Page 9

Chapter Eight

Joe was southbound three miles north of Warm Springs on Wyoming State Highway 130, when he flinched involuntarily as a very large shadow passed over his entire pickup. It was an oddly similar sensation to an eagle flying overhead in front of the sun when he was in the field. But when he glanced up through the top of the windshield, he saw the gleaming underside of the fuselage and wings of a white corporate jet streaking toward town with its wheels down at low elevation.

A second later, the roar of twin jet engines made his steering wheel vibrate. The jet descended farther and touched down on a long runway on the south end of Warm Springs, and then it vanished and gradually taxied over a rise in the terrain on the other side.

He’d been to Warm Springs years before when the sagebrush flats on either side of the highway were covered with snow. That instance was also at the behest of a governor—although the previous one. The case involved the disappearance of a female British CEO of a public relations firm who had last been seen on one of the most exclusive guest ranches in the nation. The incident of the missing woman threatened to become an international incident if she wasn’t found.

That winter Sheridan had been employed as the head wrangler on the Silver Creek Ranch, where the CEO had vanished. Joe and Sheridan had been joined by Nate Romanowski in the investigation.

As often happened with Joe, the fairly straightforward investigation had gone pear-shaped. It had all ended well, though.

—

Mountains bordered the valley on three sides: the Snowy Range to the east, the Sierra Madres to the west, and Battle Mountain to the south. The treeless summits of the peaks were dusted with snow, but nothing like it had been that January when Joe was there.

The layout of the river valley town was familiar to him, with its smoking lumber mill, distant twin water towers, and the wide North Platte River flowing through it. As he entered the town limits, he once again caught the slight whiff of sulfur from the public hot springs that gave the place its name.

—

When he entered the diner that hugged the left bank of the river, Wyoming game warden Susan Kany bounded up from her seat to greet him. She beamed and shook his hand with both of hers and led him to her booth.

A table of five middle-aged men in the center of the diner eyed Joe with bemused interest and watched him slide in across from Kany. Joe recognized them, even if he didn’t actually know them. They were the city fathers, and they met every day at the same table in the same restaurant to report on what had happened the day before and to make decisions on behalf of the town. A similar breakfast group met at the Burg-O-Pardner every morning in Saddlestring, and Joe felt like he had never left.

Joe knew them , but he wondered what the group thought of him and Susan Kany together. Communities in Wyoming kept close track of their local law enforcement officers.

Two game wardens, each in red uniform shirts with pronghorn antelope shoulder patches, bronze name tags over pinned badges, Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots, and holstered handguns on their belts. Joe in his early fifties, lean and of medium height and build, with threads of silver permeating his short sideburns. Kany was a compact young woman in her late twenties, athletic and attractive, with large brown eyes and a quick smile.

Joe ordered coffee. Kany ordered a Diet Coke.

When the waitress delivered their drinks and took lunch orders, she said, “The word will get out to all the poachers in the valley that the game wardens are here having lunch.”

It was meant as a joke, and a couple of the men at the center table chuckled.

“Believe it or not, I’ve heard that one before,” Joe said to her.

“This is Joe Pickett, Yvette,” Kany said to the waitress. “He’s one of our more… well-known game wardens.”

“Thanks for not saying infamous,” Joe said.

“Welcome back,” the waitress said. “The last time you were here, you stayed at the Hotel Wolf. Room number nine, right?”

Joe eyed her with suspicion.

“I worked there in housekeeping at the time,” Yvette said with a wink. “I made your bed and left you clean towels. You were a pretty civilized guest. I appreciated that you didn’t leave me a messy room, and you left me a tip. Not many guests do both.”

“Ah,” Joe said. “Thank you.”

After Yvette left with the orders of a cheeseburger for Joe and a Cobb salad for Kany, Kany said, “Small towns, eh?”

“Small towns,” Joe echoed.

Kany leaned forward across the table and kept her voice low so she wouldn’t be overheard by the town fathers. “Now you can tell me why you’re here,” she said more than asked. “Please keep in mind that our friends over there are mighty curious as well, so keep your voice down.”

“I understand.”

—

While Joe explained the reason he had come, he purposefully withheld several pieces of information. He told her he’d been asked to help locate outfitter Spike Rankin and his employee, but Joe didn’t say who had asked him and he didn’t reveal the relationship between Governor Rulon and his son-in-law.

“I’m hoping you know where Rankin’s elk camp is located and we can find him,” Joe said to Kany.

Her expression showed skepticism while Joe spoke.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why didn’t they just ask me to go find him? Why did they send you all the way down here from Twelve Sleep County?”

“That’s how bureaucracy works sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “Don’t take it personally. I quit trying to figure out the logic in state government a long time ago.”

Kany sat back and eyed Joe with suspicion. He didn’t blame her. She was sharp, he thought, and even if she didn’t outwardly question his story, he knew it didn’t completely add up. Joe’s badge indicated that he was number twelve in the game warden hierarchy within the state—the twelfth in seniority out of fifty. Kany’s badge revealed that she was number forty-eight. So she deferred.

Joe wasn’t comfortable thinking of himself as one of the good old boys within the agency, but he understood it if Kany felt that way. From what he’d revealed, there was no good reason why she hadn’t been asked to locate the outfitter in her own district.

“I’ve met Spike Rankin a few times,” she said. “He’s a crusty old guy, but he seems straight as an arrow, and he didn’t give me any crap at all when I asked him for his camp permit or when I checked out his hunters. There was a time last elk-hunting season when one of his clients wanted to mess with me a little by pretending he couldn’t find his license and inviting me to search his tent with him, and Rankin shot that guy down real fast and told him to comply. I appreciated that.”

“That’s good to hear,” Joe said. “I’ve only heard good things about him as well. He’s an ethical hunting guide.”

“He showed me respect,” Kany said. “He didn’t treat me like the new-girl game warden. That doesn’t always happen around here.”

“I was the new game warden once,” Joe said. “I know the feeling.”

“But I sure got the vibe that he’d call me out in a heartbeat if he thought I was doing something wrong or being heavy-handed,” Kany said. “So I played things by the book. I always do.”

“That’s always a good idea,” Joe said. “Even when it isn’t the easiest way to go.”

She smiled shyly at that, Joe noticed. No doubt, she knew much more about him than he knew about her. Although he was proud of his Dudley Do-Right reputation for the most part, he still wasn’t used to being a man whom younger wardens looked up to and shared stories about. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it. In Joe’s mind, nearly twenty years later, he was still a rookie and in over his head.

“Maybe we should go talk to Sheriff Haswell,” Kany said. “That guy has been here for a hundred years and he knows everyone. He might have an idea where Rankin is.”

Joe sucked in his breath and held it a moment. The governor expressly said he didn’t want to involve Haswell, but Joe couldn’t tell her that. Yet.

“How about we check out Rankin’s elk camp first?” Joe said. “Because if he’s been there all along, there’s no reason to involve the sheriff at all, and I can get out of your hair.”

“You’re not in my hair,” Kany said as her Cobb salad arrived. “It’s a pleasure to host you here in my district.”

As Joe picked up his cheeseburger, Kany said, “I went to school with your daughter, you know.”

“My daughter? At UW?”

“Sheridan,” Kany said. “I was in a couple of classes with her. I talked to her once at a party. She was sweet and smart.”

Joe contemplated that for a moment. It meant Susan Kany was around twenty-six, like Sheridan. And it made him feel suddenly very, very old.

“I didn’t tell her I was coming down here to work with you,” Joe said finally. “I’ll ask her if she remembers meeting you.”

“We were on different tracks,” Kany said. “We hung with different crowds. I was interested in criminal justice and aviation. She was more into wildlife biology, I think.”

“That’s right,” Joe said.

“She was into falconry,” Kany said. “I thought that was pretty cool.”

Joe swallowed and said, “She’s running a bird abatement company now up in Saddlestring. She has lots of falcons to fly and hunt.”

“Good for her,” Kany said. “Please tell her I said hello. You must be proud.”

“I am.”

“Should we take my truck?” she asked.

For a second, Joe didn’t follow what she was saying.

“We can leave your truck at the Wolf and you can get in with me and ride shotgun,” Kany said. “Believe me, if the two of us both drive out of town in the same direction the rumors will start that we’re involved in some kind of big investigation. Then the gossip will start.”

Joe agreed.

“Small towns,” she repeated. Then: “I assume we want to keep this all on the down-low, right?”

“Yup.” Without Joe saying it explicitly, Kany intuited Joe’s intent to keep the search for Rankin looking as innocuous as possible. She was sharp.

“Let me get the check,” Joe said when they’d eaten. But she quickly snatched it from Yvette.

“The State of Wyoming pays either way,” she said. “I’ll handle this one.”

“Thank you, taxpayers,” Joe said as he stood up and clamped on his hat.

“You’re welcome,” said one of the town fathers from the adjacent table.

—

After leaving his pickup parked in the lot behind the Hotel Wolf and throwing his gear bag into the bed of Kany’s truck, Joe paused at her passenger door while she made room for him inside. Game and Fish pickups served as mobile business offices, and Kany’s vehicle was no different. The cab was filled with clothing, optics, boots for every occasion, ticket and regulation books, weapons, shed antlers, and other detritus picked up along the way in the field. She cleared the passenger seat and pulled a sleepy Jack Russell terrier toward her so Joe could climb inside.

“This is Ginger,” Kany said. “Don’t let her climb all over you.”

“Hi, Ginger.”

Joe found it charming that, unlike every other (male) game warden with a dog aboard, Kany had a Jack Russell instead of a Labrador. He scratched the dog on the head and closed the door. Ginger leaned into him and stared up into his eyes.

“She seems to be quite taken with you,” Kany said. “But she’s a pretty cheap date, to be honest.”

“I like dogs,” Joe said. “We have too many of them at home.”

“Being single, one is all I can handle.” Then, looking south toward the range that looked like a blue-black battleship on the sea: “Rankin’s main elk camp is at the base of Battle Mountain. I figure we should start there.”

Joe said that made sense to him.

Kany took WYO 130 south through Warm Springs. Joe looked around. As the highway climbed up a hill toward the outskirts of the community, he said, “There are a few more houses than I remember.” He particularly noted a new subdivision under construction in the flats to the west.

“They can’t build them fast enough,” Kany said. “We’ve had an influx in population since the pandemic, like lots of places in the Mountain West. Last I heard, there were fewer than ten houses for sale in the whole valley. It’s a real problem for the businesses here—they can’t hire new people because there’s no place for them to live.”

“Just like Saddlestring,” Joe said.

“If I didn’t have the state game warden station, I couldn’t afford it myself,” she said.

“Where are the newcomers from?”

“Cities.”

—

As they drove by the airport on the top of the hill, Joe noted the private jet he’d seen earlier when he’d approached Warm Springs. The jet was parked to the side of the runway. The aircraft looked even bigger on the tarmac now that it was still.

Next to the large corporate jet were two others just as large.

“Wow,” Joe said. “What’s going on around here?”

“Have you ever heard of the Centurions?” she asked.

“No.”

“I hadn’t either until I moved here. It’s a big-time secret gathering of muckety-mucks from all over the country. They fly in every October and meet at a real fancy dude ranch about forty-five minutes away called the B-Lazy-U. Few people know this, but the Warm Springs airport is the third-largest airport in Wyoming when it comes to the length of the runways. It can accommodate aircraft all the way up to a 737. And we don’t have a single commercial flight. Do you see all those rental cars?”

They were hard to miss, Joe thought. Three rows of black SUVs were lined up between the highway and the small private airport terminal. He guessed there were eighty to ninety vehicles.

Kany pulled off the road onto the shoulder and gestured toward the parked jets.

“That first one is a Bombardier Global Express,” she said. “It holds twelve to sixteen passengers, depending on the interior configuration. The one in the middle is a Gulfstream G500. It’s a beauty that holds up to thirteen, I believe. The one that just landed, the biggest one, is an Embraer Lineage 1000. Nineteen passengers. But none of these jets are ever full. Often, it’s just one or two passengers.”

Joe looked over at her with astonishment.

“I told you I studied avionics,” she said. “I used to want to fly one of these private jets, so I learned all about them. I never thought I’d see them all in one place, much less a place like Warm Springs.”

“How did I not know about this?” Joe asked rhetorically.

“Hardly anyone does,” she said. “Just the pilots and the locals.”

“Are there more jets on the way, then?” Joe asked.

She took her hand off the wheel and swept it across the horizon from right to left, indicating the entire airport. “By the end of the week, the tarmac will be covered with them,” she said. “They’ll park small jets under the wings of the big jets. Believe me, you’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Crazy,” Joe said.

“Like I said, it’s a big deal that no one knows about,” Kany said. “The folks here are more than aware of the event, but they’re encouraged to keep their mouths shut while the Centurions are here. It’s all kind of mysterious, and it took me a while to finally learn what goes on. As you can imagine, the event is quite the cash cow for the local economy, and it bridges the gap between summer tourism season and full-blown hunting season in the valley.”

Joe recalled that when he was there before he’d been surprised by how many well-known celebrities, politicians, and business tycoons frequented the location. On the exclusive guest ranch Sheridan had worked on, she’d had to sign nondisclosure agreements to keep the identity of many of the guests private. She’d been annoyed when her father wasn’t familiar with several of the names she leaked to him, even though Marybeth was aware of them. They included country music stars, famous actors, billionaire rappers, and real estate moguls. Sheridan had also explained to her father that the locals were used to celebrities in their midst and they were largely not impressed with them. Warm Springs residents just went on about their business, she said. It was one of the reasons famous people liked to visit.

“So what goes on at this big event?” Joe asked Kany, intrigued.

“Apparently, they meet annually at the B-Lazy-U Ranch and do all the traditional cowboy stuff: horseback riding, fly-fishing, skeet shooting, hiking, all that. Then they have a couple of formal meetings and initiate new members, then they all fly home. In a week, there won’t be a single aircraft at this airport.

“From what I understand, the Centurions have been around for sixty or seventy years. I’ve never been to the ranch they gather at, but I’ve talked to a couple of people who have been.”

Joe whistled. He watched as one of the black SUVs left the front line of vehicles and turned toward the airport exit. He could see that behind the driver there were two passengers in the back seat, who had probably arrived on the Embraer Lineage that had passed over his pickup on the way into town.

“So who are these big muckety-mucks?” Joe asked.