The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (40 page)

As he walked his sons to the truck, Cody looked up at him with big brown eyes. "You want us, don't you, Dad?"

"Of course I do." John felt like crying. It was only five a.m., the day hadn't even started and he was already faced with one more crisis he didn't know how to handle.

Chapter 26

Like a truckload of rocks, the onerous responsibility that had fallen to him settled on John's shoulders in the shower. What faced him now was no rodeo, where the stakes were nothing more than a fat cash prize and a fancy belt buckle. A good, honest man had lost his life. What could be the reason, other than pure evil?

John's past, his present and his future formed a pyramid in his mind and atop it sat justice. Everything of value in his life—including the woman he loved—rode on how he handled events in the coming days. He couldn't even let himself be distracted by celebrating the reunion with his children.

The heavy hunting knife with two
Bs
engraved on the hilt loomed in his mind. He had to know, besides the one in the safe and the one he had found at Hamlin's grave, how many others this recluse Buck Brown had crafted.

Phone service didn't exist in isolated mountain pockets, so of course the knife maker had no phone. That would be too easy. John had no choice but to make a personal visit. Rooster had given him directions to where Brown lived on Cabin Creek.

The phone warbled as he shaved. When he picked up, Isabelle was on the line. A clear memory from the morning John had released her brother from jail fixed itself as firmly as a granite boulder in his mind. "Are you okay? I've been worried. I heard about the game warden."

"I'm okay, which is more than I can say for poor old Frank."

"It's so awful. I don't think I ever met him."

"Nice guy. You'd already left Callister by the time he came to town."

"Do you have any idea who's responsible?"

"Not yet, but I expect to know more today."

"I'll be thinking of you. Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't think so. I'll be in touch as soon as I can."

"I love you, John."

"I love you, too, Isabelle." Emotion swelled in his chest. He wanted to tell her about his boys, but he didn't have time.

They said good-bye and John glanced at the clock. He had been awake twenty-four hours and more than a day's work awaited him. He felt like a zombie, but he didn't feel tired.

Before he left for Cabin Creek, he had one more call to make. From the beginning of John's tenure as the sheriff of Callister County, he had been adopted as a quasi protégé by the sheriff of a neighboring county. Walt Cassidy had spent a lifetime in a law enforcement career that spanned three states. He had been everything from a big-city homicide detective to a chief of police in a small town. "I like you," he had told John. "You've got guts and you show promise."

At the time John had laughed and replied, "Don't get to liking me too much because I'm strictly temporary."

Most of the time John muddled through legal procedure on his own, having discovered that much of it was plain old horse sense. This morning he didn't want to make a procedural mistake that could cost a conviction. He wasn't too proud to call for help from a man more experienced than he.

Cassidy told him he had already heard about Hamlin and would leave at once for Callister, which gave John time to go to Cabin Creek and come back before the older sheriff arrived.

The trip to Buck Brown's was a half-hour ordeal up a rugged road. John had never met Brown and hadn't heard of his artistry until Rooster told him. Indeed, the scraggly-bearded craftsman was what the deputy had said. A recluse. An old hippie. A throwback to the seventies.

When John showed him the pictures of the knife he had found at the gravesite, Brown said he had made only two like it, confirmed that a few weeks earlier he had sold them to Paul Rondeau and Merle Keeton at a bargain price.

John's stomach dropped to his boots and his heartbeat took off on a wild tangent. "Do you put your initials on every knife you make?" John asked him.

"Ever' one. I do it in a way nobody can copy. I'm an artist."

Creeping down the mountain from Brown's shack, visions of knives and incredible coincidences swirled in John's mind. Paul Rondeau and Merle Keeton owned twin knives. Now John had both in his possession. What were the odds of that?

While he knew the location of the knives, he didn't know where to find either owner. They could be anywhere.

Both Rondeau and Keeton had a long history of run-ins with the Fish & Game Department, most of the incidents with Frank Hamlin. Both men, over the years, had paid fines at various times for poaching big game, fishing out of season and illegal trapping and were, even now, at risk of permanently losing their licenses to hunt, fish and trap in Idaho.

Frank Hamlin must have weighed around one-ninety. John believed his body had been carried to its grave. It would have taken two men.

When John reached his office, Cassidy was waiting for him. The old lawman had to have driven a hundred miles an hour to reach Callister so soon. They wasted no time going to the crime scene.

The Fish & Game pickup truck had been on John's mind at various times all night. He and Cassidy had no luck locating it. After several hours of searching and questioning, they stood on the big concrete boat landing and wondered if the green Ford rested at the bottom of Hells Canyon Reservoir, a hundred feet down.

"Looks like I'm gonna have to call in a diver," John said.

"Looks like," Cassidy agreed.

At the grave, they searched for more clues, picking up and labeling items John and Dr. Thornton had overlooked the day before. John showed Cassidy where he had found the knife and related the encounter with Paul weeks back and the morning's meeting with Buck Brown.

"Then there's your suspects," Cassidy said.

"It's not that simple. I've got this conflict of interest." John didn't say so, but that was what really weighed on his mind. Determining the suspects had been easy.

"Like what?" The older lawman gave him a look, his laser-blue eyes almost hidden in a squint.

"I don't know Rondeau real well these days, but I went to school with him. We're the same age. Keeton's a little older. I've got something going on with Paul's sister. The fact is, we're kinda serious."

"In a small town, when it comes to a crime committed by the locals, you'll usually have a conflict of interest, John." Cassidy walked to the edge of the trees and looked out over the sunlit landscape. A quarter mile away they could see the Snake River shining like a silver ribbon. He smoothed his hand over his thick mustache. "You can't let a woman, or anything, come between you and the badge. If you do, you won't like yourself and it'll be a mark against you for the rest of your life."

"I already figured that out, Walt, but knowing it doesn't make things any easier."

"I can advise you about your case, but I'm not arrogant enough to try to help you in the romance department. Hell, I'm on my fourth wife."

John cut the sheriff a look. He had never heard a word of Cassidy's personal life. "Don't worry, Walt. I'll do what I have to."

"I know you will, John, because you're that kind of man. I can tell you this much. Being the only peace officer in a big county is hard on a man. And it's hard on wives and girlfriends."

"But I'm not really a peace officer."

"Yeah, you are. Even if you didn't think you were before, you're one now."

"There's still those two goofy fishermen from Boise to consider. Maybe my thinking is wrong. Maybe Paul and Merle didn't have anything to do with this."

"And maybe they did. You know where they're at?"

"I know where Paul lives. Finding out where Merle lives shouldn't take more than ten minutes in Callister."

"Then we can pick up these bastards and clear this whole messy business."

Back in town John wasn't surprised when they failed to find Merle where Rooster told him he lived or Paul at the travel trailer where John knew he lived, though Paul's boat was there. The tree-faller's wife who lived in the house told them Paul had been gone over a week.

John left her standing on the front porch and climbed into the Blazer. He sat for a minute and looked over the mountains that surrounded him. Though inhabited by only thirty-five hundred people, Callister County encompassed over five thousand square miles, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. Most of the topography was steep and rugged. Two major mountain peaks and two major rivers framed the valley. The east side bordered a federal wilderness area where no motorized vehicle was allowed to travel. A man savvy to the outdoors could hide out and elude being found for a long time, years even.

"You know," John said to Cassidy, "Paul Rondeau's even more well known for his survival skills than for drinking and hell-raising. I've heard stories about him spending weeks in the woods hunting. Sleeping on the ground, living on hard cheese and dried bread or wild onions and berries and what game he could kill."

Cassidy nodded and John knew they were on the same wavelength. "I expect his friend's no different."

While John sat pondering, a frantic Rooster came on the radio. "John! You gotta get back here! I gotta tell you something big."

John sped to the courthouse, where he found Rooster pacing and trembling. He shut himself into his office with his deputy and Walt Cassidy.

"Paul called," Rooster reported. "He said to tell you he heard the shot when Merle Keeton killed Frank. And he helped Merle bury him."

The hair on the back of John's neck didn't prickle; it stood straight up. "Where was he? Where's Merle?"

"He wouldn't say where he was. I asked him about Merle. He says he don't know where he went."

John muttered curses, wishing he could be in two places at one time.

"I wrote down the time," Rooster said. "It was thirty minutes ago."

A rap came at the door. When John opened it, Dana handed him a faxed report from St. Alphonsus Hospital's pathology department. Hamlin had been shot at close range. Two 9 mm slugs had been removed from his corpse.

John had already learned that Hamlin went out armed with a 9 mm semiautomatic. More than likely he had been shot with his own gun. John felt a dip in his stomach and his hand automatically went to the .45 he wore.

By late morning, a drama he couldn't have envisioned on his most imaginative days had started unfolding. Like a spark in the forest on a July day, word spread that Paul Rondeau and Merle Keeton murdered Frank Hamlin and were hiding out in the mountains. Fish & Game employees from other parts of the state filtered into the sheriff's office and took up the chairs, waiting for John to organize a manhunt. Even local Forest Service employees came.

An Idaho State Police captain appeared, outraged that some asshole had dared to murder a game warden. He introduced himself as Dan O'Neal and touted his background in, first, the military police, then years as an investigator with the ISP. He came close but didn't quite insist the investigation be turned over to him.

Not far behind were reporters and choppers from Boise's TV stations, adding cameras and dazzling lights to the small anteroom outside John's office. After John made a brief statement, the reporters joined the throng of volunteer searchers, filming and interviewing anybody who would talk. And in Callister, that was almost everybody.

To John's dismay, but not totally unexpected, Izzy came, too. She'd had no sleep and had been crying. John cleared out his office and guided her to a chair.

"They're saying Paul did it. Is it true? You talked to him?"

"He called and left a message with Rooster. He said Merle fired the shots," John said gently, as if her brother's not being the trigger man somehow exonerated him.

"Shots?"

"Two shots to the chest. Paul was there, Isabelle. We don't know what role he played."

She bit down on her lower lip. Her head shook slowly. "I can't believe it. I know he drinks too much, but—" She sank to the chair seat, staring at nothing. "He wouldn't kill someone."

"Isabelle—"

"What are you going to do?" she asked, her voice breathless. She looked up at him and the pain he saw in her eyes hurt his heart. "All those men out there. What are
they
going to do?"