Page 4

Chapter Four

The next morning, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett drove slowly on a corduroy county road northeast of Saddlestring until he could locate an enclave of ramshackle structures a few hundred yards from the shore of a shimmering prairie lake. The clapboard buildings had no glass in the windows or shingles on the roofs, and several potbellied goats roamed among them. The single-wide trailer located within the enclave was the last-known address of Matt Theriault and his partner. Joe’s task was to see if he could find evidence on the property that Theriault had poached a mule deer out of season. And arrest him for it.

Theriault—pronounced “Terry-O”—was a longtime local miscreant known for wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and cargo shorts even in subzero temperatures. To Joe, cargo shorts plus winter equaled “moron.” Theriault was also known for his hair-trigger temper and the fistfights that had led to his being banished from most of the local bars. He was said to be a nice guy when he was sober, but that was rare.

Someone in the area had sent an anonymous message to Joe via the Wyoming Stop Poaching Now web hotline the night before. Within the message was a link that led Joe to Theriault’s Facebook page. After consulting with his wife, Marybeth, and his youngest daughter, Lucy, about how to use the social network, Joe had found several day-old photos of Theriault in full camo posing over the body of a five-by-five mule deer with Eagle Mountain clearly in the background. That area had been closed for deer hunting for two weeks, and a quick check of the state database showed that Theriault hadn’t purchased a deer license, either.

In the photos, the treeless summit of Eagle Mountain was dusted with snow, with the heaviest accumulation on its west slope. Joe compared it to what he could clearly see outside on the eastern horizon, and the images matched up. The photo had been taken a day or two before.

Joe was constantly astounded at what people posted on the internet about themselves. He’d apprehended a half dozen people over the years based on what the violators had uploaded for the world to see.

He took the turnoff to the enclave and parked his Game and Fish Ford F-150 between two of the shacks with a clear view of a trailer house. A decade-old Ram pickup was backed up to an ancient icehouse on the side of the trailer, but no one was inside the vehicle. A wisp of smoke rose out of the chimney pipe on top of the trailer before the wind jerked it away, suggesting it was occupied.

Joe called in the plate number to dispatch in Cheyenne and the dispatcher confirmed that the vehicle was registered to Amy Ehrlich of Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming. Ehrlich was Theriault’s partner.

“Stay here,” Joe said to Biscuit, their new one-year-old black Lab puppy. Biscuit took the place of Daisy, Joe’s longtime companion who had been diagnosed with cancer the previous winter and had to be put down. It was a traumatic decision, and Joe had cradled his Lab in his arms as she was sedated for the last time. He hoped that Biscuit would be half the dog Daisy had been. Biscuit was jet-black, lean, and surprisingly calm for her age. So far, so good.

To Joe, a Game and Fish pickup without a Labrador inside was a sad vehicle.

—

He couldn’t tell if anyone within the trailer had seen him out there. He’d deliberately approached from the county road and spent several minutes inside his pickup before getting out. There was no reason to panic Theriault or Ehrlich with a macho entrance and takedown. Especially someone as volatile as Theriault.

While he ambled his way to the Ram truck, Joe stayed in the open. They couldn’t mistake the distinctive pickup and his red uniform shirt from inside, he thought. He went through a mental checklist of his gear: digital recorder, cell phone, handheld radio, handcuffs, bear spray, .40 Glock, ticket book. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.

He considered calling for backup from the county sheriff, but decided not to do it. Sheriff Jackson Bishop and his new deputies liked to come on strong, and several excessive-force complaints had recently been filed against them. That wasn’t Joe’s style.

Joe glanced into the bed of the pickup as he passed it. There were smears of blood on the metal floor as well as several tufts of bristly deer hair. He didn’t doubt that a forensics test would confirm it was deer blood.

He guessed that if he threw open the door of the old icehouse that the vehicle was backed up to, he’d find the hanging carcass of the buck deer he’d seen on Theriault’s Facebook page. But to do so legally, he’d need a search warrant that he didn’t have.

Due to the very tough winter, the mule deer population in his district had declined upward of sixty percent. That was the reason Joe had foregone using his own license for deer. Although he never faulted hunters for harvesting game for meat, he had no patience with trophy antler hunters, especially poachers who ignored the regulations. If Theriault had done it, Joe planned to charge him with every violation he could. A conviction would result in a hefty fine, loss of all hunting and fishing privileges for several years, and the confiscation of Theriault’s hunting rifles and gear.

Since the state agency didn’t issue body cams to game wardens, Joe activated his digital recorder and placed it in his breast pocket as he climbed the three wooden steps to the metal front door of the trailer. With his right hand on the grip of his Glock, he rapped softly on the thin metal of the structure with his left.

“Hello? This is Joe Pickett, the game warden. I need to talk to Matt Theriault.”

Nothing. No response.

Then he knocked again, harder.

“Hello? Is anyone inside?”

Joe quickly looked over his shoulder toward the icehouse. If they were in there instead of the trailer, they were close enough to see and hear him.

He balled his fist and pounded on the door. It shook the trailer.

“Hey—is anyone home?” he shouted while he identified himself once again.

Finally, there were stumbling footfalls from inside. He could feel from the vibration on the aluminum skin of the trailer that someone was approaching the door.

“Who is it? What do you want?”

A woman’s voice. It sounded weak, shaky, and slightly terrified.

Joe again identified himself. Then: “Hey—are you okay in there?”

The bolt was fumbled with a couple of times, then finally thrown back. The door opened a few inches and Joe stepped back so it wouldn’t hit him in the head and knock his hat off. The smell of woodsmoke, stale fried food, and something else hit him from inside. It smelled like vomit.

Amy Ehrlich shakily placed her face between the side of the open door and the doorjamb and leaned against the interior wall to keep herself standing. She was dark-haired and heavyset and wearing a thin yellow bathrobe. Her eyes were half-open and her skin was gray and sallow.

“I guess you know why I’m here,” Joe said. He was prepared for whatever came next, knowing it might be a threat, a confession, a statement of total innocence, or the admission to a crime he knew nothing about.

On this occasion, it was none of those. Ehrlich’s eyes rolled back into her head and her mouth flopped open and she collapsed like a rag doll. Her weight made the door fly open and Joe barely retreated in time to not be swept off the steps by it.

She fell in a heap and then stretched out, her arms up above her head and her now-exposed white legs lying inside the trailer on the dirty vinyl flooring. Then, after a beat, she began to convulse. Her arms and legs twitched, and white foam covered her mouth.

“What is happening?” Joe asked himself aloud. He quickly mounted the stairs and stepped over her.

Matt Theriault was on his side next to a cluttered table as if he’d just slid out of it. He appeared to be either sleeping or dead.

Ehrlich’s convulsions became more violent, and her naked heels bounced off the floor like a drumbeat. She was gagging, and Joe pulled her into the trailer by her ankles and flopped her over onto her belly. She was heavy and hard to roll over. Although the gagging stopped, her convulsions continued.

He called 911 and requested an ambulance as quickly as possible. When the local dispatcher asked him what he thought the problem was, he said, “I think they OD’d, but I can’t be sure.”

“We’re sending the EMTs now,” the dispatcher said.

“Tell them to hurry.”

—

“Fucking fentanyl,” Sheriff Bishop said to Joe. He held up a small Ziploc bag of pure white powder that he’d snatched from a mirror on the tabletop. “These folks are the third and fourth victims this week. They probably thought it was cocaine they bought. Some asshat came through town selling this poison. I’d like to find whoever it was and mess him up for good.”

An evidence tech who had been taking photographs of the scene strode over and impatiently grabbed the bag from the sheriff’s hand and dropped it into an evidence envelope. Bishop shrugged.

“Please let me do my job,” the tech pleaded.

“Sorry,” Bishop said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Four victims?” Joe asked, stepping aside to clear the way for the EMTs to work. They’d already wheeled Ehrlich outside because she was still breathing, but Theriault had been pronounced dead on the scene. The EMTs had tried to revive him with a portable defibrillator, but they were unsuccessful, and their efforts had produced an acrid odor of burned flesh that contributed to the stale smells already inside the trailer. There was no reason to transport his body to the hospital.

Joe needed fresh air and he turned toward the door, when Bishop said, “Three fatalities. Maybe four if Theriault’s girlfriend doesn’t make it.”

“Her name is Amy Ehrlich,” Joe said.

“Whatever.”

Bishop looked like a no-nonsense western sheriff, Joe thought. He was in his early forties with broad shoulders, a bushy cowboy mustache, a square jaw, and a staccato way of speaking that made him sound authoritative on many subjects even if he wasn’t. A former deputy from Park County and the son-in-law of newly retired Judge Hewitt, Bishop had been elected in a landslide and had immediately rehired two former deputies, Ryan Steck and Justin Woods, who had quit because the department had become such a feckless mess under former sheriff Scott Tibbs. They joined Deputy “Fearless” Frank Carroll, the only LEO who’d survived the purge when Bishop arrived. Carroll had confided to Joe that Bishop’s first words of instruction were to “kick ass and take names.” Hence the allegations of excessive force.

Bishop roamed through the trailer, obviously not impressed with it. He called out and described further drug paraphernalia and the weapons he found stashed in drawers and closets throughout the structure, then returned to Joe.

He was fuming. “Both of them were on welfare,” he said. “But somehow they could afford weed, meth, and fentanyl they thought was cocaine. Plus five guns running from a .38 snub-nose to an AK in the closet. Not to mention that seventy-two-inch TV on the wall with probably every streaming service that exists.”

Joe had noticed the huge screen as well. He fought back nausea and nodded to the door to indicate that’s where he wanted to go.

Bishop didn’t pick up on the gesture. “Let’s hope Theriault’s girlfriend recovers enough to tell us who sold them the fentanyl,” he said. “Otherwise, there will be more bodies piling up and the voters will start calling for my head. But I’m not the problem.

“Folks say to blame the Chinese government for the fentanyl epidemic,” Bishop continued. “The Chicoms supply the Mexican drug cartels with the precursor chemicals to make fentanyl. They’re deliberately killing our kids, and losers like Theriault and his girlfriend here. But do you know who I blame?”

Joe said he didn’t.

“ Our own government ,” Bishop said, dropping his voice to a whisper and leaning close to Joe. “The deep state on the East Coast. They allow this all to happen and they encourage it.”

“Why would they do that?” Joe asked.

“They want to eradicate us rural folks,” Bishop said. “It’s part of the plan. Wipe out the white rural class and replace us with all those people coming over the southern border who will vote for them.”

Joe didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t heard Bishop make conspiratorial statements like that before, and it certainly hadn’t been a platform in his bid for sheriff.

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 only one 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.

“The governor will meet you in fifteen minutes,” Byrnes said, and disconnected the call.

—

Joe arrived at the Twelve Sleep County Municipal Airport as the state plane touched down on the runway and taxied toward the small terminal. He parked his truck in front of the lobby doors, where he wasn’t supposed to park, and went inside.

Saddlestring had only two commercial flights a day, both to and from Denver. One was early in the morning and the second was midafternoon. Since he was there between them, Joe was the only living soul in the airport except for a cat that was curled up on the United Airlines Express ticket counter. Not even the six TSA agents, who often outnumbered the passengers, were present.

His boot heels clicked on the granite floor and echoed in the lobby. He crossed the room and ducked under the belt of the TSA retractable crowd-control stanchions, bypassed the metal detector, and pushed his way through the double back doors. As the state plane approached and flared to its side, Joe reached up and grabbed his hat so the exhaust from the twin jets wouldn’t blow it off.

Rulon One was the unofficial name of the state airplane, named after Spencer Rulon, the current and former governor. Joe was achingly familiar with the plane, and he hated to ride in it. Not only was he a nervous flier, but the only reason he was ever in the aircraft was because of unusual and uncomfortable circumstances.

Governor Rulon had been elected—again—the previous November after a truncated campaign following the previous governor Colter Allen’s sudden announcement that he wanted to “spend more time with his family” and wouldn’t seek reelection. Joe had been there, on the plane now in front of him, when it all happened.

At that time, Joe had disabled Allen’s aircraft from taking off by firing several bullets into the right engine. It had been the most expensive act of destruction of state property in his career, and that was saying something. When the costs for repairing the jet were added to the list of wrecked vehicles Joe had been responsible for, it was very possible that no state employee would ever break his record. That fact had been pointed out to him several times by agency budget officers, and he tried to ignore it or change the subject.

—

Joe and Rulon had a long history that Joe had thought was concluded four years before, when Rulon had completed his second term as a Democrat in an eighty percent Republican state. Governor Allen, a Republican rancher from Sublette County, had proved to be impulsive, unpopular, and corrupt. He’d since moved to California, and Joe had heard rumors that the ex-governor was trying to revive his dormant acting career to no avail.

Rulon was once again proving that he was a unique politician. So unique, in fact, that the voters of Wyoming looked past the (D) behind his name.

He’d hit the ground running by stating during his first week in office that he was going after federal agencies that had, in his opinion, overplayed their hands and exceeded their constitutional powers in recent years in the state. Therefore, he would sue them all. Those agencies included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, and the Centers for Disease Control. No sitting governor had ever sued six federal agencies all at once. He also challenged the vice president to a duel with pistols unless the feds promised to “leave my state the hell alone.”

Why the vice president and not the president himself? Because, Rulon declared, the president couldn’t be trusted with a firearm.

It had been a wildly popular debut.

In his first stint as governor, Rulon had asked Joe to be his agent on various assignments. Rulon had said he liked the fact that Joe could go anywhere in the state and embed himself in all kinds of situations as a game warden and not be suspected of having an alternative agenda.

Rulon always made sure he himself had plausible deniability, and he’d made it clear that if Joe screwed up, he couldn’t expect to be bailed out. Reluctantly, Joe had agreed to those conditions because he felt he had no choice. Rulon had called Joe his “range rider.”

Joe had speculated to Marybeth that perhaps with all of those legal initiatives going on at once that Rulon might have forgotten about him. That was fine with Joe.

But apparently not.