly. The brittle edge in Strickland's voice seemed out of place and unnecessarily severe.

What, Joe asked himself, is she implying, beyond the murder itself? What suspicions is she referring to?

The Yorkie, frustrated, growled and pulled on Strickland's pant leg, nearly knocking her off balance. She wheeled, and Joe watched with alarmed interest as she drew back a foot, seemingly about to kick the dog hard in the ribs. But something stopped her, and she quickly looked up to see Joe looking at her. To the side, the Yorkie yipped and cowered.

"That dog is going to get seriously hurt if he keeps it up," Melinda Strickland said through gritted teeth. "I picked him up at the shelter to be a companion for Bette, here," nodding at the cocker spaniel she held in her arms. "But it isn't working out."

Joe said nothing. Strickland turned from him back to the reporter, whom she dismissed with a few short words. Joe watched Strickland turn and look at the idling Sno-Cats as if nothing had just happened.

Joe was taken aback. She had restrained herself at the last possible moment, but it was obvious to him by the Yorkie's reaction that he'd been kicked before. The incident left Joe feeling unsettled.

The DCI agent-in-charge, Bob Brazille, turned away from another conversation, and walked up to Joe. Brazille had an alcoholic's mottled face and heavy-lidded eyes, and he made the introductions.

"Melinda Strickland, this is Game Warden Joe Pickett and Sheriff Bud Barnum."

With a chilly smile, Melinda Strickland stepped forward and extended a gloved hand from under the belly of the cocker spaniel. Barnum shook it; Joe followed suit, but more warily. He expected her to mention the Yorkie again, but she just smiled as if nothing had happened.

Melinda Strickland had wide hips, medium-length copper-colored hair, a long sharp nose, and dark eyes that made Joe think of a raven's. Wrinkles framed the corners of her mouth like parchment parentheses. She smiled with her mouth only-the eyes remained dark. Her manner of speaking contained lilt and chuckle, as if she were leading up to a punch line that didn't come.

"I understand there are some folks up here who aren't real crazy about the Forest Service, or the U.S. government, you know?" she said, as if sharing common knowledge. "And that Lamar Gardiner wasn't well liked because he strictly interpreted Forest Service policies."

"I doubt that was the reason," Joe answered, puzzled.

"I've been hammered by calls from people who want to know what's going on up here," she said, as if Joe had just agreed with her assessment.

"We need to get going," Barnum interjected, and for once Joe was grateful for the sheriff's brusqueness. In a rumbling, clanking, slow-motion procession, the tracked vehicles ascended on the still-unplowed road. Joe Pickett was in the one in front, sitting next to the driver, with two DCI agents wedged into the backseat. Joe's snowmobile and trailer-sled were hitched to the back of the Sno-Cat. Breathing diesel fumes and keeping the windows clear of fogging with a towel, Joe pointed out the turnoff from the highway into the forest, which had been transformed by the heavy snowfall. In the second Sno-Cat were the sheriff, his two deputies, and a photographer from the Saddlestring police department. The third vehicle contained Melinda Strickland, the attractive journalist shadowing her, two more DCI agents, and Melinda Strickland's two dogs.

The sky was sharply blue and the sun's reflection off the cover of snow was blinding. They passed from sun into shadow and into sun again as they approached the Wolf Mountain bowl. Snow ghosts-pines so packed and coated with snow that they looked like frozen spectral beings-stood sentry as the three battered, spewing vehicles passed below.

"So he grabbed your handcuffs and locked you to the steering wheel, huh?" Bob Brazille asked Joe from the back. Brazille was overdressed in a mammoth down parka, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

"Yup," Joe answered over the engine noise. His voice was flat.

"That son-of-a-bitch, huh?" Brazille said.

"Turn here," Joe told the driver.

"The Feds are hot about this, judging by the temperament of that Strickland woman," Brazille continued, shouting over the roar of the engine. "Governor Budd got a call from some Washington mucky-muck. That's probably why Strickland is here. They don't like it when a federal employee gets whacked. The governor showed special interest in you, I was told. How does he know you?"

Joe felt a hot, embarrassed flush spread up his neck. "I arrested him a few years ago for fishing without a license."

Brazille's eyes widened, and he shook his head from side to side. "So you're the one, huh? I heard about that."

Joe nodded and looked away.

After a half-hour of silence, Brazille tapped Joe on his shoulder to get his attention.

"That info-babe with Strickland is a looker, eh?" Joe agreed, although he refused to admit that to Brazille. The journalist with Melinda Strickland was tall and thin and dressed in chic ski-wear: black tights, faux fur-lined boots, and a puffy yellow parka. She had short black hair, green eyes, very white skin, high cheekbones, and bee-stung red lips.

"What did you say her name was?" Joe asked.

"Elle Broxton-Howard," Brazille said, using a mocking British accent. "She's actually American, but she's lived in London for fifteen years or so. Some stuffy Brit magazine has her writing a story on Melinda Strickland."

"What's so significant about Melinda Strickland that they'd do a story on her?" Joe asked.

"I asked Elle Broxton-Howard that," Brazille answered, butchering the accent even worse than before. "She said Melinda Strickland heads up some task force on the increase of violence against federal land managers by local yay-hoos 'out here in the American outback,' as she put it. And Melinda's a woman in a man's world, so yada-yada-yada."

Joe turned to ask Brazille what "increase of violence" he was referring to, but the driver downshifted and the racket within the cab was too loud to continue the conversation. The Sno-Cat nosed over the rim, and the wooded bowl was spread out in front of them. The brilliance of the snow hurt Joe's eyes. The snow had changed everything; the melded, muted greens, grays, and blues of the meadows and tree-covered folds of before were now portrayed in stark black and white, as if someone had adjusted the contrast of the picture to its most severe. The day had warmed up and the sunshine was lustrous. Pinpricks of reflected light flashed like sequins from the snow in the flats and meadows.

The next thing Joe observed was that something was wrong in the meadow where the elk had been killed. The area should have been undisturbed, but it was criss-crossed with tracks. Tapping him on the shoulder to get his attention, Joe asked the driver to stop, and swung outside the Sno-Cat. Standing on the running board, he raised his binoculars. Behind him, he heard the other two vehicles approach and stop, their motors idling.

It looked like a circus down there. He could see where the snow had been dug up and piled in places, and spots where the snow was discolored.

Joe reentered the cab and closed the door. He turned to Brazille. "When you boys are through with me I need to take my snowmobile down there and look around."

"What's the problem?" Brazille said.

"It looks like somebody found those elk," Joe said.

"Who in their right mind would be up here?" Brazille asked. "Who would give a shit about dead elk in these conditions?"

Joe shook his head. He was wondering the same thing. He turned back toward the front. "Me," he said, more to himself than to Brazille.

"If we find whoever it was, we've got to question them about Lamar Gardiner's murder," Brazille said. "Maybe they heard something, or saw something."

Joe nodded.

"Hell," Brazille said, raising his eyebrows, "Maybe they were the ones who did it." Joe led all of them through the heavy timber toward the tree where he had found Gardiner. The snow was thigh-high, with the consistency of flour. The men grunted and cursed behind him, and Joe felt a thin film of sweat growing between his skin and his first layer of clothing.

"How much farther?" Deputy McLanahan called out, between breaths.

"It's right up ahead," Joe answered, gesturing vaguely. It was hard to get his bearings, and he hoped he wouldn't walk beyond the tree.

"You carried Lamar all this way?" Barnum asked, his voice wheezing. "Jesus!"

"The snow wasn't as deep," Joe explained.

"Can we rest for a minute? I need some air," Melinda Strickland said, supporting herself against a tree trunk while she got her breath.

"Plus I've got some important calls to make," she said as she pulled a cell phone from her coat. She looked at the phone. "Shit, I don't have a signal up here."

"Don't you remember me saying that I couldn't get a signal from up here?" Joe asked, annoyed that she hadn't listened during the briefing that morning.

"Let's take a break before proceeding," she said, as if Joe hadn't spoken.

"You'd think she was leading the investigation," Barnum grumbled, although not loudly enough for Strickland to hear him. But the reporter, Elle Broxton-Howard, caught his remark and shot him a withering look.

"I don't think you're being fair to her," Broxton-Howard sniffed. "She is an amazing woman."

"Right," Barnum coughed, rolling his eyes toward Joe.

"When a man takes charge like that, he's a leader," Broxton-Howard said. "When a woman does it she's a nasty bitch."

Joe waded away from them in the fresh snow. He felt a sharp tug in his stomach. First, an elk slaughter. Then a murder. Then a storm. Now this Melinda Strickland. What in hell is her official involvement? He found the tree, spotting it by the glint on the twin shafts of the arrows. He had been concerned that the killer might have returned and dug them out of the soft wood with a knife blade. Finding the arrows brought a sense of relief.

Joe stopped and pointed. "I found him right there."

The party stopped and caught their breath. Billows of steam rose from them and dissipated above. The morning was eerily quiet, almost a vacuum. The storm had stilled the birds and the squirrels, who usually signaled the presence of strangers. The only natural sound was the occasional hushed whump of heavy snow falling from tree branches. One of the DCI men slid his day-pack from his shoulders and let it drop at his feet before unzipping it to dig out his evidence kit.

Joe stepped aside while the sheriff's officer and DCI men approached the tree.

"These arrows are Bonebuster-brand broadheads," one of the DCI agents said, leaning close to the thick, camouflage-colored shafts, but not touching them. "They have chisel-point tips that'll cut right through the spine of a big animal. These arrows are vicious bastards, and judging by how far they're sunk into the tree, whoever shot them had a compound bow with a hell of a pull on it. It's going to be tough to get these suckers out."

Joe shot a glance toward Strickland, who had had been quiet up until then. She stood in the trail, again cradling her cocker spaniel, cooing into the dog's ear. The Yorkie had been left to follow her, and did so by leaping through the deep snow in clumsy arcs. Strickland had not offered any advice, or suggested any procedure, since they had found the crime scene. Joe wondered if she really knew anything about conducting an investigation.

As if reading Joe's mind, Melinda Strickland spoke. "Elle needs to take some digital pictures of it," Strickland said, nodded to her. "We can use them in our investigation," she said.

"I can?" Elle Broxton-Howard asked, honored.

The local photographer had attached a filter to his lens to cut down the glare, and his camera made a distinctive sipping sound as he shot. Elle Broxton-Howard was obviously new to both her camera and this kind of photography, and she mimicked his actions with her digital camera. Getting the hint, the photographer offered to assist her. When she bent over to retrieve a dropped lens cap, McLanahan and Brazille eyed her form-fitting tights and exchanged boyish grins.

"I don't know what in the hell we can possibly find up here besides these arrows," Barnum complained. "This is a whole different world than it was three days ago."

Brazille shrugged, and agreed. Then he ordered one of his team to fire up the chain saw they had brought. Brazille's idea was to cover the arrows with a bag and cut down the tree, which was about a foot thick. They would then cut the trunk again, above the arrows, and transport the section back to town, where it would be shipped to the crime lab in Cheyenne. This way, he said, they wouldn't damage the arrows or smudge prints by trying to remove them from the wood.

"McLanahan, go through the trees over there to the other road and look for tracks or yellow snow," Barnum barked at his deputy. "If you find anything, take a picture of it and then bag it."

McLanahan made a face. "You want me to bag yellow snow?"

"It can be tested for DNA," one of the DCI agents said.

"Shit," McLanahan snorted.

"That, too," Barnum said flatly, which brought a laugh from Brazille. McLanahan scowled.

As one of the agents primed the chain saw, Joe turned.

"Do you need me for anything else?" he asked Brazille and Barnum. "If not, I need to check out that meadow."

Brazille waved Joe away. Barnum just glared at Joe, clearly still annoyed that Joe was there at all, butting in on his investigation.

Joe said nothing, accepting the fact that Barnum had a problem with him. The feeling was mutual.

But if Joe had been given the choice to decide who would head up the investigation-Sheriff Barnum or Melinda Strickland-well, he was glad he didn't have to choose.

The chain saw coughed and then started, the high whine of it invasive and loud, cutting a swath through the silence of the morning. Joe slowly cruised through the meadow on his snowmobile, half-standing with a knee on the seat, studying the tracks and re-creating what had happened. There had been at least three snow machines in the meadow, he judged. Two of them were similar, with fifteen-inch tracks and patterns. The third track was slightly wider, with a harder bite, and the machine that made it had been towing some sort of sleigh with runners. The visitors had been there the evening before, since a few fingers of fresh white snow had blown into the tracks during the night.

Whoever had been there had ignored Gardiner's pickup, which was encased in snow near the tree line. Two deputies were in the process of digging their way to it so they could photograph the inside of the cab.

The piles of snow he had seen from above were where the elk had been found and butchered. The visitors had found all of them.

The discoloration in the snow was from flecks of blood, hair, and tissue. The hindquarters and tenderloin strips had been removed from the elk and, Joe assumed, loaded onto the sleigh. He noted scald marks in the snow, and tissue blowback from where the cutting had been done. They'd used chain saws. Although Joe was grateful that the meat hadn't gone to waste, the circumstances of its harvesting were bizarre. It wasn't likely that three snowmobilers had been out for recreation the night before, as the storm finally let up. Their tracks showed that they had entered the meadow from the west, from the Battle Mountain area, and had left the way they'd come. They had driven directly to the meadow, then scouted it in wide circles until they began to find the lumps of the carcasses. He could see that their tracks dug deeper on the way out than when they entered, no doubt due to the thousand pounds of meat they had hauled.

More than a thousand pounds of meat, Joe thought, and whistled. Who had the manpower, the equipment, and the acumen to butcher five elk during a mountain blizzard? How had the visitors known the elk were there? And, obviously, was there a connection between the snowmobiles in the meadow and the murder of Lamar Gardiner?

Joe used his hand-held radio to contact Barnum and Brazille.

"They took five elk somewhere on snowmobiles?" Barnum asked. He heard Brazille ask Barnum for the radio.

"Can you see any tracks heading up this direction?" Brazille asked.

"Nope," Joe said.

"Then it's unlikely these meat-lovers knew about Gardiner being up here, or I think they would have checked on him," Brazille concluded.

"That's possible," Joe said. "But they could have done that earlier. It's been two days. There's been a lot of new snow since Gardiner was killed, so it's impossible to see if they were up here before last night."

"Hold on just a second," Brazille asked, and clicked off.

A few minutes later, Brazille came back on and asked for Joe.

"McLanahan found some yellow snow near the other road," Brazille reported. "He bagged it. So we've got a little something to go on."

The thought of McLanahan grumbling and digging through the powder made Joe smile to himself.

"I think I'll find out where these tracks end up," Joe said. "They go west toward Battle Mountain."

He heard Brazille consulting with Barnum for a moment, then Brazille came back on.

"Don't confront anyone if you find them," Brazille said. "And keep your radio on at all times."

"Will do," Joe said.

"Sheriff Barnum asked me to tell you not to do anything that will piss him off."

"I don't think I can do that," Joe said.

Joe and Barnum had never been close, but their working relationship had been strained further since the previous summer. Joe had suspected Barnum of complicity and corruption in regard to the events that took place at Savage Run. But there was no proof, and the sheriff had fessed up to nothing. There was now an underlying hostility between them, and Joe knew that someday it would break out into something ugly. Before restarting his machine, Joe photographed the tracks, the remnants of the carcasses, and the blowback and jotted his observations in his spiral notebook. He patted his coat to make sure he had everything he might need: binoculars, handcuffs, pepper spray, batteries for the radio, his.40 Beretta.

Then he fired the motor, goosed it, and sat back as he entered the timber, staying in the tracks of the visitors. Over the top of the west rim, six miles into the forest, the tracks stopped at a forest service road. Joe was out of the wind now, on the south side of the mountain, and the snow was not as deep. The vehicle that had pulled the snowmobile trailer up the mountain was long gone, but Joe could see footprints in the road where someone had loaded the machines, and where the truck had turned around. He took more photographs.

The reception was scratchy, but he was able to reach Brazille on his radio and tell him what he had found.

"Never mind that," Brazille answered. "We just got a report that a rancher saw a vehicle coming down the mountain that night about the same time as you did. The rancher says he identified the vehicle and the driver and that he's some bad-ass local yahoo who lives alone out in the sticks. So we've got to get back down in the valley and regroup. And get this," Brazille continued. "He's a bow hunter."

Then Joe heard Strickland's voice from somewhere near Brazille: "Let's get that bastard." When Joe returned, the team was trudging back to the Sno-Cats carrying the section of tree with the arrows in it. Joe shuttled back and forth between them and the vehicles, giving rides on the back of his snowmobile. The Sno-Cats roared back to life and started clanking down the mountain, but then Joe saw the lead machine stop abruptly. The driver crawled out, and was peering under his vehicle. Joe got out of the cab and walked over to him. They were joined by Melinda Strickland.

"Aw, I'm so goddamned sorry about this," the driver said, clearly upset. "I saw that little dog dart right under my track and felt the bump before I could do anything about it."

Joe squatted, trying to see any sign of the dog under the heavy metal track. He could see a tuft of hair on the snow, and the still paw of the Yorkie sticking out from beneath the metal cleat.

He braced himself for the explosion. It didn't come.

"The only place that dog could run was in the packed down snow from the Sno-Cats. It's too deep everywhere else," the driver said. Joe noticed that his eyes were moist and he looked like he was about to be ill.

More of the team had gotten out and were standing around the lead Sno-Cat, looking down at what remained of the dead Yorkie.

"How did the dog get out of the Sno-Cat?" Joe asked.

"I didn't let it in," Strickland said.

Joe felt a chill. It had nothing to do with the cold.

"Ma'am, I'm so…," the driver started, but Strickland dismissed him with a wave of her hand. Joe watched her walk clumsily back through the snow toward her vehicle. If she was upset, he couldn't tell.

As she opened the door to climb back in her vehicle, she glared at the men still standing in the snow.

"We need to stop wasting time here," she snapped. "Lamar Gardiner's killer isn't going to wait for us."

Everyone stood there for a moment, then silently shuffled back to their Sno-Cats. The first machine lurched forward and resumed its pace. From the second, Joe saw a flat, tan, pie-shaped object in the road. He winced as he rolled over it, but there was no bump. The suspect's name was Nate Romanowski, and he lived on a small tract of land south of Saddlestring near the river. Joe had heard the name before, somewhere, but he couldn't place it. The procession of vehicles made their way along a county road toward Romanowski's cabin.

Sheriff Barnum had called ahead and ordered a county snowplow driver to start clearing the road toward the river. By the time the sheriff's department, the DCI team, and Joe Pickett had taken the Sno-Cats back down the mountain to the highway and gotten back into their trucks, the snowplow driver had reported that 75 percent of the road had been cleared. The snowplow operator was attacking the last 25 percent when the parade of four-wheel drive vehicles caught up with him and settled in behind.

While the plow roared ahead of them, tossing wind-hardened plates of snow to the shoulder like winter flagstones, Joe thought that he must be taking part in the slowest-moving raid in law enforcement history.

He had listened to the conversations on the radio while they drove. A local rancher, Bud Longbrake, had told the dispatcher that he'd been checking on his cattle in his winter pasture at the confluence of Bitter Creek and Crazy Woman Creek when the storm hit. He had gotten disoriented in the heavy snowfall, taken a wrong turn, was briefly lost, then found out where he was when he hit the road that led down from Wolf Mountain. As he turned onto the road in the blizzard, he was almost broadsided by an older-model Jeep that was screaming down the two-track. As the Jeep passed him, Longbrake said, he could see the driver clearly in his headlights. He recognized the profile, as well as the long blond ponytail. It was Nate Romanowski, all right. And Longbrake said Romanowski was a strange son-of-a-bitch-a recluse who hunted for all of his food with a bow and arrow and who raised birds of prey to hunt with as well.

Now Joe remembered where he had heard the name before. Romanowski had sent in an application for a falconry permit. It was the only falconry-hunting application he had ever encountered on the job. Six Nate Romanowski lived in a stone house on the banks of the north fork of the Twelve Sleep River. Across the river, a steep red bluff rose sixty feet into the air, topped by a crew-cut juniper brush that this morning supported sixteen inches of frosting-like snow. The sun lit up the red face of the bluff. The deep river was slowed by its cargo of slush.

Inside the stone house, Romanowski threw off his quilts after a midday nap. The inside walls of the house were cold, and the only light was a quarter-inch shaft from the edge of the shuttered window. He opened the shutters and squinted at the snow. After lighting a wood fire in his stove, he pulled on a pair of insulated coveralls and a tall pair of black rubber Wellington boots. He tied his blond hair into a ponytail with a leather thong, clamped on his cowboy hat, and started to cook a late lunch of pronghorn antelope steak, eggs, and toast.

After he'd eaten, he stepped outside into the deep snow. The sun had begun to soften it, and it crunched slightly as he high-stepped through it. Rocky Mountain winters were nothing like most people perceived, he thought. In the foothills and flats, the snow didn't stay on the ground all winter like it did in the Northeast or Midwest. It snowed, blew around, then melted, then snowed again. The mountains were a different situation.

He thought he heard the sound of a motor in the distance. He stopped and cocked his head. He was too far from the highway to hear traffic, so the sound of a motor usually meant someone was either lost, stuck, or coming to see him. The rushing sound of the river was loud this morning, and he didn't hear the sound again. In the shack, or "mews," where the birds were, strips of light caught swirling dust mixed with crystals of ice. The peregrine falcon and the red-tailed hawk perched on opposite corners of the mews on dowel rods. They were motionless. A slash of sunlight striped their breasts.

Romanowski pulled on a welder's glove and extended his right arm. In a leather hawking bag slung from his belt, two pigeons struggled. The hawk stepped from the dowel rod and gripped the weathered leather of the glove. Romanowski raised his arm and studied the bird, turning it slowly to see the tail feathers. They were still broken off evenly, but were regrowing. In two months, the hawk would once again be in the air. It was a much-changed bird from the one he had found crumpled on the side of the highway, stunned and still from bouncing off of the windshield of a cattle truck. The hawk had eaten well and filled out, and its eyes had regained their cold black sharpness, but it wasn't out of danger yet. For the first six weeks, while it recovered, Romanowski had kept the leather hood over its eyes to keep the bird calm. Dark meant calmness. Only recently had he begun to remove the hood for short stretches of time. At first, the hawk had reacted poorly, screeching hysterically. But now the bird was getting used to the light, and the outside stimuli.

He dug for a pigeon with his free hand and brought it up flapping. Nate trapped the pigeons in barns and on top of old stores in downtown Saddlestring. He stuffed the head of the pigeon between his gloved fingers while the hawk watched, very intent. When the pigeon was secured, the hawk bent down and took the pigeon's head off.

The hawk ate the entire pigeon-feathers, bone, and feet-his gullet swelling to the size of a small fist. When the pigeon was gone and the hawk's beak and head were matted with bloody down, Romanowski put the bird on a perch outside the mews. The peregrine now stepped up to his fist.

Romanowski took the falcon out into the dry cold. Jesses-long leather straps attached to the bird's legs-were wrapped in Romanowski's gloves. The other pigeon lay motionless in the hawking bag.

The peregrine had not yet focused attention on the sack; it had locked its eyes on something beyond the stone house and through the triad of formidable cottonwoods, out toward the sagebrush plains. Perhaps, Romanowski thought, the peregrine heard a motor too.

Romanowski released the peregrine, who flapped loudly upward until it caught a thermal current near the river. The bird circled and rose, soaring up in a tight spiral. He watched the falcon until it merged with the sun.

He reached down into his bag and pulled out the pigeon. He tossed it into the air, and the bird flapped furiously downriver for the cover of the trees.

Romanowski's eyes moved from the falcon to the pigeon and back.

At the altitude of a thousand feet, the peregrine tucked its wings, contracted its talons, rolled onto its back, and dropped head-first like a bullet. It cut through the air in a wide, daredevil arc, slicing across the fabric of the light-blue Wyoming sky. Sensing this, the pigeon increased its speed, darting from bank to bank, close to the surface of the water.

The peregrine, feet tight like fists, connected from above with a sound like a fastball hitting a catcher's mitt. The pigeon exploded in blood and feathers. The peregrine caught air a few inches above the river, pitched up, and dived again quickly to snatch the largest chunk of the pigeon before it hit the water. Then the peregrine settled gracefully on a narrow sand spit and devoured the dead bird.

Pigeon feathers floated down softly all over the water and swirled downriver on the way, eventually, to the town of Saddlestring.

Romanowski whistled in awe, and rubbed his forearm until the goose bumps flattened. Romanowski heard the sound again, and this time he saw what was making it. He cupped his hands around his eyes to shade them against the glare of the snow, and saw the top of a snowplow on the flat, and a procession of other vehicles behind it. The fleet shimmered in the distance.

"Here we go," he said aloud. Seven Upon orders from the sheriff, the snowplow stopped short of the final sagebrush crest that rose between the road and the river. Joe saw the snowplow veer to the left, off of the road, and the brake lights of the sheriff's Bronco light up. Then, doors were flying open and heavily armed men were pouring out of the vehicles into the deep snow. Barnum walked back from his Bronco and stopped at the rental DCI Yukon to gather everyone around him.

Joe Pickett dug for his shotgun behind the seat. It was a new model, slicker and lighter than the old WingMaster he'd bird-hunted with until recently. That shotgun, like his side arm and pickup, had been replaced after they were destroyed a year ago during his flight through Savage Run. He and Marybeth were still scouting for a new horse to replace Lizzie.

As he quietly closed his pickup door, Joe felt oddly removed from the rest of the unit. He was a game warden, after all, not an assault-team member. He was used to working alone. But the sheriff had jurisdiction now, and Joe was in a mandated support role.

Joe looked around him at the DCI agents and the deputies from the sheriff's department. Although he assumed they had all received some kind of training, this situation was well beyond what he or any of them was used to. The police-blotter column that ran every week in the Saddlestring Roundup consisted of small-time domestic disputes, dogs without tags chasing sheep, and moving violations. This was no SWAT team. The men were doing their best, though, Joe thought, to look and act as if they were big-city cops on another routine raid. Given the pent-up aggression they no doubt had and their general lack of experience, Joe hoped the situation would stay under control. He had seen Deputy McLanahan empty his shotgun at tents and pull the trigger to hit Stewie Woods in a cow pasture. How much restraint would he use when confronted with a brutal murderer?

Once again, he thought of how he had found Lamar Gardiner-sitting among the elk carcasses and stuffing cigarettes into his rifle. No one could have anticipated Gardiner's state of mind, or his subsequent actions. If Joe had had a secure location in his vehicle, or if he'd had backup, this could all possibly have been avoided. But Joe hadn't had either of those things. He was expected to bring lawbreakers to jail, but wasn't exactly equipped for it if they were hostile or resisted arrest. Nonetheless, what had happened in the mountains had triggered this chain of events. He felt guilty, and responsible. And he wanted, and needed, to see this thing through, even though this was the last place he wanted to be. Only when he was convinced that Nate Romanowski had killed Lamar Gardiner, and that Romanowski was in custody, would Joe's conscience let him rest.

It was the day before Christmas, after all, and the place he should be was home. Instead, he loaded six double-aught buckshot shells into his shotgun, racked the slide, and approached the group of officers who were clustered around Barnum. "Spread out not more than twenty feet from each other and form a skirmish line as we approach," Barnum said. "I want Agent Brazille on the left end and I'll be on the right. I want this Romanowski perp to think a thousand men are advancing on him. As we approach the cabin, Brazille and I will close on it and flank it from both sides in a pincer movement. I want everyone in the line to move from cover to cover, but keep moving forward. Imagine you're kick-returners in football. No lateral movements. Keep advancing up the middle toward that cabin."

Barnum sounds impressive in these kinds of situations, Joe thought. This was Joe's first raid of this kind, however, so he couldn't compare Barnum's orders or plan to anything he had experienced before. Watching the DCI agents, Saddlestring police officers, and sheriff's deputies loading and checking weapons, he was reminded of Barnum's theory of addressing every situation with overwhelming firepower, which they certainly had.

"I'll take the point, if you want," Deputy McLanahan offered, slamming the clip into a scoped M-16 semiautomatic rifle. As if for maximum effect, McLanahan worked the bolt as well, sliding a cartridge into the breech.

"No way, McLanahan," Barnum said, sounding tired. "We don't need cowboys."

Joe watched McLanahan carefully, noting the sting as McLanahan's eyes narrowed in embarrassment and anger.

"No firing unless it's in self-defense," Brazille interjected, eyeing McLahanan as well as his own men.

"I've heard he has some kind of big fucking handgun," McLanahan said. "If he goes for it-the party's over."

Barnum and Brazille exchanged worried glances. "If he goes for his big gun," Barnum said, "we turn him into red mist."

Joe grimaced. "Red mist" was a term prairie-dog hunters used when they hit the indigenous rodents with high-powered rifle bullets and the impact reduced the animals, literally, into puffs of spray.

"I've got some questions for him when you've got him in custody," Melinda Strickland said, speaking for the first time since they had arrived.

Again, Joe wryly noted that although Strickland seemed to want to be in charge of something, she had no apparent experience with tactics or strategy. And she seemed more than willing to stay out of danger.

"That's fine," Barnum agreed. "But please stay back here since you're not armed."

"That won't be a problem," Strickland chortled. Oddly, Joe Pickett thought of his children as he approached the stone house in the skirmish line. He thought of his girls getting ready for the Christmas Eve church service; trying on dresses and tights, asking Marybeth what she thought of their outfits, furtively checking out the brightly wrapped presents under the tree. It was a Pickett family tradition that, after a supper of clam chowder and a trip to church, the children could choose one present to unwrap. Except for Lucy, the girl with style, it was a catastrophe if the present they chose turned out to be clothing. Sheridan, especially, wanted games or books to tide her over until Christmas morning. April claimed she wanted a toaster oven. (She wasn't getting one.) She had explained that she used to warm up her own meals when she was with her mother and father, and would like to be able to do that again. Marybeth had assured her that there would be plenty to eat, but April didn't seem to completely understand.

Joe shook his head to clear it knowing he needed to focus on the situation at hand. He snapped his shotgun's safety off, and tried to keep the recommended distance between himself and two DCI agents as they neared the crest. A stand of cottonwoods crowned by snow provided the only "cover" he could see.

He approached the crest as he would if he were hunting or patrolling-inch by inch. He saw the snow-covered roof of the stone house, then the ragtop of the Jeep. Above them was the bloodred rim of the wall on the other side of the river.

Then he rose far enough to see a surprising, and jarring, sight: Nate Romanowski stood in plain view near a clapboard shed. The suspect stood tall and ready, with both hands empty and away from his body. He was facing the skirmish line, as if waiting for them to come.

Joe stared at Romanowski, and was impressed-and intimidated-by his size and his calm. Romanowski stood stock-still, but Joe could see the man's eyes move from deputy to deputy at they approached. Joe didn't see alarm or threat in Romanowski's demeanor, just that steely calm.

In his peripheral vision, Joe saw both Barnum and Brazille appear from the sides with their weapons drawn. Romanowski saw them too, and leisurely raised his hands.

Then the skirmish line broke and they were on him, a half-dozen high-powered weapons trained on the breast pocket of Romanowski's coveralls. Brazille held his pistol to the suspect's temple with one hand and ran his other hand over Romanowski's person, checking for weapons. When he got to the empty hip sack, he jerked it away to the ground. Barnum barked an order, and the suspect put his hands behind his head and laced his fingers together.

The skirmish line stood erect and began to crowd Romanowski. Joe lowered his shotgun and followed. Two of the DCI agents peeled off and walked toward the stone house.

"You want to confess now or wait until you get into my nice warm jail?" Barnum asked, his voiced raspy.

Romanowski sighed deeply, and looked straight at the sheriff.

"I'm just surprised that they sent the local yokels," Romanowski said. "Do you think there are enough of you?"

Sheriff Barnum didn't know what to make of Romanowski's comment. Neither did Joe. They looked toward Brazille, who shrugged.

Joe tried to read Nate Romanowski. The man certainly didn't display any fear, which seemed unnatural-and suspicious-in itself. Joe realized with a chill that he had no trouble picturing Romanowski drawing a bow and firing two arrows into an unarmed Lamar Gardiner, then walking up and drawing a knife across his throat while his victim watched him, wild-eyed.

"I understand you're a bow hunter," Barnum asked.

Suddenly, from inside the mews, there was a rustling noise and a screech. Deputy McLanahan turned on his boot heels and, his M-16 on full auto, blasted a solid stream of fire at the structure, which heaved and collapsed in on itself in a cloud of dust and feathers. The smell of gunfire was sharp in the air and the thundering echoes of the shots washed back from the bluffs. The snow was scattered with steaming brass shell casings.

"Nice job," Romanowski hissed through clenched teeth. "You just killed my red-tailed hawk."

Miraculously, the hawk was unharmed. Squawking with an annoyed reep-reep-reep chorus, the bird extricated itself from under fallen boards and hopped to the top of the new pile. With several heavy flaps of its wings, it clumsily caught air and began to rise.

McClanahan started to raise his weapon and Joe reached out and caught the barrel.

"What are you doing, McLanahan?" Joe asked, annoyed.

"Leave it be," Barnum said to his deputy who, with a scowl at Joe, relaxed and swung his rifle back to Romanowski.

A DCI agent tumbled from the stone house, clearly alarmed by the gunfire. He righted himself, and looked to Brazille. "We've got a compound bow and a quiver of arrows in there. And this…" He held up a leather shoulder holster filled with a massive, long-barreled stainless-steel revolver. This, Joe guessed, was the "big fucking handgun" that McLanahan had mentioned earlier.

This guy is no complete innocent, Joe thought. He had never seen a handgun as large.

Melinda Strickland, who had been far behind in the raid, now strode into the gathering.

"Do you hate the government, Nate?" Melinda Strickland suddenly asked Romanowski. Elle Broxton-Howard was at Strickland's shoulder, scribbling notes on a pad.

Romanowski seemed to think about it for a minute. Then he turned toward her slightly-not quick enough to elicit a reaction from the trigger-happy team-and said, "All of a sudden I don't have any idea what we're talking about."

Joe studied Romanowski. What he saw, for the first time, was confusion.

"What I do know is that you people came onto my property with firearms and tried to kill my recovering falcon," Romanowski said, his calmness eerie and out of place. "Who is the Barney Fife in charge of this outfit?"

As a response, McLanahan stepped forward and slammed Romanowski in the mouth with the butt of his rifle. Romanowski's head snapped back, and he stumbled. But he didn't lower his hands. Despite the slash of burbling crimson and bits of broken teeth on his lips, Romanowski sneered at McLanahan.

Joe had taken a step toward McLanahan again, but Barnum had flung his arm out to stop him. Joe couldn't believe what the deputy had just done.

"You people have no idea what you've just gotten yourselves into," Romanowski warned, his voice barely perceptible.

"Neither do you," Melinda Strickland said, her face hard.

"Hit the son-of-a-bitch again," she ordered. And despite Joe's shout to stop it, McLanahan did. Eight Joe was pleased to see that the plow had come down Bighorn Road that day as he drove home. It had cut a single lane through the drifts, and massive flagstone-sized plates of wind-hardened snow had been flung onto both sides of the cut, making the edges look jagged and incomplete. He smiled slightly to himself, thinking how disappointed the girls would be that they would have to go to church after all.

But, he thought, I need to go to church, even if they don't. He needed to leave the blood, gore, and violence of the last few days behind him. The Christmas Eve service wouldn't wash him clean, but it might, at the very least, change the subject to something better and more hopeful. The apprehending of Nate Romanowski left a sour taste in his mouth. Although from the outside, it might look like a highly successful investigation and arrest-hell, they identified the killer and captured him all in the same day, and in miserable conditions-to Joe things seemed tainted. His mind melded the death of Melinda Strickland's little dog with the rifle-butt beating of Nate Romanowski. He couldn't get the image of Romanowski's face pulled tight with confusion out of his mind. Given the eyewitness testimony and the discovery of what appeared to be the murder weapon, there was no reason to think that Romanowski wasn't the killer-except that something in Romanowski's face bothered Joe. It was as if the man had expected to be arrested, but for something else. Or, Joe thought, as if Romanowski thought he had a perfect alibi but no one was biting. Something…

Joe wanted a sense of massive relief that this was over, that the murder investigation was complete, that the thing he had started had finally ended. But he didn't feel that way.

Maybe I'm asking for too much, he thought. Maybe these things just weren't as neat and clean as he hoped they would be. His experience pointed in that direction, after all. Maybe this was a hangover of success, and tomorrow he would see it all in a different light.

He needed to put it out of his mind, at least for a while. And he needed to go to church. While they dressed, Joe told Marybeth about what had happened during the day. She listened intently.

Moments before, Marybeth had entered the living room where the girls were playing, clapped her hands sharply and announced, "Ladies, we are going to church."

Sheridan was silent, but glared at her mother. April had moaned. Lucy had begun to chatter about what she would wear.

"So we might have wrapped this thing up," he said now. "Like a Christmas present to Saddlestring."

Marybeth paused a beat. "Why don't you sound convinced?"

He saw his own bitter smile in the mirror.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I need to sort it out in my mind, I guess."

She nodded, but kept her eyes on him. He had tried to sound upbeat, but she always read him correctly. He could see her reflection watching his.

"That poor little dog," she said, shaking her head.

"Yup."

"Do you think it was deliberate?" she asked.

"That's my suspicion. Either she wanted to punish the dog by making it run behind the Sno-Cats, or to leave it up there, or to set the stage for what happened. I just don't know."

"She might have let that dog in the Sno-Cat if you or someone had said something," Marybeth said. "Maybe out of shame, if nothing else."

Joe whistled. "I don't know, darling. I don't think anyone knew the dog was out. And she doesn't seem the type who feels shame."

Marybeth shook her head. "At least now she'll go back to wherever she came from."

"Let's hope," Joe said, admiring his wife in her dress. "You look like ten million bucks, you know." In a tie and his unfashionable topcoat, Joe Pickett herded his children into the aged minivan after the Christmas Eve church service. Missy, dressed to the nines in black formal wear and pearls she had packed for Jackson Hole cocktail parties, joined her grandchildren in the backseat with a sigh. Marybeth slid into the passenger seat.

The service had been good, Joe thought. Surrounded by his family while the songs and message washed over him, he felt partially cleansed of the scene of unnecessary savagery he had witnessed earlier in the afternoon. Lamar Gardiner or no Lamar Gardiner, there had been no reason for McLanahan and Barnum to beat Nate Romanowski. He said a prayer for Mrs. Gardiner, and a little prayer for the dead dog, but he felt self-conscious doing it.

Sheridan was seated directly behind Joe in the van.

"How about two presents, just in case the first one is clothes?" she asked.

"Sheridan has a point," April said from the back.

Joe grunted as he started the motor. The influx of bodies into the car steamed all of the windows. The night was clear so far, although snow had once again been predicted, and the moon was framed by a secondary halo.

If it came to a philosophical debate, he knew he would lose on passion points. He was inclined to let them open everything. Just as he was inclined to back Marybeth.

"It's tradition. One present on Christmas Eve," Marybeth interjected, turning in her seat. "And besides, you need clothes."

"But I don't want clothes," Sheridan whined.

"Me neither," April added sourly.

"I do," Lucy squealed, cutely. Missy laughed.

"We know!" Sheridan shouted. "And maybe you expect some pearls like Aunt Missy's."

Joe said nothing. His mother-in-law liked to pretend she was not a grandmother, but an aunt. She suggested that the girls call her "Aunt Missy" in mixed company. Joe thought it was ridiculous. This was a sore point. Sheridan had obviously picked up on it.

"Let's all be kind to each other," Marybeth said, in her most calming tone. "It's Christmas Eve."

It worked. Joe felt Sheridan give up her debating points and settle into her seat. Marybeth was amazing, Joe thought.

They drove through Saddlestring with the heater on high and the defroster at full strength. The girls pointed out the good decorations and dissed the poor ones.

After they had cleared the town limits, Joe sped up. They passed the feed store, the Saddlestring Burg-O-Pardner (the lighted outdoor sign beckoned: ROCKY MOUNTAIN OYSTERFEST FREE WITH PURCHASE OF SAME), and the Mini-Mart. But it was the unusual number of parked cars at the First Alpine Church of Saddlestring that made Joe slow down and look.

"I've never seen so many cars at that church since we moved here," Marybeth said.

Neither had Joe, and he often passed the church on his way home from work. The number of parked vehicles-more than thirty-was unusual in itself, but it was the license plates that caught his attention. There were campers, vans, battered four-wheel-drives, and SUVs from Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, North Dakota, Georgia, Michigan, and Wyoming. The small parking lot was filled with them, and late arrivals had lined up bumper to bumper along the entrance road.

"I'm pulling over," Joe announced. He wanted to check this out, even if it wasn't his business. As expected, his children responded with a collective moan.

Marybeth gave him a look. "Joe, you can take the night off."

"Wait," Sheridan suddenly said from the backseat. "It's all of those cars we saw in front of the school."

Joe shot a glance in the rearview mirror at April, to gauge her reaction. Her eyes had suddenly grown very large. But she said nothing.

"It'll just be a minute," he said.

Marybeth started to say something-Joe knew it was going to be a "be careful" admonition-but caught herself for the sake of the children and her mother.

"Don't be long," she said instead, turning to comfort the children, and especially April.

Joe left the van's engine running and the heater on, and walked down the middle of the road that led to the church. It had started to snow, and the moon was now blocked by swift-moving storm clouds.

The First Alpine Church of Saddlestring was a small structure made of logs with an adjoining double-wide trailer that served as living quarters for the "unconventional" Reverend B. J. Cobb and his wife, Eunice. The Reverend Cobb normally served a small congregation of Twelve Sleep County's survivalists and the dispossessed. These were the people who had chosen Saddlestring because it was the end of the road-people who built bunkers, stockpiled weapons and food, and reported sightings of black helicopters to the sheriff's department. Normally, even on Christmas or Easter, there were not more than a half-dozen cars at the church. The tiny congregation provided so little income that the Reverend Cobb supported himself and his wife by working full-time as a certified welder. Eunice was the Welcome Wagon lady, who met with new residents and gave them coupons to local retail stores.

The footing was icy. Large flakes wafted through the air and settled into vague cotton-ball shapes on the ice. The three steps to the front door were slick, and Joe steadied himself on the handrail as he climbed them. The church was heated inside by a stove; the sweet smell of woodsmoke hung in the air.

He stopped at the door, his fingers around the elk-antler handle. He could hear the Reverend Cobb finish a passage with a flourish. When Eunice began to play the electric piano-the church was too small and poor for an organ-he opened the door and stepped inside. A harsh mixture of woodstove heat, candlewax, and body odor assaulted him. Eunice was playing Silent Night. Most of the congregation sang in English, but a few were singing the words in poor German. Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht! Alles schlaft, einsam wacht…

The rough-hewn pews were packed with visitors wearing big, weathered coats. Their backs were to him. He recognized no one except for the Cobbs, and two locals, Spud Cargill and Rope Latham, who co-owned a company called Bighorn Roofing. He had recognized their identical white Ford pickups outside-the ones with the company logo of winged roofing shingles on the doors. Joe suspected them of poaching, but had never caught them in the act.

As the congregation began the second verse, Reverend Cobb noticed Joe standing in the back. Still singing, the minister skirted the row of pews and greeted Joe with a handshake. Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh' Schlafe in himmlisher Ruh'

Reverend B. J. Cobb was a blocky ex-Marine who had served in Vietnam. He had short-cropped silver hair and a big jaw. His wife, Eunice, was just as short and just as blocky, with a mat of iron-gray curls on the top of her head. She had also been a Marine.

"Can the Lord, or this humble servant help you, Mr. Pickett?"

Joe surveyed the wall of turned backs and heavy coats.

"Maybe both of you can," Joe said. "Who are all these people?"

The Reverend Cobb smiled, and shrugged happily. "They're here to worship and celebrate Christmas. Who am I to question that?"

Joe looked sharply at Cobb.

"I don't know them all yet," Cobb confessed. "I was happily surprised when they showed up for services."

Joe felt a pair of eyes on him and looked over Cobb's shoulder. A big, bearlike man had turned slightly in the back row. The man had a massive head with deep, soft eyes and fleshy lips. His expression was alert, but somehow calming. The man looked Joe over carefully, and Joe looked back. He must be the one Sheridan described as their leader, Joe thought. The man turned back to his hymnal.

"They've established a camp in the forest on Battle Mountain," Cobb said. "They all drove down tonight."

"You're kidding," Joe said, alarmed. "In the national forest?"

"That's what they told me. I haven't visited it yet."

"That sounds like trouble in the making," Joe mumbled.

Cobb smiled sweetly. Despite Cobb's unique take on things, Joe liked the man.

"I might give you a call in a few days," Joe said, thanking Cobb and shaking his hand good-bye. "Merry Christmas."

"And a merry Christmas to you, Joe Pickett," the reverend said.

Joe turned toward the door but paused before he opened it, feeling eyes on him again. He wondered if the big man had once again turned, to make sure Joe was leaving.

Slowly, Joe looked over his shoulder. The big man still had his back turned, and was singing. Then Joe saw her.

Because she was small, she couldn't see him over the congregation, so she had to lean out into the aisle. Her face was thin and pinched, her eyes so hard and cold that Joe shuddered.

The first time he had met Jeannie Keeley was at her husband Ote's funeral. She had walked up to Joe, pulling April behind her like a rag doll, and said: "Aren't you the mother-fucking prick who wanted to take my Otie's outfitting license away?"

And now she was back. After making three piles of Santa's gifts for discovery in the morning, and after eating the cookie and drinking the milk left for Santa by Lucy (with plenty of telltale crumbs), Joe and Marybeth said good night to Missy. She acknowledged them by raising her pinkie finger above the rim of her just-filled wineglass. That annoyed Joe, who was still on edge from seeing Jeannie Keeley.

Later, Joe joined Marybeth at the sink in their bathroom.

"So it was her for sure?" Marybeth asked, while removing her makeup in the bathroom mirror.

"Yup."

"How awful, Joe."

"I know."

"That poor little girl. I feel like she's a target, and she doesn't even know it."

When Marybeth had finished washing her face, she removed her clothes and slid her nightgown over her head. She walked to the bedroom, threw back the covers, and slid into bed.

Joe climbed into bed, exhausted. He could hear Christmas music playing from the radio downstairs. He arose and firmly shut the door, something they had done ever since Missy had arrived. Usually, the door was open in case any of the girls needed anything. As he walked back, Marybeth spoke.

"Joe, I know my mother gets to you, but you're getting worse at disguising your feelings. You make this… face… like the one you just made a few minutes ago. I know she notices it."

"I make a face?"

She nodded, and tried to imitate it.

"I look that bad?"

"Yes."

"I'll work on it," he said. "Marybeth, I seem to be annoying you quite a bit lately."

"I'm sorry, Joe. I don't mean to needle you. It's this thing with Jeannie Keeley. I have a very bad feeling about it. I'm on edge."

"I understand."

"Merry Christmas," she said. "And come to bed. Now."

Joe recognized her tone and was genuinely surprised. "What about that thing you have about not enjoying sex if your mother is under the same roof?"

"I need to get over that," Marybeth said, raising her eyebrows. "She might be here awhile."

"Aw…"

"Joe, get in this bed."

He did.