• • •

It turns out it wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t recognize the suited individual with the crew cut who walked into the Busy Bee, cased the café, and then strolled over to the counter to extend a hand.

We shook. “Agent in Charge McGroder.”

He removed his sunglasses and smiled a broad smile. “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me, Sheriff.”

I returned the smile. “You’re looking better than the last time I saw you.”

He shrugged. “You mean almost bleeding to death?” He leaned past me and extended his hand to Vic. “Mike McGroder, out of Denver.”

I interrupted, “I thought you were Salt Lake City.”

“Transferred—more work in Colorado.” He turned and swept a hand back to introduce the two suited, sunglass-wearing individuals at the door, one male and one female. “But my staff is out of the field office in Salt Lake.”

Vic nodded and looked past him. “They on a mission?”

He shook his head. “No, but they are vegetarians and one’s a vegan.”

I glanced down at the meat loaf on my plate. “I’m betting that they’re about to go into red-meat protein arrest?”

“Something like that; you know of any place where they can eat?”

Vic barked a laugh. “Boulder.”

“Not exactly what we’re known for here in Wyoming.” I thought about it. “I guess they could go up to the deli at the IGA and put something together.”

He nodded. “Back up Main and then a left on Fort toward the mountain?”

“Yep.” As he sent his team off to graze, I scooted down one so that he’d have a place beside us and looked at Vic. “McGroder was the AIC on the prisoner exchange up the mountain last year.”

“I remember.” She mock-saluted him. “The cluster fuck.”

The agent sat. “Yeah, the cluster . . .” He looked at our plates as Dorothy brought over a menu. “I’ll have what they’re having.” Mike smiled. “I’ve learned never to argue with my Indian scouts in this part of the country.”

I forked off a section, steered it into my mouth, and chewed, giving him time to tell me why he was here, but he only sipped his water and made small talk with Vic about her connections with the Department of Justice in Philadelphia, her old stomping ground.

He finally turned on his stool and placed his back against the counter, crossing his arms and looking at Main Street. “It was a nice little town you had here, Sheriff.”

“Why are you saying that in past tense?”

“Because it’s about to turn into a circus.”

I placed my fork on my plate and turned toward him. “And why is that?”

He sighed. “You ever hear of Skip Trost?”

“Nope.”

“You know, you need to get out more. Skip Trost is the acting deputy U.S. attorney for, among other states, Wyoming, and was sworn in about five months ago with little or no federal trial experience, but he had served as a legislative aid—”

“I get the picture.”

“Well, Trost here is suddenly in the catbird seat and decides that he’s going to make a name for himself with the American people by instituting an investigation into nationwide fossil collection and even going so far as initiating a sting to expose illegal collections and sales of state property.”

I was glad I’d just about finished my meal, because I was rapidly losing my appetite. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“A dinosaur by the name of Jen?”

He pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket and examined a Post-it attached. “‘The Hope Diamond of fossils with unlimited scientific value in research, exhibition, and education and a specimen with a quality of preservation and completeness of structure unlike any ever before seen.’” He shrugged and looked out the window. “As soon as they get all of it out of the ground.”

I set my fork on my plate. “Jen.”

“It’s going to make the Scopes monkey trial look like a lemonade stand.” He swiveled back around. “The High Plains Dinosaur Museum came to the attention of the DOJ when a graduate student in vertebrate paleontology who worked as a part-time ranger over in Yellowstone was approached by a private collector who told him he could supplement his income by selling fossils from the park to the HPDM.”

“What happened with that?”

Mike smiled as his usual arrived. “A seventy-five-dollar fine. As it turned out, the old guy had sold stuff to the museum and had lied about where he’d gotten it.”

Vic laughed. “May J. Edgar Hoover’s soul rest in peace.”

“Not exactly a priority for the bureau?” I sipped my iced tea. “Okay, so the acting deputy U.S. attorney Trost has it in for the HPDM, and the wheels of justice are going to grind exceedingly fine until—”

“Oh, it’s way better than that.” McGroder cleaved off a piece of his meat loaf and started it for his mouth before pausing. “It’s not enough of a political powder keg for Trost to want to save the poor people of Wyoming from the rapacious clutches of the High Plains Dinosaur Museum.” He pointed his loaded fork at me. “This rinky-dink state really has two senators?”

“Yep, same as Utah and Colorado and the other forty-seven. You need to get out more, Mike.”

“Well, the networks and large-circulation newspapers really don’t give a crap if you cowfolk are getting ripped off, but you throw a few First People/Native American/Indian types into the mix and voila, you’ve got yourself a national platform from which you can draw the attention of the potential electorate to yourself.” He raised a fist in mock support. “Save Jen.”

“What Indians are you talking about?”

“The Cheyenne Conservancy, a land trust organization, has filed an order to desist, citing the federal Antiquities Act of 1906 prohibiting the removal of fossils from any land owned or controlled by the United States without permission from the Cultural Committee or the Tribal Historical Preservation Office.”

“The site where that fossil is being excavated isn’t the Cheyenne Reservation or federal land.”

He chewed, and it was almost as if he was enjoying my discomfort. “Actually, it’s both. That portion of the ranch is on Cheyenne Conservancy land and you have to have a permit to dig there, and guess who doesn’t have a permit.”

“The High Plains Dinosaur Museum.”

He continued smiling. “It’s all right, Walt, you’ve still got a hole card; if the possession holds up with the Native American rancher, then the tribe and the federal government are going to be left out in the cold. You see, the rancher bought that particular land from a white homesteader in 2000 and exercised his right to have it held in trust for twenty-five years by the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which allowed him to not have to pay taxes on it. The problem is that putting your land in trust, either federal or Cheyenne, limits the options of selling it or anything on it.”

Vic and I looked at each other for a moment, and then I turned to look at McGroder. “Then all our hopes of avoiding this are pinned to Danny Lone Elk?”

He chewed and swallowed, wiping his mouth with a knuckle. “Yeah, I think that’s the guy we need to talk to.”

Vic shook her head. “Well then, you’d better talk loud.”

 • • •

“This is going to introduce an unwelcome criminal facet to the proceedings.”

We’d finished our meal, and I was explaining the eccentricities of the Lone Elk situation to Agent McGroder as we made our way back toward my office at a brisk pace. “Probably not going to calm things down, huh?”

He laughed as we climbed the steps to the courthouse. “All we need now is a bearded lady and a guy who bites the heads off chickens.”

Vic’s cell rang, and she answered, talking with whom I assumed was my dispatcher, and then tucked the thing back in her jacket. “Ruby says the FBI is at the office.”

I glanced at McGroder. “No, they’re not—they’re right here.”

She glanced at me. “No, our kind of FBI.”

“Oh.” I began walking again. “So, what happens now?”