Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(3)
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Talbot said.
“Sure or pretty sure?”
“Sure enough,” Talbot said. “And it’s not much farther, I don’t think.”
“Our horses will let us know,” Martin said, extending his hand to pat his mount on the neck.
“They didn’t yesterday,” Talbot said.
Martin grunted in response. When Talbot turned his head away from the game warden, Martin looked over his shoulder at Joe and rolled his eyes. Joe nodded back. He didn’t know what to think of Talbot and he had his own doubts that the attack had taken place exactly as he had described it.
Talbot said, “I hope we can get in and out of here fast. I have a meeting in Boca tomorrow I can’t miss.”
“You might just have to,” Martin said without looking at Talbot. Joe could sense the tightness in Martin’s tone, as if the man were speaking through clenched teeth. “If what you say is true, there’s a dead man up ahead who was working for you. He has a wife and three kids at home. You might just have to postpone that meeting of yours.”
Julius Talbot sighed. He seemed to Joe to be quite put out by Martin’s insistence that he come into the timber with them to point out the site of the attack. It was odd behavior, Joe thought, although not shocking.
In too many instances, out-of-state hunters used to being catered to by underlings in all the other phases of their executive lives expected the same kind of subservient behavior from guides and outfitters in the field.
That wasn’t the right way to do things in the Mountain West, where wealth and class didn’t mean as much to the locals as it might in other places. The best thing someone could say about a newcomer was that he was a “good guy.” Not a rich guy, a good one.
Joe found Talbot’s attitude as annoying as Martin seemed to.
*
ALTHOUGH IT WAS in the midst of fall big-game hunting season throughout the state, Joe had agreed to drive over the mountains from his own district to Jackson Hole. He’d slipped away without telling anyone other than Marybeth about it, because he didn’t want word to get out to local miscreants in the Saddlestring District that he wouldn’t be on patrol.
The call had come to Joe from Rick Ewig, the director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Cheyenne. Ewig worked in the Katelyn Hamm Building, newly named after the game warden who had recently lost her life while on duty. Ewig was a former game warden himself, and he’d asked Joe to meet up with Martin so the two of them could assess the effectiveness of a new piece of technology for finding lost people in the mountains. If the technology worked as well as or better than the FLIR (forward-looking infrared) camera equipment currently used by the Wyoming Civil Air Patrol, Ewig said he might add a couple of the devices to his annual budget request.
Skiers in Jackson Hole were buried every year by avalanches, and hunters frequently became disoriented and lost in the dense alpine terrain. Finding them diverted manpower and resources, so any technology that could speed up searches would save not only money and time—but their very lives. The experimental system known as a Lifeseeker supposedly worked because it could home in on individual cell phones even in remote areas with no cell service—provided the lost person’s phone was turned on. A local philanthropist in Jackson had donated one of the $100,000 Lifeseeker boxes to the Teton County Search and Rescue team for which Martin was a liaison.
The plan was for Joe and Martin to fly in a helicopter over the Gros Ventre mountains to see if they could identify people below by the strength of their cell signals. It was densely wooded terrain, and nearly impossible to see through the canopy of pine trees to the ground below. They’d note the GPS coordinates and follow up on the ground later to see if the sightings could be confirmed.
If the Lifeseeker turned out to be a reliable tool in search and rescue efforts, it would likely be incorporated by the Predator Attack Team to pinpoint the location of some human–bear encounters.
When Martin and Joe heard about the bear attack, they were circling the Lifeseeker box on a table in the conference room of the Jackson Game and Fish station, trying to figure out how the dials and display worked. The Teton County sheriff had called to say they were transporting a hunter into town. His guys had picked him up after he’d signaled a passing unit near Turpin Meadow. The hunter, the sheriff said, had a wild story.
*
MARTIN HAD INTERVIEWED Talbot in the same conference room, and asked Joe to be present during the initial statement.
Talbot claimed that he’d booked a trophy elk hunt months before with a local outfitting company, and that a guide named Jim Trenary had been assigned to him. Trenary seemed like a knowledgeable guide, Talbot thought, and he was pleased to have drawn him. The man seemed pleasant enough and fun-loving, but serious about his job. He made sure Talbot knew that grizzlies were present in significant numbers in the area where they’d be hunting, and that the bears sometimes moved in on elk kills or gut piles to feed. As long as the hunter was cautious and carried bear spray and a firearm at all times, there was little to worry about, Trenary had said. He’d cautioned Talbot never to put himself in danger by walking between a sow grizzly and her cubs.
As Talbot talked, Joe noted that the hunter always referred to Jim Trenary as “my guide” instead of using his given name. It was a revealing tell. It was as if Trenary were simply a tool to get Talbot what he wanted, not an individual.