Free Winterkill by C. J. Box Page A

will piss him off.”
    “I don’t think I can do that,” Joe said.
    Joe and Barnum had never been close, but their working relationship had been strained further since the previous summer. Joe had suspected Barnum of complicity and corruption in regard to the events that took place at Savage Run. But there was no proof, and the sheriff had fessed up to nothing. There was now an underlying hostility between them, and Joe knew that someday it would break out into something ugly.
    B efore restarting his machine, Joe photographed the tracks, the remnants of the carcasses, and the blowback and jotted his observations in his spiral notebook. He patted his coat to make sure he had everything he might need: binoculars, handcuffs, pepper spray, batteries for the radio, his .40 Beretta.
    Then he fired the motor, goosed it, and sat back as he entered the timber, staying in the tracks of the visitors.
    O ver the top of the west rim, six miles into the forest, the tracks stopped at a forest service road. Joe was out of the wind now, on the south side of the mountain, and the snow was not as deep. The vehicle that had pulled the snowmobile trailer up the mountain was long gone, but Joe could see footprints in the road where someone had loaded the machines, and where the truck had turned around. He took more photographs.
    The reception was scratchy, but he was able to reach Brazille on his radio and tell him what he had found.
    “Never mind that,” Brazille answered. “We just got a report that a rancher saw a vehicle coming down the mountain that night about the same time as you did. The rancher says he identified the vehicle and the driver and that he’s some bad-ass local yahoo who lives alone out in the sticks. So we’ve gotto get back down in the valley and regroup. And get this,” Brazille continued. “He’s a bow hunter.”
    Then Joe heard Strickland’s voice from somewhere near Brazille: “Let’s get that bastard.”
    W hen Joe returned, the team was trudging back to the Sno-Cats carrying the section of tree with the arrows in it. Joe shuttled back and forth between them and the vehicles, giving rides on the back of his snowmobile. The Sno-Cats roared back to life and started clanking down the mountain, but then Joe saw the lead machine stop abruptly. The driver crawled out, and was peering under his vehicle. Joe got out of the cab and walked over to him. They were joined by Melinda Strickland.
    “Aw, I’m so goddamned sorry about this,” the driver said, clearly upset. “I saw that little dog dart right under my track and felt the bump before I could do anything about it.”
    Joe squatted, trying to see any sign of the dog under the heavy metal track. He could see a tuft of hair on the snow, and the still paw of the Yorkie sticking out from beneath the metal cleat.
    He braced himself for the explosion. It didn’t come.
    “The only place that dog could run was in the packed down snow from the Sno-Cats. It’s too deep everywhere else,” the driver said. Joe noticed that his eyes were moist and he looked like he was about to be ill.
    More of the team had gotten out and were standing around the lead Sno-Cat, looking down at what remained of the dead Yorkie.
    “How did the dog get out of the Sno-Cat?” Joe asked.
    “I didn’t let it in,” Strickland said.
    Joe felt a chill. It had nothing to do with the cold.
    “Ma’am, I’m so . . . ,” the driver started, but Strickland dismissed him with a wave of her hand. Joe watched her walk clumsily back through the snow toward her vehicle. If she was upset, he couldn’t tell.
    As she opened the door to climb back in her vehicle, she glared at the men still standing in the snow.
    “We need to stop wasting time here,” she snapped. “Lamar Gardiner’s killer isn’t going to wait for us .”
    Everyone stood there for a moment, then silently shuffled back to their Sno-Cats. The first machine lurched forward and resumed its pace. From the second, Joe saw a