Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  “That’s Bull Mitchell?” Cody asked. “I can’t see him.”

  “Here,” the tall woman said, stepping aside.

  Cody nodded his thanks.

  There, in the middle of twelve or thirteen kids gathered on the floor, was a big man sitting in a comically undersized chair wearing a heavy wool work shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. His head was a cinder block mounted on wide powerful shoulders and his huge hands held The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog indelicately, like a grizzly cradling a candy cane. He had silver-white hair but jet-black crazy eyebrows that looked like smudges of soot. He was an unpracticed and halting reader, Cody thought, but when his voice boomed for exclamations like Good dog! and Will you please shut up? the walls seemed to shake and he likely scared the bejesus out of the kids.

  That’s when he noticed a tiny white-haired woman in a wheelchair next to the seated children. She had a wool Pendleton trapper’s blanket over her lap and she leaned forward to listen with a gauzy smile of pure enchantment.

  “What’s with the old lady?” Cody asked the tall woman. “What’s she doing here?”

  She reacted as if he’d slapped her. The blond woman rolled her eyes and snorted in contempt.

  “What?” Cody said, genuinely surprised and puzzled.

  Oh Hank, there’s been a killing right here on the ranch and we slept through it!…

  The tall woman said, “He’s my father and ‘the old lady’ is my mother. She’s in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, and this is the only way he can connect with her these days, by reading children’s stories.”

  Cody slumped and sighed. “I’m such an asshole,” he said.

  “Yes, you are,” the tall woman said. “But I can see you didn’t know.”

  The blond mother shushed them both.

  Cody said to the tall woman, “When he’s done will you introduce me to him?”

  She almost smiled. “How can I introduce you when I don’t know your name?”

  “Cody Hoyt,” he said. “I’m a cop.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Is this official business? You don’t seem to have a badge.”

  Cody said, “It’s more important than that. Give me a few minutes and I’ll lay it out.”

  “Angela Mitchell,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m the proud daughter.”

  Cody thought, In other circumstances I would like to get to know this woman.

  The blond mother leaned toward them hissing, “Shhhhhh.”

  And Bull Mitchell read:

  … Being Head of Ranch Security is learning to ignore that kind of emotion. I mean, to hold down this job, you have to be cold and hard.…

  * * *

  Cody hovered behind Angela and Bull Mitchell as Bull pushed his wife through the aisles in her wheelchair to the van to return her to the nursing home. The children had joined up with their mothers or nannies and dispersed. Bull said to Angela in a flat, declaratory tone not unlike his reading, “So who’s the guy?”

  “He says his name is Cody Hoyt. He wants to meet you.”

  “Hoyt?” Bull barked.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew a couple guys named Hoyt. One was a drunk and the other one was a criminal. Why does he want to meet me?”

  “Hey,” Cody said, “I’m right here. I can speak for myself.”

  Bull paused and twisted slightly to a quarter profile, as if he wasn’t sure turning around to talk to Cody was worth more than that. He looked Cody up and down, said nothing, and said to his daughter, “Tell him not to interrupt my stories, goddammit.”

  “I apologize,” Cody said. “I just wasn’t expecting a guy named Bull in the children’s room.”

  Bull kept his back to him and guided his wife’s wheelchair out the front doors of the library. The attendant in the van climbed out to help position her chair on the lift. Cody saw she was still smiling and her eyes were wistful. She was small and reed thin and her body seemed to be drawing inward as if to fold up on itself. Her back was hunched, which made her head stick out forward rather than up. A baby bird, Cody thought, she’s turning into a baby bird in the nest, stretching out on a long neck. He felt sorry for her, for Bull, for Angela, and for him being there at that moment.

  In a wavery voice as light as mist she said to her husband, “That was a wonderful story, Mr. Bull. One of my favorites. I wish I could have read it to my daughter Angela, you know.”

  “I know,” he said softly.

  Cody noted how Angela flinched when she heard what her mother said. She didn’t say I’m right here, Mom. No point.

  Bull dropped to his haunches so he was eye level with his wife. She smiled at him with big teeth stained by decades of coffee.

  “Good-bye honey,” he said, and bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll read to you in a week.”

  Her waxen face flushed pink and she giggled and batted her eyes, admonishing him, “Mr. Bull…”

  He leaned forward and whispered something in her ear and she blushed further and windmilled her tiny hands as if naughtily delighted by the words. Cody looked away.

  The van driver activated the hydraulic lift and secured her in the van and drove away.

  Angela said, “She was happy.”

  Bull grunted.

  “I think she’s falling for you,” Angela said.

  “Who wouldn’t?” Bull said. Then he focused on Cody. His tone was gruff. “Now what do you want?”

  Cody said, “Can I buy you and Angela a cup of coffee? I need your help.”

  “You can buy me a beer,” Bull said. “Come on, I know a place a few blocks down.”

  * * *

  In the gloom of the Crystal Bar, the kind of old dive Cody loved with its dim lighting and the midafternoon musical clicking of pool balls from a table in back, Bull said to the waitress, “I’ll have a PBR.”

  Cody hesitated a moment, then ordered a tonic water. Angela asked for coffee.

  Bull eyed him across the table for an uncomfortable length of time, then said, “You don’t like Pabst Blue Ribbon or are you an alky?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because only alkies drink tonic water. It kind of reminds ’em of a real drink. Or so I’ve been told.”

  “Guilty,” Cody said.

  “Thought so,” Bull said. “You have that look about you. Believe me, in this country I see that look you got a lot.”

  Cody looked to Angela for help. She shrugged back with a that’s-the-way-he-is kind of look.

  “So,” Bull Mitchell said, “why are we here?”

  Cody shot a quick glance to Angela, then told the entire story, leaving nothing out. Hank Winters, his binge, the coroner, his suspension. Bull listened wordlessly. Angela squirmed toward the end, getting more and more alarmed.

  “So that’s the deal,” Cody said. “I need to find that pack trip as fast as I can but I don’t know the park well enough and I’ve got to keep quiet about it or I’ll lose my job at the very least. You’re the only guy I can think of who is familiar with Jed McCarthy and ‘Back of Beyond: the Ultimate Yellowstone Backcountry Adventure.’”

  Bull scowled, “I didn’t name it that. That was Jed’s deal. He thinks he’s a wizard with words.”

  “And women,” Angela added acidly.

  Cody waited for more but it didn’t come and she obviously wished she’d said nothing by the way she shifted her weight in the booth.

  To Bull, Cody said, “You’ve done it, this trip I’m talking about, right?”

  “Dozens of times,” Bull said. “I blazed the trail in the first place after the park rangers at the time said there was no realistic way to take packhorses where I told them I wanted to go. So I had to prove them wrong. I goddamn invented that trip.”

  Cody tried to keep himself low-key and persuasive when what he really wanted to do was get going. He said, “Can you tell me how to find them? Where they left from, which trail they took? Where they’d likely be right now as we’re talking?”

  Bull
nodded. “Pretty close. But what are you going to do? Hike after them?” he said with sarcasm.

  “Dad,” Angela said with alarm, “he wants you to guide him.”

  Cody kept quiet.

  Bull said, “I don’t do that kind of stuff anymore. I haven’t in years.”

  “I’ll pay you,” Cody said, trying not to let Angela’s glare penetrate him.

  “How much?” Bull said, gesturing to the waitress for another beer. “Jed McCarthy charges more than two grand a head.”

  “I’ll pay you four,” Cody said, thinking he had barely eighteen hundred dollars between his checking and savings accounts and he could maybe get another thousand if he got his pickup running and sold it. Maybe he could get a thousand from Jenny, who could dip into the bottomless coffers of His Richness.…

  Bull scratched his chin, thinking about it.

  “Dad,” Angela said, “this is crazy. It could be really dangerous. You said yourself horse packing like that is a young man’s game—that’s why you sold the business, remember?”

  “I sold it because I couldn’t take dealing with the Feds anymore,” Bull said, flashing a look at Cody to gauge his reaction.

  Angela put her hand on her father’s arm. “Dad, if you find them you’re finding a potential killer. Think of Mom.”

  He just looked at her. His voice dropped. “Your mother is all I think about and you should know that by now. Do you have any idea how much that facility she’s in costs? Thirty-five hundred a month. A month. I’m burning through the savings.”

  Angela didn’t back down. “Dad—if you’d get some help…”

  “I don’t want any goddamn help,” he said flatly. “I never asked for it and I don’t want it now.”

  She said as an aside to Cody, “We’ve had this discussion many times before. There are federal programs my parents qualify for but he won’t take the money. In fact, he sends it back with mean notes attached. I’ve read some of them and they’d curl your hair.”

  Bull nodded. “If everybody did that we wouldn’t be in the shithouse like we are now.”

  She said, “And you won’t let me help you, either.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Taking charity from my daughter is the last thing I’d ever do. Might as well just shoot me in the head and leave me there if it comes to that.”

  Angela said to him, “But you wouldn’t have to be seriously thinking about going back to the park right now. Like I said, think of Mom.”

  “Your mother,” Bull said to her, “she don’t know me from week to week, Angela.”

  “Then think of me.”

  Bull placed his own massive hand on top of hers.

  Cody said, “Five thousand just for trying. And two thousand bonus for finding them.” He’d get His Richness to kick in more. “That’s more than two months of care.”

  Angela shot him a look that was designed to freeze him into silence.

  Bull took the second beer and drank half of it in two long pulls.

  Angela said to Cody, “With all due respect, you should be talking to the park rangers, not my dad. It’s their job to do this kind of thing in Yellowstone. And if you didn’t get yourself in trouble, you could be doing this all legitimate.”

  Bull said, “Talk to the bureaucrats? The time it would take you to lay this all out to the Park Service and for them to have meetings and come up with a budget … hell, you don’t have that kind of time. And I doubt any of ’em really know the backcountry well enough to find that trip. They’d probably have to hire me anyway, as much as they’d hate that.”

  “Exactly,” Cody said.

  Bull leaned forward and his daughter’s hand dropped away from his arm. He said to Cody, “It’ll take me some time to put everything together. I haven’t used any of my equipment for a while.”

  Cody nodded.

  Bull said, “And we need to go in and get back within a week. One week, because I can’t miss the storytime. You got me? I can’t miss it. And I’ll tag a three-thousand-dollar-a-day penalty on you if we do.”

  “Okay,” Cody said, refusing to even consider the ramifications. He could tell by Bull Mitchell’s eyes that it was a deal kill should Cody balk or want to negotiate further.

  “I don’t suppose Margaret will mind us taking some of Jed’s horses and panniers,” Bull said to himself.

  “Dad, you can’t be really thinking about this,” Angela said. “Just do the smart thing—both of you—and call the park rangers.”

  “They’ll fuck it up,” Bull said, growling. “We can’t risk lives while they screw around.”

  Angela left the booth and stomped toward the bathroom.

  “She’s upset,” Bull Mitchell said. “In her mind, I’ve been out of the game for a long time.”

  Cody said, “What you do at the library, man. It’s, you know, pretty dedicated.”

  Bull shook the compliment off. “Gotta do something. She was there for me for forty-five years and believe it or not, being with me ain’t a sweet picnic all the time.”

  “Somehow,” Cody said, “I can believe that.”

  Bull stifled a smile.

  Cody said, “You knew my dad and my uncle Jeter, then?”

  “Yeah,” Bull said, his face contorting as if he’d bitten into something sour. “I turned in your uncle for poaching elk in Yellowstone, and he threatened to kill me for it. I said, ‘Come on down to Bozeman, Jeter Hoyt.’ I think he was on his way when the judge sent him to Deer Lodge the first time. I’ve been kind of looking out for him ever since. Is he still around?”

  Cody looked away. “We can talk about it later.” Then: “Why are you called Bull?”

  “’Cause I’m hung like one,” he said, and finished his beer.

  As Angela came back to the booth, Bull said to Cody, “I’ll meet you at Jed’s place at four thirty tomorrow morning. Get some good boots and clothes and put your personal crap together in a duffel bag weighing no more than twenty pounds.”

  Cody nodded. He was seeing Bull Mitchell the outfitter reemerge. “Any way we could get going sooner?” Cody asked. “I mean, I’ve already wasted a day.”

  “That’s your problem, not mine,” Bull said. “I got things to get ready and business to put in order.”

  Angela said, “I guess there’s no point in talking about it anymore.”

  Bull said, “Nope. Sorry, sweetie. We’ve got to go get this young man’s boy.”

  She said to her dad, “This has nothing to do with his boy. This has to do with you acting like one.”

  Bull clapped his hand over his breast, and said, “Straight to the heart.”

  * * *

  Cody was outside the door of the Crystal Bar when Angela chased him down and grabbed his shoulder.

  Her face was set. She said, “If my dad gets hurt on this trip, I’ll be your worst nightmare.”

  Cody said, “I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do,” she said. “I think you’re just focused on your son. But if my dad gets hurt or doesn’t come back—it’s on you. And if you think getting suspended from the sheriff’s department is a big deal, just wait to find out what it’s like to find me on the other side of the table.”

  Cody said, fingering her card, which read ANGELA MITCHELL, ATTORNEY AT LAW, “I was kind of hoping we could be friends. But I’ve never gotten along real well with lawyers.”

  “I’m shocked,” she said, her eyes flashing. She said, “I’m going to open a case file this afternoon with a tab that reads ‘Cody Hoyt.’ By the time I see you next I’ll know everything there is to know about you. And I have the feeling it’ll be a real thick file.”

  He nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  She said, “The only way you’re going to skate is if you bring him back better than he left and you do it within a week. Otherwise, I’m calling your sheriff and every cop I can find to come after you.”

  “Got it,” he said, sliding the card in his pocket.

  “Good,” she said. “Now if you’ll
excuse me, I’ve got to go help my dad get ready.”

  He watched her storm back into the bar. He thought she looked pretty good doing that. He tried to imagine what her face would look like when she started researching his record.

  “Another reason to get the hell out of here,” he said aloud to himself.

  14

  After Jed the outfitter peeled off the trail into the trees and called out “Welcome to Camp One, folks!” the long line of horses followed his lead, glad to be done working for the day. It was almost comical, Gracie thought, the way the animals just turned off the trail and at the same time they broke the psychic connection with their riders. They knew their shifts were done. Jed and Dakota led the mounts one by one to a makeshift corral designated by a single strand of white electric fence wire Jed had strung through the trees.

  “Hey Jed,” D’Amato called out. “What—are these union horses?”

  Which made most of the riders smile or laugh.

  Gracie waited her turn to dismount behind Danielle, who was squirming in her saddle.

  Gracie said, “What’s the problem?”

  Danielle turned to Gracie. In an urgent whisper, said, “I have to pee. Where do I do that? In the woods like an animal?”

  Gracie shrugged. That’s what she’d done earlier when nobody was looking.

  It was late afternoon and to the east the sun shimmered across the surface of the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. Small lazy waves lapped against pink football-sized rocks on the shoreline, making background music like a cool jazz soundtrack. Far across the lake, dark timbered mountains plunged sharply into the water. The sultry warm afternoon was being penetrated by slight currents of colder air washing down through the trees from the mountains to the west.

  Gracie was tired, sore, hungry, and mentally overwhelmed with the sights, sounds, and smells of the trip so far. She’d not only fallen in love with Strawberry, she was falling in love with the park itself. They’d seen a bull and a cow moose in the willows, five bison grazing on a treeless sagebrush hillside, and a bald eagle feeding on a fish. The national symbol stood on the bank of the river, tearing bloodred fillets off the sides of the trout and eying the riders as they passed. When they rode over the ridge, the Yellowstone River valley sprawled out before them. The vista was made up of endless mountains, lakes, clouds, and trees as far as she could see. All of it was lit in golden afternoon sunlight. The vastness and altitude made her slightly out of breath, and exhausted her.