Dark Sky, page 10
part #21 of Joe Pickett Series
Joe would also never forget the look in Kirby’s eyes while he was kicking the pronghorn in the head. The young man looked out of control. Like he was really enjoying himself.
He arrested Kirby on the spot and cited him for the two clear violations as well as for not having a valid hunting license and conservation stamp and for wanton destruction of wildlife. The last charge was the stiffest and could result in jail time as well as the confiscation of Kirby’s truck and weapons and a ban on future hunting privileges, but Joe hadn’t been sure it would hold up in court. He hadn’t cared at the time, because he was both sickened and disgusted by Kirby’s acts and he wanted to make a public example of him.
Joe had learned from experience that men who violated hunting and fishing regulations, especially when they did so with sadistic glee, later turned out to be capable of anything. Which was why he wanted to throw the book at Kirby Thomas.
But he never found out whether he’d overcharged him or not because days afterward the young man was arrested for beating his live-in girlfriend to a pulp and was later sent to the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins for domestic assault. Despite pleas from Kirby’s outfitter father, Earl, Joe didn’t drop his case against his son. Earl maintained that the hunting violations, whenever they were to be adjudicated, would damage his reputation as a prominent guide and outfitter in the area.
Instead, Joe held the charges in reserve for when he could serve them in person. He did it for himself and for that poor pronghorn antelope buck.
Until the moment Joe glanced over his shoulder, he hadn’t known Kirby was out. He didn’t think it was a good time to remind the man about the pending charges against him that Joe was sitting on.
And now Joe was terrified. He didn’t want to see that look in Kirby’s eyes ever again.
* * *
—
As Joe rounded the corner of the wall tent with Kirby right behind him, the knife point stinging him, he tried to quickly assess the scene:
Price sat on the log by the fire with his hands on his knees, looking up at Earl Thomas, who towered above him. Earl had a carbine in the crook of his arm.
Zsolt Rumy was sprawled on his side near the smoldering campfire. He had a head wound under his scalp that bled in rivulets across his face and pooled in the grass beneath his head. His wrists were bound together behind his back with nylon rope.
Brad Thomas, Earl’s massive other son and his partner in the outfitting business, straddled Rumy and grasped a shotgun butt-down, as if prepared to bludgeon the man yet again if he dared move. Joe noted that Brad’s large boots were approximately the same size as the tracks he’d seen earlier that morning.
Tim Joannides stood on the other side of the fire ring with his arms crossed in front of him and his head tilted toward Price, as if trying to solve some kind of puzzle. He wasn’t obviously injured and he wasn’t constrained.
Brock Boedecker stood just inside the flap of the doorway of the cook tent as if he didn’t know where else to go. He wore his big .44 in a holster at his side. So they hadn’t disarmed him. He looked at Joe as if pleading for some kind of understanding.
A glittering pile of smashed electronics—sat phones, solar battery chargers, PLBs, digital tablets, cell phones—were on the ground between the firepit and the opening of the wall tent.
Joe tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t on the fly. Too many mixed messages.
“Look who I found,” Kirby said to Earl.
Earl looked Joe over and nodded a greeting of sorts. Price gestured to Joe with his hands out, as if to say, What do you make of this?
Joe said, “What are you doing, Earl?”
“Something that should have been done a year ago, Joe,” Earl replied.
Joe shook his head, not understanding.
“Frontier justice, you might call it,” Earl said.
“For what?” Joe asked. “What do you think we’ve done?”
“You haven’t done anything,” Earl said. “Neither has Brock. You’re just with the wrong people at the wrong time.”
“What does that even mean?”
Earl raised the carbine out of the crook of his arm and swung it toward Price. Price’s eyes got large and he sat farther back on the log as if that would make him harder to hit.
“Your crime is enabling this asshole. This guy here,” Earl said. “Mr. Bigshot San Francisco Tech Mogul. He’s going to finally get what’s coming to him. It’s high time.”
“High fucking time,” Brad said in an echo.
“Shut up, Brad,” Kirby whispered from behind Joe, as if embarrassed by his brother.
Earl stepped forward and lowered the rifle so that the muzzle was inches away from Price’s nose. He said, “You killed my Sophia.”
Price flinched and shook his head. “Who?”
“My Sophia,” Earl said. “My Sophia.”
“I killed her?” Price asked, obviously confused. “I don’t even know her. I don’t know anyone named Sophia. Jesus—this is insane.”
Earl’s face got dark and Joe took in a breath, anticipating the rifle fire. He could see Earl’s index finger whitening on the trigger.
“No,” Earl said to Price, “you don’t even know her. She’s nothing to you. Nothing. And that, you little prick, is a big part of our problem here.”
Price looked to Joe and pleaded with his eyes for him to intervene.
“Sophia,” Joe said to Earl as calmly as he could. “She was your daughter, right? Brad and Kirby’s sister?”
“She was.”
“He always liked her best,” Brad said without malice.
Price looked from Earl to Joe to Brad, as if watching the most confusing tennis match he’d ever seen.
“I’m sorry to hear that, I really am,” Price said. “But what about her? How could I hurt someone I don’t even know?”
“Because that’s what you fucking do,” Earl said to him. “That’s how you make millions of dollars.”
Joe wanted to talk Earl down, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He remembered Marybeth looking up from her laptop the year before and saying how sad it was that a beautiful local girl named Sophia Thomas had taken her own life. It was such a tragedy, Marybeth had said. Sophia had been in Lucy’s class at Saddlestring High School. Joe hadn’t known her, but he was aware of the Thomas family, especially Kirby.
Earl said to Price, “You let them torture her until it became unbearable. You allowed that to happen.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Price said.
“You’re a liar,” Earl said. “I called you. I called your company thirty times to complain. I left messages every time, but I never talked to one living person and no one ever called me back. All I got was automated voicemail. You just sat there in your fucking headquarters and minted money while my Sophia was being hounded to death.”
Price slumped forward and placed his head in his hands. “I have no idea what’s happening here!” he cried.
Joannides broke in for the first time. “It’s company policy to disregard individual user complaints,” he said calmly to Earl. “We don’t react until there’s a groundswell or unless an important influencer has a reaction online. Steve-2 thinks there are too many users to respond to each and every time there’s a complaint.”
“I wasn’t a user,” Earl said. “I was Sophia’s father and I had to watch her spiral. So fuck your company policy.”
Joannides didn’t argue, but he looked away furtively. Joe noted that he didn’t seem scared or frightened by the Thomases, and he wasn’t bound. That didn’t quite fit with the scenario. Just like the fact that Boedecker still had his weapon.
Just then, Earl gestured to Boedecker in the tent. “You can go now,” he said. “Just don’t tell anyone what you saw here today.”
“I won’t,” Boedecker replied. “Will you let Joe go with me? That was part of the deal.”
“What deal?” Joe asked, stunned.
Boedecker wouldn’t meet his gaze. Joe realized the rancher had been in on it from the beginning. That’s what his early warnings and his antipathy toward the hunting party had been about.
Joe felt sick to his stomach.
“For a year I tried to figure out how to get at this guy,” Earl said to Joe about Price. “But God works in mysterious ways. I never could have imagined he’d be delivered to me. So for that I have to thank you, Joe Pickett.”
“Yeah, thank you, Joe Pickett,” Brad echoed.
Joe looked to Price and saw absolute fear in his eyes.
“I had nothing to do with this,” he said to him.
“Thank the governor, too,” Boedecker said as he stepped out of the tent. “That bastard finally did something right.”
Joe sensed Kirby relax behind him. The knife point was withdrawn, but he still stood there, ready. Kirby lowered Joe’s pack to the ground at their feet. It seemed as if he were about to be released. He doubted Price and Rumy would get the same deal. He wasn’t sure yet about Joannides.
Boedecker grasped his personal gear bag and started to walk in the direction of the horses.
“No,” Earl called to him. “You need to hoof it yourself.”
Boedecker turned. “They’re my horses.”
“And they’ll stay with us,” Earl said to him. “It’ll take you two or three days to get back down to the trailhead. We need the time in case you change your mind and start yapping.”
“I won’t change my mind,” Boedecker pleaded.
“Start walking before I change mine,” Earl threatened.
“My radio is in the pannier of my horse,” Boedecker said. “You know that one Brad told me to keep on? I might need it in an emergency.”
Joe thought, A live radio in Brock’s gear? So the Thomases had been listening to them?
“No,” Earl said to Boedecker. “You’ll need to be radio-silent so we can do what we’re here to do.”
While the two of them went back and forth, Joe noticed in his peripheral vision that Rumy had regained his wits on the ground. Although he still lay motionless on his side beneath Brad, his eyes darted around and he was carefully working on loosening and stretching out the rope on his wrists so he could get his hands free. Brad was preoccupied watching the exchange between Boedecker and Earl.
Rumy, Joe thought, was preparing to make his move.
“I want to get those horses back from you as soon as I can,” Boedecker said to Earl. “I’ve got clients coming.”
“I’ll get ’em back to you,” Earl said.
“They’re my best, you know.”
“I know. And leave that handgun. I’ll give it back to you when this is over.”
Boedecker was alarmed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I am not. I’d prefer it if you weren’t armed.”
“What about bears?”
“Make plenty of noise.”
“Earl, this isn’t the arrangement we discussed.”
“Seems like you want to argue some more.”
Boedecker apparently thought it best to shut up. With a curse, he turned his back on Earl and began to trudge away.
At that moment, Joe saw movement from the camp and he turned his head to see Rumy roll onto his back. He kicked up at Brad with one decisive movement. His boot came up between Brad’s legs and hit with an ugly thump. Brad gasped and stepped back, doubling over. He still grasped his shotgun.
Rumy continued his roll until he was on his hands and knees. Then he launched himself up and ran through the campsite and toward the trees to the east. He didn’t even look over his shoulder as he did so. Not protecting his boss, Joe thought, but saving himself.
“Fucking Brad,” Kirby hissed behind Joe.
“Get him,” Earl ordered to Brad. “Get him before he reaches the trees.”
Brad moaned and then howled. He sounded like a wounded animal.
“Stop him!” Earl shouted.
Brad took a raggedy breath and placed his big hands on his knees and pushed himself back up to his six-foot-four height. His face was a twisted red grimace.
All eyes in the camp were on him as he raised the shotgun to his shoulder. Rumy was thirty yards away—nearly out of effective buckshot range. Five or six full strides and he’d be into the timber.
The blast split open the still morning, and Rumy’s arms shot out from his body and he tumbled forward. He was obviously wounded but likely not yet dead.
“Go finish him off,” Earl ordered. Brad grunted in pain and lumbered in Rumy’s direction. He jacked a fresh shell into the receiver of his weapon as he did so.
“Move your ass,” Kirby hissed to his brother.
At that second, Joe glanced in Price’s direction and they made eye contact. A message was exchanged.
Now.
Joe bent his knees, grasped the shoulder strap of his daypack, and came up with it as he wheeled around, surprising Kirby, who was distracted and watching his brother.
While Joe frantically unzipped the side pocket, Kirby recovered and stabbed at him. Joe raised the pack to intercept the blade, although he saw a flash of the knifepoint emerge through the nylon skin of it inches from his bare hand.
Joe yanked the canister of bear spray out of the side pocket, gripped the red plastic safety mechanism with his teeth, and pulled it free. He let the pack drop a little and he hit Kirby point-blank in the face with a blast from the canister.
Kirby screamed and backpedaled away until he tripped on a tree root and fell to his butt. His eyes were clenched tightly and his face was crimson.
Joe turned quickly toward the camp to see that Earl had heard Kirby and was now raising his carbine away from Price on the log and toward him. Joe raised the nozzle of the bear spray until it covered Earl’s upper body and he squeezed the trigger. A huge plume of red spray shot across the distance between them and engulfed Earl’s entire face and neck.
Joe didn’t let up. He kept the spray going full-blast while Earl spun, cursed, and fired without aiming in the direction where Price had been sitting just seconds before.
Price was no longer there. He was running toward Joe with his arms up over his head to shield it and to avoid the plume.
At the edge of the campsite there was another concussive boom. Brad had caught up with Rumy. He turned to check out the commotion near the tent and no doubt saw Joe and Price break for it, going in the other direction. To the west. And both his dad and brother were writhing in the grass.
“Hey!” Brad called out, running back toward the camp with his shotgun. “They’re getting away!”
“Go, go, go, go,” Joe barked at Price, who sprinted past him. Joe followed.
As they penetrated the tree line, Joe heard another boom and the angry whap of buckshot pellets tearing through pine boughs and smacking into tree trunks behind him. He wasn’t hit, and Price, who was ahead of him, didn’t break stride.
* * *
—
The two of them ran until Joe’s lungs were on fire. Price had fallen back, but he stayed with Joe every step of the way. He was in good physical shape, Joe was pleased to find out.
Tree trunks shot by them and Joe made no real attempt at stealth. They ran generally west, but not in a straight line. All he cared about was putting as much distance as possible from the Thomases. He assumed Brad was back in camp trying to help his dad and brother, and wasn’t pursuing them at the moment.
That would come later.
Joe had to finally stop and catch his breath. Price seemed grateful as well for the pause. They again exchanged glances, but no words were said. Too tired, Joe thought.
They’d chosen to rest on the cusp of a vast stand of aspen. The forest floor was colored gold and vermilion with fallen leaves in various stages of death.
Heaving for air and with his hands on his knees, Joe thought:
No horses.
No weapons.
No food.
No way to communicate.
Leaving an easy-to-follow trail in the dirt.
Finally, Price recovered enough to say, “Are we fucked?”
“Yup.”
ELEVEN
Marybeth was in a feisty mood and she tried to work her way out of it by concentrating on the budget presentation she’d have to deliver to the county commissioners in two days. She’d started the morning by having a tense exchange with Evelyn Hughes, the front desk librarian, for forgetting to make sure the exit doors had been locked the night before, which they hadn’t been. It was Evelyn’s responsibility to check them.
“I thought I had,” was Evelyn’s response.
“Please make sure you do so in the future,” Marybeth had snapped.
“I really thought I had,” Evelyn said before looking away.
So Marybeth scrolled through the spreadsheets and graphics on the monitor of her library computer and tried to anticipate not only the questions they’d ask her, like, Do people even go to the library anymore? and Do you have porn filters on the computers available to the public? but what her answers would be.
There were five commissioners. Two were reliably pro–library funding. Two were adamantly against any taxpayer expenditures that weren’t devoted solely to infrastructure, although they had pet causes such as funding the county fair and spending money on lawyers to advance a county-wide wolf eradication policy in opposition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The fifth commissioner, Laura Beason, could go either way. Beason was the swing vote, and Marybeth had learned to tailor her answers to her. Beason had married into a third-generation ranch family, and although her husband was squarely with the two anti-spending commissioners (except for his pet projects, of course), Laura enjoyed defying him when she could. Marybeth would play to Beason’s soft spot for culture and the arts in the community. It had worked in previous years.
