The Disappeared

The eighteenth installment in the Joe Pickett series, the novel is set in southern Wyoming, where a missing British executive, a corrupt wind energy project, and political manipulation converge around a game warden trying to do the right thing.

In Encampment, Wyoming, Wylie Frye works the night shift at a lumber mill, tending a conical steel burner that can exceed a thousand degrees. Months earlier, a man with a deep, grating voice offered Frye $2,500 per delivery to walk away while unidentified men dump unknown material into the burner. Frye agreed without asking questions. On this night, Encampment police officer Jalen Spanks notices an acrid smell from the burner, but Frye claims he burned garbage. Nearby, Carol Schmidt, a 69-year-old widow and grocery store checker, also smells the odor, which triggers a childhood memory of her father burning a body on their ranch. She watches a gray pickup with a camper shell leave the mill with its headlights off and gets a partial license plate: six-zero-zero.

Three hundred miles north, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is summoned by Governor Colter Allen, a Yale-educated rancher-turned-politician. Allen explains that Kate Shelford-Longden, a 43-year-old British public relations executive, disappeared the previous July after departing the exclusive Silver Creek Ranch near Saratoga, never arriving at Denver International Airport. British tabloids have dubbed her "Cowgirl Kate," generating international pressure. Allen orders Joe to take over the vacant Saratoga game warden district as cover while investigating. His chief of staff, Connor Hanlon, warns Joe not to fail and to keep Nate Romanowski, Joe's friend and outlaw falconer, away from the case.

The previous Saratoga game warden, Steve Pollock, departed without explanation, and the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) was pulled off Kate's case. The DCI report, written by Agent Michael Williams, appears deliberately sanitized. Williams contacts Joe privately, revealing the report was redacted and naming suspects: Joshua Teubner, co-owner of a fish hatchery with a stalking conviction; brothers Ben and Brady Youngberg, farriers who shoe horses; and Kate's ex-husband Richard Cheetham. Williams hints the DCI was removed for reasons unrelated to Kate.

Joe drives to Saratoga and finds Pollock's house abandoned in haste. At the historic Hotel Wolf, Joe meets his oldest daughter, Sheridan Pickett, 23, who works as a wrangler at Silver Creek Ranch. A confrontation erupts when Brady Youngberg grabs Sheridan; she knees him, and Lance Ramsey, the head wrangler and Sheridan's secret boyfriend, steps between them. Joe also meets Sophie Shelford-Longden, Kate's sister, and Billy Bloodworth, a British tabloid journalist, who briefly show him a blurry photo of a blond woman in a log cabin. When Joe returns to his room, the Kate case file has been stolen.

The thief is Ted Panos, a former correctional officer working for Gaylan Kessel, the security chief of the Buckbrush Wind Energy Project, the world's largest wind farm. Kessel, a former mercenary with a grating voice and white hair, arranged the mill deliveries. He intimidates Schmidt at her workplace, warning her to stop calling 911, and that night a truck with the six-zero-zero plate rear-ends her car, sending her into a ditch in freezing temperatures.

Joe breaks into Pollock's house and discovers that files related to the Silver Creek Ranch and Kate have been removed. Nate visits the Teubner Fish Hatchery, where Joshua Teubner mistakes him for a meth distributor and reveals a hidden drug lab. After a violent confrontation, Teubner claims he overheard two men at a bar say Kate was still alive and in the area.

Bloodworth publishes the cabin photo, claiming Kate is held captive by a "mountain man." Hanlon announces a premature press conference declaring Kate rescued. Sheriff Ron Neal organizes a snowmobile raid on the remote cabin of trapper Les McKnight. Inside, the "blond woman" turns out to be a blow-up sex doll. Bloodworth and Sophie, who follow the party to the trailhead but are barred from joining the raid, photograph the fiasco. McKnight, fleeing on a snowmobile, is captured when Sheridan, waiting at the trailhead with Joe's truck, kicks open the passenger door into his path.

Hanlon fires Joe, announcing the press conference will blame "the incompetent investigator." Nate reveals his theory: Governor Allen's collapsed fortune was propped up by two secret backers, Buckbrush and Joe's mother-in-law, Missy Vankueren, who has long schemed to break up Joe's marriage to his wife, Marybeth. Joe was sent to Saratoga to fail. Devastated, Joe presses ahead, reasoning his termination cannot be processed until Monday.

Marybeth, the Twelve Sleep County Library director, discovers Kate's secret Facebook alias, "Miss Kitty," on a group called Cowboys Are My Weakness. Kate posted a photo of Lance Ramsey implying romantic interest. Joe realizes Kate may have been involved with Sheridan's boyfriend.

Kessel sends Panos to kill Schmidt at the hospital in Rawlins, since she can identify him. Schmidt has been moved to a different floor, but the room's whiteboard has not been updated, and Panos smothers the wrong patient with a pillow.

At the Encampment mill, Jeb Pryor, the mill's owner, tells Nate he suspects someone has been cremating remains in his burner after overhearing Frye on a suspicious phone call. Inside the still-warm burner, Nate finds a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leg band used on eagles. The cremated material is not human remains but dead eagles killed by Buckbrush's turbines, burned to destroy evidence. In Cheyenne, Joe meets secretly with Pollock and Williams. Pollock reveals Panos paid him $175,000 to leave his district. Williams explains the governor pulled the DCI off the case after Kessel blocked their investigation on Buckbrush property. Pollock's missing files included complaints about wind energy companies exceeding federal permits that allow a limited number of eagle deaths.

On Sunday, Lance fails to return from his mountain cabin. Sheridan rides into the mountains and finds Kate Shelford-Longden at the door. Lance has a compound fracture and is unconscious with fever. Kate explains she drove to Lance's cabin instead of the airport in July, unable to face returning to her high-pressure career. She stayed for months, threatening to accuse Lance of holding her captive if he revealed her presence. Sheridan, furious and heartbroken, loads Lance into the snowmobile and drives everyone to the hospital.

Joe photographs Kate and sends the images to the governor. In the hospital hallway, Schmidt identifies Kessel by name as the man who ran her off the road. Hanlon calls to threaten Joe's arrest, but Joe disconnects and drives to Encampment.

That night, Joe, Nate, and Pryor stake out the mill. Kessel and Panos arrive with a pickup full of dead eagles. Officer Spanks, on patrol, pulls over Kessel's truck. Kessel exits and shoots Spanks dead, then fires at Joe's approaching pickup. Joe crashes and tackles Panos in the snow. Nate confronts Kessel at the burner shack, and when Kessel offers money for his freedom, Nate shoves him into the thousand-degree burner. Sheriff Neal arrives to secure the scene. A state trooper takes Joe into custody on the governor's orders. As Joe is driven away, former Governor Spencer Rulon calls and offers to serve as his lawyer. Joe accepts, suggesting that the exposure of Allen's corrupt ties to Buckbrush and Missy's role in his downfall may ultimately work in his favor.