Stone Cold (9 page)

Coon paused, looking over the transaction records. “But again, I guess it isn't so unusual among the rich and well connected. They know if word gets out that they're interested in a certain property, the price might go up. So they conduct an anonymous transaction that keeps their name out of it until it's done. And when he relocates to Wyoming, the file goes cold. The bureau has so much on its plate these days we couldn't devote any manpower to what really amounts to snippets of gossip.”

Joe waited for the other shoe to drop. It did.

Coon said, “But now there's something else much more recent. In fact, just a month ago, and I'm sure you've heard of it.”

Joe waited.

Coon said, “The disappearance of Henry P. Scoggins the Third.”

Joe sat up. Of course he'd heard about it. Scoggins had vanished from his own fishing lodge on the Bighorn River under the watchful eyes of a private security team. Speculation had run from kidnapping—which seemed unlikely, even though the questioning of locals and members of the Crow tribe had brought accusations of harassment and racism—to the possibility that Scoggins had sleep-walked into the river during the night and drowned. His body had never been found.

“What do you have that might tie Templeton to Henry Scoggins?” Joe asked.

“Practically nothing,” Coon said, and rubbed at his face with his hands, “except Scoggins seems to fit the profile. Extremely wealthy. Hated bitterly by his enemies, who are also extremely wealthy and
connected, and among that elite set we just identified. No explanation for his disappearance. No body. Except this time we might have a lead, although it's a damned thin one.”

Coon paused for a long time.

Joe said, “Now comes the part I may not like, right?”

Coon nodded wordlessly and flipped to the last few pages of the file.

“The affidavits from the security team seem hinky to me, but you can be the judge of that when you read them over. Something happened that night they're not being truthful about, is my intuition. That's all it is—intuition. I'd like to question them myself—especially this Jolovich guy, who was the head of the security detail. But right now, I don't have enough backup to call him in or make the trip.

“But we have two other pieces that interest me and I think will interest you.”

Coon said, “A member of the Crow tribe named Benny Black Eagle was bait-fishing on the river before dawn the morning after the disappearance. He said he saw a private plane land on an old abandoned runway about a mile upriver from where he was. He saw a man carry a big duffel bag of some kind from the river to the plane, and then the plane took off, heading southeast.”

“Could he identify the man or the pilot?”

Coon shook his head. “Too far and too dark. He could barely see them at all. But we know there was no FAA flight plan filed by anyone for that morning for that airstrip.”

“The bag—”

“Could have been the size of a body. But maybe not. He wasn't sure. But we do know Templeton has a pilot's license and at least one private plane, maybe two.”

Joe was confused. “Where is this headed?”

Coon said, “The tribal police up there talked to a couple of members—girls—who told them about meeting a Caucasian a couple of days before Scoggins disappeared. The guy gave them a ride from the Scoggins compound to a bar near Hardin. They really liked him, but they didn't get his name. A police artist was called in, and here's what he came up with.” He handed a rough composite across the desk to Joe.

He looked at it. A rough face, hawklike nose, piercing eyes. Joe felt a chill roll down his back.

“Something else,” Coon said, sliding over a mottled black-and-white photo. “All the electronic surveillance of the Scoggins compound was disabled and the hard drives were missing from the computers. But there was an old trail cam mounted on a tree the bad guys must not have known about.”

Joe was familiar with trail cameras that were used by landowners and hunters to get nighttime images of passing wildlife. He'd used trail-cam images to implicate poachers on private land as well.

The photo was grainy and of poor quality, and had obviously been enlarged. Tree trunks were brilliant white stripes against black, and the brush looked haunting and skeletal. The single image was unfocused, but in the distance he could clearly see the form of a man who appeared to be leaning forward as he walked, as if dragging something heavy behind him.

The side of his face couldn't be clearly seen, but the set of his shoulders and the outline of his frame were familiar enough.

“You know him best,” Coon said. “Is that your pal Nate Romanowski?”

“Can't say for sure.”

“How in the hell did he get mixed up with Wolfgang Templeton, is what I'd like to know,” Coon said.

“Me too,” Joe whispered.

“When was the last time you saw Nate Romanowski?” Coon asked.

Joe looked up. The FBI had been trying to find Nate for years to question him about several unsolved disappearances. Coon had not pursued the search with the intensity of his predecessors, but Nate was still listed as a federal fugitive.

“Last year,” Joe said. “He showed up at my home and helped me out with that train wreck of a search for Butch Roberson.”

“I can't recall you reporting that to me,” Coon said icily.

“That's because I didn't.”

“But you've not seen him since?”

“No,” Joe said. “Nate is . . . unusual in his habits. He'll just show up, and we never know where he goes when he leaves.”

“Any idea where he's been living?”

“No. I assumed Idaho, but I might be wrong.”

“My guess,” Coon said, “is he's now based in Medicine Wheel County.”

Joe took a deep breath. “Nate has his own style. But he's not a kidnapper or a hired killer.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Joe took a moment to answer. “Somewhat.”

Joe recalled the last time he'd seen his friend. Nate had come across as slightly unhinged—more excitable and more violent. Joe attributed it to what Nate had gone through the year before that, when he'd been tracked down by an old mentor.

Had Nate discarded his unique set of principles and gone off the deep end?

Coon said, “Take the file and study it. I've got a conference call with Washington in five minutes on another matter. Call me if you've got questions, and keep me informed on what you find out when you get up there. And, Joe, don't do anything stupid.”

Joe didn't respond. He was still reeling from the revelations.

“Joe?” Coon prompted.

Joe looked at his watch. It was nearly noon. He had four hours before
Rulon One
was scheduled to take him back to Saddlestring.

“Can I borrow a car?” Joe asked.

“
You
want to borrow a government car? You? With your track record?”

Joe grinned. “My daughter needs her winter coat and you have a motor pool full of government cars.”

“I swear, if anything happens to one of our vehicles, I'll take it out of your hide,” Coon said, shaking his head.

“What could possibly go wrong?” Joe asked with a slight grin.

Laramie, Wyoming

His plastic tray slid along the tubed aluminum railing, and Joe followed Sheridan through the buffet line of the Mongolian Wok food station in Washakie Dining Center at the University of Wyoming. The cafeteria was bustling at lunchtime, and Joe knew how much he stood out by his uniform—and his age—by the number of interested and appalled stares he received from students. Sheridan noticed it as well and smiled in sympathy over her shoulder while taking a plate of thin noodles with strips of beef and Mongolian hot sauce.

They'd passed up the burger bar, the sandwich bar, the salad station, and four other offerings that Joe preferred as he followed the lead of his daughter.

Joe leaned toward her and said, “Things have changed in this place. When I went to school here, we had a choice of Spam with green beans or macaroni and cheese.”

“Yuck,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Sheridan was dressed like most of the other students: UW hoodie, skinny jeans, boots, backpack. She was blond and clear-eyed and striking, Joe thought, more mature for her age than most of the students that gawked at him. He admired her self-assurance, and she seemed no longer embarrassed by the presence of one of her parents, which had been the case in her first two years. He understood.

He stared at his plate and said, “I don't know what I'm eating.”

“Stir-fried noodles with beef, shrimp, and veggies,” she said, since she'd ordered for him. “Give it a try.”

He grunted and stabbed at the strips of beef with a fork. Sheridan used chopsticks. The food was better than he'd imagined it would be.

•   •   •

“
T
HANKS FOR
BRINGING
my coat,” she said.

“You'll need it.”

“No kidding.” She gestured with her chopsticks through the windows toward Grand Street. It was spitting snow.

“So April has a boyfriend?” she asked, looking at him slyly.

“How did you know?”

“Facebook. She decided to friend me again, and I read about it last night. Is it really Dallas Cates?”

“Yup.”

“He's trouble with a capital
T
,” she said. “I'd try and tell her that, but she'd just think I was being bitchy and trying to tear her down. Or accuse me of trying to steal Dallas or something like that.”

Joe nodded. Although the relationship between Sheridan and
April had thawed a bit, it was still contentious. April was a hard customer.

“She's not real happy with you and Mom right now,” Sheridan said.

“Tell me about it. That was on the Internet, too?”

She nodded.

“I hate Facebook,” Joe said.

Sheridan chuckled.

Before he could ask why she'd called, Sheridan said, “So what brings you down here?”

He hesitated. The words that came to mind—
mission
,
special assignment
—sounded too fraught with intrigue. He said, “The governor asked me to help with an investigation up in the Black Hills. He could have asked over the phone, but he brought me down here instead.”

She paused and studied his face, looking for clues beyond what he'd just said.

“Don't do that,” he said. “Your mother does that.”

“It's so we can figure out what you're really saying,” she said breezily. “So you can't really talk about it, huh?”

“That's right.”

She smiled to herself for getting to the heart of it.

He asked, “Have you happened to have heard anything from Nate the last couple of months?”

“Nate?” she said, looking up, surprised. “No. Why?”

Sheridan was Nate's apprentice falconer, and the previous year she'd started flying her first bird. The kestrel had performed as it should and reconfirmed her fascination with the sport. She'd
mentioned from time to time that Nate had sent her emails and offered tips on flying the bird. They'd released the bird prior to school starting, with the hope that Sheridan could get another in the future.

“Just wondering,” Joe said.

“Does this thing you're doing involve Nate?”

Joe shrugged. “I hope not.” But the black worm of dread that had formed in his stomach when he saw the trail-cam photo had grown over the past hour.

“If you see him, well, tell him hello from me,” she said. “Tell him he's been a bad master falconer lately.”

Joe smiled. “I'll tell him.”

They ate until the silence became an issue. Then Joe said, “You called me yesterday. Was it a real call or a pocket call?”

“A real call, I guess,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

“It's okay to leave a message,” he said. “In fact, if you left a message I'd have some idea what was going on and not worry about it.”

“I
know
,” she said.

“So leave a message next time. What were you calling about?”

She took a deep breath and seemed to weigh her response. “It seems kind of stupid now.”

“Try me.”

“There's this guy on my floor,” she said, and Joe immediately felt himself tense up.

“He's a transfer student from California,” she said. “Los Angeles, according to the directory. I don't know much about him, but he gives me a really bad vibe.”

Joe lowered his voice and said, “What kind of bad vibe? Like stalker vibe, or predator vibe, or what? Is he harassing you?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” she said, moving her hands as if
erasing his implication from the air. “He hasn't said two words to me since the semester started. He hardly talks to
anyone
.”

Joe pushed his plate aside and urged her on. He knew she had second thoughts about involving him by the way she hesitated with the details. He didn't want to come on too strong so she'd back off.

“Okay,” she said. “His name is Erik Young. He's a junior, which is weird right there. All the other kids on my floor are freshmen. Everybody else lives off-campus. When he didn't come to the mandatory orientation at the dorm, I thought, ‘Okay, he's been through all this stuff before, so no big deal. Maybe he's shy.' When I saw him in the hall, I introduced myself as the RA and he just stared at me. His eyes reminded me of falcon eyes—black and kind of dead. Do you know what I mean? Then he walked right past me as if I wasn't there.”

“Does he speak English? Is it possible he's an exchange student who doesn't know the language?” Joe asked.

“That's what I wondered at first, too. That he was just shy or not comfortable with the language. But that's not the case. His roommate told me Erik had talked to him a little, but what he'd said weirded him out. In fact, his roommate said he was crazy and transferred out of the dorm the first week. Now Erik lives as a single in his room. All he does is play first-person shooter games on his computer. I had to knock on his door a couple of times to ask him to turn the volume down. Erik turns the sound down, but he won't open the door or apologize or anything.”

Joe said, “First-person shooter games?”

“Yeah. If you stand outside his room, all you can hear is
BLAM-BLAM-BLAM
and explosions going off.”

She sighed. “You know, I've really tried with him. I'm not trying to be his best friend, but it just gets to me when I say hello or ask him
a question and he just puts those eyes on me and moves on. He has no friends, dresses in all black, and totally keeps to himself. In fact,” she said, as her voice dropped to a whisper and she looked over Joe's shoulder, “there he is.”

Joe instinctively started to turn in his seat, when he felt Sheridan's hand on his.

“Don't stare,” she said. “He'll know we're talking about him.”

“Gotcha.”

Instead, Joe gathered his plate and stood with his tray, looking around the room as if to locate where to deposit it.

Erik Young stood a few feet inside the entrance to the cafeteria, as if looking for a place to sit. Students flowed around him, but he was still, an island in a sea of motion. He was thin and had a pinched face with no expression. He wore a long dark coat that reminded Joe of a duster, but he was hatless. After a moment, Young backed out of the room without looking over his shoulder and nearly ran into a couple of female students who were entering. They glared at him, but he ignored them, and he continued backing away until he was gone.

Joe felt a chill run down his spine. He sat back down.

“See what I mean?” Sheridan said. “I can't believe he just showed up like that when I was telling you about him.”

Joe said, “Have you talked to anyone?”

Sheridan nodded. “It's kind of embarrassing, you know. But yeah, I talked to the dorm administrator and even a guy from campus police. But all I could honestly say was that the guy just made me uncomfortable. They asked what you asked—has he said or done anything to me or threatened anyone—and I had to say no. See, he hasn't
done
anything. There are rules and procedures for this kind of
thing, I guess. They can't really do anything or infringe on his civil rights unless he acts out in some way. That's what they told me.”

“Does he have a gun?” Joe asked.

She shrugged. “It's against the rules, of course, but how would I know? The residents aren't supposed to have guns in their rooms, but a lot of these guys are hunters. Some RAs just kind of look the other way if they know the student is, you know,
normal
.”

Joe sat back and looked at his daughter.

She said it first: “Let's just say if there was a mass shooting on this campus, he would be the first guy who would come to my mind. I know that's judgmental and not fair because I really don't even know him. But you saw him . . .”

“I did,” Joe said. “Judging is fine with me. I trust your judgment and you should, too. Sheridan,” he said with emphasis, “you've always been judgmental. You've seen a lot, and it's okay. Don't let college make you doubt your instincts.”

“So what should I do?” she asked.

“It's a tough one. Keep your eye on him, that's for sure. Make sure your concerns are in writing and the administration has a record of them. That way, they can open a file of some kind. And if there is anything—
anything at all
—that he does or says or you suspect, you call the campus police and you call me one second later. Do you promise me you'll do that?”

She hesitated for a moment. Then: “Yes.”

“Do you still have that pepper spray I gave you?”

She nodded.

“Keep it with you every second of the day.”

“I will.”

“Where is it now?”

Sheridan cocked her head in a way that indicated
Somewhere in my room
.

“Find it and keep it with you. And if you need to call me and I don't answer that second,
leave a message
.”

She said, “What can you do if you're hundreds of miles away?”

Joe said, “You'd be surprised how fast I can get here.”

After a beat, Sheridan said, “Now I feel kind of stupid. I didn't mean to get you worked up based on, you know, my
feelings
.”

Joe reached out and grasped his oldest daughter's hand. “I'll do some background checking on this guy. I may involve the university folks if I learn anything. I'll try not to bring your name into it unless I have to. But in the meanwhile, don't feel guilty for telling me. You've done the right thing.”

“Dad . . .” she said, and for a moment he could see in her face the little girl he remembered. “Thank you. I feel a little better.”

“That's my job,” he said.

“Please don't tell Mom. You know how she worries.”

“I can't promise that. We don't keep secrets,” Joe said. “But I'd suggest
you
let her know about our talk before I get home.”

“She'll want to move in with me,” Sheridan laughed, breaking the tension. “Then who would keep an eye on April and Dallas Cates?”

Joe groaned.

•   •   •

S
HERIDAN SAID
she had to go to class, and Joe accompanied her as far as the outside doors. She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, and as she left and joined the river of students headed toward the classroom buildings, he thought,
I won't let anything
happen to you.

•   •   •

I
NSTEAD OF
WALKING
to the U.S. government Crown Vic he'd borrowed, Joe joined the flow of students on an inner walkway toward the dormitories and, beyond that, the classroom buildings. He ignored a couple of young yahoos who said, “Hey, Game Warden, want to see my fishing license?” He kept his anger at bay as he walked, and he spotted Erik Young a hundred yards ahead on the walkway. The boy stood out in his all-black clothing and by the way other students gave him space as he walked. Joe noted that: students who likely didn't know Young or had likely never seen him before instinctively stepped aside to let him pass. The boy had an aura about him.