Page 16 of Battle Mountain

As if realizing he’d said too much, Bishop quickly changed the subject. “Did the governor’s office get ahold of you?” he asked Joe.

“When?” Joe asked. “Do you mean today?”

“This morning. They called our office asking if we knew where to find you.”

Joe drew his phone out of his breast pocket and looked at the screen. He’d missed three calls that morning from Ann Byrnes, who was chief of staff for Governor Rulon.

“Uh-oh,” Joe said.

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was busy and cell service is bad out here, I guess.”

“It’s bad everywhere in my county,” Bishop said. “That’s something I hope to do something about.” The sheriff was back in campaign mode after a dark little side trip, Joe thought.

Then: “What were you so busy doing?” Bishop asked.

“I was going to arrest Theriault for poaching a deer. I found it a few minutes ago hanging in his ice cooler outside.” The mule deer buck was hanging next to a pronghorn antelope carcass that had the backstraps cut off. Theriault was obviously a habitual poacher, Joe had concluded.

“I’m not surprised,” Bishop said. “He seems like the type. But I guess you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“I guess not.”

Joe used the moment when the EMTs rolled Theriault into a body bag to shoulder around Bishop and head for the open door to return the call to the governor’s office.

“Oh, Joe,” Bishop called after him.

“Yup?”

“How’s Sheridan doing? Now that she’s running the falconry business on her own?”

Joe hesitated before answering. Everyone in the area knew Sheridan’s single status since her fiancé-to-be had been killed by a grizzly bear the year before, but Joe recalled Sheridan telling her mother that the sheriff’s interest in her was off-putting and odd. He was also a married man.

“She’s fine,” Joe said.

“She sure is,” Bishop countered.

Rather than confront the sheriff at that moment, Joe turned his back on him and went outside.

—

Joe had onlyone bar of cell reception on his phone in the yard, but a second appeared when he climbed into the bed of his pickup and stood on top of the large toolbox behind the cab. He punched the last recent call on his call log.

Ann Byrnes answered after one ring. There was a substantial amount of whooshing background noise that Joe recognized as belonging to an aircraft.

“This is Joe Pickett. I’m sorry I missed your previous messages. Can you hear me?”

“Yes I can. The governor would like to know where you’ve been all morning,” Byrnes said without any kind of salutary greeting.

I’m not at his beck and call, Joe wanted to say—but didn’t. “Game warden business,” he said instead. “In and out of cell phone range, I’m afraid.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at a rural residence east of Saddlestring. We’re in the middle of investigating a couple of drug overdoses and a poached—”

“Can you get to the airport in fifteen minutes?” she asked, cutting him off. “We’re flying from Gillette back to Cheyenne in the state plane, but we can divert to Saddlestring.”

Joe transferred the phone to where he could pinch it between his cheek and shoulder and shot out his arm and looked at his watch. “I can be there in twenty if there aren’t too many cows on the road,” he said.