“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” “I was just kidding.”
“I,” Thompson said slowly, “am less than impressed with your investigative technique, Mr. Pickett. Maybe I should have waited for the sheriff.”
Joe arched his eyebrows. “Maybe. But let’s go down there for a closer look.”
He eased the pickup down the hill and parked it on the left side of the circle. Joe and Thompson climbed out. While Thompson leaned against Joe’s pickup, Joe paralleled the ring on the outside, studying it. The ring cut through the buffalo grass turf to bare ground. It did not look singed on the edges, or ripped out. There were no pieces of broken-up turf along the edges. He was reminded of the ring of moisture a sweating, cold drink made on a countertop. He walked a full rotation around it until he was back at the truck.
Thompson looked expectant, his eyebrows raised as if to say, “See? What did I tell you?”
Joe turned, looked again at the circle, squinting.
“When was the last time you used that road we just took?” Joe asked. “Oh, a few months, I suppose.”
“Are you sure? Can you remember the last time you came down here?” Thompson’s eyebrows fell a little. “Why are you asking me this?”
Joe stuffed his hands into his Wranglers and rocked back a bit on his bootheels. “I’m trying to establish how long this thing has been here.”
“I told you about that premonition I had . . .”
Joe nodded. “But that doesn’t mean that because you just found this thing it was made last night. You see, if you look close at the dirt in the ring you can see that it’s been weathered. There’s old pockmarks from rain in it. This circle has been here quite a while—at least a month, and probably longer than that.”
Thompson looked puzzled for a moment, obviously doubting himself, then rebounding, as Joe knew he would.
“What difference does it make if the crop circle was made last night or a month ago? It’s still a damned crop circle.”
Joe shook his head. “Don’t you have caretakers who live here in the winter when you’re in Texas?”
“A woman stays here,” Thompson said impatiently, trying to figure out where Joe was going. “Heidi Moos. She stays in the guest house and watches over the place.”
“I know Heidi,” Joe said. She was an attractive, dark-haired woman who had moved to Wyoming from Alabama. “She moved here with her horse a few years ago. She’s a horse trainer, right? I mean real horses.”
Thompson puffed up. “I resent that, mister. Miniatures are real horses.” Joe raised his hand, palm up. “Calm down, that’s not what I meant. I should have said ‘full-sized’ horses. My point is that she’s a horse trainer. This is the only flat ground on this side of the hill. It’s the best place to set up a portable round pen. You know what a round pen is, right?” “Of course I do,” Thompson said. “I’ve got one by my corral.”
“My guess is that Heidi set up her round pen right here last winter and spring,” Joe said, soldiering on. “I’ve seen how horses running in a controlled circle eventually cut right through the turf like this. I’ve got a couple of these ‘crop circles’ next to my own corral, where my wife, Marybeth, works our horses.”
Thompson’s face was red. “That’s how you want to explain it away?” “Yup.”
“You think I’m overreacting? That what we’re looking at is where Heidi set up her round pen?” “Yup.”
“Well for Christ’s sake,” Thompson said, shaking his head. “No wonder you people haven’t figured out these mutilations yet, if this is how you work. . . .”
“Why don’t we call Heidi?” Joe said. “And ask her where she set up her round pen?”
Thompson stared, his eyes boring into Joe. He clearly was not a man who was used to being questioned.
oe thought about David Thompson’s so-called crop circle—round pen—as he drove down the highway toward the turnoff to Nate Romanowski’s house. David Thompson was not stupid, and, despite his faults and his miniature horses, he was a serious man. Yet the atmosphere in Twelve Sleep County was now such that when Thompson saw a ring on the ground he didn’t think “round pen,” he thought “crop circle.”
This thing was warping the mindset of the valley, Joe thought. Football practice was being held indoors. Out- of-state hunters had cancelled $3,000 trips with local outfitters. A public meeting that was supposed to be held at the Holiday Inn by the Wyoming Business Council had been switched to Cody. Livestock was being housed in barns and loafing sheds. Schoolchildren were wearing aluminum foil over their caps as they walked to school.
Despite the CBM activity, Saddlestring was being squeezed economically. Residents had assumed a siege mentality, of sorts, and tempers flared more quickly. Marybeth had told him of a fistfight in line at the grocery store.
The task force was getting nowhere. There had not even been another meeting, because no one had anything to report.
But for a reason he couldn’t quite articulate, Joe thought that there was an answer to what was happening. Whatever the answer was, it was just sitting there, obvious, waiting for Joe or someone to find it. He just hoped it could be discovered before any more animals, or people, died.
19
As joe rumbled down the rough dirt road that led to Nate Romanowski’s stone cabin on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River, he searched the sky for falcons. The sky was empty.
Nate’s battered Jeep was parked beside his home, and Joe swung in next to it and turned off his engine. “Stay,” he told Maxine, and shut the door. If let out, she would have been drawn straight to the falcon mews, where Nate kept two or three birds, and she would upset them by sniffing around.
Joe knocked on the rough-hewn door, then opened it slightly. It was dark inside, but it smelled of coffee and recently cooked breakfast. Joe called for Nate but got no response. This wasn’t unusual, because Nate often went on long treks on foot or horseback in the rough breaklands country surrounding his house. Joe checked the mews, then the corral. No Nate.
