Free Breaking Point by C. J. Box Page A

assumed, they were unfamiliar with local custom where everybody waved at everybody simply as an acknowledgment for sharing the road. He couldn’t recall seeing such a massive assemblage of state and federal employees before on one road, even the year before, when Nate Romanowski was on the loose and the county was being littered with bodies.
    He’d clapped Reed and Coon on the shoulder after he’d read his messages and told them to call him if he could be of any use. The scene was crowded and getting worse, and Joe could see no reason for staying around. The tent had been put up, and portable lights flooded the small lot. No additional bodies had been discovered in the hole, although the excavators did uncover a briefcase and the wallet badges of the two murdered EPA agents. Either the killer had removed the identification and tossed it into the hole with the bodies, or the agents themselves had pulled their IDs and died with them in their hands. The wallets confirmed the identification of the bodies even further.
    The first message on Joe’s phone was from Marybeth, asking him to pick up April at the western-wear store on his way home. The second and third were from Biff Burton and Bill Haley from other corners of the state.
    Burton’s message read:
Lisa Greene-Dempsey. Calls herself “LGD.” Don’t know a damned thing about her or where she came from.
    Haley’s said:
Lisa Greene-Dempsey. The Gov has really lost it this time. Twenty-two weeks to my retirement. Counting the hours.
    So Bill Haley knew of her, Joe thought. He planned to give the other game warden a call later that evening.
    The fourth was from Lisa Greene-Dempsey herself, although the number was listed as “unknown.” It read:
LGD here, Joe. I’m on my way up w/ Gov. Rulon. I look forward to meeting one of our colorful wardens. Call me.
    “Colorful?” Joe said aloud.
    He hesitated, then punched CALL . He was relieved that he got her voicemail. Her phone was out of range because she was likely in the state plane with the governor, flying up from Cheyenne. He haltingly said he looked forward to meeting her as well, and closed the phone.
    —
    J OE PULLED into an empty space on Main in front of Welton’s Western Wear, one of the oldest retail stores in operation in Saddlestring. Because it was dark outside but all the lights were on inside despite the WE’RE CLOSED, PARTNER sign, the big display windows allowed anyone passing by to look over the jeans, boots, hats, and long-sleeved shirt display and into the store itself with the clarity of an aquarium.
    He saw April right away, perched behind the counter, beaming at a couple of local boys on the other side. The boys were dressed identically in the unofficial uniform of Wyoming: T-shirts, baseball caps, faded jeans, belts with big buckles, and athletic shoes or scuffed boots. One of the boys said something, and April threw her head and hair back and laughed in what Joe thought was a provocative way. The boy who didn’t tell the joke punched the other one hard in the chest, so it wasn’t tough to figure out who the jibe had been aimed at.
    Daisy spied April and whined, and her tail whumped the back of the truck seat.
    “Okay, April,” Joe said, “come on,” hoping April would look out and see him waiting. He didn’t want to have to go inside and roust her and possibly create a situation with the two boys.
    Joe knew why two teenage boys would be in the store after hours, and it didn’t have anything to do with perusing the Cinch shirts or Ariat boots. April was a stunner. She wore a short skirt with a tooled belt, tall red cowboy boots, and a top too tight to be subtle. And when she tossed her hair back that way . . . Joe didn’t like it.
    The week before, another boy who looked the same as these two had driven his pickup to their house to take April out to a movie. Joe had taken the boy aside and whispered in his ear: “I have a rifle, a shovel, and ten acres of land, son.” The boy had