Blood Trail - C. J. Box [107]
She knew the state, the back roads and hunting areas from traveling with her team and later as a hunting guide.
She knew how to track, how to hunt, how to kill and process game.
She had a motive.
It fit, but he wanted no part of this. He’d been convinced the Wolverine was Klamath himself or one of his followers working under Klamath’s direction.
“Nate,” Joe said, speaking softly into the radio, “I need your help down here.”
“It’ll take me at least five minutes.”
“Hurry.”
At ten feet, she fit the stock of her rifle to her shoulder and raised it until the muzzle was level with the crown of Randy Pope’s head.
She said, “Pope, look up.”
Joe could see Pope squirm, try to shinny around the tree away from her, but he could only go a quarter of the way because his cuff chain hung up on the bark. She took a few steps to her left in the grass so she was still in front of him.
I RECALL not the night it happened but the next morning, when I woke up feeling dirty, bruised, and sore. I was alone in my tent wearing only a T-shirt. They hadn’t even covered me up. I was damaged and it hurt to stand up.
The sun warmed the walls of the tent and as it did I could smell not only me but them. All five of them. I dressed—my clothes were balled up in the corner—and unzipped the flap and stepped outside where it was surprisingly cold. The campfire was going, curls of fragrant wood smoke corkscrewing through the branches of the pine trees, a pot of coffee brewing on my black grate. Three of them sat on stumps around the fire, staring into it as if looking for an explanation. They were unshaven; their faces told me nothing. They were blank faces, hungover faces. Maybe they were ashamed. But when they looked up and saw me, none of them said anything.
No one asked me if I wanted coffee. They weren’t going to talk about it. They were going to pretend nothing had happened.
That was the worst of all. That’s when the rage began. I was nothing to them. It was all about them, not me. This was apparently what they had expected when they hired me. The problem was, I felt the same way at that moment. I thought of their wives, their daughters, assumed they were having the same thoughts.
Randy Pope was there. He looked at me and then back toward the fire with a dismissive nod, as if I disgusted him. “If you say anything about this to anyone,” he said in words I can still hear clearly, “we’ll destroy you. You’ll end up as just another grease spot.”
That’s when I decided to find the sheriff and press charges.
AT THIS RANGE, Joe knew, a blast from his shotgun would practically cut her in half. But he couldn’t conceive of it—he didn’t want to fire. Hell, he admired her. He wanted her to turn or look behind her back up the hill so he could stand and shout at her to drop the rifle. As it was, with her finger tightening on the trigger, his sudden appearance could cause her to fire out of fear or reaction. And he thought, Would that be so bad?
“Please,” Randy Pope cried, “please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do,” she said.
“No. Please. You know what happened in that camp. None of us hurt you. Nobody forced you.”
She said, “Actually, I don’t remember very much about that night. It’s still in a fog of alcohol to me. But I do remember how you wouldn’t look at me, how you threatened me. And I remember going to jail. I remember what was said about me afterward.”
“It was years ago,” Pope said. “We’re all different now.”
She laughed bitterly. “I have one more poker chip. Then it will all be over. You know, I carried those five poker chips in my pocket for years as a reminder to me of what you did and what I was. But I’m not like that anymore, and killing you kills what I was back then. I want my dignity back, and you’re the last man in my way. I have a daughter now, you know. I don’t want her to know about me then, or about you. She deserves better than both of us.”
Pope moaned a long moan, and Joe felt the pain of