Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  “Got that?” Tubman said again.

  “I hear you,” Cody mumbled.

  Deep in the trees from the direction of the main road he could hear the sound of a vehicle approaching.

  “Oh no,” Bodean said, zipping up his long yellow raincoat and turning toward the road. “Skeeter’s coming.”

  “Shit,” Tubman said, turning away from Cody, dismissing him. “Skeeter’s been showing up places wearing a sidearm lately. He’s trying to hammer home the fact that he’s law enforcement. Let’s see if the joker is packing.”

  * * *

  Skeeter was called Skeeter, Cody’d been told, because he didn’t like his first name, which was Leslie. SKEETER was stenciled on his vehicle doors. He pulled his four-wheel-drive behind Cody’s Ford, blocking him, and jumped out quickly, already dressed for the weather. Before he zipped his rain jacket, Cody saw Skeeter was wearing a holster.

  Skeeter Caldwell was tall, slim, and gaunt with deep-set eyes and a long bladelike nose and he’d recently had his teeth capped so he wouldn’t look quite so much like a ghoul. But, Cody thought, he still looked like a ghoul.

  “Sheriff,” Skeeter said in greeting, nodding toward Tubman.

  “Skeeter,” the sheriff said, unenthusiastic.

  “Where’s the body?”

  Four vehicles were lined up shoulder to shoulder with all of their headlights aimed at the burned cabin. Tubman said, “Guess.”

  “Can we be professional here?” Skeeter asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then please have your men show me the victim.”

  Tubman turned to Larry. “Perhaps you could escort the county coroner to the scene.”

  Larry grunted.

  “So what is your first impression?” Skeeter asked.

  “Accident.”

  “We shall see.”

  Tubman rolled his eyes.

  “I hope you don’t mind if a reporter from the Independent Record comes along,” Skeeter said. “Carrie Lowry. I guess she heard the report over the radio.”

  “I bet,” Tubman said sourly. “And I do mind. We haven’t even secured the scene yet.” He turned to Cody. “Put up some crime tape. Make her keep her distance. I don’t want her at the cabin taking pictures or getting in the way. Tell her we’ll talk to her when we’ve got something to say.”

  Cody saluted and said, “Yes, sir!”

  Before Tubman turned to follow Skeeter, Bodean, and Larry toward the cabin, he said to Cody, “That’ll be more than enough of that shit, mister.”

  * * *

  Another set of headlights fanned through the lodgepole pine trunks. Unlike Skeeter, the driver was going slowly, picking through the forest, as if unsure that the road was the correct one. Cody had a six-inch roll of yellow plastic tape that read DO NOT CROSS DO NOT CROSS. He’d tied one end to a tree trunk near the entrance to the parking area and was letting it unwind as he walked toward the other side. He shot glances over his shoulder at the cabin as he unwound the tape. Skeeter was bending over the body while Larry provided the light. Tubman and Bodean stood behind them in the rain looking useless.

  The vehicle made the last turn and headlights blinded him. Again. He held up his free forearm to block the light and the vehicle braked to a stop with a squeal.

  A woman’s voice said, “Oh, come on. You’re telling me I can’t get any closer than that?”

  “Sheriff’s orders,” Cody said.

  “You’ve gotta let me through.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Cody,” she said, “you are such an asshole.”

  “Hi, Carrie,” he said. “How are you tonight?”

  “I thought I was lost,” she said. “Then I finally find it and … it’s you.”

  He shrugged. “Did you bring a poncho or something? It’s raining.”

  “Oh, really?”

  He nodded, then continued stripping the tape across the road. She killed the engine and he heard a door slam. He looked over and saw her raise the tape up over her head and start to stride toward the cabin.

  “Whoa,” he said. “I don’t want to have to arrest you and/or torture you until you confess.”

  She turned toward him, hands on hips. She wore a battered raincoat that bulged near her waistline and a slouch cap that looked like it had been in her trunk for ten years. Her red hair fell on the shoulders of the raincoat and stuck to the wet fabric.

  “Nice look,” he said. “I hope you didn’t dress up just for me.”

  “Fuck you, Cody,” she said.

  “Language,” he said. “God is listening.”

  “Fuck You, Cody.” Then added, “And the horse you rode in on. Skeeter told me I’d have access.”

  “I’m sure you will,” he said, “once the scene is released to him. But that hasn’t happened yet. Right now, this is a crime scene under investigation by the sheriff’s department. When it gets turned over to the coroner, you’ll be the first to know, I’m sure.”

  She huffed, “What am I supposed to do in the meanwhile?”

  “You could help me string this crime-scene tape,” he said. “I could use a hand.”

  “You are such an asshole.”

  “Get back before I shoot you,” he said, shining his flashlight on her face so she flinched. But before she did, he got a glimpse of her green eyes, the constellation of freckles across her cheeks and nose, that nice mouth.

  “Bastard,” she said, wheeling around and stomping back toward her fifteen-year-old Subaru. She climbed back in and slammed the door and he watched her fume until the interior light went out.

  He’d met Carrie the year before, shortly after he returned to Montana from Denver. He’d been with the department less than a month, and he sidled up to her bar stool at the Windbag Bar and Grill. He’d watched her fend off rural legislators in town for the session like swatting flies and told her he admired her high opinion of herself. When she didn’t swat him away, he bought her another Jack and Coke, even though he explained that by drinking the concoction she was ruining two good drinks.

  Over the next three hours he bought her four more. He kept up with her. She told him about growing up in Havre, going to J-school, marrying twice to losers, landing at the Independent Record. She covered the police beat, she said. She asked him if he’d be a source. He said sure, if she’d quit talking shop and go home with him.

  Somehow, he drove her to his apartment without being picked up by the Helena police, even though he cruised through at least two red lights, maybe more. She never noticed because she was pawing at his belt, fumbling at it, pulling the wrong way on the tongue of his belt but with surprising strength. When he threw her over his shoulder and carried her into his place, she laughed and hit at him until he tossed her on his bed. She was a crazy back-scratching wildcat for ten minutes before he, or she, passed out the first time. He recalled little after that, but he had a vague memory involving him trying to connect the dots of her freckles with a felt-tipped pen, which they both found hilarious at the time.

  When she came by the station a week later to interview the sheriff after a Marysville outfitter who had shot his wife twelve times (pausing twice to reload) with a .30-06, their eyes locked for a moment and she tossed her red hair, said, “It was hell getting that ink off of my face,” and turned on her heel and clicked away down the hallway.

  * * *

  He knew he wasn’t wanted or needed at the cabin so he returned to his Ford and climbed in. The windows steamed again, but it was good to be somewhere dry.

  Through the fogged windshield he saw flashlights dancing in the dark at the cabin and figures moving slowly through the black muck. He thought about Hank and something gripped him hard inside like a talon and suddenly he was tearing up. He couldn’t believe it. Cody hadn’t cried since his dog died when he was twelve. Funerals for his father and mother had been uneventful. But Hank was different. Hank was a tough old bird who wanted to help him solely because he was a kind and good man. Hank was willing to help a fucked-up
stranger and show him goodness existed. And Hank was gone.

  Cody’s hand, as if on its own, crab-walked across the bench seat until it paused near the day pack of the hiker. Cody didn’t look over. His hand had a mind of its own. It was out of his control. Then it grabbed the neck of the bottle of Jim Beam.

  His other hand, also thinking independently, reached across his body and unscrewed the cap. He took two big gulps, as if it were water and he was thirsty, then he jammed the bottle between his thighs. Something inside him said, Stop now, while you still can.

  He shrugged the voice away. That had never been difficult, he always won that contest. At first, his belly clutched painfully, as if it were shutting down and rejecting the alcohol. He grunted and leaned forward, doubling up, his forehead on the top of the steering wheel. Then the pain stopped and, as if he were welcoming an old friend, he could feel the familiar warmth radiate through him starting with his chest and spreading out to his arms and legs and head. It was as if he was filling his tank up with rocket fuel.

  He sat back and the blackened image of the arm and bloated hand flickered on the inside of the windshield like the screen of a drive-in movie, and he said, “Hank, is this what happened to you? Is this what you did? You opened a bottle again? Tell me I’m wrong because buddy, I believed in you.”

  He thought about it. He had another drink.

  Then: “Hank, I’m going to find whoever did this to you.”

  Cody drank fast on an empty stomach. When he put the cap back on the bottle half of it was gone. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, turned on the interior light, and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He remembered that flushed face from scarred mirrors in bar restrooms and from his own bathroom when he got home after closing time.

  He said, “Helloooo, handsome. And welcome back.”

  And he suddenly had a plan.

  Then he unwrapped and crammed three sticks of Stride Winterblue gum (every drunk’s secret gum) into his mouth and lit a cigarette. The combination would disguise his breath. He knew this from experience. And he opened the SUV door and once again was pelted by rain. If it weren’t for the furnace raging through him, he thought, it might feel cold outside.

  * * *

  Cody walked toward the plastic barrier and wriggled his fingers at Carrie as he pushed the crime-scene tape over his head and approached her car on the driver’s side. She didn’t respond so he leaned his butt against the front fender and drew in deep on his cigarette. He listened to the rain coursing through the pines and heavy drops plunking into surface puddles. Raindrops smacked his cigarette and he felt it important to smoke it to a nub before a lucky drop hit the cherry and drowned it out.

  Finally, she rolled her window down. “Yes? Are you here to tell me I can go in?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then get off my car.”

  He wouldn’t tell her he needed to lean against her car for a moment so he wouldn’t fall down. Instead, he laughed. “I don’t think I can make it look any worse than it does now.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “You are such an—”

  “Sticks and stones,” he said in a way that even charmed him. And he noted she hadn’t rolled her window back up.

  “Carrie, do you remember when you asked me to be a source? Remember? It was in the Windbag.”

  She was quiet. Cautious. “Yes.”

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  “Are you jerking me around?” Her voice was attractive, kind of husky.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Are there conditions?” she asked. Her voice had become businesslike. Which for some reason made him want to take her home again, but he’d settle for another cigarette. He slapped his raincoat until he found the pack and matches.

  “Those things will kill you,” she said.

  “Bring it on,” he laughed. “Bring it on.”

  “Cody.”

  He got the cigarette lit and turned and dropped to his haunches so he was eye-level with her in the car. She didn’t draw back away from him, he noticed. He wished he could see her face better.

  “Promise me what I tell you will be confidential,” he said. “My name can’t be in the story and you have to promise you won’t even hint at where this comes from.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Okay. But it’s got to be of substance.”

  “It’s of substance. And you can’t do one of those ‘an unnamed source in the sheriff’s department’ kinds of things. Or I’ll make your life so miserable you’ll have to leave Montana.”

  That made her wince, and she sat back. “Don’t threaten me like that.”

  “No threat,” he said. “Just what it is. Are we clear?”

  “We’re clear.”

  He looked around. Although he couldn’t see everyone at the cabin, he did see flashlight beams bouncing around.

  “This isn’t an accident, whatever the sheriff or Skeeter tells you. It’s a murder.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And whoever did it tried to cover his tracks by burning the place down. The victim was a great man named Hank Winters, and we’re gonna find who did it.”

  She shook her head. “Why would the sheriff or Skeeter want to cover that up? I don’t understand.”

  He whispered conspiratorially, “Because it’s important to them not to call it a murder. It’s political, and it’s big. Bigger than hell. This could be the story that gets you on the map if you play it right.”

  “Oh, Cody,” she said, reaching out of her window and touching his arm. Her eyes glistened in the reflection of the flashlights at the scene.

  “Look,” he said. “The murderer left a clue to his identity. I can’t tell you what it was but we’re going to follow it to the killer once we get some outside experts up here with some special equipment. And we will get him. He’s on borrowed time until the analysis comes back.”

  “What kind of analysis?”

  “That I can’t tell you yet.”

  With that, Cody stood and patted her hand back. “Remember,” he said, “you didn’t hear this from me.”

  After a beat, she said, “Thank you, Cody. I owe you.”

  “Just no scratching this time,” he said as he turned to walk away.

  As he passed under the crime-scene tape he nearly ran into Larry, who stood in the dark with his flashlight off. Cody felt the familiar grip of guilt that came with secret drinking.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Larry said in an urgent whisper. “I heard what you told her, you son of a bitch.”

  Cody reached out for Larry but Larry backed away. Cody said, “I’m baiting the trap.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What was that about special equipment and analysis?”

  Cody found himself grinning maniacally, and couldn’t douse it out. He held out his hand to Larry, and said, “I’m pretty sure she bought it.”

  Larry stared at him, unmoving. They faced off for over a minute with no words.

  Finally, Larry said, “You found a bottle, didn’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “And now you’re going to self-destruct and try to take me with you.”

  Cody shrugged. “You don’t have to come, Larry.”

  “You asshole. You stupid jerk.”

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot tonight.”

  Larry said, “What am I going to do with you?”

  Cody suddenly felt sober. It happened at the weirdest times, he thought. He said, “Help me find the guy who killed Hank. I’ll take it from there.”

  Larry moaned.

  Cody stepped close to Larry and said, “Larry, I’m a drunk but I’m not a joke. You’ve never seen me unleashed before and believe me, it’s a sight to behold. I’ll go after this guy like nothing you’ve ever experienced. And when I find him I’ll kill his ass a million times over.”

  Larry stepped back. “Man, are you okay?”

  Cody said, “I’ve never been okay. But now I’ve got a purpose.” He spat the las
t word.

  Larry’s eyes got wide and he shook his head slowly. “You’re out of control,” Larry whispered.

  “Maybe.” Cody winked and walked back to his Ford for the bottle. The rest of the night he functioned in a blackout. And he woke up the next morning in his apartment covered with blood. Not his.

  5

  On the night he shot the coroner, Cody Hoyt was back at Hank Winters’s cabin, hiding in a copse of pine trees in the dark. Waiting.

  The last twenty hours had been a dense, almost impenetrable fog. He’d called on his reserves to simply stay upright for most of it. As he sipped from the pint bottle of Evan Williams bourbon he’d brought with him to Vigilante Campground, certain disconnected scenes came up to the surface as if for air and he recalled them before they sunk again to be replaced by another. Whack-a-mole memories! he thought. Just like the bad old days.

  He tried to put them in order.

  Driving down from the mountains following Larry’s car, Larry pulling over twice to get out and curse at him, saying Cody nearly gave himself away when he was slurring his words to the evidence tech and EMTs as they bagged the body and collected all the evidence they’d tagged. Telling Cody that luckily, the sheriff and undersheriff were back in their vehicles at that point, bitching about Skeeter and not thinking about why one of their lead investigators had to lean on trees or the cabin to keep upright. Noting that Carrie Lowry was long gone, and Skeeter was annoyed about that. Not objecting when Larry pushed him away from the cabin in the dark so no one could hear him talk or see him trying to maintain his balance;

  Cutting up the dead cow elk with Larry on their way down the mountain, quartering it with a bone saw Larry had in his gear box, all so Cody could take the meat to the battered women’s shelter even though he could barely stand and the huge chunks of raw, still-warm meat had covered his clothes with blood. Ignoring Larry as he bitched and moaned about it, saying those women had plenty to eat as it was and they’d think Cody was crazy;

  Hauling the quarters into the walk-in freezer of the shelter after waking up the manager, winking at Larry when she cried and said how grateful she was, how the women and kids staying there would love the meat, offering to clean him up and make some coffee because there was something wrong with his eyes;