Wild Sorrow (11 page)

A crack of gunshot interrupted my thoughts and I dove to the ground, then crawled behind the elk cow's back to take cover. I couldn't be sure exactly where the shot had come from, but as I watched the woods, three men emerged and began running toward me, carrying rifles. Behind me, I could hear a vehicle coming down the road. I glanced back and saw Charlie Dorn's green truck as it lumbered over a rise and then disappeared back down into a dip in the road. He would be here in minutes.

The three men were making good time as they ran directly for me. I would have to make a move before Charlie arrived. I decided to take the offensive. I pointed my rifle barrel and took dead aim, zinging a shot right past the man in the middle, slightly above his head. “BLM Resource Protection. Drop your weapons and put your hands up!” I yelled.
Please, Charlie, get here quick!
I thought.

I watched as the three men did as they were told.

“Step back from your arms!” I yelled again. “Take three big steps back, no more.”

They did.

“Put your hands on the back of your head and keep them there. Do not speak, do not turn around, just stand there and keep your hands on your head!”

I took another glance back down the road, but didn't see Charlie yet. I had to see this through by myself for now. I got up, my rifle pointed at the three men. I walked around the elk and farther down into the field toward them.

I didn't speak again until I had kicked their weapons to the side. I jerked my head back toward the elk. “Did you do that?” I screamed, my voice giving away my fury.

The men shook their heads no, but they did not speak. Their eyes were wide, either with fear of what I might do or with surprise at having been caught.

“Why did you shoot at me, then?” I heard Charlie's truck and I glanced quickly sideways and saw him pulling up beside my Jeep.

“We didn't shoot at you, miss,” the man in the middle said. “We were running because we heard one shot from one way and then another from another way, and we didn't know who it was or where it came from.”

I snorted. “You have weapons here, gentlemen. You expect me to believe that?”

By this time, Dorn was sprinting toward us, and he held his rifle at the ready.

The man in the middle spoke again. “We been shooting targets all morning. We're out of ammo. We're parked over the next hill”—he pointed farther down the forest road—“and we were headed that way when we heard a shot and then a woman screaming. We didn't know who it was, but we were coming to see if we could help. It sounded like somebody was in trouble. Then we heard a second shot. So we decided to get out of there, and we started running out. We were just trying to get to the road as fast as we could when you shot at us.”

Dorn looked at me, his brow puckered.

“I fired a warning shot over their heads. They were coming straight at me, right after a shot had been fired at me.”

He pressed his lips together and gave a nod. “All right, fellas, let's see what you got in your backpacks,” he said.

The men claimed to know nothing about the mutilated elk. They were carrying bags of spent shells and paper targets in their backpacks. We scrutinized their identification and gun licenses, and then I hopped in Dorn's truck with him, and we followed the three men, idling slowly along behind them as they walked up to their truck, a quarter mile farther down the forest road and around a bend. We checked their truck, got their license plate number, and let them go home. They seemed to be telling the truth.

While Charlie was looking over the elk cow and her calf, I went back to my Jeep with my rifle. There was a package on the driver's seat, wrapped in white butcher paper. Without picking it up, I pulled the paper away at the top. I drew in a sharp breath, and I thought for a moment I wouldn't be able to breathe again—my chest had knotted up and stalled. Nestled inside the waxy white paper was the bloody heart of the elk calf, with a note which had been printed on a flap of the wrapper with a red crayon. It read:
Este pobre muchachito lo dejaron abandonado.
I translated the words one at a time:
This poor child was left abandoned.

Chill

I drove back to the tiny village of Cascada Azul, just outside the gates of Tanoah Pueblo, to gain cell phone service so I could call Roy. I used the Screech Owl and reported the incident through shivering lips and chattering teeth, trying hard not to let Roy know it. I had a sudden case of the chills, and I couldn't stop shaking.

“What in the hell?” he barked into the phone.

I shook my head and gritted my teeth, but didn't answer. I yanked up the zipper of my coat, pulled on my gloves, but I didn't think it would matter.

“What kind of jackass would do something like that?”

“It would have to be someone really cruel. Someone who enjoyed hurting . . . life. Charlie found a foot-noose trap. They must have caught the elk in a foot-noose and then snared her front legs. They timed it so I would get there while the cow was still alive.”

“Damn. It sounds like the work of some psycho. Can you think of anyone who might have it in for you for some reason? Have you busted anybody for illegal hunting this season? Anybody hunting in the wrong place, or maybe someone who got a pregnant elk?”

“No. I'm not a game warden. I hardly ever bust a hunter.”

“I know. I'm just trying to find a handle on this. Why a pregnant elk?”

“I don't know, Boss. It was . . . it was just so cruel.” I whispered that last.

“I'm coming right out. I want you to get on out of there, have Dorn wait for me. I don't like this, Jamaica. You need to mix up your routine, take the rest of the day off, maybe stay with a friend or in a motel for a few nights.”

“I'm going to call Diane Langstrom and report this to her, too.”

“Yeah, good idea. We call the FBI on cattle mutilation, so this is no different. Only it seems like it's more about you than the elk.”

“It could be nothing, but the note was written in r-red c-crayon,” I chattered.

“What? Are you all right?”

“I'm just cold. I think it was also r-red crayon that was used to write the words on that sign that was hung around the neck of Cassie Morgan.”

“Oh.” He was quiet a moment. “Okay, be sure to tell Langstrom that, too. Maybe you should stay with Dorn, then, until I get there. I don't want you out there by yourself.”

“Boss?”

“What?”

“Did you give this c-cell phone number to anyone else?”

“Just your FBI friend, Langstrom.”

“No one else?”

“Not a soul.”

I jotted the caller's number down from the Screech Owl's call log and gave it to Diane when I phoned to report the incident to her. Then I sat in my Jeep in the lot of the little gas station in Cascada Azul with the heater blasting, trying to chase the chills away. Roy got there first, and I got out to talk with him. A few minutes later, Diane pulled up. As she got out of her car she said, “Guess where the call came from.”

“The power company?” I said.

Diane shook her head no. She pointed at the pay phone booth listing against the side of the building.

“What?” I asked, disbelieving what I'd seen.

“That's it. That pay phone right there. That's your number on your caller I.D.”

 

While Roy went to join Charlie to examine the elk, Diane stayed with me and took a report. We sat in the front of her car. After she'd heard my story and asked a few questions, she said, “Listen, Jamaica, it sounds like somebody set you up to take you out.”

I sat still, my eyes making REM-like movements as I tried to fathom what was happening. I knew what Diane had said was true. “If those three men hadn't run out of the woods—”

“Exactly. And then you said Dorn drove up. You foiled the shooter, whose plan was to take you down. The elk was the lure.”

I shook my head no. “But I—”

“Look, you need to get past the shock and surprise here and start thinking on your feet again. Let's start with the phone call you got about the elk.”

“That's the part I don't get. The only people I have called on that phone are you, Charlie, Roy, and the power company. I left my number at the power company right before I got that call about the elk. Nobody else has that cell phone number.”

“Okay, then we gotta check out the power company, and we can do that. But you need to think. Why is someone gunning for you? Who would want to kill you?”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe this has something to do with the ATV driver yesterday.”

“My thought exactly. What was he—or she—doing out there by the ruin and the old school? And didn't you say the vehicle was idling along really slow?”

“Yeah, really slow. Until the driver saw me coming.”

“So whoever was driving that ATV thinks that you saw him. Or her.”

“But what if I did? I could bust them for driving an ATV off-road on BLM land. But that doesn't seem like enough reason to want to kill me.”

“Murderer returns to the scene of the crime?”

“Yeah, maybe. And thinks I'm onto him or her. So what was the ATV doing out there, possibly for a second time?”

“Idling along slow . . . maybe looking for something?” Diane said.

“They wouldn't have been worried about covering their tracks—the wind took care of all the tracks. Maybe something else?”

Diane nodded. “Keep thinking. In the meantime, maybe you ought to come stay with me for a few nights. If someone at the power company is involved, they know where you live.”

“But . . . Mountain.”

“So, bring him. Hang on a second and let me call the Silver Bullet.”

As I thought of Diane's offer, I wondered how the wolf would handle staying in a house in town. But the idea of electricity, hot showers, and flush toilets was irresistible. I started running down a list of things I'd have to pack for a few days' stay.

Diane flicked her phone closed. “The Bullet is going to have someone go to town on the power company, and by the time he's through with them, they'll have all their files alphabetized and we'll know everything about everyone there, right down to their sock size. He'll find out where all their people are now and have been all day. Agent Sterling said for you to call the sheriff and have him send someone out to back you up at your cabin while you get Mountain out and whatever things you need.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll go get Mountain now. Then, while I'm out that way, I have an errand to run. Do I need a key to your place?”

“No,” she said. “Remember? I have a heck of a time getting the front door to stay shut, and it won't lock even if it does. You know where it is, right?”

I nodded.

“Okay, then. I have to go check out this elk now. Whenever you get there, just make yourself at home.
Mi casa es su casa
.”

 

 

When I called the sheriff's office, the dispatcher told me that there were no deputies available for a nonemergency assignment. Evidently an RV had overturned on the highway south of Taos, completely blocking traffic, and every available deputy was needed on the scene. I headed for my cabin, suddenly realizing that if someone were out to get me, they might harm Mountain. I drove at top speed, telling myself all the way that the wolf would be fine, that everything was going to be all right. As I turned off the gravel county road onto the long dirt drive that led up to my place, I felt an unaccustomed sense of fear, my eyes searching every rock and tree, scanning the forest behind my cabin, looking for any sign of danger in this place where I normally found peace and comfort.

Instead of hooking around and facing my Jeep out, as I normally did when I pulled up to the end of my drive, I checked my rearview mirror to make sure no one had followed me in, then parked the car facing the cabin. I turned off the motor, eased my automatic from the holster, and sat watching the house for any action. After a few moments, I got out of the Jeep, but I didn't bother to close the door. I raised my gun, pointing the barrel upward, and I braced the grip with both hands. Looking right and left, I made my way as quietly as I could across the porch. I saw Mountain looking out the window at me, wagging his tail, and I felt a weight drop away from my chest. I let out a huge sigh of relief, then looked once more to either side just to be sure. I opened the door. I was so happy to see that the wolf was all right, I almost didn't care that my cabin had been pillaged.

Mountain had been busy demolishing an assortment of my personal belongings. Angry that he didn't get to go with me that morning, and then eventually anxious over being “abandoned,” he had chewed through a tube of body cream, smearing the contents of it across the hardwood floor in a trail from the bathroom to his lambskin rug beside my bed. He had also shredded a shower sponge, leaving a web of pink nylon netting stretched across the cabin floor. The wolf had turned over my laundry basket and rummaged through the contents, choosing those items that smelled most like me to bring to his bed, where he rolled on them, and—in the case of two pairs of my panties—chewed through them.

His destructive tendencies due to his abandonment anxiety were a long-standing problem that had developed soon after he took up residence with me as a tiny pup. But his behavior had improved over time, as he began to trust that my rare short absences would eventually end with my return and our reunion. For months now, an occasional few hours alone in the cabin had not resulted in a destructive episode—but today, he surprised me by reverting to his old habits. Given the events of the past few days, I decided to make little of his misbehavior. I set about cleaning up the mess while he huffed nervously and wagged his tail, his ears down, hoping for me to forgive him.