Hell Is Empty wl-7

by Craig Johnson

  “Hey, Junk-food Junkie.”

  The tone of my voice and the use of his nickname gave him pause.

  “Let’s say for conversation’s sake that you’ve got a Sig 9mm under that blanket, and that I’ve got a Colt. 45 in my right pocket aimed at your guts, and my finger on the trigger; we would continue to have this nice conversation without any rude interruptions, now wouldn’t we?”

  Freddie “Junk-food Junkie” Borland blinked, but that was all he did.

  “Now, I don’t know if your hand is already on that Sig, or that it’s aimed, or the safety is off-but I am ready to pull the trigger on you right now.” In the dim light, I could see his eyes widen just a bit and the glow at the end of the cigar flare a little brighter with his intake of breath. “Something else for you to think about is what’s going to happen afterward. You might shoot me and kill me, but I most certainly will get you-center shot, right in the guts.”

  I tapped my boot against the door, and his eyes shifted to the noise. “The other thing I’ll make sure I do is kick this door open so that just in case the cold doesn’t get you, whatever carnivores might be out there roaming around looking for a little Bighorn buffet will smell the blood. I’ve had a cougar following me for the last few miles, and I’m pretty sure there’s a good-sized grizzly out there, too-and brother, when those professionals come in here they are not going to concern themselves with which meat is alive and which meat is dead.”

  The last part was mostly horseshit, but I didn’t figure his Phoenix-born ass would know the difference any more than Hector’s Texas one did-besides, the abstraction of a bullet was one thing, but being eaten alive was something else.

  “I figure that putting you in the Ameri-Trans driver’s uniform was Shade’s idea, but after seeing how the other flanking efforts had fared, especially with your buddy Calvin back there, you took exception. That’s when he cuffed you to the grating and left you here with a pistol that’s only got one bullet.” I shifted my weight forward. “What were you going to do after you shot me, hope that you could fish the cuff keys out of my belt?”

  He still didn’t move, but the end of the cigar flared again.

  “Well, I’ll make sure I fall out the back. Then you can sit here eating Funyuns and fattening up for what happens next.”

  He finally swallowed and shifted; the semiautomatic pistol clattered onto the metal floor between us.

  10

  “Only a professional criminal would neglect to ask an officer to uncuff him, but the dead giveaway was the Funyuns. Who but the Junk-food Junkie would know that the cutout window in a bag of chips was replaced in 2005?”

  He nodded and rubbed his wrist, trying to work the blood back into the white and stiffened hand now cuffed to the other in his lap with those cuffs attached with my own to the bench seat.

  “Fuck.”

  “Yep, it never pays to have a nom du criminal.”

  Along with the 9mm, he’d had one of the next-generation satellite phones, which I activated. The battery was fully charged and should be plenty good enough for my purposes; within thirty-six hours I intended to be sipping an Irish coffee somewhere warm. “Were you supposed to call him when you were done with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stared at the phone and then tossed it onto his lap. “Call him.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “Call him; tell him I’m dead and that you’ve uncuffed yourself and need to know what to do next.”

  He looked at the phone but made no move to try to dial. “We’re supposed to like meet somebody.”

  I plucked a Funyun from the bag beside him and ate it; it wasn’t the usual and tasted like onion-flavored insulation, but it would have to do. “I’m aware of that, but I want to know who and where.”

  He sat there. “I can’t lie to him.”

  “What, you’ve suddenly developed scruples?”

  He picked up the phone and held it out. “He’ll like kill me; after he kills you he’ll come back here and kill me.”

  “So, they are coming back this way?”

  “No, but he’ll make an extra effort after I lie to him and he kills you. Hey look, I don’t know who we’re meeting or where. Shit, man… I don’t know where the hell I am right now.”

  Still holding the 9mm, I sat on the opposite bench and looked at him. “Call him, or when I go I’ll leave the door back here open and let nature take its course.” He still didn’t move. “Survival of the fittest.”

  He looked like he might cry but thumbed the CALL button and bent down so that he could hold it to his ear. After a moment, he spoke into the receiver. “He’s dead.”

  There was a pause.

  “No, like really. I shot him and got the keys off of him. He’s like lying here and I think there are animals outside…” He stopped talking for a moment and swallowed, the fear wafting off of him like a bad smell. “What? No, like he’s dead and…” He paused again, froze like that, and held the phone out to me, the tears openly flowing. “He says he wants to talk to you.”

  I sighed and took the phone. “Yes.”

  The singsong rhythm of his voice sounded close. “You should be getting kind of tired about now, Sheriff.”

  “Actually, no. I’m used to the altitude, and I’ve been cooped up most of the winter and been looking forward to getting out of doors.”

  “It’s beautiful up here isn’t it-sacred land.”

  “Yep, it is.” I waited, but he didn’t say anything. “I’m sure we’ve got more to discuss than the scenery. Look, Shade, I don’t know where you think you’re going, or who you think you’re going to meet. ..”

  There was a long pause, and then his voice bounced off the satellite in the cold dead of space and landed in what was left of my ear. “You should stop now, Sheriff. I gave you those four in hopes that that would be enough. Remember, there are only the two hostages and me. I’ve given you all I’m willing to give; if you continue to pursue me any further-I will begin taking.”

  I measured my next words carefully, knowing we were playing a balancing act, attempting to get into each other’s head. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, Shade. Those two people are the only reason you’re still alive. I know you’ve got that. 223, but if you keep going up on this trail you’re going to hit some long meadows and then open areas above the tree line, and when you do you’re going to feel an itch between your shoulder blades, a. 45-70 itch. That’ll be me-and it’ll be the last thing you ever feel.”

  I listened to him breathing on the other end of the line; then he spoke in a voice that was monotonous and unemotional. “Tell Freddie that I’ll be back for him.”

  The line went dead.

  “What’d he say?”

  I thumbed off the phone. “He says he’s having a wonderful time and wishes you were there.” I drew the pack onto my shoulder along with the Sharps and grabbed the snowshoes beside the door.

  “Hey look, you’re not going to like just leave me here, right?”

  “I am but don’t worry, I’m going to use the phone to bring the cavalry to you.”

  “What about the bears and the mountain lions?”

  “When I leave I’ll close and latch the door. Both of them are amazingly adaptable hunters, but one thing they don’t have is opposable thumbs, which means the next thing that opens the cargo hold will be human. It’ll probably be Henry Standing Bear, a big Indian fellow, or a mean little brunette deputy of mine by the name of Victoria Moretti-if I were you, I’d hope for the Cheyenne.”

  I stood there for a moment, thinking about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I had limited resources and a limited amount of time. I pulled Saizarbitoria’s cell phone from the inside pocket of my jacket, rescued it from the waterproof Ziploc, and flipped it open; it was still out of service. I closed it and put it back-insurance, just in case I was to get to an altitude where it might get a signal.

  I looked at the satellite phone in my other hand and thought about
which of two calls I wanted to make. I punched in the office number.

  “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where are you!”

  I held the receiver a little away from my ear. “Ruby, I need you to listen. I’ve got one of the Fed satellite phones now, so this is the number where you can reach me, and I was right, the numbers are sequential. I’m at the waterfall meadows on Tensleep Creek where I’ve got a vehicle broken down. Is there any backup nearby?”

  “Wait… meadows at the base of the falls at Tensleep Creek, right? Yes, they broke through on the east and west slopes. Saizarbitoria is arranging transport for that agent.”

  “McGroder. He’s alive?”

  “Yes, and Henry’s with search and rescue. They’re getting ready to head out from there. Did you really leave a man handcuffed to a water pipe at Deer Haven Lodge?”

  “I did, and I’m about to leave another one handcuffed at this location.”

  “Another one?”

  “Yep, and there’s a body at Omar Rhoades’s cabin at Bear Lake.”

  “Oh, Walter.” There was a rustling of some papers. “Tommy Wayman, Joe Iron Cloud, and a detachment of Highway Patrol are at the last turn at Tensleep Canyon and should be joining Henry before too long. Do you know about the weather?”

  “It’s cold but dry up here for now.”

  “It’s going to get much worse. The NOAA says that was only the front of the storm and that this blizzard is carrying fifty-mile-an-hour winds with severe mountain temperatures that will likely reach forty below zero. It’s going to be a complete whiteout by midmorning.” There was only a short pause. “Walter, you have to stop.”

  I placed my thumb over the OFF button.

  “Walter, please? They are on their way; at least wait until Henry and the others get there.”

  “Don’t worry, they’ll find me.” My thumb hovered over the button. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Walter…”

  I punched it and looked at the indicator, which still read fully charged. I turned the satellite phone off and hoped for the best.

  The Junk-food Junkie was looking at me when I raised my face. “Popp’s dead?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good, he was a prick. How about the Mexican kid?”

  “Hector. Alive and well.”

  “What about Fingers?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He seemed to take a certain amount of satisfaction in that at least one of his companions was alive, but the troubled expression returned to his face as he began rocking again. “You cannot like leave me here.”

  “I don’t see as how I have much of a choice, Freddie. Unless you want to leave the comfortable environs of the Thiokol and accompany me farther up the range, but the weather report isn’t good.” I studied the Fed phone and wondered if any of the other ones had been left. I held the device out. “I don’t suppose they left any more of these, dead or otherwise?”

  “No.” He wiped his hands, rattling the restraints that held them close to the bench, and looked at the water bottle beside him. “How am I supposed to drink that, cuffed like I am?”

  “Pour it into the lid a bunch of times, but I’d not wait too long or it’ll freeze. The other option is keeping it close to your body.” I pushed my own water bottle inside the pack to help it stay insulated and then placed the satellite phone in one of the outside pockets of my jacket in hopes that the cold would do the battery some good.

  “Hey, have you got any more food?”

  I dug into the expedition pack, dragged out Omar’s sandwiches, and handed one of them to him. “Here.”

  He took it, crouched down to reach his hands, and began eating. He studied me from under the knit cap, his eyes shifting like bad cargo. “You should just let me have the other one, too.”

  “How do you figure?”

  He swallowed and took another bite. “You’re gonna be like dead here in a few hours anyway.”

  I stood there looking at him for an elongated moment. “Dead, or like dead?” He didn’t say anything more, so I repacked, starting with placing the other sandwich back in my pack. “Beatrice said that Shade had a waterproof duffel with him. Do you have any idea what’s in it?”

  “He’s got a lot of stuff with him, some of it that she brought and some that he took from those FBI guys.” He took another bite and chewed, suddenly sullen. “You don’t get it, do you, Sheriff?” He licked the mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth with his tongue and shook his head. “It doesn’t mean shit that you’ve stopped us; he’s not like us. I mean, we’re the kinds of guys that give people nightmares.” He shifted his weight and leaned back against the bulkhead with one shoulder. “He’s the kind of guy that gives us nightmares.”

  I lifted the pack up onto the seat by the door to make it easier to hoist onto my shoulder, stretched my eyes, and rubbed my face. “Then I guess you’d better stay awake.”

  It was starting to snow again, but through the tides of the storm I could see small leaks of moonlight seeping to the ground. I was able to follow their tracks, but before heading into the timber, I checked the early morning western sky for stars-there weren’t any. This was not a good thing. I was feeling tired again and that wasn’t good, either. I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nostrils, the vapor blowing across the expanse of my jacket like the twin trails of two locomotives. Maybe what I needed to do was work up some steam.

  Even as cold as it was, there was still a discernible amount of water dropping from the rocks above; of course it was smothered under a two-foot casing of ice, but the dull thudding of the falling water pounded a rhythm and I settled into a comfortable pace. It’d been a long while since I’d had this kind of physical activity at altitude, and I figured the burgeoning headache that seemed to be mushrooming in the front of my head was just that. Of course, the knot on my forehead probably didn’t help.

  I wondered once again where Raynaud Shade thought he was going.

  The path straightened at the ridge along Mistymoon Trail, bypassing some smaller ponds I remembered. I knew this area better than Virgil’s since we were now approaching the main trail. Of course, I’d been here mostly in the summer and that was a different landscape. I’d fished Gunboat Lake with Cady and before that with my late wife, what seemed like a few lifetimes ago. Before my daughter was born, Martha and I made summer pilgrimages in an attempt to break up the heat and to supplement my civil service wages with a freezer full of brookies and a few rainbows-some as large as ten inches, big for being that high.

  I remember my wife on those trips, mostly with her hair tied back with a bandana, as she dutifully breaded the fillets and carefully browned them over an open campfire. I remembered the closeness in our double sleeping bag and the smooth soles of her feet as she attempted to keep them warm by pressing them against my legs.

  A surge of wind pulsed against the trees on the far ridge as if trying to push them aside and then swirled into a snow devil in the frozen meadow below, the tiny tornado jumping the hard surface of the water and moving across the small valley toward me. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, another gust caught it, and it was gone.

  I wasn’t even aware that I’d stopped walking.

  Standing there on the ridge trail, I realized I’d come to a fork and my subconscious mind had been unable to make the choice. The main path led north, the one to the right went east toward Mirror and Lost Twin lakes.

  I felt a shudder run through me that had nothing to do with the temperature. I could feel a slight twinge in my fingers and in that little portion of my ear that was missing, and felt kind of like those amputees that reach to scratch limbs that have long been removed.

  I adjusted my collar, pulled the balaclava over my nose, stuffed my gloved hands in my pockets in an attempt to further insulate my long-healed wounds, and stared at the path east. There were no tracks, but I could swear that someone was watching me. It was the same feeling that I’d had at t
he West Tensleep parking loop at the start of this trail. My mind made the logical connection and moved back to the time when I’d been even more sure that I’d been watched, prodded, cajoled, and enticed.

  I thought about the questions I’d asked Henry after I brought George and him out of the wilderness, and the inadequacy of his answers. Maybe there were no answers to what had happened on my multiple trips to and from Lost Twin Lakes that time on the mountain-maybe there were no answers because there was nothing there at all.

  Perhaps, but it still felt as if something had been there and that something was here now.

  I glanced up the main trail where there were three sets of snowshoe prints. Looking for movement, I let my eyes unfocus, but there was nothing there. I took a few steps and felt a sudden sense of loss, snow devils being better than the real ones.

  I lifted the binoculars just to check the trail more closely and saw what I must have sensed-there was another set of footprints along the creek bed. I tromped my way down the slope, kneeled-careful not to let the top-heavy pack topple me over-and gently blew in the nearest print. It was a huge track, moccasins, smooth with just a trace of the stitching on the side-crude stitching that could only have been homemade.

  Virgil.

  I glanced back up and half expected him to be standing there with the paws of the giant grizzly swaying in the breeze beside his massive girth, but there was still nothing, only the tracks that continued to follow the other three. It took the better part of a mile to get to Lake Helen, and Virgil continued to follow the others. As I trudged along, I thought about the Crow Indian. Had he known that they had left Freddie in the Thiokol and continued on? Why was he following them? Was he the guide whom Hector had alluded to, that Beatrice had mentioned? If he was, then why had he taken the time to fool with me?

  He said he’d been watching them last night before waking me, and if that was the case, wouldn’t he have seen them leave? If he was the so-called guide, then why wouldn’t he have simply joined them there?

  The moonlight had given way to dawn, and I could see some movement on the trail far ahead. I pulled the binoculars up again and looked.