Breaking Point

Book 13: A Joe Pickett Novel

by C.J. Box

Genres: Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

The recipient of Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box has won almost every honor in his field. In Breaking Point, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is glad to catch up with old friend Butch Roberson, but then the man goes missing and is named a suspect in the death of two EPA employees. All signs point to Butch's guilt, but the more Joe digs into the case, the more he realizes he's stepped into the middle of a deadly power play.

Release date: March 12, 2013

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 448

Sample

 

Also by C. J. Box

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

 

DAY ONE

Chapter 1

 

DAY TWO

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

 

DAY THREE

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

 

DAY FOUR

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

 

ONE WEEK AFTER

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

 

Afterword and Acknowledgments

 

1

ON AN EARLY MORNING IN MID-AUGUST, EPA SPECIAL Agents Tim Singewald and Lenox Baker left the Region 8 Environmental Protection Agency building at 1595 Wynkoop Street in downtown Denver in a Chevrolet Malibu SA hybrid sedan they’d checked out from the motor pool. Singewald was at the wheel, and he maneuvered through shadows cast by tall buildings while Baker fired up the dash-mounted GPS.

“Acquiring satellites,” Baker said, repeating the voice command from the unit.

“Wait until we get out of downtown,” Singewald said. “The buildings block the satellite feed. There’ll be plenty of time to program the address. Besides, I know where we’re going. I’ve been there, remember?”

“Yeah,” Baker said, settling back in his seat. “I know. I was just wondering how long it would take.”

“Forever,” Singewald said, and sighed, taking the turn on Speer that would lead them to I-25 North. “Wyoming is a big-ass state.”

The GPS chirped that it had connected with the sky. Baker punched in an address and waited for a moment and said with a groan, “Four hundred and twenty-two miles. Six hours, twenty-seven minutes. Jesus.”

Said Singewald, “Not counting the guy we need to pick up along the way in Cheyenne. Still, we ought to make it before five, easy.”

“Where are we staying? Do they have any good places to eat up there?”

Singewald emitted a single harsh bark and shook his head. “The Holiday Inn has a government rate, but the bar sucks. There are a couple good bars in town, though, if you don’t mind country music.”

“I hate it.”

“Six and a half hours,” Baker said as Singewald eased the Chevy onto the on-ramp and joined the flow of traffic north.

—

IT WAS A CLEAR summer morning in mid-August. The mountains to the west shimmered through early-hour smog that would lift and dissipate when the temperature rose into the seventies. Both men wore ties and sport coats, and in the backseat was a valise containing the legal documents they were to deliver. Both had packed a single change of clothing for the drive back the next day.

Tim Singewald had thin sandy hair, small eyes, a sallow complexion, and a translucent mustache. Lenox Baker was fifteen years younger. Singewald didn’t know him well at all, although his impression of his colleague was that he was overeager. Baker was dark and compact and exhibited nervous energy and a wide-eyed expression he displayed when talking with a senior staffer that said, Keep me in mind when promotions or transfers come along.

Singewald noticed that Baker wore a wedding band, but he’d never heard the wife’s name. Singewald had been divorced for six years.

All he knew about Baker was, like thousands of others across the country, he was new to the agency and he was gung-ho to get into some kind of action.

Baker was an EPA Special Agent (Grade 12), one of 350-plus and growing. He pulled in $93,539 a year in salary plus benefits and hoped to move up to Grade 15, where Singewald resided. Singewald made $154,615 per year, plus benefits.

As they cleared Metro Denver into Broomfield, Singewald reached up with his left hand and loosened the knot on his tie and then pulled it free and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. When Baker saw him do it, he reached up and did the same.

“Ties stand out where we’re going,” Singewald said.

“What do they wear? Clip-ons? String ties?”

“They don’t wear ties,” Singewald said. “They wear jeans with belts that say ‘Hoss.’”

Baker laughed. Then: “Who is this guy we have to pick up in Cheyenne?”

“Somebody with the U.S. Corps of Engineers,” Singewald said, shrugging. “I don’t know him.”

“Why is he coming along?”

“I don’t know,” Singewald said. “I don’t ask.”

“The secret to a long career,” Baker said.

“You got it.”

“Are there other secrets?” Baker asked, grinning a schoolboy grin.

“Yes,” Singewald said, and said no more.

—

THE AGENTS DROVE another hour north and crossed the border into Wyoming. Instantly, the car was buffeted by gusts of wind.

“Where are the trees?” Baker asked.

“They blew away,” Singewald said.

—

AS SINGEWALD WHEELED into the parking lot of the Federal Building in Cheyenne, he saw an older man in a windbreaker and sunglasses standing near the vestibule entrance. The man was conspicuously checking his watch and glancing toward them as they found an empty spot.

“Gotta be him,” Singewald said.

“What was his name again?”

“Love. That’s all I know about him.”

The man who might be Love pushed himself off the brick wall and walked slowly to their car. Singewald powered down his window.

“You EPA?” the man asked.

“Agents Singewald and Baker.”

“I’m Kim Love,” the man said. “I guess we’re going to the same place today.”

Singewald chinned toward the backseat. “Do you have anything you need to put in the trunk before we leave?”

Love rocked back on his heels and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. He shook his head.

“I’ll follow you up,” Love said. “I’ve got my own car.”

“Sure you don’t want to come with us?” Singewald asked Love.

“I’m sure.”

“Suit yourself. Do you know where we’re going?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

Singewald didn’t react. Instead, he reached inside his jacket pocket and handed Love an official EPA business card.

“My cell phone number is on there. Give me a call when we get going so I have yours, so we can keep in touch if we get separated.”

Love sighed and shook his head. “What, you think you’re entering No Man’s Land?”

“Yes,” Baker whispered, sotto voce.

“Maybe we can stop in Casper for lunch,” Love said. “I know a place there.”

“We’ll follow you,” Singewald said with a shrug.

When Love walked away to climb into his own sedan with U.S. Government plates, Baker said to Singewald, “What’s his problem?”

Singewald shrugged. “Don’t know and don’t care,” he said. “He’s just another working stiff. Like us.”

—

BAKER WAS PRACTICALLY SPUTTERING two and a half hours later when the brake lights of Love’s sedan flashed and the Corps of Engineers car took the Second Street exit in Casper and turned in at a truck stop.

“He’s yanking our chain,” Baker said, leaning forward in his seat to look around. A long line of side-by-side tractor-trailers idled in a cacophony on the south side of the huge parking lot. A trucker emerged from the restaurant and convenience-store doors holding a half-gallon soft-drink container to take back to his truck cab.

“Maybe this Love knows something,” Singewald said. “Maybe this place is, you know, a jewel in the rough.”

“It’s a truck stop.”

“We might as well be friendly, since we’re stuck with him,” Singewald said, and turned off the motor.

Baker sighed. “Maybe I’ll just stay in here. I can feel my arteries clogging up just looking at this place and the people coming out of it.”

“You don’t have to come in,” Singewald said, handing Baker the keys. “If you want to listen to the radio or something.”

Baker waved him off. “Believe me, there’s probably nothing worth listening to here. I’m not a big fan of Buck Owens.”

Singewald pocketed the keys.

“Oh, all right,” Baker said with a groan, opening his door to get out.

—

THEY SAT around a Formica table in a high-backed booth; Kim Love on one side and Singewald and Baker on the other. All of the other tables and booths were occupied by truck drivers and rough-looking locals who appeared as if they’d driven into town from building sites or oil rigs. Even with their ties removed, Singewald thought the three of them stood out. Singewald thought Love seemed distant, and maybe a little hostile to them. He chalked it up to interagency rivalry and didn’t let it bother him. There was no reason to make friends, he thought. He’d never met Love before, and after their joint operation later that afternoon, he doubted he’d ever see him again.

Beside him, Lenox Baker studied the plastic menu and sighed.

“Do you recommend anything in particular?” Baker asked Love.

“The chicken-fried steak sandwich,” Love said without even looking at his menu. “Best in Central Wyoming. I’m from Texas, and I’m particular about chicken-fried steak. They do it right here: no pre-breaded bullshit.”

Baker cringed.

Singewald ordered the sandwich as well, and Baker asked the waitress if the lettuce of the chef salad had any preservatives sprayed on it. Without a smile and with a quick glance toward her other busy tables, she said, “I wouldn’t know that, hon.”

“Can you ask the chef?”

“We don’t have a chef. I’ll ask the cook,” she said, and spun on her heels toward the kitchen.

“Those chemicals give me diarrhea,” Baker explained to Singewald.

“Can’t have that,” he replied.

—

AFTER THEY PUSHED their empty plates away and sat back—Baker had picked at his salad and claimed he was full—Love looked squarely at Singewald and said, “I can’t say I like what we’re doing today.”

Singewald shrugged. “We’re just the messengers.”

“Still.”

“We didn’t make the decision,” Singewald said. “We’re just delivering the verdict.”

“Yeah,” Love said, shaking his head and taking a swipe at his balled-up paper napkin like a bear cub, “I read it. In fact, I read it twice and didn’t like it any better the second time.”

“I don’t read ’em,” Singewald said, looking over Baker’s head in an attempt to signal the waitress. “I just deliver ’em. Reading ’em is above my pay grade.”

“I hear he’s a hardheaded man,” Love said.

Singewald nodded.

“I get the impression he’s not going to just roll over.”

Baker opened his jacket and interjected, “That’s why we carry these,” indicating the butt of his holstered semiautomatic .40 Sig Sauer.

Love’s mouth dropped open, and he turned to Singewald. “You guys carry guns?”

“We’re trained and authorized,” Singewald said softly.

“You should see what we have in the trunk,” Baker said. Singewald thought of the combat shotguns and scoped semiautomatic rifles nestled in their cases.

Love’s eyebrows arched when he said, “So you’re prepared to shoot it out with him if necessary?”

“If necessary,” Baker said, narrowing his eyes.

“I try not to predict these things,” Singewald said, almost apologetically. He didn’t want to continue this conversation. He wished Baker wasn’t so overtly gung-ho. Then he raised his hand and waved at the waitress. He began to think she was ignoring him.

“Have you met this guy we’re serving the order on?” Love asked Singewald.

“Nope,” Singewald said, wondering if he should snap his fingers to get her attention. “I wasn’t there the first time he was given the word. From what I understand, he was confused, mainly. I don’t think he’s the sharpest knife in the drawer, so to speak.”

“But he sure as hell understands now,” Love said, shaking his head. “Things like this . . . it makes me wonder just what the hell we’re doing. It isn’t the kind of thing I signed up for, that’s for sure.”

“What’s the problem?” Baker said suddenly to Love, his tone incredulous. “The guy obviously screwed up big-time or we wouldn’t be going up there. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Love leaned forward on the table and balled his fists together. “Do you know him?”

“Of course not,” Baker said, defensive.

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Just his address.”

“Did you even read the documents we’re taking up there?”

“No,” Baker said, looking away from Love to Singewald.

The waitress intervened and slapped the bill down on the table as she rushed by.

“Ma’am,” Singewald said.

She turned toward him.

“We’ll need separate checks. One for him and me,” he said, gesturing to Baker, “and one for him,” he nodded toward Love. “And receipts, please.”

“Separate checks and receipts,” she repeated with a dead-eyed stare.

“Yes.”

“It’ll be a minute,” she said through gritted teeth.

“It’s okay,” Singewald said, sliding out of the booth. “I can get it taken care of at the front counter.”

Baker was right behind him as he walked up to the cashier, pulling out his U.S. government Visa card. When he glanced back, Kim Love was still sitting in the booth.

—

AN HOUR LATER, sixty-seven miles north of Casper, Love caught up with them near Kaycee, Wyoming. Singewald looked up and saw the Corps sedan in his rearview mirror.

Baker saw him do it and turned his head toward the back. “Oh, good,” he said. “Our buddy.”

Singewald grunted.

“What is his problem, anyway?”

“I guess he doesn’t like what we’re doing.”

“Why does he even care?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

“I think you should mention this in our report,” Baker said.

—

THE TERRAIN CHANGED as they drove north. Blue humpback mountains had emerged from the prairie to the west. Lines of high white snow veined down from the summits and melded into dark timber.

Baker pointed at a cluster of vivid brown-and-white dots placed on the slow-waving high grass out his window. “Are those pronghorns?”

Singewald said they were.

“And they just stand there like that? There must be a hundred of them.”

“I’ve heard there are more pronghorn antelope than people in this part of the state,” Singewald said.

“Well, at least there’s something good about it,” Baker said.

—

“THE TETONS?” BAKER ASKED, pointing toward the mountains.

“Bighorns,” Singewald said. “Those are the Bighorns.”

“So that’s where we’re going,” Baker said, looking at the GPS display, and then his watch.

“We should be able to get this done in time to check in to the hotel by five,” Baker said. “We won’t even have to do any overtime.”

“That’s the plan,” Singewald said.

“I hope we can find someplace decent to eat,” Baker said. “I’m starving.”

“First things first,” Singewald said as they took the first exit near the town of Saddlestring. The bypass would link them up with a two-lane state highway into the mountains, toward Aspen Highlands, a subdivision near Dull Knife Reservoir.

When he checked his mirror, Love’s sedan was no longer there.

“Call Love and see what’s happened to him,” Singewald said, handing Baker his cell phone.

Baker scrolled through his recent calls and pressed SEND. After a moment, he said, “This is Agent Baker and we’re on our way up the mountain. We were kind of wondering if you planned to join us.”

When he punched off, he said, “Straight to voicemail. Either we lost him or he decided to go into town and check in to his hotel.”

Singewald hadn’t noticed whether Love had continued on I-25.

“I guess we’ll do this ourselves,” he said.

“That asshole,” Baker said. “For sure, this will go into our report, right?”

—

AN HOUR LATER, Tim Singewald writhed in the grass on his back, choking on his blood. Although his legs were convulsing, causing his heels to thump against the ground uncontrollably, he couldn’t feel them. He was able to roll clumsily to his right side.

Lenox Baker was also on his back just a few feet away. Baker’s eyes were open, as if he were staring at the late-afternoon clouds. A bullet hole, like a third eye, looked out from his left eyebrow. He wasn’t breathing.

Singewald knew he wouldn’t last much longer, either. The first two bullets, he suspected, had collapsed his lungs. He couldn’t draw breath, no matter how hard he tried, and he was drowning in his own blood. He gurgled when he tried to speak.

Baker’s weapon lay in the dirt between them. Singewald hadn’t drawn his before he was cut down.

In the distance, he heard shouting. Then a tractor started up.

2

THE NEXT AFTERNOON ON THE LONG WESTERN SLOPE of the Bighorn Range, where the sage and grass met the first lone scouts of pine preceding the army of dense timber descending from the mountain, game warden Joe Pickett encountered Butch Roberson. By the way Butch looked back at him, Joe knew something was seriously wrong.

The mid-August afternoon was uncharacteristically sun-splashed and soft under the massive blue sky, which was cloudless and clear except for a single fading vapor trail miles above. The warm air was still and perfumed with juniper, sage, pine, and mountain wildflowers: Indian paintbrush and columbine. Insects hummed at grass level, and Joe was so far away from the distant state highway he couldn’t hear traffic sounds from the occasional passing vehicles.

Joe was riding Toby, his fourteen-year-old Tobiano paint. The day and the surroundings brought a bounce to the gelding’s step, and the horse had trouble focusing on the task. There was rich grass on both sides of the narrow trail, and Joe had to be constantly alert so Toby wouldn’t dip his head to grab a bite. Joe’s one-and-a-half-year-old yellow Labrador, Daisy, loped alongside or drifted behind so she could hoover up Toby’s droppings, even though Joe hollered at her to stop. The new dog had joined Tube, their less-than-ambulatory corgi-Lab cross, in the Pickett household. The new dog had been dropped off at the local veterinarian’s office by disgusted Pennsylvania bird hunters the winter before. They claimed she was useless. Joe knew that all year-old Labs were useless, and took her home to mature. She seemed to be settling down, now that every shoe in the house had been destroyed. And so far on this ride he’d been impressed with her, except for eating the horse droppings.

It was a rare and perfect day; so perfect, in fact, that after the year he’d had and the things that had happened, the day seemed cheap and false and somehow unearned. As he rode the Forest Service boundary, which was marked by a three-strand fence line of barbed wire, Joe had to keep reminding himself he had nothing to feel guilty about. He told himself he should just enjoy the moment because they came so few and far between. It was sunny, dry, warm, cloudless, and calm. After all, there he was in the Bighorn Mountains on a sunny day with his horse and his dog, and he was doing the job he loved in the place he loved. The opening days for hunting seasons in his district were weeks away, and he’d spent the summer recuperating his left hand from when he’d broken it pulling it out of his own handcuffs the October before. Except for the shot-up body of a pronghorn antelope found south of Winchester, he had no other pending investigations. The crime bothered him for its viciousness, though: the buck had been practically cut in two by the number of bullets, and whoever had done it had also fired several close-range shots to the head after the animal was obviously down. That kind of bloodthirsty crime was a window into the soul of the perpetrator, and Joe wanted to find whoever had done it and jack him up as much as possible. There was little to go on, though. Several rounds had been caught beneath the tough hide, and he’d sent the bullets in for analysis. But there were no shell casings, footprints, or citizen’s reports of the crime. Joe could only hope whoever had done it would talk and word would get back to him.

Additionally, he had time to do preliminary elk counts in the mountains, verify the licenses of fishermen, check the water guzzlers, and actually be home for dinner with his wife, Marybeth, and his three girls. It was as if he were a character in a movie and the scene was being shot in soft focus.

Despite the setting, he found himself scanning the horizon for the ferocious snouts of thunderheads and sweeping his eyes over the ocean of trees for gusts or one-hundred-mile-an-hour microbursts or some other kind of trouble.

He thought later he should have gone with his premonition that something was coming and it wouldn’t be good.

—

BEFORE HE RAN into Butch Roberson, he rode parallel to the western border of Big Stream Ranch, which was owned by a longtime local named Frank Zeller. It was one of the few of the big historic ranches in northern Wyoming still owned by the original family. Frank Zeller was a solid if taciturn man who managed the ranch with care. He ran huge herds of Angus cattle and pastured hundreds of saddle horses for guest ranches throughout Wyoming and Montana. He’d convinced the owners to allow the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to install water guzzlers near the forest boundary to help sustain the elk and mule deer herds not only because he cared for the wildlife, but also because he feared the spread of the brucella bacteria from the wildlife to the cattle if they mixed too much near the big creek on the valley floor.

Water guzzlers were shallow depressions in the ground covered with polyethylene fabric that captured rainwater and surface runoff—as much as five hundred to eight hundred gallons in each guzzler. The money for the guzzlers had come from an EPA grant Joe had applied for several years before, and the agency had sent an engineer up from Denver to help Joe design them. The guzzlers seemed to work. Parched herds from the mountains came down during drought years to drink, and pronghorns and mourning doves came up from the valley as well. His work, once a year, was to ride along the series of guzzlers to make sure the fabric was still intact and hadn’t been blown into shreds by the vicious winter winds, and to check that the depressions hadn’t been filled in with dirt or fouled by decaying carcasses.

Because water itself was rare and precious in a state that averaged less than thirteen inches of precipitation in a year—mostly snow—the wildlife literally flocked to it. As he approached each guzzler, he anticipated an explosion of doves and grouse that got Daisy excited, as well as deer bounding away through the sagebrush and elk crashing up into the timber. Once, the year before, he’d startled a black bear feeding on a deer carcass. The bear woofed at him and caused Toby to crow-hop and nearly dump Joe out of the saddle. But by the time he’d wheeled Toby around with a one-rein stop, the bear had run into the trees with startling speed and power, and it hadn’t come back.

—

HE’D RECEIVED PERMISSION from Zeller to access the ranch. After checking in at ranch headquarters and having breakfast with Zeller and his four Mexican ranch hands, because the foreman insisted he eat, Joe parked his green Game and Fish pickup and horse trailer two miles below the line of guzzlers near a head gate.

Still, parking so far from the Forest Service boundary was a pain in the neck, Joe thought, and a fairly recent one. When they’d installed the guzzlers, the two-track ranch road had joined with a Forest Service road on the other side of the fence. They’d been able to bring their gear and equipment close to the fence so they wouldn’t have to carry it across the folding foothills terrain. But two years before, the Forest Service had decided to prohibit through traffic. They’d fortified the gate, chained it, and locked it with a combination lock. Then, behind the gate, on the Forest Service side, they’d brought in a backhoe to scoop a deep hole into the road and use the dirt as a berm to prevent vehicles from using it. The coup de grâce was a small rectangular brown metal sign that read ROAD CLOSED.

He’d saddled his horse and checked seven of nine guzzlers throughout the day. Number three had required some dirt work, but it didn’t take long, because he’d packed along a shovel with the handle shoved down into his empty saddle scabbard.

—

JOE WAS RIDING between the seventh and eighth water guzzlers, through a stand of thigh-high aspen with their still, spadelike leaves, when he saw to his left that the three strands of barbed wire on the fence had been severed. Each wire was now curled back, leaving a gaping hole in the Forest Service fence. He clucked his tongue and turned his horse and rode Toby up through the small trees to the damaged fencing.

He swung down and grunted when his boots thumped on the ground. His knees ached from being wrapped around Toby’s belly. He tied Toby to a midsize pine tree with enough slack in the rope that his horse could graze, and walked off his aches to the fence.

As he limped, he resisted saying, Getting too old for this.

Joe Pickett wore his red uniform shirt with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department pronghorn patch on the shoulder, thin leather gloves, worn Wranglers, scuffed cowboy boots, and his sweat-stained gray Stetson. His duty belt with his cuffs, pepper spray, and .40 Glock was in the right saddlebag because it was uncomfortable to wear when riding. His radio, citation book, uneaten lunch, and notepad were in the left.

He thought for a moment that he should retrieve his weapon before checking out the fence, but decided against it. Joe despised his weapon, not because of its properties but because he really couldn’t hit anything with it. If it weren’t for a softhearted range officer, there were several times over the last few years when he shouldn’t have officially qualified. Although he was comfortable and fairly accurate with a rifle and deadly at close range with a shotgun, he considered his Glock more for show and always convinced himself that he’d never pull it again for the rest of his career if he could avoid it.

The strands of barbed wire had been snipped cleanly and very recently by a sharp tool, probably a pair of wire cutters. The end of the cut was still shiny and the edges sharp. He visualized each strand snapping back as it was severed, and imagined the pop and the sound of singing wire.

Joe let the wire drop back to the grass and looked around. The nearest road was where Joe had parked his truck and trailer, nearly two and a half miles away. There were no other vehicles parked at that location. Whoever had cut the wire had either walked a long way from the highway—probably six to