Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(4)

Joe started to say that he didn’t usually guide hunters at all, but Price was on a roll.

“I’ve had hundreds of opportunities to just shoot an animal, if that’s what I wanted to do. I’m talking absolute trophies. But that was on land owned by friends and colleagues, or worse, game farms. That is the last thing I want to do.

“I want real,” Price said. “I want the actual experience. Did Tim communicate this to you clearly?”

Joe was torn how to answer without throwing Joannides under the bus.

“I get it,” Joe said.

“Wonderful,” Price said. “Now, do you think you can go get the wrangler and help us unload all of that gear? And be very careful. Some of it is really delicate.”

Joe turned and pushed through the double doors into the terminal. He found Boedecker sitting on a plastic chair reading the Saddlestring Roundup.

The rancher looked up as Joe approached. He said, “Are you sure we can’t get out of this?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Boedecker put the paper aside and looked around to make sure no one could overhear what he was about to say. His eyes were unblinking.

“You can go,” the man said. “No hard feelings on my part. In fact . . .”

Joe cocked his head as he waited for more.

“I’d really advise you to go home,” Boedecker said finally. “I can do this without you.”

Joe was puzzled. “I signed on for this.”

Before Boedecker could continue, Joannides stuck his head in the door. He was frantic.

“We need to get this show on the road, gentlemen,” he said.

Boedecker gave Joe a long look that Joe supposed was designed to tell him something. Then he stood up and the two of them walked through the tiny terminal toward the waiting plane.

Joe looked up from the tarmac. A procession of dark clouds scudded across the sky from the north. Soon, it looked like, they’d envelop Battle Mountain.





TWO


Two and a half weeks before, Joe had sat in a leather-backed armchair across from Colter Allen, the governor of Wyoming, in the newly refurbished capitol building in Cheyenne. Game and Fish Department director Rick Ewig was with him.

They’d both been summoned to appear before the governor. Joe had left a telephone message on Ewig’s phone asking if the director knew what the meeting was about. Ewig hadn’t called back.

“Why am I here?” Joe asked Allen.

“I’ll explain,” Allen said.



* * *



—

Governor Colter Allen was in the midst of completing his third year in his first term of office. His term had been wracked with problems including a #MeToo scandal, as well as revelations that he’d falsified his résumé and he’d been backed by donors of questionable character, including Joe’s own mother-in-law. Additionally, Governor Allen was thought by general consensus within the state to have fouled up the response to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic by lurching from strict shelter-in-place orders to a full-blown reopening within weeks, then issuing no guidance at all for months while the virus raged.

Joe’s relationship with the Republican governor was nothing like it had been when Spencer Rulon held the office. Although slippery at times, Rulon had enlisted Joe to be his “range rider” and he’d sent him out to different places in the state on special assignments. And when Joe had gotten into trouble, which was often, Rulon had backed him up.

Allen had assumed office with the misconception that Joe would do anything he asked, including gathering dirt on his political opponents and spreading misinformation on his behalf. When Joe had refused, Allen retaliated. If it weren’t for Rulon stepping in as a private-practice attorney and representing him, Joe would have long been out of a job and possibly indicted.

Although there had been rumblings about the possible impeachment of Allen—Wyoming’s first ever—the bills to start the proceedings had been killed in committee by the legislature. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the house of representatives and senate seemed to have concluded that rather than play hardball with the governor, they’d simply wait him out and elect someone new.

By his very nature, Joe was nonpolitical. He’d done his best over the years to avoid trips to the capital city and especially during the short sessions of the legislature when nothing ever seemed to happen. He had no doubt that he’d taken the right path, especially now when the finances of the state were in a tailspin and all the committee hearings and general sessions seemed filled with anger and acrimony.

Joe thought that Allen had aged in the past three years. The governor’s once-broad shoulders had slumped and his salt-and-pepper mane was thinning and turning snow-white. His movie-star good looks—which he’d once parlayed into a few scenes in a soft-porn pseudo-western feature called Bunk House that no one had known about until his #MeToo scandal broke—were filling out and softening. Jowls like the beard of a tom turkey hung down from his jawline and jiggled when he talked.

“If you’ve been paying any attention,” Allen said to both Joe and Ewig, “you’ll know that we’re facing more budget cuts. No one is safe, including your agency.”

“I’m aware of the situation, Governor,” Ewig said. Unlike Joe, the director was duty-bound to testify during the legislature and defend the department’s budget. Joe didn’t envy him.