“So who is going to pay me for this?”
“Give me your bill and I’ll send it in,” Joe said, distracted. He was waiting for the NO SERVICE indicator on his phone to give way to cell phone reception.
“Shit,” Farkus groaned, “I have to wait for the state to pay me? That’ll take months.”
“Maybe. Sorry.”
“Do I at least get a tip?”
Joe said, “Never trust a man who wears white shoes. There’s your tip.”
“Very fucking funny.”
Joe nodded.
“At least say we’re square now?” Farkus said.
“We’re square.”
Joe waited, staring at his phone.
“I’ve got to get on the Internet and look for someplace warm to live,” Farkus said. “Someplace with sun and an ocean I can look at. Maybe I can hook up with a boat captain and take rubes out deep-sea fishing. I haven’t tied a fly in months, but I could learn some of those exotic patterns and—”
“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.”
Joe 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.”