Blood Trail

center of the target’s chest and squeeze the trigger. An instant before the shot bucks the rifle upward, I see the other man unexpectedly stand up in the line of fire, but it’s too late to stop . . .

CHRIS URMAN was explaining to Joe that he’d returned to the crime scene to track the killer on his own, that he’d been “less than impressed” with the sheriff and his ability to pursue his uncle’s killer in a timely fashion, that he’d participated in enough night patrols in the Anbar Province to follow a track and keep his cool, when they heard the shot.

“What was that?” Urman asked.

“It came from back at the truck,” Joe said, fighting a feeling of cold dread. He knew it wasn’t Robey trying to signal him because he would have used the radio. It was someone else. It was Frank Urman’s killer.

Joe snatched the radio from his belt as two more quick shots rolled through the mountains.

I’M OUT of breath from running down the saddle slope and up the other side to the pickup. The night is cold and still. The only sound I hear is from my hard breathing.

As I jam the poker chip into my prey’s gaping mouth I hear the radio inside the truck come to life.

“Robey? This is Joe. Is everything all right?”

No, Joe, it isn’t.

I have a decision to make. I had much more planned for my target but this may have to do for now.

“Robey, can you hear me?”

I have the urge to pick up the mike and tell him Robey can’t hear him, but I don’t.

And I hear the sound of a motor, another vehicle grinding up the road from the direction of town. I see a splash of headlights in the trees less than a mile away, hear an engine downshift.

As I step over the other body, apparently a man named Robey who had the bad luck to step in front of my first shot, I hear the radio again, the voice on the other end more urgent.

“Robey, this is Joe. Talk to me, Robey. Please talk to me....”

I bend down and place my gloved hand on Robey’s face and gently push his eyelids closed. I ask God to forgive me. This man did nothing to deserve this, and I truly am sorry.

12

AT THE SAME TIME, Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope pulled his departmental SUV into the lighted parking lot of the Saddlestring Holiday Inn. He was both tired and anxious, and a little surprised he’d heard nothing from Buck Lothar over the radio. He checked his wristwatch: 10:15 P.M. It just seemed later. The wait was killing him.

He’d had an unsatisfying dinner by himself in that Burg-O-PARDNER restaurant on Main, finishing only half his steak, drinking only half his beer. The conversations at the tables around him among the locals were all about the murders of hunters in the mountains, how Governor Rulon may declare a state of emergency and lock all of them out of their own land, deny them their heritage and their rights. The word was out and it would spread like wildifire. There was no way to contain it, despite their best efforts. The news would be statewide quickly. Would it go national? These people, he thought. They had no idea what kind of pressure he was under. He’d kept his head down but was recognized nevertheless. When a fiftyish man who looked more like a bear than a human approached his table and asked him what the Game and Fish was doing to solve the crime, Pope said, “Everything we can.”

“Then why in the hell are you sitting here eating a damn steak?” the local asked.

ALTHOUGH HE could have used a side door and gone straight to his room, Pope used the main entrance so he could pass the front desk. He’d clipped the handheld to his belt in case Lothar or Pickett called him. The hotel had been built in the early 1980s when it must have made some kind of sense to put a huge fake waterfall in the cavernous lobby to simulate something tropical. The sound of stale rushing water struck him as incongruous. Rooms rose on three sides of the lobby for three floors. Most were empty.

“Any messages?” he asked the night clerk, an attractive, slim blonde with a mesmerizing New Zealand accent. She was the reason he came in through the front doors.

“Why, yes,” she said, handing him a message. “You’re to call the governor.” Her eyes widened as she said it, which he liked. She was impressed with his importance, finally. The night before, when he had explained to her who he was, she didn’t get it. After going over how many employees he had under him, how big his agency was and therefore how prominent he was, she told him how the pop star Prince had once been in the hotel and said she wished she’d had a chance to meet him.

“In fact,” she said, “he stayed in the same suite you’re staying in—the Hunting Lodge.”

Which was the best room in the place: two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bar, a living room decorated with deer, antelope, and mule deer trophies courtesy of the owner of the establishment. The walls displayed photos of the owner on safari, in the mountains, smiling over dead animals. Pope approved of the decor since hunting meant revenue for his agency, and wondered what Prince had thought of it, whoever he was.

“The governor, huh.” Pope took the message, saying, “I see he left his private number for me to call him back,” and glanced up to gauge her reaction, hoping she’d be impressed.

“When Prince was here he left the housekeeper a one-hundred-dollar tip,” she said.

He detected an amused sneer at the corners of her pretty mouth.

THE CARPET in the hallways, like the rooms themselves and the stinking waterfall in the lobby, was tired, of another era, but this place was the best he could do in the sleepy little backwater town of Saddlestring. Pope dug his key card out of the back pocket of his jeans as he walked the length of the long hall, past the humming ice maker and vending machines, debating whether he should call the governor immediately or wait until he had something to report. He decided on the latter. The last thing he wanted was the governor to focus on and bring up the question of why he was back in town in his room instead of with his team at the crime scene.

He placed his left hand on the door while he bent to fit the key card into the lock with his right, and was surprised when the door swung open a few inches. Stepping back, he cursed housekeeping for being so careless. The last thing they would get from him, he thought, was a hundred-dollar tip.