"There's a six-foot drop down there once you clear the brush, isn't there?" Joe asked.
"Spud thought of it," Latham said. "But we waited a couple days for that BLM guy to bite. It worked pretty good before."
Joe didn't say that seeing twin antelope fawns had led him to think of how they'd pulled it off.
Keeping Rope Latham in his peripheral vision, Joe stepped back and looked up the opposite slope. Spud Cargill, the other half of Bighorn Roofing, had stopped at the top of the hill and was looking back with binoculars. Joe grabbed the hand-held radio from Spud's pickup and held it up to his mouth.
"We've got you now, you son-of-a-bitch," he said, then tossed the radio back inside. Joe raised his arm and pointed his index finger at Cargill, who was still looking back through binoculars, and pretended to shoot him.
Spud's truck started to move again, and vanished over the top of the hill. While Joe waited for Jamie Runyan to arrive in his pickup, Rope Latham began to tremble. He hoped Latham's injuries weren't worse than they appeared.
Joe read Rope his Miranda rights, then turned on the micro-recorder that he hid in his shirt pocket.
"Why were you targeting the BLM boys?" Joe asked. He leaned against a tree with his shotgun pointed vaguely at Rope Latham. The back of his own head had started to throb from the collision.
"They owed us money," Latham said dejectedly. "So did the goddamned Forest Service."
"They owed you money?" Joe was confused. "What?"
"Those bastards owed us from last summer. Twelve thousand dollars' worth of work we did for them on their buildings. We replaced all the roofs, and paid for the material in advance. But it's been six months and we still haven't been paid." Latham spat bloody saliva into the brush. "Some goddamned problem with the check request the BLM sent to Cheyenne has held it all up, and me and Spud want our money. When it comes to paying their bills, our government is just fucked. 'Maybe next month,' they tell us. Shit, how would those BLM shitheads feel if their paychecks were even a week late, much less six months?"
Joe pushed himself off the tree. The back of his neck was tingling, and it wasn't from hitting the window.
"These people throw money around like it isn't even real, you know? Just look at this stupid 'joint management' area that cost three million dollars between them just to string some fence and put up some signs."
"What did you say before about the Forest Service?"
Latham's voice suddenly caught in his throat. "Nothing."
"No, you said the Forest Service owed you money as well."
"Fuckers." Latham coughed. "They're the worst of all. They owe us fifteen thousand from work we did last summer!"
"This would be Lamar Gardiner," Joe said flatly.
"It was Lamar Gardiner," Latham said, smiling wickedly. His teeth were pink from a cut in his mouth. "He wouldn't even return our calls about it, and he told Spud that if he didn't stop harassing him, we'd be off the government bid list for good and he'd press charges!"
"Move aside," Joe ordered, and Latham slid along the truck away from the cab.
Reaching inside, Joe pulled the bench seat forward. A well-used compound bow was wedged between the seat and the cab wall. A narrow quiver of arrows lay next to it.
Joe slid one of the arrows out and held it up.
"Bonebuster," Joe said.
Latham's eyes bulged, and his face drained of color. At the same time, the cut on his forehead started to gush again.
Joe was stunned. "This was about some unpaid bills? You killed a man and tried to kill another because their agencies owed you money?"
Latham nodded, fear in his face because of Joe's tone.
"I ought to shoot you right here and leave you for the coyotes," Joe said icily. "Do you realize what you two idiots almost set in motion?" Sheriff O. R. "Bud" Barnum sat shell-shocked as Joe Pickett dropped the bow and arrows with a clatter on his desk after he had turned Rope Latham over to Deputy Reed.
"I got one of 'em," Joe said. "Spud Cargill is the other one and he got away. Rope shot the arrows and Spud cut Lamar's throat."
Barnum glared.
"Rope confessed everything on the way into town," Joe said. "I've got it on tape."
"Did you read him his rights?"
"That's on the tape."
"So where's Spud?"
"I don't know," Joe said. "Why don't you find him? You're the sheriff."
Barnum stared at Joe, his eyes darkening.
"I know you're busy with the Sovereigns and Melinda Strickland and 'Phase One' and all, but Spud's driving a tan pickup with a Bighorn Roofing logo on the door and Wyoming plates. It shouldn't be all that hard to find," Joe said. He put his hands on Barnum's desk and leaned toward him.
"This had nothing to do with any antigovernment movement in the county. It had to do with roofers who didn't get paid when they should have been paid." Joe glared at Barnum. "And it had a lot to do with sloppy police work by the sheriff's department."
Veins in Barnum's temples began to throb. But he said nothing.
"When you release Nate Romanowski, please tell him I'm looking forward to talking with him," Joe said. "That is, if your deputy is through hitting him with a hot shot."
Joe turned and walked out. That night, in bed, Marybeth shook Joe awake. When he opened his eyes, he found her staring at him.
"I'm sorry about last night and this morning," she said. "You didn't deserve it."
"Yes, I did. You were right," he said, his mood suddenly lifting. "It's okay. The tension level was pretty high around here."
She smiled, but stayed silent.
"What?" he asked, finally.
"Joe, sometimes you amaze me. Two antelope fawns?"
He laughed. Twenty-three In the morning, Joe confirmed Rope Latham's story with Carrie Gardiner. He found her standing in front of her house in a heavy coat, hugging herself with both arms. A big moving truck had backed up to her front door across the yard, and a crew was carrying furniture and boxes up a ramp from her house into the back of the trailer.
"I heard," Joe said, tipping the brim of his hat toward the moving truck. "Where are you going?"
"My parents live in Nebraska." She sighed. "Still on the farm. They've got room for all of us."
"I'm sorry to see you leave."
Her eyes flared briefly. "I'm not," she said.
"You heard about Rope?"
"Yes. The sheriff called this morning. Thank you for arresting him."
"Yup."
"Please tell me what happened," Carrie said.
She listened, staring at her winter boots, while Joe told her everything Rope had said.
When he was done, she nodded.
"I believe it," she said.
"You do?"
She nodded sadly. "I wish it didn't make sense, but it does. The roofers even called our house a couple of times to complain. I spoke with Spud Cargill once, and he told me about it, so I asked Lamar about it when he got home that night.
"Lamar was going through a real tough time last summer. I guess he realized he wasn't going any further in the Forest Service and it was really bothering him. He'd been applying for other districts for the past three years, and jobs at regional headquarters, but he wasn't getting any encouragement. I think he realized that he would always be a midlevel manager, and he didn't take it well at times. It was hard on me, and on the kids."
Joe listened, shifting his gaze occasionally to watch the team of movers emerge from the house with something and disappear into the back of the truck.
"I'm not excusing what Lamar did up there in the mountains," she said. "Shooting all those elk makes me sick to my stomach. But I know that his frustration level was really high. For the first time since we'd been married, he was snapping at me and the kids. He was drinking too much. I was thinking about leaving him just before, well, you know…"
"Carrie, what about the roofers?"
"Oh, yes." She flushed. "From what Lamar told me, he did a standard request for bids in the spring to get all the buildings shingled. Bighorn Roofing-Spud and Rope-had the best bid. Lamar said he gave them a verbal okay to start working, then submitted the paperwork to the regional office in Denver. He said that in the past, submitting the paperwork was just a formality.