“Ask her if she’s moving or stationary,” Joe said.
Sheridan blew a breath. “Stationary? That’s not the best word, Dad. Texting words are short and sweet. She’d know you’re here.”
“You know what I mean.”
The list of questions he’d made out was on the desk. Marybeth gestured to it, and Sheridan nodded.
“I’ve got to be cool, you guys,” Sheridan said. “April’s always been pretty suspicious—she has a high-powered BS meter. So let me do this my way.”
r u still in aspen?
na. we left last night.
where now?
some bar. middle of nowhere.
yre in a bar? cool.
na. im waiting outside in the car. bored.
where at?
not sure. cant remember.
no idea at all?
savage I think. y so many ????
Sheridan said, “See, I’ve got to be careful. She’s starting to wonder.”
Joe said, “Savage?” Then: “Not Savage Run? The canyon? That’s the only Savage I know.
“Dad, please.”
Marybeth shot him a look.
He mouthed, “Okay, okay.”
im worried about u.
im ok. but kinda scared now.
?????
bad day. stenkos sick and we’re going 2 some ranch.
r u scared of stenko?
na. robert. stenkos nice.
does robert hurt u?
na. but he hurt some man 2day in a drug store.
?????
2 awful 2 say. later.
Said Marybeth, “Oh no—is that it? Did she sign off?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sheridan said. “I think she means she’ll tell me what happened later when she has more time. It’s too much to text, in other words.”
Joe said, “Ask her where the drugstore is. Ask her where the ranch is. Ask her if you can meet her there—”
“Dad, please.”
“Joe, please.”
“Sheesh,” Joe said.
can I call u?
NO.
ok.
they cld come outside any minute.
ok. sorry. i want to hear yr voice again.
ya. me 2.
wheres this ranch?
not sure. black hills i heard stenko say.
can I c u?
id like that. me & my other sister.
Sheridan looked up. Joe and Marybeth shrugged.
there’s 2 of you? or do u mean lucy?
id like 2 see luce 2. my other sister. chicago.
confused.
sorry. i got a sister in chicago i want to fly out 2 me.
how?
get her a plane ticket 2 me.
when?
as soon as stenko gives me the $. Lol. do u drive?
ive got a truck.
cool. u drive.
where? u name it.
not sure yet. ill let u know.
????
soon i hope.
“Okay,” Sheridan said. “Here goes . . .”
can i bring my dad?
NO.
what about mom?
NO.
????
just u. us sisters.
Marybeth reached over and squeezed Joe’s hand. He looked up. Her eyes were moist with tears.
Joe thought,
Savage? What ranch? What sister?
how bout 2morrow.
NO. do u miss maxine?
yes.
sad.
we have a new dog named tube.
can u bring him?
maybe 2morrow.
ill let you know.
Joe said, “See if you can get her to tell you what kind of car they’re driving.”
what kind of car u in?
just a car. no big whoop. what kind of dog is tube? is luce awake?
“Man,” Joe said, “she’s tough to crack.”
Sheridan said, “Unless it’s a cool car, girls don’t know makes and models and things like that, Dad. I don’t know what kind of van Mom drives and we’ve had it for years.”
Joe shook his had.
lucys sleeping.
can u wake her up?
hold on. tube is a corgi/lab mix.
LOL!
Joe looked to Marybeth, puzzled.
“Laugh out loud,” Marybeth said.
“Oh.”
Suddenly:
“Is she gone now?” Marybeth asked.
Sheridan sat back. “Yes.”
“Can you try again?”
Sheridan’s tapped out several versions of “Are you there?” “Are you coming back?” “April?”
No reply.
“She probably turned her phone off again,” Sheridan said.
“Why won’t she let you call her?” Joe asked. “This text message back-and-forth takes forever. If you could just talk with her . . .”
Sheridan said, “What she’s doing makes sense to me in her situation. If Stenko or Robert come out of the bar and look at her in the car they’d see the phone if she was talking on it. You can always tell when someone’s talking on a phone. But if she’s texting the phone’s in her lap and out of sight.”
Joe saw the logic of that.
“That’s what kids do at school,” Sheridan said. “They text each other under their desks all day long.”
“Really,” Marybeth said.
Sheridan shrugged. “Not me, of course.”
“Of course.”
JOE WAS IN HIS OFFICE with a Wyoming highway map spread open. He could find no Savage, and there was no bar near Savage Run Canyon. Of course, he thought, she could still be somewhere in Colorado. Or Utah. Or New Mexico, Nebraska, Arizona, Kansas . . . someplace up to twenty hours away from Aspen. That could be 700 road miles if they’d driven nonstop. He wished he knew when they’d left Aspen exactly so he could draw a radius. How many square miles would that be? Thousands.
But she’d mentioned black hills.
The
Black Hills were in western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. She might know the Black Hills because she claimed to have been there in Keystone. Was there a Savage, South Dakota? He searched his bookshelves for a U.S. atlas and was following the tip of his finger through the cities, towns, and locations of the state to find a Savage. No luck: he’d need to do an Internet search.
His phone burred in his pocket and it startled him. He glanced at his watch: past one A.M. He retrieved his phone and looked at the display. It was the number of the FBI office in Cheyenne. He thought, “Ah . . .”
“So you got the warrant,” Joe said, opening the phone. “That was quick.”
Coon said, “We had to interrupt Judge Johnson’s dinner to get it. That didn’t make him very happy, as you might guess.”
“You said it would be tomorrow.”
“I thought about it, Joe. I thought we couldn’t risk missing your daughter getting a new call tonight and we were right, weren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“So, do you want to know where it came from?”
“What do you think?”
“First, give me the gist of the exchange.”
Joe nodded. Coon had him.
Joe said, “The caller said they were sitting in a car outside a bar somewhere while Stenko and Robert were inside. We couldn’t get a description of the vehicle. The only place names we could get were ‘black hills’ and ‘Savage.’ I’ve been looking over the map and I can’t find any Savage. Oh—and it had been a very bad day. Robert allegedly hurt someone in a store.”
Joe left out the part about the sister on purpose because he saw no way of not revealing April’s identity if he went down that road.
“A store?” Coon asked. “What kind of store? And where was this?”
“We don’t know. A drugstore. The text said a drugstore.”
Coon paused. Joe knew the conversation was being taped. What he didn’t know was how much Coon and the FBI knew. There was no doubt they were withholding information as well.
“Joe,” Coon said, “the cell phone tower that got the ping is located between Pine Tree Junction and Gillette, Wyoming. On State Highway Fifty.”
Joe brushed the atlas aside and stared at the Wyoming map. Savageton was seventeen miles north of Pine Tree Junction and thirty-five miles south of Gillette. The middle of nowhere. Was it even a town at all? Or was it like so many place names on the Wyoming map—a location?
But every location in Wyoming had a bar.
Bingo.
He scanned the map. There were several south-to-north roads that could have been used from Aspen into Wyoming and on to Savageton in the northeast corner of the square state. There was WYO 789 through Baggs to I-80, WYO 130 or 230 through Saratoga to I-80, WYO 230 to Laramie. There were at least four other highways that could have been used to get to Savageton. If they were headed for the Black Hills, Stenko, Robert, and April would likely drive north through Gillette. From there, they would hop on I-90 East.
Joe’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the map. If one were headed toward the Black Hills from Gillette, I-90 was, for twenty-five miles, the only road east. At Moorcroft, other options appeared on both sides of the interstate. But for twenty-six miles, I-90 looked like a thin wrist that led to an extended hand with routes for each finger. And throughout the Black Hills, there was a spider’s web network of rural roads.
So if Stenko was to be located, it would be either on that I-90 stretch or before he got to Gillette on Highway 50 north of Savageton.
Marybeth came into his office looking puzzled. She’d heard him talking. He mouthed
“FBI”
and jabbed at Savageton on the map. Marybeth understood immediately, nodded, and turned in the threshold, said, “Sheridan . . .”
On the other end of the line, Joe heard a voice in the background he recognized as Coon’s boss, Tony Portenson. Portenson said, “Savageton!”
“We think we’ve found it,” Coon told Joe.
“So Portenson is there?”
“Of course. He’s my supervisor.”
“Mmmm.”
“Look,” Coon said, “I know you two have history. But Agent Portenson is willing to look the other way right now. To quote him, Stenko is a bigger prize than you are a pain in the ass.”
Joe smiled. He wondered how long it would take Portenson and Coon to coordinate a roadblock at the logical pinch point on I-90 with the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Then they’d order up their helicopter from the Cheyenne airport. He guessed it would take several hours at least to get the roadblock set up because there simply weren’t enough troopers available to handle it themselves, which meant local sheriff and police departments would be asked to provide men and vehicles. And it would take a while to roust the chopper pilots and get clearances in order to fly north. It would be unlikely Coon, Portenson, and team would take off before dawn. That gave Joe a five- to eight-hour window.
The drive from Saddlestring to Savageton would be less than two. He could beat them there.
“What else?” Coon asked. Joe couldn’t tell if Portenson was prompting him but he assumed so. “There has to be something else you can tell me. A twenty-minute text exchange and all you got was Savage, black hills, and Robert doing something bad in a drugstore?”
Joe felt his neck get hot. He didn’t want to get into the sister thing. But then he asked, “Twenty minutes? What do you mean twenty minutes?”
“I told you, Joe,” Coon said. “We have the ability to register the location of the phone from when it’s turned on to when it’s turned off. I have the printout right here in front of me, so don’t hold anything back.”
Joe said, “Hold on,” and dropped his cell on the desk. He met Sheridan in the hallway. She had her duffel bag over her shoulder, ready to go. Marybeth was behind her looking concerned. Joe asked to borrow her phone and he took it back to his office.
“You’re wrong,” Joe said to Coon after opening Sheridan’s phone and scrolling back through the exchange. “The first text came at 12:12 A.M. The last one came at 12:21 A.M. That’s just nine minutes.”
Nine long minutes of frustration while the two girls tapped out short messages to one another, sent and received, answered. So much could have been accomplished if April had allowed them to talk . . .
“I see what I see, Joe,” Coon said. Joe could hear paper rustling.
Then: “Oh, now I get it.”
“What?”
“We were both right.”
“What do you mean?”
“The phone was turned on for twenty minutes. But it looks like the first ten were to someplace else.”
“Where?”
Joe heard muffled voices. Coon had obviously covered the mouthpiece. Portenson and who knows how many other agents were having a heated discussion.
Joe paced. Marybeth and Sheridan stood outside his office, looking at him cautiously.
Finally, Coon came back on. “We aren’t at liberty to say right now.”
Joe stopped. He wished he could reach through the phone and grab Coon by the throat.
“We suspect you’re withholding information,” Coon said, speaking as if he were being coached what to say. “If we’re going to be partners in this investigation, you’ve got to come clean. Like who it is you think is sending the texts. When we feel you’ve come clean, we’ll do the same. Up until this moment, you’ve had the upper hand. But you forget, Joe. We
are
the upper hand.”
It was as if Portenson had his hand up the back of Coon’s shirt, using him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Joe decided it wasn’t worth it to reveal April. And while it was killing him to know whom she’d called before texting Sheridan, it might not be vital.
Joe said, “I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Where?” Coon said.
Joe snorted, “Chuck, you’re a good guy, but you’re not yet a good liar,” and hung up.
He turned to Sheridan. “Ready?”
Sheridan nodded. Her face was deadly serious, but her eyes sparkled.