Joe swung the binoculars back to the car.
When the passenger door opened, the dome light inside the SUV lit up and Alisha Whiteplume, looking tall and thin and striking, hurled herself out into the brush and ran toward Nate with open arms. Joe started to follow her with the glasses when he realized there were others in the vehicle, something he hadn’t expected.
Steadily, he moved the binoculars back. The dome light was still on because the passenger door was open. The man behind the wheel was Bill Gordon. In the backseat were Klamath Moore and his wife.
Joe’s mouth went dry and his heart thumped in his chest. His hands went cold and slick and the binoculars slipped out of them into the dirt.
19
ON TUESDAY MORNING, Joe Pickett stood at the stove in an apron and made pancakes for his daughters whom, he hoped, would eventually wake up and want to eat them. When the pancakes were cooked he moved them to a large serving plate that he warmed in the oven so they’d be hot and ready. Bacon sizzled in his favorite cast-iron skillet and maple syrup warmed in a pan of water. The morning smells of breakfast cooking and brewed coffee were good smells, and he tried not to think of the roof that needed repair or the fence that needed fixing. It was nice to be home and doing something routine, although he didn’t yet consider this house on this street to be home. He could see his neighbor Ed outside already in his perfectly appointed backyard, prowling the lawn while smoking his pipe, apparently targeting thin places in the turf where weeds might get a stonghold and grow when spring came. While Joe watched, Ed raised his head to look over the fence at the Pickett house, and Ed shook his head sadly, as if the mere sight of it made him want to weep.
For years, whether at the state-owned house on Bighorn Road or the old homestead house they’d lived in on the Longbrake Ranch, there had been no neighbors except wildlife. When the bathroom was occupied, which was nearly full-time with a houseful of females, Joe was used to going outside to relieve himself, which felt normal and good because there was no one around. Sometimes, he would go outside and sit on a stump and smoke a cheap cigar and watch antelope or deer moving cautiously toward water. On the ranch it was cows. Sometimes he would just sit and think and dream, trying to figure out why things were, how they worked, what his role was in the scheme of life. He ended up short on answers. His only conclusion was that his purpose, his reason for being, was to be a good husband and father and not to shame either his wife or his daughters. Why he’d been chosen by the governor to be his point man in the field still baffled Joe. Rulon once said, “When I think of crime committed out of doors, I think of Joe Pickett. Simple as that.” But it wasn’t as simple as that, Joe thought.
In this house in town Joe felt contained, bottled up, tamped down. He longed to look out the window and see an antelope or a cow and not Ed. But he didn’t have a choice at the moment other than to make more pancakes and try not to speculate that Nate Romanowski had betrayed him.
MARYBETH RETURNED from her morning walk with Maxine on a leash. She’d scarcely unclipped the leash before the Labrador collapsed in a heap and went immediately to sleep. “Poor old girl,” she said, patting their old dog. “She still wants to go, but she sure doesn’t have the energy she used to have.”
Joe nodded. He didn’t like contemplating Maxine’s inevitable demise and tried not to think about it. Marybeth was much more practical about life-and-death matters and had said she would continue to take Maxine out until Maxine could no longer go. Then they’d have a decision to make.
“Breakfast smells good,” she said. “I’ll wake up the girls in a minute.”
Joe handed her a mug of coffee.
“How are you doing?” she asked, taking it and sipping. “You tossed and turned all night long. Did you get any sleep?”
“Some.”
They’d talked briefly the night before when he got home after one. He was still reeling from what he’d seen through the binoculars.
“Have you heard from him?” she asked.
“No.”
She nodded. “On my walk I was thinking a lot about what you saw last night. I can’t come up with a good explanation. What it all boils down to is you either trust him or you don’t.”
“He’s never given me a reason not to trust him,” Joe said.
“That’s all you’ve got,” she said, taking her coffee with her to wake up Sheridan and Lucy.
AFTER THE breakfast dishes were cleared away, Marybeth took Lucy to school and Joe read over the file he’d been given from the FBI. Bill Gordon was indeed deep inside Klamath Moore’s organization, and one of the few of his followers to travel with Moore from rally to rally. The reports in the file were records of the calls Gordon had made to the FBI when he checked in on Mondays and Thursdays. They went back two years.
Six months before, an enterprising agent had summarized the reports up to that date.
The Klamath Moore Animal Rights Movement
