Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  Her dad said, “We’re not exactly sure what happened.” To Danielle, he asked, “Did the guy say anything at all?”

  “No. He just coughed and laughed.”

  “He laughed?”

  Gracie and Danielle exchanged guilty looks.

  “Gracie thought he did,” Danielle said.

  “Did you feel threatened?” Rachel Mina asked them both.

  “Pretty much, yeah,” Danielle said.

  Said Gracie, “They should let us carry bear spray.”

  “Or they should build a real fucking toilet,” Danielle mumbled.

  “Language,” their dad said, and Gracie caught him shooting a quick glance to Rachel Mina to see her reaction to the profanity.

  “Sorry.”

  Her dad said, “Did you consider maybe he was as embarrassed to find you girls as you were? I mean, I’ve stumbled into a bathroom before and found somebody in it. It’s always a shock and I’ve been embarrassed. I remember opening the door on a stall once in a gas station and seeing this fat guy on the toilet looking at me. We were both kind of horrified.”

  Rachel Mina laughed politely.

  Her dad continued, “I remember I didn’t say anything—I was too red-faced. I just shut the door and went outside the station. When the guy finally came out neither one of us looked at each other. He went on his way, I went on mine. We both sort of pretended it didn’t happen, you know?”

  Gracie hadn’t thought about it that way and she felt a needle of doubt creep in. Maybe they had overreacted with their shouting and Danielle calling him a pervert and all. Who would want to respond after being called a pervert? And much of the panic she’d felt earlier was more as a result of thinking she was lost in the forest than anything anyone did.

  Still …

  * * *

  As they entered the trees Gracie did a 360-degree pivot to see if anyone was watching them carefully. Dakota waved from near the firepit where she was breaking sticks into kindling. No one else met her eyes.

  * * *

  Within five minutes she found the bog. The footprint was gone, obscured in the mud by a gnarled knot of pitchwood that had been dropped on top of it. Whoever had left the print had crushed it out of existence.

  “It was here,” she said to her dad and Rachel.

  “I’m sure it was,” he said, waggling his eyebrows in a way of saying maybe they’d been mistaken.

  “It was,” Gracie said with less assurance.

  “Who knows what we thought we saw?” Danielle said. “You know how you get. Remember when you used to say there was a werewolf under your bed?”

  Her dad stifled a smile. Rachel looked away.

  Gracie hated her sister at that moment.

  * * *

  When they returned to the camp, Jed was setting up the aluminum cooking station—a series of interconnected boxes that became a counter, sink, and chuck box—and Dakota set a coffeepot over the fire. James Knox, Drey Russell, and K. W. Wilson sat on separate logs watching the fire burn. All of them looked up as the Sullivans and Rachel entered the camp from the trees.

  “Everything all right?” Jed asked.

  “Fine,” Gracie’s dad said quickly. He wanted to preempt either of his daughters. To say something now, Gracie thought, would seem silly. She collapsed on a log bench to watch the fire across from her dad and Danielle, who chose another log. Rachel sat next to Gracie, saying nothing but sitting close enough that Gracie felt the woman was sympathizing with her. That was nice.

  “You folks might want to get your stuff all laid out in your tents,” Dakota said. “We’ll have dinner ready in about an hour and it’ll get dark fast. This way, you won’t have to try to unpack everything by flashlight.”

  Her dad slapped his knees and stood up. “Makes sense.”

  As Gracie rose she noticed Wilson had changed into moccasins. Maybe, she thought, so they wouldn’t see that his boots had been muddy.

  15

  Cody chain-smoked cigarettes in his room at the Gallatin Gateway Inn, breaking the filters off each stick and lighting the new one from the cherry stub of the old one. It had only taken him two minutes to dismantle the smoke detector on the ceiling by unscrewing the faceplate and disconnecting the white and red wires. He hoped he’d remember to put it all right before he checked out in the morning.

  He paced and surveyed his new gear piled on the bed. Before the stores closed, he’d found Ariat cowboy boots that didn’t hurt his feet at Powder Horn Sportsman’s Supply on Main as well as a straw cowboy hat, chaps, jeans, two sets of nylon saddlebags, and denim jacket. He’d felt foolish buying Western wear, but Bull Mitchell had insisted. Everything else he needed—sleeping bag, pad, water filter, daypack, .40 caliber Smith & Wesson cartridges, .223 rounds for his scoped departmental AR-15, a saddle sheath for the rifle, Steiner binoculars—he found at Bob Ward Sporting Goods on Max Avenue. Rounding out his purchases was a plastic grocery bag packed with two cartons of cigarettes, a long sleeve of Stride gum packets, plastic bottles of tonic water, and instant coffee. He’d spent five agonizing minutes staring at a pint of Wild Turkey behind the clerk’s head—Just one pint, just one, what could it hurt? Hell, he thought, he’d save it until he had Justin with him and the killer in cuffs or in the ground. It would be his reward.

  While he argued with himself he tried to conjure up the image of Hank Winters saying, “Once you start you cannot stop. That is our curse.” Instead, the image of Hank was of a roasted and bloated arm reaching up from the black muck in the rain. And when the eager young clerk behind the counter asked, “May I help you?” Cody snapped, “Go to hell,” and stomped out of the place.

  He felt guilty for that now.

  * * *

  He was pleased to find out they had available rooms at the Gallatin Gateway Inn—a restored grand hotel from the early railroad days—because it was less than a half mile from the headquarters of Wilderness Adventures. The female receptionist wore a crisp white shirt and sniffed at him, saying, “Please keep in mind we have a strict no-smoking policy here.”

  “I thought this was a railroad hotel,” Cody said. “Railroaders smoked.”

  “At one time,” the clerk said. “Many many years ago. And there aren’t any railroaders around here anymore, if you noticed.”

  “So this is a snooty place,” he said.

  “Not at all,” she said crisply.

  He winked at her and gave her his credit card. After she took the imprint, he hauled all his gear to his room to unwrap his purchases, clip off the price tags, and fill two new nylon saddlebags. To hell with Bull Mitchell’s twenty-pound limit, he thought.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time he had everything packed. He’d made several trips to and from his Ford. There were things in the tool box and investigations lockers he wanted to take with him, including his rain gear. He was pleased he remembered to bring the Motorola Iridium 9505A handheld satellite phone. He’d stashed it in his SUV a few months ago after he stole it from the evidence room. Drug runners had used the phone so they wouldn’t be tracked via their cell phone calls by law enforcement, and the case was a slam dunk because the bad guys turned on each other so the phone was never introduced in court. The phone was small for a sat phone, less than a pound, and cost sixteen hundred dollars retail. It had three and a half hours of talk time without recharging and thirty-eight hours of stand-by time. He stuffed it in a saddlebag.

  Then he sat at the small desk in the room, turned on the ancient banker’s lamp, and placed his cell phone within reach, waiting for Larry to call. It had been way too long not to have heard from him since he faxed the material, he thought. His partner must know something by now—he’d had the sheets all afternoon. Cody vowed to himself that if Larry didn’t call him by midnight he’d break his pledge and track Larry down like a dog.

  He poured a glass of tonic over ice and lit yet another cigarette, and opened the file he’d taken from Margaret Cooper. He looked at his list of suspects:

  1.
Anthony D’Amato

  2. Walt Franck

  3. Justin Hoyt

  4. James Knox

  5. Rachel Mina

  6. Tristan Glode

  7. Donna Glode

  8. André Russell

  9. Ted Sullivan

  10. Gracie Sullivan

  11. Danielle Sullivan

  12. K. W. Wilson

  On the bottom of the page he scrawled,

  13. Jed McCarthy

  14. Dakota Hill

  He thought, Everyone on the list could be the killer. Except Justin, of course.

  The applications had arrived in Jed McCarthy’s office throughout the past year. They were designed to elicit information Jed needed to know to plan the trip and to match up horses with riders. There was a short questionnaire about dietary restrictions, riding ability, allergies, medical issues, and emergency contact information. The last item on the application was “What do you hope to gain from this backcountry wilderness experience?” Cody wished there were more questions and information but he was grateful he had what he had. He hoped Larry was running the whole lot of them through every criminal background database he could access.

  Anthony D’Amato, thirty-four, was from Brooklyn, New York, and worked for Goldman Sachs. He was married, no children. He weighed 185 pounds and listed his wife Lisa as his emergency contact. He’d ridden a horse once, at the Iowa State Fair when he was visiting relatives as a teenager. He answered the last question, “To not be eaten by a wild animal.”

  Walt Franck, fifty-four, listed his home locations as Aspen and Fort Collins, Colorado, as well as Omaha. He was a commercial Realtor and developer of strip malls in the Mountain West and Midwest. He was soon to be married to Jenny, Cody’s ex, and listed her as his emergency contact. Cody snorted derisively when he saw His Richness listed his weight as 220 pounds, and he planned hereafter to refer to him as “His Fat Richness.” Walt was a novice rider, and he hoped the trip would “provide unique fly-fishing locations and bonding opportunities for me and my future stepson.” Cody snorted again.

  Justin Hoyt, seventeen, Fort Collins, 165 pounds, stepson of His Fat Richness, was next. Cody recognized the handwriting on the application as Jenny’s, and it elicited a sudden desire for her again that had been rekindled the night before. He shook it off and continued reading. She said Justin wanted to experience “nature and outdoor skills.”

  “Shit,” Cody said. “Send him to me in Montana. I could do that.” But he doubted Justin had even seen the application, much less discussed it with his mother.

  James Knox, thirty-seven, Manhattan. Not married but had a partner named Martha, who was also his emergency contact. Worked as an executive with Millennium Capital Advisors and weighed 180 pounds. He had no experience with horses, and wrote that he and his two friends wanted to experience “the nature and diversity of Yellowstone while waiting for the market to come back.”

  Cody smiled at that, and skipped ahead in the stack to find the third of the buddies.

  André Russell, thirty-nine, of Manhattan. Married, two children, a boy and a girl, ages twelve and nine. Wife and emergency contact was named Danika. A VP with J. P. Morgan and had ridden horses at stables in Central Park to prepare for the trip. Cody was impressed by that. For his ambition for the trip he wrote, “To try and keep Tony D’Amato from being eaten by wild animals.”

  Cut-ups, Cody thought. Or liars. A three-man team of killers from the East? He shook his head. The idea didn’t grab him, and seemed much too cinematic and far-fetched. He moved on.

  Rachel Mina was single. She didn’t indicate whether she was divorced, widowed, or never married. A hospital administrator on leave from Chicago. She was thirty-seven and weighed 115 pounds. In Cody’s experience, that meant he should add a few years and at least ten pounds, so he scratched in “40” and “125” on the page. Mina indicated she was a vegetarian (fish was okay) and intermediate rider. She wrote: “Discovery tour.”

  He wondered what “on leave” meant. His first thought was she seemed to be the only one of the clients thus far who might have had the free time—and means—to visit homes in four states and leave bodies and ashes behind. But a woman, and a single one at that?

  Discovery tour, Cody mouthed, squinting through smoke at the page. It sounded phony and new-agey, he thought. Or facetious. And an interaction between a hospital administrator and Hank Winters seemed possible.

  He placed her application aside from the others into what he thought of as the hot stack.

  Tristan Glode was the president and CEO of The Glode Company of St. Louis. Cody didn’t know what the company did but planned to find out. Glode was sixty-one and claimed to be an expert rider. He’d indicated he weighed 211 pounds and had written in the margin that he had bad knees and would prefer a Tennessee walker for a horse. In the margin, someone (Jed?) had scribbled, “Call Pat.” Cody guessed Pat, whomever he or she was, knew of a walker that could be leased for the trip.

  In the space for what Tristan was seeking, he wrote, “TBD.” To be determined.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Cody grumbled, thinking the man sounded arrogant. Asking for a specifically gaited horse, claiming to be an expert rider, listing his weight at 211 pounds. Anyone normal would write “210,” Cody thought.

  He put Glode’s application in the hot stack with Mina’s. Now he had two prime suspects.

  Then he read the next application: Donna Glode, sixty, St. Louis, 130 pounds. Another expert rider. For what she was seeking she wrote, “Yellowstone by horseback. A peaceful journey.”

  So, husband and wife. Cody reached over and pulled Tristan’s application and put it on the cold pile along with his wife’s.

  Ted Sullivan, forty-five, was divorced and lived in Minneapolis. He was a 185-pound software engineer with a firm called Anderson/Sullivan/Hart. He’d scratched an “X” between beginner and intermediate, slightly closer to beginner. Very precise and engineerlike, Cody thought. And in carefully printed handwriting, Sullivan said, “I hope to gain a closer and more intimate relationship with my daughters, Gracie and Danielle. I hope it will be the greatest shared experience of our lives.” He listed his emergency contact as his ex-wife.

  Nice, Cody thought. Heartfelt. He skimmed over the applications for Sullivan’s daughters, ruling them out immediately.

  He started to toss the three documents on the cold pile, then stopped himself. He retained Ted’s app and looked it over again. At first, he’d thought there would be no way for the father to have done the crimes with teenage girls around, and based out of Minneapolis. But because the man was divorced, that meant it was possible the girls hadn’t been with him until recently. Cody had never heard of Anderson/Sullivan/Hart but the fact that it was simply a string of surnames and that they apparently felt no need to add “software” or “consulting” or “business solutions” to the end of it indicated that they either wanted to be thought of highly or they were prestigious. Meaning it was a good likelihood Sullivan traveled. Cody often saw men like Sullivan in airports; road warriors who were constantly on their Bluetooth cell phones and computers, those things hanging out of their ears, talking to clients all over the country and checking in with their colleagues to form strategies and solutions.

  But would a cold-blooded killer pause to take his daughters on a wilderness pack trip? Cody asked himself. His answer was, not likely. Still, though, he couldn’t rule him out and he put the application between the hot and cold stacks.

  Cody looked at the last application and whistled. As he read over it he started to nod. Jesus:

  K. W. Wilson, fifty-eight, Salt Lake City, Utah. No marital status indicated. No occupation listed except “transportation.” One hundred seventy pounds and an intermediate rider. Under dietary restrictions Wilson had scrawled, “No cheese.” For what he was seeking, Wilson had written, “Fishing and adventure.”

  Cody said to the application, “Congratulations, you’re now number one,” and placed it on the hot stack.


  Doubts remained, however, if he was even on the right track.

  * * *

  Cody remembered seeing a business center in the lobby with two computers for guests. He gathered the applications back into the file to take them downstairs. He’d find more about all of the names, as well as get some background on The Glode Company, Anderson/Sullivan/Hart, Rachel Mina’s hospital, and anything he could locate on K. W. Wilson.

  His cell went off and danced across the surface of the desk since he’d set it to ring and vibrate.

  He checked the display: Larry.

  “About time,” he said.

  “Are you sitting down?” Larry asked.

  16

  Gracie wished she’d unpacked her heavier jacket because when the sun doused behind the mountains the temperature dropped a quick twenty degrees or more within minutes, as if the thin mountain air was incapable of retaining the afternoon heat. She thought about going back to her tent to dig out her hoodie, but the instant darkness didn’t encourage a trip and the warmth and light of the campfire held her in place as if it had strong gravitational pull.

  She was sitting on a smooth downed log with Danielle and Justin. She couldn’t stop staring into the fire, which was mesmerizing. The meal had been huge and consisted of things she normally didn’t like that much: steak, baked potatoes, baked beans, half a cob of corn dripping with butter. She’d wolfed most of it down, leaving only a quarter of the steak. She had no idea why she’d felt so hungry, or how the food possibly tasted so good. The apple cobbler baked in a jet-black Dutch oven was one of the best things she’d ever eaten, and she’d had two helpings of it. Her mouth still tasted of cinnamon from the cobbler and hot fat from the meat. Now, the entire meal sat in her stomach as heavy as a rock, and it made her sleepy and uncomfortable.

  Normally, Gracie hated it when portions of food touched each other on her plate. This time, though, she didn’t care that the steak tasted of bean juice and the potato turned pink because it sat in pooled grease. It was all so wonderful she’d nearly forgotten about what had happened earlier. But not completely.