Blood Trail (10 page)

Pope approached Joe and Robey. He closed his phone for the first time that morning and fixed it in a phone holster on his belt.

“Finally, eh?” Pope said.

“Lothar the Master Tracker
,
”
Robey growled melodramatically. Pope glared at him. Joe looked away to hide his smile.

A collective groan came from the crowd as the spiky-haired airline agent announced that the approaching plane was a private jet, not United Express, but that United Express would be landing within five minutes.

“A private jet?” Pope asked, raising his eyebrows. “Saddlestring has private jets?”

“We have a lot of ’em,” Robey said. “The Eagle Mountain Club up on the hill has lots of wealthy folks.”

As he spoke, the jet touched down on the farthest runway, scattering the herd of antelope. Joe watched it brake and taxi to the far end of the tarmac to the private fixed base operator, FBO—which was larger and better appointed than the public airport—and turn with an ice skater’s dramatic flair and stop.

“Who is it?” Pope asked.

“His name is Earl Alden,” Joe said, observing as a black Suburban with smoked windows drove out onto the tarmac to greet the jet. A petite and attractive older woman got out of the Suburban and walked up to the unfolding airplane stairs to greet the lone passenger, a tall man with silver hair and a pencil-thin mustache.

“I’ve heard of him, who hasn’t?” Pope said. “Who’s the woman?”

Joe sighed. “Her official name is Missy Vankueren-Longbrake.”

“She’s a babe.”

“She’s my mother-in-law,” Joe said.

He looked at Robey and shook his head with disgust. “Why can’t people just get old and sweet anymore?” Joe said, thinking not only about Missy but about his own father, who was suffering from dementia brought on by years of alcoholism. His father was in a facility in Billings. The last time he’d gone to see his father he had to introduce himself as his son. His father had said, “Joe? Joe Schmoe? Go get me a flask, Joe Schmoe.”

 
 
THE UNITED EXPRESS flight landed five minutes later. Joe stood well back from the crowd, watching as the passengers descended the stairs and walked the short distance across the pavement to the airport. He heard a woman in the crowd gasp, “There he is!”

Klamath Moore wore an oversized white smock that accentuated his tanned and weathered face. His long blond hair blew around his face in the breeze, and he brushed it back and tucked it behind his ears as he gazed at the airport, knowing instinctively how important it was to make a powerful first impression, Joe thought.

Robey said to Joe, “Did we find out how Klamath Moore knew about the circumstances of Frank Urman’s death almost before we did?”

“Nope,” Joe said. “I’ve got a couple of other questions as well. One is if I’ve been underestimating my boss for the last few years. He seems to have picked up on the fact that these hunting accidents weren’t accidents mighty quick.”

“Self-preservation may be the answer to that one,” Robey said. “Guys like Pope can sniff out a threat to their jobs before anyone even knows there’s a threat.”

“Maybe so,” Joe said, not buying the answer.

When Moore stepped inside the terminal, the crowd cheered. Moore raised both of his arms in celebration, and boomed,
“Save the wildlife!”

“Jesus,” Pope said, joining Joe and Robey, his expression sour as if he were sucking on something bitter.

Joe watched Moore shake hands and roughly hug his followers, pulling their bodies into his with a primitive force just shy of assault. But when he got to the dark-eyed woman and her baby, Moore visibly softened and took them into his arms. They left the airport together, Moore carrying the infant, holding hands.

 
 
BUCK LOTHAR, perhaps miffed that his arrival had been upstaged, made no effort to make a powerful first impression. Joe approached a tall, angular man at the luggage carousel, said, “Mr. Lothar?” The man shook his head, said, “You’re lookin’ for someone else.”

“That would be me,” said a short, overeager fireplug of a man with a close-cropped beard, a lantern jaw, aviator glasses, and eyes that went in two different directions. “I’m Buck Lothar. Can you help me with my gear and my dogs?”

“Sure,” Joe said, shaken by his mistake. While Robey and Pope introduced themselves, Joe watched in his peripheral vision as Moore and his contingent loudly filtered out of the airport into waiting cars, trucks, and vans. Lothar’s gear consisted of four huge duffel bags made of camo cloth. It was obvious from the military patches on the bags Lothar was well traveled. Two large animal carriers—each with a bloodhound in it—slid down the aluminum leaves of the carousel. “Butch and Sundance,” Lothar said.

Joe carried two of the bags, Robey one, and Pope the last, albeit reluctantly. Lothar let the dogs out of their carriers and leashed them.

“Sorry I can’t help,” Lothar said. “My back. My foot too. I’m still recovering from jungle rot inside my boot and I can’t put any added pressure on it.”

“Jungle rot?” Pope asked.

“From tracking insurgents in Indonesia,” Lothar said, guiding the dogs to a patch of grass so they could defecate. “We got ’em, if you were wondering.”

Outside, Joe tossed the bags into the back of his pickup. Pope put his bag into the back of his state Escalade. Lothar stood on the curb and supervised.

“Let’s get to the crime scene while it’s still warm, gentlemen,” Lothar said, rubbing his hands together and chortling.

“I’ll meet you up there,” Pope said to them. “I’ve got a buddy to pick up.”

With that, Pope roared away from the curb, leaving the three of them with the two dogs.

“I guess we’ll all fit into the pickup,” Joe said.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Robey said.

“I’ve been in much worse situations than this,” Lothar said jauntily, making it sound vaguely to Joe like something the deceased Crocodile Hunter would say.

 
 
“A BUDDY?” Robey grumbled as he climbed into the middle seat of Joe’s pickup, pushing aside coats and gear, followed by Lothar, who took the passenger seat. “Pope’s got a buddy?”

9

YELLOW CRIME-SCENE tape had been stretched around tree trunks and stapled to pieces of hammer-driven lath in a hundred-foot perimeter around where Frank Urman’s body was found. Two state DCI employees had been left to guard the scene, and they scrambled to their feet from where they had been sitting on the tailgate of a pickup chewing tobacco when Joe’s vehicle and Pope’s Escalade nosed over the ridge near them and parked.

Pope climbed out of his car with his cell phone pressed to his ear, and motioned to the DCI men that they could go. His gesture to them was a backhanded flicking of his fingers as he walked, as if shooing away a street vendor. Joe noticed that the two exchanged dark looks and one mouthed, “Asshole,” before they left.

“He makes friends everywhere he goes,” Joe said to Lothar, who pretended not to hear.

Since Pope didn’t take the time to introduce his friend, Joe offered his hand.

“Joe Pickett.”

“Wally Conway,” the man said, smiling warmly. Conway was in his midfifties, with longish, thinning brown hair, bulldog jowls, and an avuncular nature. Joe got the impression Conway was good at putting people at ease, making them smile. He wore a huge down coat that was reversible: camo on the outside and blaze orange on the inside. A hunter. Joe had seen him around town but didn’t know him.

“You’re an architect, right?” Joe said.

“Yes, and you are—were—the local game warden,” Conway said. “I’ve been following your exploits for years.”

Since Conway was Pope’s friend he’d no doubt heard, from Pope, that Joe held the record for the most damaged vehicles and equipment in departmental history—and was insubordinate as well. It was hard to gauge how close the two men were since Pope had shown no deference to Conway since they’d arrived.

“I hope you don’t mind me crashing the party,” Conway said, looking to Pope to explain his presence but Pope was busy on the phone. “Randy and I go back a long way. Since he was in the area, he asked me to come along. I hope you don’t mind. I promise to stay out of the way.”

“Nice to meet you,” Joe said. He liked Conway’s pleasantness, and wondered how he and Pope could be friends. But given Pope’s sudden change of attitude toward him, Joe thought he might have been too rough on his boss. Maybe, just maybe, there was a human being in there somewhere, he thought.

Pope snapped his phone shut and stepped between Wally Conway and Joe. “You met already,” he said.

Joe nodded.

Robey and Lothar stepped forward and Pope introduced his friend to them. Conway asked if there was anything he could do to help out, and Lothar suggested they unload his gear from Pope’s Escalade. Which left Joe and Pope standing together.

“What?” Pope asked defensively.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were giving me that look, like,
why are you bringing a civilian up here?
Like,
why didn’t you clear this with the governor? ”

Joe said, “I was?”

Pope stepped forward and shook his finger in Joe’s face. “The reason is, Joe, I need people around me I can trust. And I trust Wally Conway.”

“And you don’t trust me,” Joe said.

Pope started to say something but stopped. Instead, he smiled a triumphant smile.

Joe shook his head and turned away.

 
 
THE ONLY THINGS Buck Lothar retrieved from his duffel bags for the hike down the hill were a square-shaped camo daypack and a telescoping rod of some kind. He also buckled on a holster. Joe recognized the weapon as similar to his.

“Sig Sauer P229,” Lothar said. “I prefer it to the Glock .40 you’re wearing.”

“I prefer a shotgun,” Joe said. “I can’t really hit anything with a handgun, anyway.” Thinking,
Except from three inches away
, a dark reminder of an episode from two years prior that still gave Joe night sweats and filled him with guilt.

“Tracking stick,” Lothar said, answering Joe’s unasked question about the rod in his hand. “I’ll show you how it works a little later.”

“What about your dogs?”

“We’ll leave them up here for now,” Lothar said. “My understanding is that there have been dozens of you people down there trampling all over the crime scene, right?”

“Right.”

Lothar said, “All those scents will just confuse them. If we can figure out where the shooter was and isolate a scent, I might bring them down later. But not until.”

Joe shrugged, and reached in the carriers to pet the dogs. They lapped at his fingers.

“Dogs are helpful,” Lothar said, “but nothing beats human observation and brain power. We might not even need them.”

Robey said, “Wouldn’t we need a piece of clothing or something from the shooter to offer to the dogs? Don’t they need to have the scent beforehand so they know who they’re after?”

Lothar smiled paternalistically. Joe had the impression he did a lot of that.

“It would help if we had an article of the shooter’s clothes, of course,” Lothar said, “but it rarely happens that we’re that lucky. No, these are great dogs.
Great
dogs. With a great handler—me—they can track blind. You see, humans always leave something behind. Even in the worst-case scenario, when they haven’t left something obvious like a cigarette butt or a clothing fiber caught in a thornbush, the shooter will have shed dead skin cells. Tens of thousands of them. They fall off the body like rain.” Lothar gestured to Robey. “They’re falling off
you
as we speak, and settling to the ground all around you.” Which made Robey look in vain at the grass around his boots, as if he could see a pile of his dead skin cells.

Lothar continued, “Each dead skin cell is unique to the individual, with a unique scent. If we can find where the shooter stopped for a period of time—and there hasn’t been too much deterioration of the ground due to weather or trampling—we should be able to get a scent on him. But first, we need to rule out dozens of things.”

Lothar patted the top of one of the carriers. “Butch and Sundance are like my samurai swords. I don’t pull them out of their scabbards unless I plan to use them to track down a man.”

“Not even for a drink of water?” Joe asked.

Pope snapped, “Joe, they’re
his
dogs.”

Before Joe could reply, Pope’s cell phone burred and Pope snatched it out of his breast pocket and turned away. Conway was visibly uncomfortable, not knowing whether to stand with Joe, Robey, and Lothar or stick close to his friend, who was walking up the hill gesturing as he talked. Joe felt sorry for him.

“What’s the deal with those two?” Lothar whispered.

Joe shrugged.

“This isn’t one of those
Brokeback Mountain
kinds of deals, is it? I mean, this
is
Wyoming.” He grinned to show he was kidding.

Robey sighed and looked heavenward. “You know,” Robey said, “I think I’ve heard just about enough
Brokeback Mountain
jokes to last me a lifetime.”

“Yup,” Joe said.

“Think about it,” Robey said heatedly, “men can’t even go fishing together anymore without someone making a
Brokeback Mountain
joke. And now a man can’t go hunting without getting butchered! What are we supposed to do, fucking
knit
?”

“Man,” Lothar said, still grinning, “you guys are a little sensitive. . . .”

 
 
LOTHAR AND POPE led the way down the hill with Joe, Conway, and Robey following. Lothar kept up a nonstop chatter. Pope nodded and prodded. He seemed pleased, Joe thought, proud of having Buck Lothar next to him, on his team. While Lothar told the story of tracking down an escaped inmate from the SuperMax prison in Cañon City, Colorado, who had gotten out by shrink-wrapping himself in plastic and hiding among rolls of clean linens, Pope looked over his shoulder at Joe and Robey and beamed at them, as if to say, “He’s on
our
side.”