Stone Cold (5 page)

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

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

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

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

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

“Yup.”

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

“Please shut up.”

Joe listened to the message.

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

That was all.
Pack? For what?

Joe said, “Uh-oh.”

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

“Yup.”

•   •   •

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

He'd been wondering when Rulon would call.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But what does it mean, exactly?”

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

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

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

“I hope so.”

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

“I do appreciate this.”

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

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

“So,” Joe asked, “why me?”

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

Suddenly, it was clear.

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

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

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

Joe was speechless.

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

With that, the governor slammed down his phone.

Joe had been waiting ever since.

•   •   •

T
HEY RELEASED
THE OLD TRUCK
on the side of Joe's garage and Farkus roared away toward town on Bighorn Road. When he was gone, Joe opened the driver's door again and dug out the frozen urn of his father's ashes that he'd left behind the seat years before. He'd never known where to spread them—no place seemed
right
—and he'd stashed them behind the seat until he could figure it out.

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

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

•   •   •

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

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

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

Joe didn't like that.

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

Warily, Joe entered the living room.

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

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

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

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

She said the name with a triumphant whoop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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