Joe also couldn’t discount the bear theory because bears were his responsibility. Because once the grizzly had left its federally protected enclave in Yellowstone, it was now the responsibility of the Game and Fish Department. With responsibility came liability, and if it turned out that the bear was the cause of the crimes, Joe’s agency would be blamed. If so, blame would cascade downhill, pooling around Joe Pickett’s boots.
If the radio collar on the bear hadn’t malfunctioned, the bear biologists tracking it could either clear—or implicate—the bear. As it was, they had no better idea of the bear’s location than Joe did.
“Disturbed Individuals” merited more consideration, he thought. He drew a star next to it. The likelihood of a nut—or nuts—with cutting tools was the most likely prospect of all, he thought. Perhaps the bad guy had been practicing on animals for months or years without suspicion. He had started, maybe, with small animals or pets, and perfected his technique. Then he moved up the food chain; an antelope or deer for starters, then a single cow or horse. Without the atmosphere of suspicion that now existed, the lone deaths of single animals would not have aroused any notice. A mutilated carcass that wasn’t found immediately—predation or not—wouldn’t appear all that different from a natural death if the discovery was a month or so afterward. Maybe, Joe thought, this had been going on for years in the area. How many animal bodies had he seen himself over the years on the sides of highways, in ditches, in the landfill? Hundreds, he thought.
But then, for some reason, the animals weren’t enough, so the killer moved on to human beings. Not just one, either. He went after two people in one night in a bloody explosion of . . . something.
Both men were killed in isolated locations accessible by either private dirt roads, in Montegue’s case, or remote county roads, in Stuart Tanner’s case. Joe wondered how long it would take to drive from one crime location to the other, and guessed an hour and a half without stopping. Which meant, if this theory played out, that the killer was local and knew his way around.
What kind of person is capable of this? Joe wondered, trying to picture a face or eyes. Neither came.
Joe’s mind spun with questions.
Was this the same person who had mutilated cattle in the 1970s? If so, why had the killer stopped for over thirty years before beginning again? Had the killer, in the meanwhile, contented himself with the death and mutilation of wildlife, like the bull moose Joe found, or perhaps the cattle mutilations in Montana?
And whoever it was, why had the killer chosen to escalate the horrors to a new level? Since Joe and the task force had virtually no leads of any kind—despite what Barnum might tell the public—what was to stop this person?
Joe looked up and stared out at the breaklands. The dull headache that had started behind his left ear an hour ago had become a full-fledged skull-pounder. The more he thought about the killings, the worse it got.
This is a job for somebody a hell of a lot smarter than I am, he thought.
The sun was still two hours from dropping behind the mountains, but the sagebrush flats and red arroyos were beginning to light up. Pockets of cottonwoods and aspen pulsed with fall color. He loved this time of the evening on the high plains, when it seemed like the dying sun infused the landscape with every last pulse of color and drama before withdrawing the favor.
He shoved his notebook into his pocket, climbed into the cab of his truck, and drove farther up the mountain into the trees, peering out from behind his headache.
oe cruised slowly, with his windows open. As it darkened, he had switched on the sneak lights under his front bumper, illuminating only the road surface directly in front of him. With his headlights off, he was almost invisible to a hunter or another vehicle until he was practically on top of them.
A half mile from the turnoff to Hazelton Road, in the low light of timber dusk, two camouflaged hunters stepped out of the trees onto the road.
When the hunters saw him, he could tell from their body language that he had surprised them. They consulted with each other, heads bent together, as he approached them. He waved, eased the pickup to a stop, clamped his Stetson on, and swung out of the truck. Before he closed his door, he reached in and turned his headlights on full, bathing the hunters in white light. It was a tactic he had learned over countless similar stops; approaching armed men on foot with his headlights behind him.
Joe quickly sized up the men as elk hunters out for the archery season. Their faces were painted in green and black, as were the backs of their hands. Each carried high-tech compound bows with extra arrows at-tached by side quivers. Their eyes, in the headlights, blinked out from their face paint.
“Are you doing any good?” Joe asked pleasantly, although he’d noted that neither was spotted with blood from a kill.
“It’s too damned warm up here,” the taller hunter said. “It’s too dry for any stealthy movement.”
His voice sounded familiar to Joe, although Joe couldn’t place it. “See anything?”
“Cow and a calf this morning,” the shorter hunter said. “I missed her, damn it.”
The shorter hunter’s quiver was missing an arrow, Joe noticed. “Couldn’t find your arrow, I see.”
The shorter hunter shook his head. “Nope.”
“I hope you didn’t wound her,” Joe said. Although archery hunting was certainly more sporting to the prey than rifle season, too many inexperienced or overexcited hunters often wounded game animals and then lost track of them. He had seen too many crippled elk, deer, and antelope in the field with errant arrows stuck in them.
The shorter hunter started to speak. “I don’t think . . .”
“. . . He missed her clean,” the taller one interrupted, annoyance in his voice. “He just fucking missed her, all right?”
Joe was now close enough to see their faces and to recognize the taller hunter through his face paint.
“You again,” Joe said to Jeff O’Bannon, the belligerent fisherman he had met before on Crazy Woman Creek with his daughters. “I hope you’ve learned how to release a fish since then.”
O’Bannon’s eyes flashed. Joe thought they looked bigger behind the face paint.
“What’s this about?” the shorter hunter asked O’Bannon. “Never mind, Pete,” O’Bannon said through clenched teeth.
“Can I please see your licenses and conservation stamps?” Joe asked, still polite.
“You’ve already seen my stamp,” O’Bannon said. “Yup, but not the elk tag.”
O’Bannon rolled his eyes and sighed, clearly annoyed.
While the hunters set their bows aside and dug for their wallets, Joe waited with his thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his Wranglers.
“Have you heard anything lately about those murders?” the short hunter asked, giving Joe his license.
“Like what?” Joe asked, checking it over. Pete was a state resident from Gillette. His license and stamp were okay, so Joe handed it back.
“Have there been any more sightings around here? Any more, you know, incidents?”
O’Bannon chuckled when he heard the question.
“Not since last week,” Joe said. “I’m sure you heard about that.”
“No little green men?” O’Bannon asked, smiling so that his teeth glinted in the headlights.
“Nope, just hunters.” Joe said, looking over the license. “You need to sign this,” he told O’Bannon, pointing toward the signature line.
“Jesus,” O’Bannon sighed, shaking his head “I knew you’d find something to hassle me over.”
I told you I would, Joe thought.
“I’m glad things are quiet,” Pete said. “I almost didn’t come over here to go hunting when I read about them murders. Jeff had to work hard to convince me to come hunting with him.”