When his eyes became adjusted to the darkness and the only ambient light was from the stars and the fingernail slice of moon, he stepped back away from the vehicle and surveyed the terrain all around him. The river was in front of him: inky and determined, lapping occasionally at pale, round river rocks that rimmed the bank as he passed by. Behind him were swampy wetlands created by beavers damming up the fingerlike tributaries of the river. He was lucky, he thought, to have found this dry spit of land to drive on.
To his east was a sudden rise. The cliff face was striated and pale in the starlight. Small, dark forms shot across the flatness of the face, either starlings filling up on an evening insect hatch or bats doing the same thing. On the lip of the cliff he could see brush and bunched thick grass.
Nate took it cautiously as he crossed the river. The water was cold and surprisingly swift and it came up to his knees. He stepped from rock to rock and sometimes couldn’t tell what was beneath him. It was shallow and wide here, but there might be hidden deep holes. He aimed for smudges of tan or yellow beneath the surface, hoping they were rocks, hoping he wouldn’t slip on them.
He made it to the other side, but found himself walled in by twelve-foot-high brush that was too thick and tight to get through. He paralleled the river for a while, but couldn’t find an opening. Then he dropped to his knees and crawled through the brush on a game trail. His presence spooked low-bodied animals that squealed and ran out ahead of him.
After thirty yards, the brush thinned and he was able to stand. He found himself closer than he thought he would be to the cliff wall. Hands on his hips, he leaned back and scouted a route to the top. There were lines of dark vegetation zigzagging up the face. Since the seams were level enough to host weeds and grass, he assumed they would be flat enough to climb up.
But before approaching the wall, he stood stock-still and simply listened and looked around.
It was a familiar quiet, like Hole in the Wall Canyon. But he’d learned how treacherous that kind of quiet could be if he wasn’t fully alert and engaged.
He saw no other people anywhere. No fences. But as he concentrated on a pair of tall cottonwood trees between him and the wall, he saw an anomaly. Nothing in nature had perfect lines, and he’d seen perfect lines. He squinted, and recognized two box-shaped pieces of equipment secured waist-high to the trunks of the trees.
Hunters called them scouting cameras. They were battery-powered digital cameras designed to be mounted near game trails. The cameras had motion detectors and either flashes or infrared nighttime capability. They could take up to a thousand 1.5- to 5.0-megapixel images from a single set of four D batteries.
The usual range of the cameras was forty to fifty feet. He was beyond that. But how could he possibly bypass them or get close enough to destroy them without having his photo snapped with every step?
He stayed still and thought about it.
There were so many moose, deer, elk, and antelope in the river bottom that no doubt the cameras got quite a workout at night. But was someone actually looking at each shot live?
He shook his head. This was the Eagle Mountain Club, not the Pentagon. What probably happened was some intern or maintenance guy was sent down the hill every few days to retrieve the shots and see if trespassers had entered the grounds, and who they were. Individual digital photographs stayed inside the camera and weren’t transmitted to a central control room.
Additionally, the trail cameras were mounted high, not at ground level. It was probably so the security guys wouldn’t have to stare at hundreds and hundreds of photos of rabbits and grouse.
So Nate once again dropped to his knees and simply crawled through with his head down. He didn’t hear a single shutter snap.
Climbing the cliff face wasn’t difficult. In less than fifteen minutes, he slid through the strands of a barbed wire fence and he was in.
Joe drove into the driveway of the Skilling guesthouse, turned off his headlights and the engine, and looked for signs of life. He sat for a moment, studying it. If someone was inside and heard him drive up, Joe expected to see a curtain edged back or a light switched on.
The guesthouse was small but well tended. It was beige, one level with three curtained windows facing out, and a railed porch leading up to an extra-large wooden double door. An attached double garage was on the right side. Tall twin cottonwoods flanked the walkway up to the porch. A second guesthouse to his left was an exact mirror of the one he was facing—including the trees—but Joe barely glanced at it because Bailey had said this was the one. In the center of the large picture window on the left side of the door was a faint vertical stripe, and Joe guessed it came from the living room. There was a light on.
Joe climbed out of the pickup and slid his shotgun out of the scabbard behind his seat. He checked the loads—five rounds of double-ought buckshot—but didn’t pump a round into the chamber. As he made his way up the walkway, he pondered whether to slink around the house and see if he could see anything inside or bang on the front door. He thought about the fact that he had no warrant and no real authority for being there. If Bud was inside and decided to start blasting away at an intruder, he would be justified in doing so.
Joe rapped sharply on the front door with his knuckles and stepped aside. He called, “Bud? It’s Joe Pickett. Open up. I need to talk to you.”
He paused to listen, but heard nothing from inside. He knocked hard again and repeated his words, this time louder. After all, it was two in the morning. Joe didn’t expect Bud to be up and around and wanted to give the man time to throw some clothes on.
Joe reached down and tried the door. Bolted. He banged on it again and shouted. Nothing.
He went down the porch steps and sidled up to the picture window where he’d seen the vertical slash of light. He removed his hat and cautiously leaned across the glass, suppressing a flash vision of Bud inside aiming his .45 at Joe’s face. Joe could feel his pulse race as he leaned and looked.
The space between the curtains was less than half an inch, so he had to move his head back and forth in order to see the whole of the room inside. It was a living room, after all, and there were signs of clutter. A coffee table was covered with empty beer bottles, some on their side. A stout liter bottle of Jim Beam lorded over the beer bottles.
Joe said softly, “It’s Bud, all right,” although this was a Bud he wasn’t sure he knew anymore.
Clothes had been thrown over the backs of chairs, and on the couch were several take-out containers he recognized as coming from the Burg-O-Pardner in town. As Joe moved right to left and elevated onto his toes, he could see the carpeting and a single cowboy boot on its side, sole facing out from the corner of the couch. Just the sole. The shaft of the boot was hidden from view by the furniture. Joe felt his insides contract. Was Bud’s leg connected to the rest of the boot? Was his body back there?
Probable cause for entry. Joe recalled Bailey saying Bud was sure someone was after him.
In normal circumstances, Joe would alert the Eagle Mountain Security office or the sheriff’s department, so they could go in together. And he would call them, eventually. But he wanted to see the inside for himself before they took over the scene. To document the PC for entering, he took three photos of the boot by the couch with his digital camera.
He got his Maglite from his pickup and returned to the front porch and felt around at the obvious places for a spare key—the top of the doorframe, under the mat, beneath several flat river rocks on the side of the walkway. No key. Then he jogged back to the front door, propped the shotgun against the railing, paused while he took a breath, and rushed the door hard, smashing into it with his shoulder. It didn’t give at all, and the blow caused pain to shoot through his entire body. He stepped away from the solid door, rubbing his shoulder, wondering if he’d broken something.