While he waited for Nate, Joe called Marybeth on his cell phone.
"I've got him," he said.
"Nate? How's he doing?"
"I can't tell yet."
"Where is he now?"
"Outside the car smelling sagebrush."
She chuckled.
"How's Nancy?" he asked.
"Doing well, considering. I just left her at her house. She's got relatives on the way. I'm going to go home and bake her a casserole and bring it by tomorrow."
"How are the girls?"
"Fine. Joe, it's only been two days since you went up into the mountains."
"It seems longer than that."
"A lot has happened, hasn't it? You need to come home and get some sleep."
"I need you."
"That's sweet, Joe. But you need sleep even more."
He shook his head, not thinking that she couldn't see him. "Did you hear the governor's press conference?"
She laughed drily. "Yes, it's good to know you're closing in on the bad guy."
"We aren't," Joe said with a sigh.
"I didn't think so. Maybe Nate can help you out."
Joe looked up to see Nate shedding his jumpsuit and rolling it into a ball, which he threw into the darkness like a football. Nate turned and walked back toward the Escalade in his laceless boat shoes, kicking off his baggy, dingy jail boxers. He left them draped in the branches of a mountain mahogany bush.
"You might not say that if you could see him now," Joe said.
"Tell him hello," she said. "Tell him we missed him."
"I'm going to tell him to put some clothes on," Joe said.
"What?"
"I'll explain later," Joe said.
"Call when you get close to town. Try to stay awake."
Nate climbed into the passenger seat, briskly rubbing his arms, chest, and thighs.
"It feels good to get that shit off," he said, closing the door.
Joe eased onto the highway and set his cruise control at two miles under the speed limit. He didn't want to risk being pulled in the governor's car over by a trooper and trying to explain why there was a naked man sitting next to him. "JOE," NATE SAID as they got back on the highway, "I'm not going back."
"But-"
"I'm not going back."
"We'll discuss it later."
"There's nothing to discuss," Nate said with absolute finality. TO KEEP AWAKE and try to make some sense out of the last two days, Joe detailed to Nate what had happened to the hunters and the investigation thus far. Nate listened silently, grunting and shaking his head.
At a convenience store near Casper, Joe filled the Escalade with gas and bought a set of extra-large Wyoming Cowboys sweats inside from a discount rack. He handed them to Nate, said, "Put these on."
"I was just starting to feel good again," Nate said sourly. THEY WERE south of Kaycee when Nate finally said, "Amateurs."
"Who?"
"All of you. Everyone except the shooter. He's been playing with you people."
"Maybe I ought to take you back," Joe said.
Nate snorted. "Don't be so sensitive. When I think about what you've told me, there are some things that just don't fall into place like they should. When you lay it all out, there are some wrong notes in the narrative."
"What wrong notes?"
"I'm not sure yet," he said. "I've got to think about it more, let it settle and see what rises to the top or sinks to the bottom. But something just doesn't work right here. It all seems so neat while at the same time there's something wrong."
"I have no idea what you're saying," Joe said, taking the exit for Kaycee.
"Neither do I," Nate said. "But I get the feeling none of this has much to do with hunting."
"That's what I said."
"Great minds." Nate smiled. "Hey, I'm hungry. Pull over here." AS THEY entered the town of Kaycee, Joe and Nate both raised imaginary glasses and clinked them, said, "To Chris," referring to the late, great singer, rodeo champion, and Wyoming icon Chris Ledoux, who died young and once lived there on a ranch outside the town limits. His family still did.
Nate and Joe pretended to toast and drink. It was something they did every time they drove by. THE ONLY restaurant in Kaycee was closed, but Nate knew where the owner lived and directed Joe to a shambling log home in a bank of cottonwood trees outside the town limits. Nate got out and banged on the front door until a massive man threw open the door, ready to pound whoever was disturbing him. The fat, bearded man at the door was nearly seven feet tall and dressed in a wife-beater undershirt and thick leather gloves up to his elbows. Joe hung back while the man recognized Nate-a fellow falconer-and enthusiastically invited both of them into his home. The man pulled off the gloves he'd been wearing so his falcons could sit on his forearm while he groomed them, and started pan-frying two of the biggest steaks Joe had ever seen.
While they ate, Nate and the restaurant owner-he introduced himself to Joe as Large Merle-talked falconry and hunting. Joe looked around the house, which was dark and close and messy. Merle obviously lived alone except for his falcons, four of them, all hooded and sleeping, perched on handcrafted stands in the living room. The place smelled of feathers, hawk excrement, and eighty years of fried grease and cigarette smoke.
"D'you get your elk this year?" Large Merle asked Nate.
"No," Nate said. "I was in jail."
"Poor bastard," Merle said. "And now you can't go, since Governor Nut closed the state down. Man, if I could get my hands on the guy who shot those hunters I would break him in two."
Large Merle eyed Joe for the first time. "You gonna find that guy?"
"We hope to," Joe said.
"You better," Merle said. "Or we're going to do it for you. That's why we live here. And it won't be pretty. How's your steak?"
"Huge."
Merle smiled and nodded. One of his prairie falcons dropped a plop of white excrement onto his ham-sized forearm like a dollop of toothpaste being squeezed from a tube.
"Borrow your phone, Merle?" Nate asked.
"You bet, buddy," Merle said, then turned back to Joe as Nate took the phone into the other room.
"I've heard of you," Merle said, looking at Joe's nameplate with narrowed eyes.
"Is that good or bad?" Joe asked.
"Mostly good," Merle said, not expounding. "Me and Nate go way back. He's the only guy know who scares me. Whoever that knuckle-head is killing hunters? He don't scare me. But Nate scares me."
Joe sat back and put his knife and fork to the side of his plate. He'd eaten half the steak and couldn't eat any more.
Merle leaned forward. "Did Nate ever tell you about that time in Haiti? When the four drugged-out rebels jumped him?"
"No."
Merle shook his head and chuckled, the fat jiggling under his arms and his chin. "Quite a story," Merle said. "Especially the part about guts strung through the trees like Christmas lights. Ask him about that one sometime!"
Joe nodded.
"It's a hell of a story," Merle said, still chuckling. BACK IN the Yukon, Joe said, "Don't ever tell me about Haiti."
"Okay."
"Because I don't want to know."
"Okay."
"It's gone pretty well so far over the years with you not telling me what you do for a living. I think that's best."
"Since you're in law enforcement, I'd agree."
"And let's not eat at Large Merle's again soon."
"I needed a big steak. Merle and I go way back."
"So I heard. SO," Nate asked, "how's my girl?"
"Marybeth?" Joe asked, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.
"Sheridan," Nate said, rolling his eyes. "The falconer's apprentice."
Joe calmed. "She's sixteen. That's a tough age. She can't decide if her parents are idiots or what. All in all, though, considering what she's been through in her life, she's doing well, I'd say. I sort of miss her as a little girl, though."
"Don't," Nate said. "From her letters, she sounds smart and well adjusted. And she doesn't really think you're an idiot. In fact, I think she admires her parents very much."
Joe had forgotten about the letters. "So why did you ask? You know more about her than I do now."