Free Stone Cold by C. J. Box Page B

together—Joe’s normal life was without elevators—and he followed Coon through a large room filled with cubicles and out-of-date computers to the supervisor’s corner office.
    Joe liked Coon, and they’d been involved in several situations over the years, although from different angles. Coon was professional, straight-up, and generally by-the-book. He’d chosen to stay and work in the Mountain West and not use the smallest state FBI office as a stepping-stone to a more high-profile post, unlike his predecessors. When Joe sat down, Coon outlined the agreement he’d reached with the governor’s office: Joe would go to Medicine Wheel County and report directly to Coon, and he’d advise Rulon; Joe’s role was not law enforcement or investigation but information gathering; Joe was
not
to represent himself as either an agent of the FBI or the governor’s office; Joe was to extricate himself immediately if the situation turned dangerous.
    Joe raised both of his hands shoulder height and dangled them and said, “Do I look enough like a puppet to fit the bill?”
    â€œVery funny,” Coon said. “The idea here is Medicine Wheel County locals are used to seeing their game warden poking around.Your presence won’t stir them up. And if they get an idea to check out your credentials, they’ll find out that you are indeed a Wyoming game warden of many years.”
    Joe lowered his arms to his lap. “This is unusual,” he said, “you working with the governor instead of against him.”
    Coon said, “I know it appears that way sometimes, and believe me, I have higher-ups who don’t exactly like your governor. But I’m trying to mend some fences here. This antagonism between the national government and the states out here can’t last forever. And if we can work together on this, everybody wins.”
    â€œGotcha.”
    â€œSo, who is Wolfgang Templeton?” Coon asked rhetorically from behind his desk. “Answer is: we’re not sure.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    F OR THE NEXT HALF-HOUR, Chuck Coon leafed through a file on his desk and hit the highlights. When Joe reached for his spiral notebook to take notes, Coon said it wasn’t necessary, that the file in front of him was a redacted copy and that he’d give it to Joe to take with him to study when they were done. Joe sat back and listened, shaking his head several times.
    Wolfgang Peter Templeton was born on a country estate between Porters and Pickerel lakes in eastern Pennsylvania to a father who was a college dean and a pediatrician mother. He’d been sent to private schools and appointed to West Point. Templeton had served as an officer in the army and was decorated for heroism for acts during the invasion of Grenada in 1983 when he was a commander in the army’s Rapid Deployment Force, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions and the 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers. Hisniche was Special Ops. After twenty years in the service, Templeton had retired from the military and founded one of the first hedge fund companies in New York City and was wildly successful and an influential leader in global high finance and an annual participant in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Templeton had married Hillary (Rothschild) Swain of Sagaponack in the Hamptons, New York—she was one of two heirs to the Allegheny Group, a consortium of defense contractors. The wedding had taken place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with a massive reception at Tavern on the Green that was covered by the
New York
Times
. He was a Republican and rumored to have political ambitions and had given the green light to an exploratory committee in his home state of Pennsylvania, with his eye on the U.S. Senate.
    Coon slid four eight-by-ten photographs across his desk, and Joe caught them. In the first and most dated, Templeton wore combat fatigues and