Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  Knox stepped out from behind the kitchen setup. “Jed, I’m worried as hell about my friends. I wish I would have gone with you to find them.”

  He said to Knox, “I’m going back after them but I’ve got to switch horses. I need a better mount.”

  Suddenly, Rachel Mina asked, “What did you do to them?”

  It felt as though a shard of glass had been shoved under his skin.

  “Excuse me?” he said, still maintaining his smile.

  Her eyes flashed. “I said what did you do to them? Tristan, Wilson, Drey, and Tony? Did you hurt them and leave them back there?”

  Jed slowly removed his hat and stared at the inside of it. He ran his fingertips along the leather sweatband inside, as if testing for irregularities. He felt his stomach contract and it hurt a little to breathe.

  All eyes were on him.

  “Ma’am,” he said after a beat, “I don’t have any idea at all what you’re talking about or what you’re asking me.”

  From across the camp, Ted Sullivan said, “Jeez, Rachel…” He was aghast.

  “You heard me,” she said to Jed. “You’re picking us off one by one. I want to know why. I want to know what your game is and what you’re after. I mean, look at us. We’re no threat to you—”

  “Jesus, Rachel,” Ted Sullivan said to her. Then to Jed, “Man, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what got into her.” He strode across the camp with his arms out toward her.

  Sullivan said, “Rachel, really, I’ve never known you to jump to conclusions like this.” As he approached her she turned, said, “Ted, stay away. Don’t touch me.”

  Sullivan’s two daughters watched the scene open-mouthed. Jed couldn’t tell which side they were on.

  “This is getting out of hand,” Walt Franck said, slapping his thighs from where he sat on a log and using his hands to push himself to a standing position. “This isn’t helpful in any way.” He gestured toward Jed and said to Rachel, “This man has spent the best part of a day trying to track down a couple of his clients who left voluntarily in the middle of the night.

  “If I can fault him for anything, it’s for letting Drey and Tony take off on their own this morning to try and make things right. But given the circumstances,” Walt nodded toward Donna Glode, who looked back nonplussed, “I would have probably done the same thing. But no one threw them out, or pressured them to leave. To accuse him of…” He couldn’t say it. He shook his head as if ridding his thoughts of the unpleasant words. “It’s just crazy,” he said.

  “He’s right, Rachel,” Sullivan told her. “You’re not being helpful or positive. Please, let’s take a breath and calm down.” He grasped her by the arm and tried to spin her away, but she shrugged him off.

  “She might be right,” Gracie said, looking straight at her dad. Ted Sullivan dismissed his daughter with an angry wave. The girl’s face turned crimson.

  Jed said bluntly to Rachel, “I ain’t going to lose my temper here, lady. I know it’s a stressful situation. But making accusations with no proof at all isn’t helping anything.”

  He looked around the camp for assurance.

  And he got it from everybody, he thought. The only people who wouldn’t meet his gaze were Gracie and Rachel Mina. Dakota looked back, but she did so with an upward tilt of her chin and slitted eyes. Like she was making some kind of decision about him.

  A beat of silence, then two. Rachel Mina was being led away by Ted Sullivan. Jed watched them go, and noticed that after they’d cleared the camp and were in the trees Sullivan tried to hug her and reason with her, but she pulled away and stomped off alone. After she left, Sullivan stood in the trees with his head down and his shoulders slumped, a sad portrait of a weak but useful man, Jed thought. In a moment, Sullivan turned on his heel and walked the opposite way from where Rachel Mina had gone. Probably to break down and cry, Jed figured.

  Jed turned his attention to Dakota. “Please take this bay down to the corral and pick me out the best horse to ride and get it saddled up so I can go after our wayward boys. I’ve got to gather some more gear because I may be back pretty late. I’m not coming back without those strays.”

  “Thank you, Jed,” Knox said.

  Jed nodded, in his best friendly-like reaction.

  He walked the bay to Dakota, who still eyed him coolly. She took the reins, as instructed. That’s all he needed from her at the moment.

  * * *

  Gracie, Danielle, and Justin walked side by side toward the collection of tents on the grass. Justin and Danielle were holding hands, but Danielle seemed distracted and vacant.

  “Those people are just making me crazy,” Justin said, “They’re turning on each other instead of pulling together. I wish we could all go home now.”

  He seemed to be waiting for agreement from Danielle, which didn’t come.

  Danielle said to Gracie, “I can’t believe Dad acted like that. He really dissed you, didn’t he?”

  “Mmmm,” Gracie said. “He dissed Rachel, too.”

  Danielle said, “I thought he might take Rachel’s side and yours, too. I mean, he’s our dad. You don’t want your own dad to side with the other guy.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I guess that’s one thing,” Justin said. “My dad probably would stand with me. He’s like that. I guess I never really thought about it before.”

  “Lucky you,” Gracie said.

  “You know what?” Danielle said, letting go of Justin’s hand and stepping in front of him next to Gracie.

  Gracie said, “What?”

  “I’m not sure we can trust him.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I don’t,” Danielle said. “Not anymore.”

  * * *

  Dakota led Jed’s bay to the temporary electric corral. As she walked the horse the voices from the camp faded behind her. Jed was holding court; explaining to Knox, Walt, and Donna how he was going to go back down the trail and come back with Drey and Tony, at least. Saying he couldn’t promise Tristan and frankly didn’t care all that much about Wilson although he’d like to get all his horses back. That he’d likely be back deep into the night or early next morning at the latest. Explaining to Knox, once again, that he didn’t need his help.

  As Dakota turned off the electric fence charger and parted the string, she glanced up the hill toward the camp. Knox, Donna, and Walt were still there. Jed had apparently gone to his tent to retrieve gear or clothing he would need for a longer trip. Rachel and Ted were off quarrelling—or avoiding each other—somewhere.

  Her eyes swept the trees and the tents. The three teenagers were by themselves, walking away. No one was watching her from the camp.

  She picked up her pace and practically dragged the bay along behind her. The horse limped badly but she couldn’t care about that now. The grass was teeming with grasshoppers and they shot away like sparks through the air as she crossed the meadow. A plump one landed on her left breast and she brushed it away. There was a thick spruce in the middle of the makeshift corral and she led the horse behind it, so the trunk was between her and the people in the camp.

  Before opening Jed’s saddle panniers, she looked around again. She was in the clear.

  She fumbled with the straps of the dual panniers and loosened the top flap. Stretching on the toes of her boots, she pulled the lip of the bags down and peered inside. Jed’s handgun was on top. She thought she got a whiff of gunpowder.

  She pushed his rain gear aside and found his briefcase on the bottom of the pannier. Grasping it by the worn handle, she pulled it up and out. Jed’s rolled yellow raincoat came out with it and fell to her feet.

  Using the back of the bay like the surface of a desk, she placed the briefcase on it and unsnapped the hasps. They sprung up with two solid clicks.

  The manila folder she’d glimpsed the night before in their tent was on top of his other materials and she could see the corners of the printouts peeking beyond the stiff file cover.

  She took a deep breath and cente
red the file folder and reached for the smudged tab to open it.

  The white flash in front of her eyes was not another grasshopper, but the blade of a knife wielded by someone who pressed into her back, pinning her to the side of the bay. It sliced so deeply through the flesh of her throat she felt the steel scrape on bone.

  34

  The sounds in the trees became more pronounced; twigs cracking, the click of hooves against rock, the squeak of leather on leather, the nickering of horses. He felt more than saw the presence of heavy-bodied beings approaching en masse. Cody thought, How many of them are there?

  He glanced down at his rifle. Likely not enough bullets. And if they were armed? He might need to pull his Sig Sauer when the rifle was empty.

  Then a deep-throated shout: “Cody?” The voice carried through the trees.

  Cody closed his eyes and took a deep breath and stood up. “Bull?”

  “Where the hell are you?” Mitchell grumbled.

  “Here. Ahead of you, I think. In a clearing.”

  “Gotcha,” Mitchell said, “so don’t shoot me. I’m coming toward your voice.”

  “I won’t,” Cody said. “Who is with you? How many of you are there?”

  “Just one,” Mitchell said.

  Cody didn’t know if that meant just Mitchell or another. Nevertheless, he could feel heavy weights release from the tops of his shoulders. “I’ve got to say I’m glad you came back.”

  “It’s taking me a while,” Mitchell grumbled, “seeing I’ve been gathering up loose horses for miles.”

  Cody lowered his rifle and waited. He could hear Mitchell and the horses coming, picking their way through the timber and brush, but he couldn’t see them yet.

  Finally, a horse head with a white star blaze on its forehead pushed through the brush. Mitchell’s horse.

  “There you are,” Mitchell said, and Cody could see him. He was a big man but he sat the horse as if they were conjoined, and Cody had trouble discerning where the horse stopped and Bull Mitchell began.

  “Damn, I’m glad to see you,” Cody said. “Why’d you come back?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “As Hank the Cowdog says, there’s a thin line between heroism and stupidity.”

  Cody found himself grinning at the answer. “Then you’ll probably want your gun back.”

  “Yup.”

  Mitchell was leading Gipper and the packhorse that had run away. Behind them, tied with a series of lead ropes, were four more horses. The first three had empty saddles.

  The last one, a gray, had a rider. Cody was surprised and instinctively raised the rifle again. A dark man, hatless, glowered back at him. So there was another. The man rode oddly, shifting around subtly as if he were trying to maintain his balance, as if he were simply cargo. That’s when Cody noticed the man’s hands were cuffed behind him and he’d been lashed by the waist and legs to the saddle with rope he’d last seen looped on Mitchell’s saddle.

  “Says his name is Wilson,” Mitchell said. “I don’t care if you shoot him because he’s been nothing but trouble. But I was thinking you might want to talk with him, first.”

  “K. W. Wilson,” Cody said, “fifty-eight, Salt Lake City. Or, as I like to call you, Suspect Number One.”

  Wilson didn’t react. Cody noticed the contusion under Wilson’s left eye and his bloody and fattened lower lip.

  “Doesn’t like cheese,” Cody said, remembering Wilson’s trip registration.

  “I had to thump him a couple times,” Mitchell said, patting the butt of his rifle. “He didn’t want to work with me very much.”

  Cody thought Wilson didn’t give off any indication of fear—or innocence. Like so many criminals he’d encountered in lockup over the years, Wilson’s bearing was a dismissive mix of arrogance and regret. Not regret at what he’d been picked up for, but regret he’d been caught.

  Cody nodded. He wondered if he was meeting the killer of Hank Winters and the others.

  “I found a couple of things on him you might find interesting,” Mitchell said, leaning back and digging into his saddlebag. He produced a six-inch Buck knife in a sheath and a stubby handgun. He handed them both butt-first to Cody.

  Cody inspected the revolver, a snub-nosed .38 Special. It was a double-action Taurus six-shot revolver made of stainless steel with rubber grips. It had a two-inch barrel. He sniffed the muzzle and cracked open the cylinder.

  “Two rounds have been fired recently,” Cody said to Mitchell, who nodded.

  Cody snapped the cylinder home, spun it, and pointed the gun at Wilson. Wilson didn’t flinch. Cody said, “This is an odd choice of weapon to bring up here. It’s not big enough for bears and hard to hit anything at a distance because of the short barrel and fixed sights. I used to carry one of these as a backup in an ankle holster in Denver, but I knew this kind of piece is strictly for self-defense and it’s only good for close-in work. Meaning,” he said to Mitchell without taking his eyes off Wilson, “he was right on top of D’Amato and Russell when he shot them. Probably a couple of feet away, max. They knew him well enough to get close. I doubt it was an ambush. He probably looked right into their eyes before he pulled the trigger.”

  He slid the gun into his belt and drew the knife out of the sheath. The blade had been wiped clean but there was dark gummy residue where the fixed blade met the brass guard. Cody dug some out with his fingernail and tasted it. “Blood,” Cody said, then spat it out. To Wilson, “This is what you used on Tristan Glode, then. More close-in work.”

  He circled around Wilson and came up from behind him. He could sense the man start to stiffen, possibly anticipating the stab of the knife. Cody reached up and pressed the point of the blade to Wilson’s spinal column just to make him jump. But what he was interested in was an intimate view of Wilson’s bound hands.

  “You’ve got blood under the fingernails of your right hand,” Cody said. “Looks just like the blood on this knife. There’s blood spatter on your cuff, too, it looks like.”

  “Oh,” Mitchell said, digging something silver and square out of the front snap pocket of his shirt and flipping it through the air to Cody. “Something else. Check this out.”

  Cody fumbled the catch and reached down in the grass for the object. “I was hoping it was a pack of cigarettes,” Cody said.

  “Nope,” Mitchell said, “Wilson’s camera. You might want to take a look at some of the shots in there to see if there’s anyone you recognize. While you do that I’m gonna tie these horses up and get Wilson down.”

  “I’ll help you,” Cody said, doing the math. He assumed the three riderless horses had belonged to Tristan Glode, D’Amato, and Russell.

  Mitchell swung off and put his hand up to Cody. “Stay there, if you don’t mind, pard. The only thing you seem to know about horses is how to lose them.”

  Cody shrugged. “True enough.” He pushed buttons and flicked toggles on the digital camera until the display came alive. The first dozen shots were obviously from the departure area. People milled around eyeing horses, their faces mixes of excitement and anticipation as they got ready to get under way. There were vehicles in the background and glimpses of a long horse trailer with JED MCCARTHY’S WILDERNESS ADVENTURES painted along the side.

  As he advanced through the photos he tried to match up faces with the names and descriptions he’d memorized from the file he’d borrowed.

  The cowboy with the mustache was obviously Jed himself, shadowed by a younger woman in a floppy sweat-stained hat. He recalled her name: Dakota Hill.

  The older stiff couple were the Glodes. Cody recognized Tristan and winced. He’d been a regal man in bearing with striking silver hair, cool blue eyes, and a prominent chin.

  The father and his two teenage daughters were the Sullivans; Ted, Danielle, and Gracie. The youngest girl appeared to be much more animated than the older girl, who looked bored.

  A single woman, open face, attractive, looking away from the camera as if she was furious about being phot
ographed by him. Rachel Mina. Her face reminded him of the glare Jenny had once given him when he photographed her as she stepped out of the shower. It was the last time he ever did anything like that again. Cody wondered why Suspect Number Two was so angry at Wilson.

  Three men posed on their horses like the characters from the movie Three Amigos. The shot would have been amusing, Cody thought, if he hadn’t seen D’Amato’s and Russell’s mangled remains a couple of hours before.

  And there were Walt and Justin, sitting side by side on horseback. Cody felt his heart race. Justin looked older and more mature than when he’d seen him last. He had a weariness in his eyes and an easy smile as he looked over at Walt in the photo.

  Cody whispered, “Yes.” Until that second, he hadn’t been absolutely sure Justin was on the trip.

  The last three shots were taken in deep timber. Although not focused well, Cody could see they were of the two Sullivan girls. One was using a camp latrine.

  He looked up as Mitchell untied Wilson from the saddle. Wilson stared straight ahead.

  Mitchell said, “I found this guy about a mile from where I left you. Apparently, he’d gotten off his horse to pee and the horse ran off. I seem to be surrounded by goddamned amateurs. I heard him yelling obscenities and I sneaked into the trees. I finally found him chasing his horse around a meadow with that pistol in his hand, like the horse was gonna be threatened by him. He’s as good a horseman as you.”

  Cody studied Wilson’s face while Mitchell talked. It was inscrutable.

  “I watched him for a while. His horse finally stopped trotting at the edge of the meadow and Wilson here walked right up to it from behind. He didn’t know that when a horse pins its ears back and positions his butt toward you you need to get ready for a kick,” Mitchell said, and chuckled.

  Mitchell said, “Laid Wilson out. Caught him right in the chest. I rode out there to see if he was okay and he woke up going for his popgun. So I had to thump him a couple times. I took the liberty of borrowing a set of handcuffs from your gear. I hope you have a key somewhere.”