Page 54 of Dark Sky

He knew that successful falcon smuggling required certain resources. It couldn’t be done by an itinerant in a rental car. In addition to the climbing equipment and the bownet traps used to capture birds, a semipermanent place had to be secured with room, electricity, and most of all privacy. Eggs couldn’t be kept alive or young birds fed and housed for long in a motel room or vehicle without arousing suspicion. The smuggler wouldneed to secure the young birds while he built his inventory. Falcons needed to be hooded, fed, and watered.

The captured birds could be held anywhere—an outbuilding, garage, workshop—as long as they were kept out of view from locals or passersby. Trying to figure out who might have recently rented such a space seemed all but impossible, the three of them decided.

But falcon food was a different story. Young raptors needed to eat prey on a schedule, as Nate could attest. Buyers didn’t like it if the wild falcons they wanted to purchase had subsisted on commercial feed. Rabbits, pigeons, ducks, grouse, and other wild species had to be available in quantity to keep the birds healthy. Nate spent more than half of his hours hunting and trapping to keep his Air Force maintained. Sheridan had taken on a big chunk of that burden.

And it was Sheridan who asked the question aloud that put Nate on the trail of Axel Soledad.

“If you just showed up in Saddlestring with a dozen hungry birds,” she asked, “where would you go to find food for all of them in a hurry?”

—

He’d taken Sheridan with him to town in the Yarak, Inc. van and parked it in front of Rex’s Taxidermy on Main Street. Nate had stayed in the van while Sheridan went inside to see Dusty Tuckness, the owner.

Tuckness was small, plump, odd, and very energetic. He’d purchased the shop from Matt Sandvick a few years before, andhis obvious goal was not only to run the busiest taxidermy facility in a thriving hunting community, but to create a destination for visitors. He had a loading dock in the back for receiving big-game carcasses and a showroom in front with local mounts, as well as exotic animals that hunters had sent him from all over the country, including tigers, lions, and Cape buffalo.

Tuckness was preparing his shop to host a Chamber of Commerce social later that night. He wanted to show off the changes he’d made in the facility and urge locals to send tourists his way.

His newest and most lucrative venture was selling “prairie dog skin rugs” that looked like miniature versions of bearskin rugs and were meant to be used as place mats at the dinner table. The tanned rodent skin had all four paws splayed out and an intact head with beady plastic eyes and an open mouth to show its yellow teeth. Tuckness sold them in sets of four for two hundred dollars a set or individually for seventy-five. He didn’t care that most of the tourists who bought them intended them as gag gifts.

But because Tuckness couldn’t rely on a steady flow of dead prairie dogs from local varmint hunters—or the carcasses he received from them were too blown up by gunfire to be salvaged—he’d built an add-on facility next to his shop to raise the creatures himself. Nate had purchased a few of the prairie dogs to feed to his falcons when the valley was buried by snow or when he hadn’t been able to trap or hunt himself. He’d also sent Sheridan to pick up a few of the rodents from time to time.

That’s how he found out that Tuckness had a crush on the girl. The taxidermist not only gave her significant discounts on her purchases, but he also called Liv every few weeks to say that he had excess rodents if Sheridan wanted to stop by and procure them.

Nate knew that Tuckness would do just about anything to keep Sheridan in the shop and talking to him, which was why he’d ask her to go inside while he waited in the van.

Twenty minutes later, Sheridan emerged on the street carrying a small box in her arms. She climbed into the van and placed it at her feet.

“He only had four he could spare,” she said with a triumphant grin.

“Only four?”

“That’s because somebody bought two dozen of them earlier this week. Wiped him out, he said.”

Nate raised his eyebrows, waiting for more.

“Dusty said he’d never seen the man around here before. He described him as a fidgety tweaker type wearing all black. Dusty charged the guy more than double per prairie dog, fifty bucks each, and the guy paid it.”

Nate narrowed his eyes, thinking. The photo and description they’d found for Axel Soledad didn’t fit the man Tuckness had described.

“The guy didn’t have enough cash on him,” Sheridan said, “so he had to pay the balance with a credit card.”

Before Nate could ask, Sheridan drew out her phone andshowed him a photo of the credit card receipt. “Raylan Wagy is his name,” she said.

“Never heard of him,” Nate said.

“Neither had Dusty before then. He said Wagy left the shop pretty agitated, like he was under pressure to buy the prairie dogs, but he didn’t want to have to use his card.”

“Interesting.”

“I looked up his name on my phone. A Raylan H. Wagy was arrested in Denver for assault at an antifa rally three months ago. This has to be him.”

Sheridan said, “So when Wagy drove away from here, he burned rubber on the street and got picked up by one of the local cops for reckless drivng or something. Dusty said he watched the whole thing go down. Which means I now need to call my mom.”

Nate pulled away from the curb in a reasonable manner, looking both ways for local police cruisers. He had to be very careful these days, he knew.

“Why your mom?” he asked.

“She knows everybody at town hall,” Sheridan said. “She can get Raylan Wagy’s address from the citation.”

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