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He crumpled the scrap of paper in his fist, but couldn’t bring himself to toss it away.
Then Bickham said, “See you in the morning, Lucas,” and headed off across the parking lot, Silvers trotting at his heels like a well-trained dog.
Lucas let out a cautious breath of relief as he watched them go. Okay, maybe he hadn’t completely fucked up his investigation. But he sure as hell couldn’t afford any more missteps like this.
He watched the pair climb into a brand-new white Ford F-250 Platinum, and drive off. Lucas studied the vehicle, spotting the rifle rack mounted in the cab’s rear window. For sure, it wasn’t an unusual sight for a pair of hunters. He also memorized the truck’s Utah plates.
Twenty minutes later, he arrived at his tiny but comfortable one-room cabin on the Jacobsen Ranch just north of town.
Tringstad had recommended it as clean but inexpensive. The State of Idaho was pretty frugal about what costs they were willing to reimburse their Regional Investigators, and Lucas often found himself camping while on assignment. Having hot and cold running waterandwireless Internet felt like the height of luxury.
Lucas pulled out his laptop and began writing his first set of case notes. He meticulously recorded everything that Bickham and Silvers had boasted about in regards to hunting, as well as the truck’s make, model, and license plate number.
Among the scanty details in Rob’s account was that his assailants had been driving a large, light-colored pickup truck. That description fit alotof vehicles in the area, but the information might prove useful down the line.
Then Lucas phoned Tringstad.
After some chitchat about his drive from Boise and The Hair of the Dog having good food and music, Lucas got down to business. “Gage, I need you to run checks on one Travis Bickham, out of Ogden, Utah, and his buddy, Arnold Silvers, likely also from Ogden.”
Tringstad snorted. “It sure didn’t take you long to zero in onmytop suspects. I’m well-acquainted with those two clowns.”
“Yeah?” Lucas asked, pleased at the confirmation that Tringstad shared his gut instinct about the pair. “So, what can you tell me about them?”
“For starters, Bickham’s at the top of my list for both elk and bear poaching, but I’ve never been able to catch him in the act.” Tringstad sounded frustrated. “And both of ’em have out-of-state rap sheets a mile long.”
“Interesting,” Lucas said. “Can you give me the highlights?”
Tringstad reeled off a list of offenses that began with Silvers’s burglary convictions, and went on to list assault and battery, domestic battery, and a whole string of DUIs divided fairly evenly between the two men.
But no charges for poaching or illegally buying or selling game meat.
“Thanks for the info. I got myself invited to go hunting tomorrow morning with these sweethearts,” Lucas said dryly. “Any idea where my two new friends are staying right now?”
“At the Salmon River Suites in town.” Tringstad blew out a breath. “Bickham’s a slippery bastard, Lucas. I really hope we can finally nail him onsomething. Then, maybe we’ll be able to make a connection to the other poachers. We suspect that the rash of illegal elk killings are connected to an organized black-market game meat selling scheme.”
“Bickham hinted at that. I’ll do my best to get proof,” Lucas promised. “One more thing I forgot to mention—Travis Bickham drives a big white Ford pickup. Didn’t you say that the guys who shot Rob were driving a light-colored truck?” He gave Tringstad the license plate number.
“I’ll ask Mary—she’s the local sheriff—to run the plates. But Rob didn’t see enough of the truck to get even a partial plate.”
“Understood,” Lucas said.
“So,” Tringstad asked. “Did you meet any other interesting characters at The Hair of the Dog?”
Lucas hesitated. Should he mention encountering Malia and her friends?
He gave in to the temptation to find out more about the pretty wolf-shifter cop. “Most of the folks there seemed on the up-and-up. I did run into a group of very unusual young women. It was damnedest thing, Gage—two of them were bear shifters and the third was a wolf shifter. And they said they were all related.”
In Lucas’s experience, shifters from different lineages didn’t do a whole lot of mingling.
Tringstad chuckled. “By any chance, was one of them Maggie Swanson? Long dark-brown hair and pregnant?”
“Yeah, that was her,” Lucas said. “And the wolf shifter was named Malia. You know them? Is she really a cop?”
“Sure,” Tringstad said. “Those are Evan Swanson’s nieces, and my distant cousins. Malia is actually Rob’s sister, and yes, she’s one of Bearpaw Ridge’s finest.” He paused. “She’s also the cop assigned to investigate Rob’s shooting.”
“Wow, really? Isn’t she a little too close to the case?”
“This is a really small town, Lucas,” Tringstad reminded him. “And the shifter clans here are all kin to one another, by blood and mate bonds. It makes the distinctions between lineages…blurrier…than they are in other places.”
