As Hersig moved to the case of Tuff Montegue, Joe interrupted. It was the first time he had spoken.
“Yes, Joe?”
He turned to Sheriff Harvey. “The report doesn’t indicate predation of any kind. Did you see any?”
“You mean like coyotes or something eating the body?” Joe nodded.
Harvey thought, stroked his chin. “I don’t recall any,” he said. “I wasn’t the first on the scene, but my guys didn’t mention any animals and the coroner didn’t say anything about that, either.”
Joe nodded, sat back, and turned his attention back to Hersig.
Tony Portenson cleared his throat. “Before we go off in too many directions, I’ve got something here that might give you all a great big headache.”
From a briefcase near his chair, Portenson withdrew a thick sheaf of bound documents. Like a card dealer, he slid them across the table to all of the task force members.
Portenson said, “This stuff isn’t new, cowboys.”
Joe picked up the one-inch-thick binder and read the title: summary investigative analysis of “cattle mutilations” in wyoming, montana, and new mexico.
The report was dated 1974.
“I found this when the bureau was asked to assist on this investigation,” Portenson said, a little wearily. “Somebody in our office remembered seeing it back in the archives.”
Joe flipped through the binder. The report had been typed on a typewriter. There were dark photographs of cattle, much like the newer ones he had just looked at in the file Hersig had assembled. There were pages of necropsy reports, and transcripts of interviews with law enforcement personnel and ranchers.
“Shit,” McLanahan said, “this has all happened before.”
“Not exactly,” Hersig said quickly. Joe guessed that Hersig didn’t like the way Portenson had taken over the meeting and surprised him with the reports. “There’s no mention of what I’ve found about wildlife or human mutilations here.”
Portenson conceded the point with a shrug, but did it in a way that indicated that it didn’t matter.
“So what was the conclusion of the FBI?” Barnum asked. “Or do I have to read this whole goddamned thing?”
Portenson smiled. “A forensic investigative team at Quantico devoted three years to that report. Three years they could have been working on real crimes. But your senators and congressmen out here in the sticks insisted that the bureau devote precious time and man-hours to a bunch of dead cows instead.”
“And?” Sheriff Harvey prompted.
Portenson sighed theatrically. “Their conclusion was that this cattlemutilation stuff is a pile of horseshit. Let me read . . .” He flipped open the report to a page near the back he had marked with a Post-it. “I quote:
‘. . . It was concluded that the mutilations were caused by scavenging birds, pecking away at exposed soft tissues like eye, tongue, rectum, etc. The smoothness of the “incisions”—note the quote marks around that word, fellows—is produced as a result of postmortem gas production in the cattle’s bodies that stretched the tissues . . .’ ”
Portenson looked up from the report and his upper lip hitched into a sneer. “So how did the cattle die?” Joe asked.
To answer, Portenson found another marker in his report and turned the page.
“ ‘The cows examined died of mundane causes, such as eating poisonous plants.’ ”
Joe sat back and rubbed his face with his hands. Birds? That was what the FBI concluded? Birds? The report made him angry, as well as Portenson’s delivery of it. There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
Hersig broke it. “I guess I don’t see how a thirty-year-old report and our crimes here—including the deaths of two men—have anything to do with each other.”
Portenson shrugged. “Maybe nothing, I grant you that. But maybe you all need to step back a little and take a deep breath and look at the whole situation from another angle. That’s all I’m saying.”
“What other angle?” Brazille asked.
Portenson slowly looked at each person seated at the table. Joe noticed the brief hardness in Portenson’s eyes when they fell on him.
“Let’s say that the cattle died naturally. Maybe they got a virus, or ate some bad plants. Hell, I don’t know shit about cows. But let’s say that happened. So the cows died. Birds found them and started pecking at the soft stuff, like the report says. It could have happened that way here, gentlemen. After all, the carcasses weren’t really fresh when they were found.
“But in this atmosphere of near hysteria, a cowboy falls off of his horse in one county and an old man dies of a heart attack in another county. That’s a strange coincidence, but that’s maybe all it is: a coincidence. People die. Two men dying in the same night wouldn’t be a very big deal in any American city. No one would even make a connection. Only out here, where the deer and the antelope play and hardly any people live, would it be a big deal.
“So the cowboy gets pecked on a little while he’s on the ground and then he gets mauled by Joe Pickett’s grizzly bear. And the other guy gets found by birds and other critters that start eating on him. So what?”
Portenson stood up and slammed his report shut. “What you may have here, boys, is a whole lot of nothing.”
During a break, Joe stood in the hallway with Hersig as the others used the restroom, refilled their coffee cups, or checked their messages. Hersig sagged against the wall near the doorway to the deliberation room.
He winced and shook his head slowly.
“Portenson’s report sucked all the air out of the room,” Hersig said morosely.
Joe said evenly, “It’s not birds.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Hersig sighed. “Are we jumping to wild conclusions here, like he said?”
Joe shook his head.
“It’s going to be you and me, Joe.”
“I came to the same conclusion,” Joe said.
“Shit.” Hersig said, rolling his eyes. He had made no secrets about his own political ambitions. He wanted to be thought of when Governor Budd replaced the soon-to-be-retiring state attorney general. If the investigation floundered, so would his chances of moving to the capital, Cheyenne.
“I do admire you, Joe,” he said. “You don’t have much of a dog in this fight, but you seem to be the only guy in that room who wants to figure out what happened. The others are concerned with protecting their turf.” “I wanted to work on my own, anyway,” Joe said. “Looks like I’ll be doing that.”
Hersig smiled. “That wasn’t exactly the idea, you know.” “Yup,” Joe said. “What does Portenson want?”
Hersig folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “That I can’t figure out.”
“Me,” Joe said. “I think he wants me.”
“Think he’s got a hard-on for you and Nate Romanowski because of that bad business last winter?”
“Maybe so.”
Robey Hersig was the only man who knew enough about the circumstances surrounding the death of Melinda Strickland, a federal land manager, to legitimately suspect that Joe knew more about it than he let on.
But Hersig had never asked Joe anything about the incident, and Hersig’s silence in the matter told Joe everything he needed to know about his friend’s suspicions. Justice had been done, and Robey asked no questions.
When they got back to work, Hersig asked the members of the task force for additional theories on the crimes.
He addressed the group. “We know what the FBI concluded thirty years ago, and we can’t discount that. But I think we’d be doing a disservice if we didn’t consider other possibilities. So fire away, gentlemen. The ideas can be off the wall,” Hersig urged. “Nothing is too crazy. Remember, it’s just us in this room. Who or what is killing and mutilating wildlife, cattle, and people in our county?”