River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053)

by Bertsch, David Riley

  Whether Wright’s conjecture that Xiao and Canart had a physical presence around the Greater Yellowstone area was correct didn’t matter. There was no way he was going to let Divya go herself. He wasn’t keen on using a desk agent who might stick out like a sore thumb. The matter called for someone discreet—a local, who would blend in, wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. He wanted Trent. Jake knew the people and the area. And most important, he understood the mechanics of operations like this. He could be trusted.

  She had Jake in her pocket now. Everyone in this business had at least one skeleton in the closet. That one scar on the Internal Affairs record. And she had found his, buried in a classified government file.

  When it was all over, she would apologize and tell him the truth—that she made a mistake in mentioning his name, that she never knew Wright would be interested. That she still cared about him and that she was still the same Divya. Her job just interfered with her personal life sometimes. Often it prevented her from having a personal life at all.

  Divya’s cell phone rang as she was drying herself off. Number blocked.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Layle Statler.” She’d given him her cell number while posing as the FBI agent. The blocked number meant he didn’t trust her totally, but apparently he had nowhere else to go.

  “What can I do for you, Deputy?” She was looking at herself in the mirror, at her own curious face.

  The man sounded drunk, emotional. “Get me Terrell back. Somebody killed the janitor. I can’t deal with all this . . .”

  “What? Wait, slow down, Deputy.” Divya ran to the bedroom to get her tablet of paper and a pen.

  32

  WEST BANK, SNAKE RIVER. THE SAME NIGHT.

  9:05 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.

  Jake’s cell phone rang: unknown local number. He ignored it. They called twice more.

  He pushed a snoring Chayote off his lap, marked his place in the John Gierach book he was reading, and picked up.

  Before he could say a word, the rambling started. “H-he trusted you, you know? Why I’m calling . . .”

  “Who is this?”

  “. . . said you were a good man . . .” A long sigh. The caller took a moment to compose himself. “I-I need a ride.”

  “Who needs a ride?” Jake was standing, one hand up and open, confused. It sounded like a typical J.P. request, but the voice didn’t match. As far as he knew, J.P. and Esma weren’t back from Salmon yet.

  A deep breath and a push of garbled energy. “Deputy to the chief, Layle Statler! Okay?”

  “Layle?” Jake knew him only in passing. “You need a ride? What’s going on?”

  “I need a ride to—ah, Game and, ah, Fish, you can believe that. F-fast.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Brewpub. The FBI won’t help. Somebody just got killed at Game and Fish. Next to the visitor’s center.”

  “FBI? What did you say?”

  “Oh yeah. Poor guy.”

  “I’ll be right there. No more beers.”

  Chayote was up and ready, but Jake told him to stay as he closed the guesthouse door behind him. Jake unlocked the SUV, grabbed the Glock from his camping pack, and tucked it inside the driver’s door sleeve.

  It was crystal clear in the valley, and cold. The two always went hand in hand. The Milky Way shone as brightly as Jake had ever seen it. As he crossed the Wilson Bridge, the inky Snake reflected its light—a gleaming serpent slithering to its den for the night.

  The light at Broadway and 22 seemed to take forever, though few people were out. The road-tripper minivans, campers, and RVs that clogged the streets all summer were gone. Any remaining visitors were staying in the hotels downtown. Retirees, mainly, on tour busses.

  Jake turned left on Broadway, drove toward the square, and turned left on Millward. He saw a man on the corner of Millward and Hansen, looking wobbly and holding a cell phone.

  Jake parked in a handicapped spot in the pub’s lot and jumped out.

  “Layle?”

  “I didn’t have any more to drink.”

  “Good. What’s going on?” Jake did his best to read the man. Another murder? “Start from the beginning.”

  The deputy cleared his throat and spit on the asphalt. “I’ll tell you on the way. Can we go?”

  They got in the 4Runner and Jake reversed back out onto Millward. “Fill me in. Who’s on the scene?”

  “Somebody found a body in the warehouse.”

  Jake was doing his best to be patient. “Any officers on the scene?”

  Layle looked at him, dumbfounded. “Paramedics. And, well . . . I’ll be there shortly.”

  Jesus. “Call the officer on duty. Who got the dispatch call?”

  “I did—I forgot to change the forwarding when I left the station.”

  “Call the officer on duty now.”

  Layle did as Jake said. They turned into the Game and Fish parking lot, where an ambulance came into view. The lights were on in the building. Just behind them, a cruiser with flashing lights and sirens screeched to a halt. A uniformed police officer hopped out.

  “I’m Jake Trent.”

  The officer gave him the once-over. No time for a handshake. “I know who you are. The fishing guide who saved Yellowstone. I’m Officer McClelland.” He turned to his superior. “He legit?” He was out of breath and got to the point.

  Jake answered, to save Layle the effort. “Just here to help the deputy.”

  “He’s good,” Layle mumbled.

  McClelland pulled Jake aside. “What’s with him?”

  “Don’t know. Few beers, I guess.” Jake led the group toward the entrance, deflecting the line of questioning, and held the door for the two policemen.

  Inside, a couple of young paramedics were standing over something. One spoke in a panic: “Took you long enough!”

  “First homicide for him,” the other said.

  “Shut up,” the first replied.

  The quarreling was too much for the deputy. “Stand down!” he growled. Jake responded by pulling Layle back by the collar, then patting him on the back. Relax.

  “Sorry.”

  At the paramedics’ feet lay the body of a sixtysomething man. It wasn’t anyone Jake recognized. He was small statured. Short gray hair, long gray beard.

  “Gunshot wound to the chest,” the rookie paramedic said.

  “Did anybody touch the body?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Who heard the shot?” asked McClelland.

  “Nobody. He called in on his own.” The young officer shrugged.

  Jake and McClelland followed the blood trail to a shop bench where a bloodstained land phone lay, still off the hook. Layle stumbled catching up.

  “What’s with the deputy?” the paramedic asked his cohort. Layle mean-mugged him, preventing further query.

  From the shop bench, the trio followed the spatter to one of the garage doors.

  Jake held back, allowing McClelland to do his job. “Was the garage open?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fingerprint this?” McClelland turned to Jake, and pointed to the garage-door button.

  “Print the outside keypad too.”

  “Perp would have to know the code.” McClelland said with his pen at the numbers on the pad.

  “Yeah.” McClelland nodded, knowing Jake was saying, Inside job?

  “But why leave the garage open?”

  “In a hurry, probably.” Jake walked outside a few paces, then stopped and pointed to a pile of debris just outside the garage, and then to a broom that rested a few yards away. “Perp didn’t know the code, necessarily.”

  “Shoot. Victim was sweeping out the garage?” Officer McClelland jotted notes on a pad and snapped a few pictures of the broom with his phone.

  “Wan
dered inside to call 911. He moved fast—the blood trail didn’t start until he was inside.”

  “The perp never bothered to make sure he was dead.”

  “Right.” Jake nodded. “Rules out an execution-style killing. It was quick, maybe even shot from the car.”

  “I need a coffee,” Layle blurted, then hiccupped. “I’m going across the street to the gas station.”

  McClelland nodded at his boss and turned. “What about the body?” he said to Jake.

  “Let’s take a look.”

  Jake allowed McClelland to approach the body first, knowing better than to touch anything at the crime scene. The victim had a large section of his torso missing.

  “Shotgun,” Jake said.

  McClelland was holding his hand over his mouth. “No shit,” he mumbled.

  Jake bent and looked at the damage. “That’s not duck shot. Three and a half 12-gauge, at least.”

  “Goose gun?”

  “No. Self-defense gun. Bear gun, whatever. The spread is wide, suggesting a short barrel. Maybe sawed-off. Or a really long shot, but it wouldn’t have done this much damage.”

  “So not a hunting gun.”

  Jake stood up. “Probably not.”

  “These his tracks?” McClelland pointed to two bloody footsteps that headed away from the garage door, toward the back of the building. After a few steps, the blood had dried on the victim’s shoes, leaving a path to nowhere.

  Jake checked the victim’s shoes. “No.” He’d already noted that the paramedics were wearing the required shoe covers for the crime scene.

  McClelland stopped. “Then the shooter did make entry. Why not finish the job?”

  “Cause he didn’t care whether this guy lived?”

  Layle walked back in sipping a twenty-ounce high-octane from the Exxon.

  “What you got?” His cadence was slow and even. He was trying his best to get back in the game, focusing.

  “Tracks, Dep.” McClelland gestured toward the footprints.

  “I see. But to where?” Layle followed McClelland’s finger in the direction the tracks led. “Son of a bitch!” He moved the fastest he had all evening over to the walk-in cooler. The paramedics had drifted off to the open garage door to get some fresh air. The excitement in the deputy’s voice got their attention, and they turned back toward the scene.

  “What is it?” McClelland was right behind the deputy.

  Jake carefully pulled back the sheet that covered the victim from the shoulders down. The janitor’s shirt had been torn open after the shooting and his pockets turned inside out. The killer was looking for something, but had never bothered to shoot again.

  Layle hollered from the walk-in. “Holy shit!”

  Jake hurried over. “What is it?”

  Layle and McClelland were standing over an empty lab cart.

  “They took the damned wolf.”

  “What?”

  “They killed the janitor and took the wolf carcass.”

  Jake turned to McClelland for help in deciphering Layle’s statement.

  “There was a wolf here, alpha male, waiting to be incinerated.”

  “Incinerated? Why would someone steal it?” Jake asked as the trio left the frigid cooler.

  “Dep?” McClelland avoided the question.

  “Don’t know. Didn’t seem right from the beginning,” Layle muttered.

  “What didn’t?”

  Layle scratched his head. “We found the wolf with an outdated radio tag in it. Big ol’ thing, hit by a car. Must’ve been someone’s pet or something.”

  “And the driver?”

  “Hit-and-run. Nobody wants to admit to something like that, let alone pay the fine.”

  “And they came back to get it? For a proper burial?” McClelland jumped in.

  The deputy was shaking his head. “Guess so.”

  Jake shook his too—in disbelief. “Kill a man for a carcass? Doesn’t add up.”

  “Yeah, Deputy, I’ve gotta agree here, I mean . . .”

  Layle walked away, on a mission. “Let’s check the parking lot.”

  The medic shouted after them. “What do I do with the body?”

  “Leave it,” Jake shouted over his shoulder. “Stay here.”

  The night sky was glowing with starlight. The temperature had dropped further, into the upper twenties. A setting moon left only a sliver of light on the horizon. Jake looked around, just to be doubly sure they weren’t in immediate danger. He didn’t see anything, and heard nothing but coyotes quarrelling on the National Elk Refuge. Their yips echoed from Saddle Butte back to them. Jake figured they were as confused as he was—howling into the blackness, hearing only an augmented echo of their own questions.

  “I’ll start here.” Layle began slowly walking the perimeter closest to the warehouse.

  McClelland was pulling on latex evidence gloves.

  Jake headed to the far side, where the lot abutted the southeast corner of the visitor center. He walked slowly, scanning the pavement for candy wrappers, receipts, cigarette butts, or anything else that might have fallen out of the assailant’s car.

  McClelland had a small bag of evidence going. He joined Jake on the far side of the lot.

  “Couple butts over there, that’s it.”

  McClelland went over and picked them up, then returned to Jake’s side to show him.

  “Where’s the chief, anyway?” Jake asked the officer.

  “Vacation.”

  “Figures.”

  The deputy ambled their way, and they went quiet.

  “Find anything?”

  “Couple cigarette butts, coffee cup, that’s it.”

  “Shit. No tire marks?” Layle glanced around at the pavement.

  “None.” McClelland waited for Layle’s next cue. The deputy clapped his palms together, trying to think.

  Jake was thinking too.

  “Does the warehouse have security cameras?”

  “Already thought of that. Doesn’t look like it.” The deputy sounded more sober with every sip of his drink. He and Jake looked skyward, inspecting the roof’s eave for a camera.

  “How ’bout the visitor center?” McClelland asked.

  “Nothing to protect in there. They don’t bother with anything other than door and window alarms.” Layle waited for a second and started back toward the crime scene.

  Jake made him stop in his tracks. “They’ve got a webcam facing the elk refuge. Hunters watch it to see how the snow affects the movement of the herds. Whether they’ve started moving to their winter range.”

  Layle spun to face McClelland. “Get me the director of the Grand Teton Association. Wake her up if need be. And call a detective for the crime scene.”

  The association ran the visitor center and a few informational kiosks throughout the valley.

  “We won’t have any view of the lot,” the officer objected.

  “Get the video.”

  Currently the only animals in the refuge were a flock of geese resting on the banks of Flat Creek, just thirty yards from the warehouse. The elk would move in sometime in the next month, escaping the heavy snow in the mountains.

  A half hour later, a brand new Mercedes SUV pulled into the lot. Out stepped Anne Lowe, the association director, wearing a Patagonia fleece and sweatpants.

  “What’s going on?”

  She met Jake and Layle at the glass front doors of the center, where they’d been waiting since McClelland called. He was off snapping pictures of the crime scene and looking for prints so the medics could get the body to the morgue.

  “We need to view the footage from the past several hours on your refuge webcam.”

  The woman stopped, irked. “How would I have any idea how to do that?”

  “We’ll figure that out when we
get in there. Open the door, please.”

  “Has there been a crime?”

  “Homicide.”

  “Jesus.” She unlocked the door.

  “I’ll go in first. Just in case.” The deputy shined a flashlight he’d commandeered from the medics around the atrium of the center, then waved Jake and Ms. Lowe in.

  The building’s interior looked eerie in the beam of the flashlight. A mount of a grizzly bear stood to the left of the stairs up the main floor, a black bear to the right.

  “Where are the lights?”

  “Main lights are on a timer. Let’s just go to my office.”

  They went up the stairs, past the information counter and to the right. Lowe opened a door in the corner and flipped on a light, revealing a stuffy office filled with magazines, books, and newspapers.

  “I don’t spend much time in here.”

  “Boot up your computer. Who runs your webcams?”

  “A guy named Travis from Idaho Falls does most of the tech work.”

  “Get him on the phone.”

  The director looked through a Rolodex and dialed from her desk phone.

  “Travis? Anne Lowe at the Grand Teton Association. I have a strange request.”

  She gave Layle a thumbs-up.

  “The police have asked me to bring up webcam footage from a few hours ago. . . . Right. Is that possible?”

  She waited, then nodded. “Okay. Thank you.” Lowe hung up and turned her desk chair toward Layle and Jake, still looking impatient. “He’s going to bring it up remotely.” She logged in and then clicked an icon. “What happened?” She seemed keen for new gossip.

  “I can’t tell you until I have more information myself.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s in.” Layle pointed to the monitor.

  A window to the webcam program had opened, and Travis was inputting commands. He started the video at 6 p.m. and gave control back to the mouse and keyboard in the office.

  They reviewed the tape in fast-forward. When the time stamp read 8:50 p.m., Layle slowed the video to real time.

  “Headlights,” Jake said.