well as the long-retired county coroner who recalled the cases but couldn’t locate his files on them. Joe noted the similarities with a rising feeling of unease. The mutilations indeed sounded similar. The removal of genitals and skin, the bloating, no evidence of predation, the lack of a logical conclusion. Several cattle, it had been reported, were found in what looked like craters of four or five inches in depth, making it appear as though they had been dropped from the sky. One blatant similarity was the precision of the cuts, which seemed to have been made by an extremely sharp and very precise instrument.
. . . “There is nothing to fear,” Sheriff Barnum cautioned. “There could be an easy explanation for this.”
When pressed, Barnum declined further comment.
“We don’t want the good citizens of this county gathering up their pets and searching the skies for aliens,” said Sheriff ’s Deputy Kyle McLanahan.
Joe smiled despite himself. He bet Barnum just loved that quote.
Launching his e-mail program, Joe scanned the incoming messages. Nothing yet from the laboratory in Laramie regarding the samples he had sent them.
One e-mail was from his district supervisor, Trey Crump, in Cody. The subject line said “???” He opened it.
“What in the hell is going on with these cows and a moose?” Crump asked. “And what is it with you and dead cows?”
Joe paused before responding. He ignored Crump’s jibe about dead cows. Two years before, an environmental terrorist, his wife, and another man were killed by cows strapped wtih explosives. Joe had inadvertently been involved in the case. In regard to Crump’s initial question, Joe didn’t want to speculate.
“It’s true,” he typed. “Tissue samples have been sent to Laramie for analysis. I’m keeping an eye on any future incidents, especially with the game population.”
Joe opened his browser, went to the Web site for the Roundup, and copied the link for the mutilation story to his e-mail, so Trey could read it for himself.
“There is probably an explanation,” Joe wrote. “I haven’t figured it out yet but I will try.”
He wrote that he had found massive bear tracks near the moose. “Could this be our rogue grizzly?”
Then he reread his e-mail, deleted the last line, and sent it.
Just as Joe was about to exit his e-mail program, a large file appeared in his inbox, and he waited as it slowly loaded. He recognized the return address as Dave Avery’s. Since the time years before, when samples he had sent for analysis had been “lost” at headquarters, Joe had never regained complete trust in the agency bureaucracy. So sometimes he chose to seek two opinions, one from the lab in Laramie and the other from Dave Avery, an old college roommate, who was now chief wildlife biologist for the Montana Fish and Game Department in Helena. Joe had been best man at Avery’s first two weddings, but had begged off when asked the third time last summer, claiming he might be bad luck.
There was no subject line, and no text, only six JPEG photos attached to the e-mail. Joe leaned back and waited for them to open, annoyed as always at his low-speed connection.
He scrolled down through the photos and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
The photos were of mutilated cattle in a meadow. He recognized the wounds, the bloated bellies, the madly grinning skulls. Joe wondered how Dave could have gotten a hold of these photos so quickly, but then Joe noticed something.
The sky in the top right corner of the second photo was dark and leaden. In the fourth photo, a skiff of snow could be seen in the foreground. The grass was yellowed, almost gray. These photos had been taken in winter. And they had been taken somewhere else.
Breaking the online connection so he could use the telephone, Joe found Dave Avery’s contact details and punched the numbers. His friend answered on the third ring.
“Avery.”
“Dave, this is Joe Pickett.”
“Joe! How in the hell are you?” “Fine.”
“I thought you’d be calling.”
“Yup,” Joe said, scrolling again through the photos on the screen. “I’m looking at these shots of mutilated cattle and wondering where they were taken.”
“Gee, Joe, ever heard of small talk? Like how am I doing these days, or how is the weather in Helena?”
Joe sighed. “So, Dave, how are you doing? What’s the weather like in Helena?”
“They were all taken outside of Conrad, Montana,” Avery answered, “last January. Do you know where Conrad is?”
“Nope.”
“Conrad and Dupeyer. Pondera County. Northwestern part of the state. East of Great Falls.”
“Okay . . .”
“Sixteen of ’em, from July through January of this year,” Avery said. “Maybe eight more, but we couldn’t be sure because the bodies were too old. So maybe two dozen cattle in all. They were found in groups of four to six, although there were a couple loners. No tracks, no reports of vehicles or lights in the area. Unfortunately, no one ever brought in a fresh one. All of the carcasses were bloated and old.”
“Any predation?”
There was a long pause, then “No.” “Was the blood drained out of them?”
“No. It just looks like that. Natural coagulation makes it look like they’re bloodless. Once you run some tests you’ll find that out.”
