Hunters called them scouting cameras. They were battery-powered digital cameras designed to be mounted near game trails. The cameras had motion detectors and either flashes or infrared nighttime capability. They could take up to a thousand 1.5- to 5.0-megapixel images from a single set of four D batteries.
The usual range of the cameras was forty to fifty feet. He was beyond that. But how could he possibly bypass them or get close enough to destroy them without having his photo snapped with every step?
He stayed still and thought about it.
There were so many moose, deer, elk, and antelope in the river bottom that no doubt the cameras got quite a workout at night. But was someone actually looking at each shot live?
He shook his head. This was the Eagle Mountain Club, not the Pentagon. What probably happened was some intern or maintenance guy was sent down the hill every few days to retrieve the shots and see if trespassers had entered the grounds, and who they were. Individual digital photographs stayed inside the camera and weren’t transmitted to a central control room.
Additionally, the trail cameras were mounted high, not at ground level. It was probably so the security guys wouldn’t have to stare at hundreds and hundreds of photos of rabbits and grouse.
So Nate once again dropped to his knees and simply crawled through with his head down. He didn’t hear a single shutter snap.
Climbing the cliff face wasn’t difficult. In less than fifteen minutes, he slid through the strands of a barbed wire fence and he was in.
Joe drove into the driveway of the Skilling guesthouse, turned off his headlights and the engine, and looked for signs of life. He sat for a moment, studying it. If someone was inside and heard him drive up, Joe expected to see a curtain edged back or a light switched on.
The guesthouse was small but well tended. It was beige, one level with three curtained windows facing out, and a railed porch leading up to an extra-large wooden double door. An attached double garage was on the right side. Tall twin cottonwoods flanked the walkway up to the porch. A second guesthouse to his left was an exact mirror of the one he was facing—including the trees—but Joe barely glanced at it because Bailey had said this was the one. In the center of the large picture window on the left side of the door was a faint vertical stripe, and Joe guessed it came from the living room. There was a light on.
Joe climbed out of the pickup and slid his shotgun out of the scabbard behind his seat. He checked the loads— five rounds of double-ought buckshot—but didn’t pump a round into the chamber. As he made his way up the walkway, he pondered whether to slink around the house and see if he could see anything inside or bang on the front door. He thought about the fact that he had no warrant and no real authority for being there. If Bud was inside and decided to start blasting away at an intruder, he would be justified in doing so.
Joe rapped sharply on the front door with his knuckles and stepped aside. He called, “Bud? It’s Joe Pickett. Open up. I need to talk to you.”
He paused to listen, but heard nothing from inside. He knocked hard again and repeated his words, this time louder. After all, it was two in the morning. Joe didn’t expect Bud to be up and around and wanted to give the man time to throw some clothes on.
Joe reached down and tried the door. Bolted. He banged on it again and shouted. Nothing.
He went down the porch steps and sidled up to the picture window where he’d seen the vertical slash of light. He removed his hat and cautiously leaned across the glass, suppressing a flash vision of Bud inside aiming his .45 at Joe’s face. Joe could feel his pulse race as he leaned and looked.
The space between the curtains was less than half an inch, so he had to move his head back and forth in order to see the whole of the room inside. It was a living room, after all, and there were signs of clutter. A coffee table was covered with empty beer bottles, some on their side. A stout liter bottle of Jim Beam lorded over the beer bottles.
Joe said softly, “It’s Bud, all right,” although this was a Bud he wasn’t sure he knew anymore.
Clothes had been thrown over the backs of chairs, and on the couch were several take-out containers he recognized as coming from the Burg-O-Pardner in town. As Joe moved right to left and elevated onto his toes, he could see the carpeting and a single cowboy boot on its side, sole facing out from the corner of the couch. Just the sole. The shaft of the boot was hidden from view by the furniture. Joe felt his insides contract. Was Bud’s leg connected to the rest of the boot? Was his body back there?
Probable cause for entry. Joe recalled Bailey saying Bud was sure someone was after him.
In normal circumstances, Joe would alert the Eagle Mountain Security office or the sheriff’s department, so they could go in together. And he would call them, eventually. But he wanted to see the inside for himself before they took over the scene. To document the PC for entering, he took three photos of the boot by the couch with his digital camera.
He got his Maglite from his pickup and returned to the front porch and felt around at the obvious places for a spare key—the top of the doorframe, under the mat, beneath several flat river rocks on the side of the walkway. No key. Then he jogged back to the front door, propped the shotgun against the railing, paused while he took a breath, and rushed the door hard, smashing into it with his shoulder. It didn’t give at all, and the blow caused pain to shoot through his entire body. He stepped away from the solid door, rubbing his shoulder, wondering if he’d broken something.
Joe considered smashing through one of the windows with the butt of his shotgun and crawling inside, but decided to try any other doors first. There had to be one in back. He retrieved his shotgun—
It gave. Joe stopped, surprised. Then he rolled it all the way up.
Bud Longbrake’s F-150 pickup was inside. Joe looked up and saw that the manual catch on the garage door opener had been clicked back, and it made sense. Bailey had given Bud a key to the house, but the remote control for the garage was probably in Kimberly Alice Skilling’s car, wherever that was. In order to hide his vehicle, Bud had had to disengage the opener and slide the door up and down the old-fashioned way. After parking inside, he’d forgotten to slide the bolt home.
Joe swung his Maglite up and held his breath as he reached for the knob of the door to enter the house.
