Page 5 of Battle Mountain

Orr had often been told that he looked more like a studious, well-meaning college professor than a G-man, and he knew it was true. He was in his early sixties with wispy gray hair and round metal-framed glasses. He wore a thigh-length, belted beige trench coat, slacks that were not made for cold mountain weather, and slip-on leather shoes with smooth soles that provided no grip on the slick, snow-covered grass. He struggled to keep up with the coroner as she stepped under the yellow crime scene tape and strode toward the charred remains of the lodge.

Urbigkit was a slim and fidgety woman with long, silver-streaked hair braided into two lengths on each side of her head. They bobbed when she moved.

She’d been utterly shocked at Orr’s arrival that morning and said that she’d never met an FBI agent before in her life and that she didn’t know whether to be impressed or intimidated.

“Two of the victims were found in there,” she said, gesturingtoward the burned structure. “One male, one female. Those bodies were pretty crispy, I’ll tell you. It took some time to figure out what happened to them, but I can say with confidence that the male was hit twice. Point-blank shotgun blasts. There must have been two dozen pellets in him, and of course shot like that is untraceable to the weapon that used it. Maybe the crime lab in Cheyenne can figure something out, but I sure couldn’t.

“The female victim was shot once in the face, also by a shotgun blast.”

With that, she paused. But before Orr could respond, Urbigkit continued. “I can ask the sheriff to let you see all the crime scene photos. I’d warn you, though, that if you’ve never seen burned bodies hit with shotgun blasts or high-powered rounds—”

“I’ve seen plenty,” Orr said. Despite the cold and the days since the incident, Orr noted that the scene still smelled strongly of blood and ash.

He knew from talking to the sheriff that the crime scene had been discovered by a local trapper placing leghold traps along the river. If the man hadn’t trespassed on the property, the sheriff said, it might have been weeks or months before the crimes were reported. There had been no missing-persons calls and no one had inquired about the well-being of the victims.

The coroner darted into the ash and snatched a singed, lint-covered stocking cap from the debris. She handed it to Orr. “Here, put this on. You look cold.”

Orr took it reluctantly. He was used to being around forensics personnel who were meticulously anal about anyone besides them entering a crime scene. Even Orr, who had been with the bureaufor over thirty years. Never before in his experience had a crime scene investigator cavalierly lent him an item of clothing from a victim. This, Orr said to himself, was amateur hour.

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Orr sniffed thecap. It smelled of both wood and stale marijuana smoke. When Urbigkit turned her back and headed toward the outhouse, Orr tossed the stocking cap aside and followed.

“This is where we found the third victim, the other male,” she said, chinning toward the structure. He stepped under the crime scene tape and opened the door. It was a two-seater with a roll of toilet paper sitting on the plywood sheet between the holes. The coroner made a face and pointed toward the left hole.

“The body was found down there,” she said. “Two days after the sheriff’s department got here. One of the deputies went inside to take a dump and he looked down into the toilet vault and saw the body. It scared the shit out of him, so to speak. My opinion is that the killing took place in the yard where you’re standing, and the shooters dumped the victim into the vault. Pulling that body out of there was no fun for anyone.”

“I can’t imagine that it was,” Orr said. “So this victim was shot with a high-powered rifle instead of a shotgun?”

The coroner stepped into the outhouse and addressed Orr. As she did so, she placed her index finger on the coat fabric over her heart.

“He was hit right here,” Urbigkit said. Then she turned and pointed to a clean hole in the back of the outhouse about shoulder high. “The round went straight through the victim and out through the back wall. And take a look at that hole.”

She stepped aside so Orr could enter. He bent forward and looked through the large opening. He could see cottonwoods in the meadow.

“That bullet hole doesn’t look like the results of any rifle round I’ve seen go through wood,” she said. “It looks like it was done with a sharp drill bit. It went through the victim and through the outhouse and just kept going, probably to the next county. We’ll never recover it. But whatever it was, it was a powerful weapon.”

Orr recognized the features of the bullet hole, but he didn’t reveal them to Urbigkit.

He asked, “Did you find anything else on the grounds? Fingerprints? Footprints? Hairs? Fibers?”

Urbigkit sighed and shook her head. She said, “You know, since I’ve been coroner in this county we’ve had exactly two murders in the last fifteen years. These three victims make five. What I’m trying to say is that none of our guys—including me—has a lot of experience in violent-crime forensics, you know? The two murders I mentioned were open-and-shut. The shooters were on the scene blubbering when the cops showed up. One was a guy who thought his wife was cheating on him—she was, by the way—and the other was between two Natives high on meth who got into a knife fight.”

Orr remained silent.

“We don’t do a lot of this,” the coroner said.

“What’s your theory?” Orr asked Urbigkit.

“The sheriff and I are on the same page here. You can ask him if you don’t believe me. What we think is that the murders are gang-related and the shooters were sent to kill them. All three victims were from out of state, and so were the killers, we think.When you look at the autopsy photos, you’ll see that all three of ’em were tattooed hipster types from the city. Two of ’em had IDs from Denver, so they weren’t from around here. I figure they found this place online and rented it out. Nobody around here knew any of them.

“Our preliminary conclusion, I guess, is that this was a horrible crime, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us. As far as we know, there are no local connections with the victims, so this is random and frankly not a high priority. We’re here to serve our constituents, not to get involved in gang-related activity from other states. I’m surprised the FBI sent you.”

“Actually, I sent myself,” Orr said. Then: “How many shooters did it? What is your professional judgment?”

“Two at the minimum,” she said. “One with a shotgun and the other with that high-powered rifle. Maybe they had a lookout as well.”

Urbigkit leaned in toward Orr as if to share a secret. “I think we’re dealing with professional hit men,” she said. “They were sent up here to take care of some targets. The shooters didn’t take anything that we could figure out, and they did their work and left. I wish they wouldn’t have burned the lodge down, because we might have learned more about the crimes, but they knew what they were doing.”

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