Joe said, “You know how I get along with the sheriff, but this is a triple homicide. He’s got to do everything he can to close it fast. I understand that.”
“Yeah,” Reed said, looking down at his boots. “I guess you’re right. But with this guy,” he said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder toward the open garage, “there’s always an angle. We both know him well enough to know that.”
“What’s the angle?” Joe asked.
“You mean besides making you look bad in front of the county attorney?” Reed asked.
Joe sighed and conceded the point.
“All I’m saying,” Reed whispered, “is watch your back.”
Joe thanked him and said, “You, too.”
Reed smiled bitterly. “For me, it’s a twenty-four/seven operation.”
Joe nodded and left Brueggemann and went back inside the county garage.
While the sheriff gathered his deputies around him and issued orders for arming up for the raid, Dulcie Schalk gestured for Joe to follow her outside. Once they were clear of the garage and the odors inside, she said, “Tell me what he was saying isn’t true. Tell me you don’t know about a fugitive who might be a cop killer.”
Joe looked over his shoulder to make sure Brueggemann and Reed were out of earshot. Reed was back inside the garage. He saw the trainee over by his truck, leaning his head against the front bumper. Joe said to Dulcie, “Like I said. It’s complicated.”
Her eyes flared. “I’m riding out there with you, and you’re going to explain everything to me. And if I’m not satisfied, Joe, there will be hell to pay.”
He nodded and held her eyes. He said, “I’ll tell you the truth. But I want to give you some advice. It’s something Marybeth and I agreed to a long time ago when it comes to Nate Romanowski.”
“And that is?” she asked, skeptical.
“Don’t ask me things you may not want to know. Just think real hard about that before we talk.”
She looked at him quizzically. She whispered, “You aren’t threatening me, are you, Joe?”
He shook his head quickly. “Not at all, not at all. It’s just that sometimes it doesn’t help to know everything there is to know about someone else. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Marybeth knows Romanowski?” she asked.
“Oh, she does,” Joe said. “She does.”
Dulcie Schalk went to get fitted for body armor, and Joe used the opportunity to speed-dial Marybeth on his cell phone. His wife worked from nine to three at the Twelve Sleep County Library, and he knew she’d likely just dropped off April and Lucy at school and was settling into her desk. Marybeth was blond with green eyes, and she was slim and attractive. Joe was always surprised he’d landed her. So was his mother-in-law.
“I’m surprised you’re calling,” she said when she picked up. “I didn’t think you’d have a signal up there.”
“I’m not in the mountains,” he said, and quickly recapped the morning. He heard her gasp when he told her the sheriff was preparing to storm Nate’s home.
“Should I warn him?”
Joe closed his eyes. Nate had a satellite phone, and he’d given them both the private number. He’d asked them not to call him unless it was a dire emergency.
“No,” Joe said after a few beats. “You shouldn’t. I don’t want you to get involved in this. Who knows if the sheriff or the Feds can trace back a call? It’s possible, you know. And if Nate’s involved in this, you could go to jail for tipping him off.”
“I don’t mind taking that chance,” she said defiantly. “After what he’s done for us…”
“Marybeth, we can’t risk it. You can’t risk it. Besides, Nate is smart. If he’s involved, he’ll expect the sheriff to show up, and he’ll take precautions. And if he wasn’t involved, he has ways of knowing that we’re on the way.”
“This feels rotten, Joe.”
“It has to be this way.”
“I don’t have to like it, and I’m not making any promises.”
“I don’t like it, either,” he said. He said he’d call her as soon as he could to let her know what happened.
“Joe,” she said, “don’t let any of McLanahan’s goons get trigger-happy. I could see one of them going over the top.”
He agreed. After they’d disconnected, he made sure the coast was clear in all directions-Brueggemann was still recovering, and Schalk wasn’t back with her vest-before he stepped behind his pickup and called Nate’s number.
There was no answer.
4
“This reminds me a lot of the first time I ever met Nate Romanowski,” Joe said to Dulcie as they sped down the state highway in the midst of the sheriff’s department caravan of SUVs. “Nine years ago, different sheriff, similar situation.”
Joe recounted how Nate had been arrested for murder, beaten, and jailed. The former sheriff considered it a slam-dunk case, but Joe was able to prove Nate’s innocence, and the outlaw falconer had pledged to protect Joe and his family.
“Over the years,” Joe said, “we’ve been through a lot and he’s never broken his word. We’ve had our disagreements, and I don’t want to get into all the details, but he’s been there for us. So I hope you understand that it isn’t an easy thing to turn him over to the Feds. That’s where he comes from, and we’re not sure he’d make it out alive.”
Dulcie recoiled. “What do you mean, he might not make it out alive? This is our government you’re talking about, Joe.”
He nodded. Luke Brueggemann was in the caravan as well, his pickup hovering in Joe’s rearview mirror.
Joe recalled other incidents over the years, things he’d stored in his memory drawer but never reopened. When they’d first met Nate he mentioned he’d just come from Montana. Because of Nate’s sudden violent appearance and the way he’d said it, Marybeth was curious and did some research on the library computers, and keyed on a headline from the Great Falls Tribune that read “Two Dead in U.S. 87 Rollover.” The story said that a damaged vehicle with out-of-state plates had been called in to the Montana Highway Patrol twenty-one miles north of town near Fort Benton. The identities of the occupants were unknown at the time, but authorities were investigating.
On the next page, a smaller story identified the victims of a multiple-rollover accident as two men, aged thirty-two and thirty-seven, from Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., respectively. Both were killed on impact. The highway patrol suggested that judging by the skid marks, it was possible that the engine to the late-model SUV had lost power or died as the vehicle approached a sharp grade with several turns, and that the driver was unable to negotiate the sharpest of the turns and blew through a guardrail and rolled to the bottom of the canyon, flipping at least seven times. The passenger was thrown from the vehicle, and the driver was crushed behind the wheel.
“Witness Sought in Rollover Investigation,” the third, and smallest, headline read. In the story, the highway patrol reported that they were seeking a potential witness to the rollover on U.S. 87 that killed two men from out of state. Specifically, they were looking for the driver of an older-model Jeep with Montana plates that was seen passing a speed checkpoint near Great Falls. The authorities estimated that the Jeep may have been in the vicinity of the rollover near the time it occurred, and that the driver could have seen the accident happen.
Joe later learned that Nate drove a Jeep, and that his preferred weapon at the time, a five-shot. 454 Casull manufactured by Freedom Arms, in Freedom, Wyoming, was the only handgun designated a “car killer” by the U.S. Secret Service because the bullets had the power to penetrate the engine block of a vehicle and render it
