Bluetick Revenge (31 page)

Valeska found a backpack in Bugg’s house and brought it up front. “I put a few bottles of water in there,” she said.

I looked at Livingston and said, “You ready?”

We were six hours into it, and Prince had taken us in a southerly direction, back toward Nederland and Rollinsville. Other
teams were now searching the areas north and west of Bugg’s home.

The miles of walking up and down hills gave me some time to get to know Livingston. I decided he wasn’t such a bad guy. A
lot like me in some ways. His undergraduate degree had been in meteorology, of all things, and he had even been a TV weatherman
in a small town in Missouri, but he had tired of it and joined the FBI. He had a wife and two small kids. We both liked the
Broncos.

“We’re awfully far south,” Livingston said. “You sure this dog knows what he’s doing?”

“He knows what he’s doing; the question is whether I know what I’m doing.”

“You said you’d been tracking your whole life.”

“I exaggerated a little.”

“Great.”

“I trust the dog,” I said. “He’s a champion.”

I also trusted my sense of logic. I guessed Bugg would head to one of his three caches in Colorado, and I was pretty sure
I knew which one. One was in southern Colorado, near Durango, and there was no way he was going to try to cover that distance
in February. Another was in western Colorado near Grand Junction. That would be a long hike, too, unless he got brave and
tried to thumb a ride on the interstate. The third one wasn’t that far from his home. It was near the Winter Park ski area.

Winter Park is south and west of Ward. To get to Winter Park from Ward would take two hours by car. Even though they are probably
only twenty-five miles apart as the crow flies, that twenty-five miles includes the Continental Divide. If you were not a
crow, you would have to drive thirty-five miles south from Ward, through Black Hawk, then catch the interstate west, then
head north on Highway 40.

If Bugg was headed toward Winter Park on foot, he had two choices. He could get the uphill leg of his journey down first by
heading west from his home over the Divide, then south. Or he could do what Prince apparently thought he was doing; head south
first, then turn west and uphill.

Why head south first? Why not get the uphill leg out of the way? Why risk being above eleven thousand feet when night falls?

We continued south. Up one ridge, down into the next valley. Livingston monitored his radio to keep track of what the other
teams were doing. When we stopped for water, I used my Global Positioning System and USGS map to determine where we were.
I showed the map to Livingston and pointed to our location.

“We’ve come a long way,” he said. “We’re just a few miles west ofNederland?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t get it,” Livingston said. “He’s staying off the designated trails, but heading toward more populated areas. You think
he’s trying to get to the interstate?”

“Maybe,” I said. “He’s a gutsy guy.”

“What’s this?” Livingston said as he pointed to a place on the map.

“The Moffat Tunnel,” I said. “Trains use it to go under the Divide. Saves lots of time.”

“Maybe he’s hoping to hop a train,” Livingston said. “If he gets a train, he’s on the other side of the Divide and long gone
before we get near him.”

“It wouldn’t be hard,” I said. “Most of the trains carry coal. They’re long and they don’t carry a big crew. They go pretty
slow through here.”

“How big is the tunnel? Could he hide in it?”

“It’s a little more than six miles long. I don’t know how wide it is. Probably wide enough for a man to stand up without getting
hit by a train. I’d be a little concerned about ventilation if I went deep into it.”

I got Prince fired up again and we continued south. Livingston got Valeska on the radio and told her our theory.

“I’ll call the railroads,” I heard her say. “We’ll stop and search all eastbound and westbound trains.”

Within a few more hours Prince had us at the entrance to the east portal of the Moffat Tunnel, a few miles west of Rollinsville.
It was dusk now. The tunnel looked to be eighteen or twenty feet wide, wide enough that a man could stand in it without getting
hit by a train.

“Maybe he’s in the tunnel,” Livingston said. “Think we should check it out?”

“No. He could be two or three miles into it. And, like I said, I don’t know how good the ventilation is in there. It would
be kind of embarrassing for me, you, and the dog to die of suffocation or toxic fumes. Get on the radio. Maybe Adrienne can
get the Gilpin County sheriff to send some deputies to keep us company tonight, and get some deputies over in Grand County
to watch the west portal.”

Forty-five minutes later two SUVs driven by Gilpin County deputies pulled up to our position. They had to stop a few hundred
yards east of us because the dirt road does not go all the way to the east portal.

We introduced ourselves, and Livingston briefed them. If Bugg was in the tunnel, it was a waiting game. If Bugg was not in
the tunnel, he might be very close to us—waiting to hop the first train that came through. Or Prince might be a tracking school
dropout and Bugg might be in Utah by now.

It had been a long day, so I asked one of the deputies if I could take a nap in his SUV. I put the back of the passenger seat
down as far as it would go and fell asleep.

By early morning we had more law enforcement and more equipment. Someone’s radio crackled at around six and I heard a male
on the other end say, “You’ll have a westbound coal train stopping just east of the tunnel in about thirty minutes. The engineer
has been advised to stop before entering the tunnel.”

“We’ll have to search every car,” Livingston said. “See if he’s hiding on top of one or in between two of the cars.”

“Could be underneath one of them, too,” a deputy said.

An FBI agent I did not know offered me coffee and I gladly accepted. We waited.

I heard the train even before it reached Rollinsville. I looked east every few minutes and eventually the train came into
view. Then I heard the squeak of metal on metal as the engineer began braking. It was a long train, maybe a half mile long,
and it was powered by four diesel locomotives. The ground vibrated as the train neared us. The engineer brought her to a stop
just a hundred yards or so from the east portal, but the diesel engines continued to run and the noise was defening.

Some of the feds started at the Rollinsville end of the train, at the caboose, and began working their way toward us. Livingston
and I and the deputies who had arrived last night started at the first engine and worked our way east toward the caboose.
Everyone was armed.

One of us had to climb up the ladder on each car to look into the top of it. It dawned on me that Bugg could be buried under
a mound of coal and we might not see him.

At some point Prince trotted down a few cars to the east and started barking wildly. Now he was jumping up at one of the railroad
cars, howling, and generally going crazy. “I think the dog’s got something,” I said.

Livingston came up to me and motioned the two deputies to approach the other side of the car.

I saw the head of one of the deputies as he climbed to the top of the car from the ladder on the other side. “There’s nobody
up here,” he said. “Just coal.”

Prince was still going nuts. Livingston and I exchanged glances. Then he started climbing the ladder on our side until he
could see into the car. Holding on to the ladder with one hand, he set his pistol down on the top of the car and picked up
his radio. “The dog is alerting on this car,” he said. “We think he might be hiding beneath the coal, but I’m wearing a four-hundred-dollar
suit. I’m going to fire some rounds into the car to make sure nobody is hiding. Ignore the gunfire. Repeat, ignore the gunfire.”

I thought he was bluffing, but he fired three rounds right into the coal. Suddenly a figure covered in black dust appeared
from beneath the coal, jumped to the ground, and sprinted toward the trees. “Go get him, Prince,” I said.

It didn’t take the eighty-five-pound Prince long to catch the 250-pound Bugg. Prince lunged from behind and took a bite out
of Bugg’s thigh. Now Bugg was on the ground. Snarling and snapping, Prince was coming at him from all directions. Bugg raised
an arm to swat the dog, but Prince sank his teeth into the arm and wouldn’t let go. I trotted over to them, aiming my Glock
at Bugg with my right hand, and used my left hand to pull Prince off him. Livingston and the deputies joined us. Livingston
cuffed him, then got on the radio and shared the good news.

A
NVIL TURNED OUT TO BE
a graduate journalism student who had hoped to make it big with a book about his life and times with the Sons of Satan. His
real name was Evan Roberts. He had penetrated the gang with good intentions, but got in too deep. I was still pissed about
his role in the snake incident, but I realized he had done what he could to protect Karlynn and me from Bugg. Still, he had
committed crimes and would be prosecuted.

I talked Matt into defending Anvil. We visited him at the jail where he was awaiting trial. He was less scruffy-looking now.
In a small room with no windows Matt explained the criminal justice process and conducted his first interview with his new
client. We wanted to see how much he knew and how much help he could give the feds in return for a deal.

Anvil didn’t know anything about Rankin’s death because that had been before he had joined the Sons of Satan. He could testify
that Bugg and Mongoose discussed options with regard to Lowell, but he knew nothing about Skull’s involvement. Nevertheless,
it didn’t take long for us to realize that Anvil knew enough about the gang and its operations to sink Bugg and the Sons of
Satan for good. For two years he had been part of Bugg’s inner circle. During those two years he had lived alone in a small
cabin near Jamestown, Colorado, and he had kept a daily journal about his life in the gang.

Matt looked at me and said, “What do you think? You were a federal prosecutor.”

“They might relocate him if they think he has enough to offer. If not, you can probably still get a pretty good deal. If he
has to do time, he can use it to write his book. He might make some money on a book like that.”

“I’m going to call it
A Son of Satan
,” he said.

“I’ve got to ask you one question,” I said. “You didn’t tell Bugg you saw Karlynn with me. At the bar in Longmont you told
my partner you hadn’t seen her for months. And you pretended not to recognize me when I saw you at Bugg’s house. Bugg tried
to kill me three times. Once up in Idaho, once with the snake, and once by sending his army to my house. How did Bugg know
what I had done?”

“The guys in Idaho saw that you had Colorado plates and a bluetick coonhound, so they thought you might be the guy that took
Bugg’s dog. When they described you and your truck to Bugg, he gave them the go-ahead. Then you came back here, gave him the
money, and told him that story about Karlynn and his dog. He started having doubts. He thought he had jumped the gun in Idaho.
It was hard for him to believe that you were lying, because you had given him so much money. He went back and forth. He did
everything he could think of to try to figure out whether you were lying. He even had some guys check to see if there really
is a Lewis and Clark Trailer Park in Coeur d’Alene. That’s when he decided you had been suckering him all along. That’s when
he told us to put the snake in your house.”

We said good-bye to Anvil, and as we left the building, Matt said, “I’ve got a better name for his book.”

“What’s that?”

“
I Was a Thirty-Year-Old Dumbshit
.”

“I’ve got a name for his book, too,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“
Bluetick Revenge
.”

D
URING THE NEXT FEW MONTHS
things began to return to normal. I had coffee with Kendra Carlson a few times. I told her Karlynn was safe and perhaps on
her way to the life she wanted. I was honest with her about Jayne. I told her about my dream.

“That’s easy,” she said. “You’re in a china shop. Jayne is in China. She wants to bring something back.”

“What about the Ford Taurus?”

“Taurus is the symbol of the bull,” she said.

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re the bull.”

“I’m the bull?”

“You’re the bull in a china shop. You’re afraid you’ll break something.”

Though I enjoyed talking with her, we figured out fairly quickly that we were not a good match. Karlynn was right; Kendra
was too high-maintenance for me. She wasn’t the kind of woman who was going to allow Buck and Wheat to sleep on her bed.

I spent more time working out and practicing my karate. It was May and I enjoyed taking the dogs on walks. In my spare time
I testified in front of a federal grand jury. I told the truth about almost everything.

One day, as I was coming out of the federal courthouse, I walked over to Coors Field to meet Scott so we could spend an evening
watching the Rockies lose to the Dodgers. When the game was over, we decided to grab a beer and ended up walking right past
the spot where Hal had been murdered. I pointed it out to Scott.

“Do you ever think about Skull?” he asked.

“Every day.”

“Me too,” he said.

“Even if we could get to him, what would we do with him? Mongoose and Bugg aren’t talking about Lowell, and neither is anyone
else. Anvil knows nothing about Skull. Nobody has enough evidence to prosecute him.”

Scott didn’t answer me.

“I don’t think I could kill him,” I said. “Not unless it was in self-defense.”

We continued walking. Scott remained silent for a while, then said, “How would you feel about kidnapping him and burning every
building on that compound to the ground?”

“I could live with that,” I said.

We found a sports bar and went inside. We ordered two beers and some nachos. Scott likes sour cream and green chilis, so I
asked the waiter to make sure that stuff was on the side.