Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  Gracie said, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Rachel shot a puzzled look at Gracie over her shoulder, then shook her head and shrugged. Gracie got the impression Rachel had said things she didn’t mean to say.

  “Never mind me,” Rachel said. “Sometimes I just get going. You know how it is.”

  No, Gracie thought. She looked again at the backpack Rachel had strapped to her saddle. Something heavy in it. And Gracie thought about the fact that she hadn’t seen Dakota’s body. No one had, except Rachel. Just like she hadn’t seen her father. She took it on Rachel’s word he was there with her when they saw Jed murder Dakota.

  As she rode she found herself looking hard at Rachel in a different light. Justin was wrong. There might be good in everybody, but there could also be evil.

  Gracie continued to stare while her stomach knotted. There was a bulge next to Rachel’s calf that could be the handle of a long knife. Rachel said Dakota had her throat cut.

  Gracie couldn’t help herself. She lurched to the left and got sick, emptying her stomach on the grass.

  Rachel looked back with suspicion masquerading as concern, and said, “Are you okay, darling? Is this whole thing getting to you, poor girl?”

  Dusk gave way to darkness.

  40

  Jed McCarthy dug his headlamp out of his jacket and strapped it on the crown of his cowboy hat. He wasn’t ready to turn it on yet because there was still enough light to see, but that wouldn’t last much longer.

  Even after years of wilderness pack trips, he was still slightly awed by twilight in the mountains when for a short period of time a natural transition unfolded as the wind stopped and the hidden animals became still and quiet and the nocturnal predators began to stir awake. It was immensely quiet and he could hear each footfall of his horse and his own nervous breathing.

  Ahead of him, when the trees parted, he could see the massive J shape of the glacier in the bald side of the mountain. The glacier glowed light blue in the afterlight and it looked clean and pure and it seemed to beckon him.

  * * *

  His horse labored up the trail, climbing with a rocking motion. Jed sat forward in the saddle, urging him on. They continued to rise, switching back on sharp corners, but always going up. The pitch of the mountainside was getting so sharp he could reach out and touch the wall to his right at times. As it got darker he prayed the trail was passable and had not been blocked over the winter by rockslides or deadfall.

  Finally, the sky opened up and although it wasn’t pitch-dark yet he could see the sudsy wash of stars in the cloudless sky. The full moon was rising and would soon take over the sky and keep the mountain illuminated.

  His senses were on full alert. He was looking for anomalies. He noted a smudge of pale color in the shadowed branches of a pine tree and it caught his attention because it was out of place. He rode over and leaned and reached deep into the needles to retrieve it. It had some heft but was pliable and he pulled it out. A perfect little bird’s nest. Empty. The materials used to build it seemed unnatural, a blending of paper and fabric. He shook it and noted how spongy it was.

  Birds and mice made nests of whatever material was available. It seemed to Jed much too far from anywhere for the birds to use man-made fabric, but there it was. What had they found?

  He dropped the nest to the ground and rode on.

  * * *

  He was almost unaware of it at first, the dusting of snow on the ground in his peripheral vision. It was scattered and mixed in with the mat of pine needles.

  Then he thought, Snow? In July?

  He looked up. It wasn’t snowing, and it certainly wasn’t cold enough. Could it have snowed earlier in the day?

  “This makes no sense,” he mumbled to himself while he pushed his horse farther, up the trail and finally to the top and he emerged on a long flat bench of rock.

  He reined to a stop to take it all in. The glacier loomed above him like a dimly lit billboard. The bench was solid rock but puckered in places where shallow pools of water gathered from recent rains. Straight ahead of him, toward the face of the mountain, full-grown pine trees that had found purchase in cracks of the rock were knocked down. He could see where they’d been snapped off because the jagged trunks stood like a line of fence poles.

  Snow was everywhere on the ground but it wasn’t cold, and he dismounted. His boots thumped on the solid rock, and he led his horse to the side where the snow was thickest, where it was caught in short grass.

  He clicked on his headlamp and squatted down. The headlamp pointed wherever he looked, and he reached out to touch the snow.

  Scraps of paper. Thousands of them. None bigger than a square inch. It was the same material that had been used to construct the bird’s nest. He grasped the largest scrap he could find and lifted it into the pool of light. A pair of hooded and wise eyes stared back from the scrap. He recognized the eyes, and said, “Ben Franklin.”

  He stood, still holding the scrap between his thumb and forefinger. With his other hand, he reached up and twisted the lens of his headlamp to make the beam sharper.

  At the far end of the bench, beyond the sheared-off trees, looking like the last glimpse of a whale sounding off the coast, the V-shaped tail of the airplane stuck straight up out of a crevice where it had fallen after crashing the winter before.

  41

  “What is that out there in that field?” Mitchell grumbled. “An elk? It’s almost gettin’ too dark to see.”

  Cody looked up and squinted. Ahead of them, to the left of the trail in a moon-splashed clearing, was a horizontal dark form elevated above the grass. The form had been still as they approached but now it moved a few feet to the right. The figure was hard to make out because it was dark against a green-black wall of pine trees.

  “Damn if it isn’t another stray horse,” Mitchell said. The string of docile horses was behind him. “But it looks like there’s something on it.”

  Cody held his satellite phone up to his ear and was talking with Edna at dispatch in Helena. He was glad she was on duty and he’d ignored her pleas to tell her where he was and what had happened since she’d seen him last. When she took a breath, he said, “Edna, send a car up to Larry’s house in Marysville. I was talking to him ten minutes ago and I got cut off. I think something happened to him.”

  She repeated, “Something happened to him? What?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve called back four times since and he won’t pick up. Edna, send whoever you can as fast as you can and warn them there may be someone else in Larry’s house. Tell them to nail the guy and hold him. Go!”

  “Cody—”

  “Go!” Cody barked, and punched off.

  * * *

  Mitchell and Cody rode up to the stray horse. Mitchell said, “Be calm, Hoyt. Don’t rush it or charge it or you’ll make it panic and run away. Don’t bark out Go! anymore.”

  Cody hung slightly back and let Mitchell walk his gelding to the horse.

  There was something on its back. Cody’s first thought was it was a roll of carpet or a set of slim panniers the way it hung over on both sides of the horse. He could see the horse didn’t have a halter or bridle.

  “Easy now,” Mitchell cooed to the horse.

  It was a bay and it took a few unsteady steps forward as Mitchell approached. Cody said, “He’s lame.”

  “Yup,” Mitchell said, slipping off his mount and walking patiently toward the bay. With a movement as quick as it was gentle, he slipped a rope over the bay’s neck to keep it in place. The horse seemed docile but Cody could see white on the edges of its eyes. It wouldn’t take much to set it off.

  “Oh, no,” Mitchell said with what sounded like genuine sadness. “We’ve got a woman this time.”

  With that, he turned the bay and walked it a few steps into the moonlight.

  Her body was draped over the back of the horse facedown. Long brown hair hung limply, obscuring her face and ears. Her hands had been tied under the b
elly of the bay to her boots to keep the body secure.

  Cody gritted his teeth, and said, “Shit.”

  “Look at this,” Mitchell said, pointing to a thin gash on the bay’s haunch that glistened with fresh blood. “They tied the body on and gave the horse a prod to get it running away.”

  Mitchell looked up. “Do you know who she is?”

  “I think so.”

  “Want to make sure?”

  Cody tried to swallow, but couldn’t. He nodded.

  Mitchell gently grasped her hair with one hand and cupped her chin in the other and lifted her face up into the light.

  Cody could see the gaping wound across her throat and he tasted bile in his mouth.

  “Her name was Dakota Hill,” Cody said, his voice dry. “And we’re going to go find who killed her before there’s no one left.”

  * * *

  They approached the camp cautiously, even though Cody’s inclination was to storm it like Vikings. He could see a fire going, but only four people around it. Justin wasn’t one of them. Rachel Mina and Jed were gone as well.

  There were four adults huddling around the fire. The firelight on their faces made them look gaunt and shell-shocked.

  Mitchell had agreed to stay back in the trees to cover him with his hunting rifle as Cody walked his horse up. He kept looking for others in the camp. After all, there were nine tents pitched neatly in a meadow to the north of the camp. No one seemed to be in them.

  Cody had his rifle out and across the pommel as he rode up. He was locked and loaded. He’d checked his .40 to make sure there was one in the chamber with a full twelve-rounds in the magazine.

  Before they even knew he was there, before anyone looked up to see a strange rider approaching from the dark, Cody could feel a palpable sense of doom from the people sitting around the fire. Like they’d given in, defeated.

  He recognized Walt immediately. His Richness sat there with his hands hung between his knees, his head down. The skeletal woman must be Donna Glode. The younger, slim man who looked out of place had to be James Knox. And the nervous man, the one who sat by the others but didn’t seem to be with them, must be Ted Sullivan.

  Cody said, “Everybody stay where they are, I’m a cop.”

  Walt said, “Cody? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, Walt. Where the hell is my son?”

  Walt gathered himself to his feet and swallowed. “He’s gone, Cody. I don’t know where.”

  “Jesus,” Cody hissed, “what do you mean you don’t know?”

  Donna Glode looked up from the fire. “Four more horses are missing. We think Justin is with the two Sullivan girls and Rachel Mina. They sneaked out of here without a word to anyone.”

  Cody turned to Ted Sullivan: “Where are your girls?”

  “I don’t know,” Sullivan said, standing with closed fists, “but I want to find them. I’m coming with you.”

  Cody snorted. “Can you ride?”

  “Not really.”

  “Cody,” Mitchell said as he approached from the shadows, “I hate to break it to you like this, but you can’t ride worth a damn either.”

  Cody said to Mitchell, “You’ll stay here with these three?”

  Mitchell nodded.

  Cody said to Walt, “Do you want to come, too?”

  Walt sighed and looked away. “I’ll stay,” he said softly.

  Cody shook his head, disgusted. To Ted Sullivan, Cody said, “Come on, then.”

  42

  Gracie noticed how Rachel Mina’s shoulders tensed as she spurred her horse from the trail up into the open. Then Strawberry nickered and a horse up ahead nickered back. Rachel didn’t turn around in her saddle but Gracie saw the woman’s hand move back and untie the string bow on the top of the pack she’d retrieved from her tent.

  Gracie was beside herself. She had nothing but speculation to go on but with every foot they rode higher up the trail she became more convinced that everything they’d believed an hour before back at Camp Two was a fantasy. She hurt deeply and wanted to cry out for her dad and for herself.

  But there was little she could do. Rachel rode ahead on the trail and both Danielle and Justin were behind Gracie. The steep wall of the mountain hemmed her in on her right and the ground dropped off to the left. She couldn’t turn and run, or even turn to talk to her sister to convey her fears. It was getting dark and cold. She had no weapon.

  Rachel’s horse stepped up and over a solid lip of granite and Gracie could hear hoofbeats clatter on solid rock. In a moment Strawberry was on top as well. Danielle and Justin were right behind her.

  Rachel had reined to a stop next to a riderless horse tied to the trunk of a tree. She turned in her saddle and whispered, “I’m going to protect you. Do you understand?”

  Justin said, “Protect us? All I see is Jed’s horse.”

  Rachel ignored him. “Everybody get off. We’re going to walk the rest of the way. I need you all to keep completely silent, and I mean that.”

  Gracie looked to the others. Danielle looked miffed. She hated to be told what to do, especially if it involved silence. Justin was confused, and he scowled at the older woman.

  Reading the same reaction Gracie had seen, Rachel reached back into the open pack and came out with a large handgun. She waved it toward them.

  “Get off,” she said. “Now.”

  “Where’d you get that?” Justin asked, swinging off his horse. “I thought nobody was supposed to—”

  “Justin,” Danielle said sharply, cutting him off. She slid off her horse as well.

  Gracie felt fear grip her insides and seem to clamp her legs to Strawberry. She wasn’t sure she could move.

  “You too,” Rachel said to her. “Especially you.”

  Gracie found the will somewhere and stiffly climbed down.

  “Listen,” Rachel said to them, dismounting herself. “I don’t want you to be alarmed. I brought this for self-protection and I’m glad I did.”

  She moved closer to them as she talked so she wouldn’t have to raise her voice. Gracie noticed Rachel kept the revolver down by her side, but not exactly pointed away from them. And she also noticed that when Rachel climbed down from her horse her pant leg had ridden up and the knobby end of the knife handle in her boot was now out in the open. Gracie shot a glance at her sister and Justin to see if they’d picked up on the same thing. They hadn’t.

  “Look,” Rachel said, leaning closer. “That’s Jed’s horse but obviously he isn’t here. I don’t know where he is but we can’t be too cautious. We need to walk along here until we can find him. I hope nothing’s happened to him or anyone else is up here. But,” she said, gesturing toward the gun, “I want to be ready if there are any surprises.”

  Justin and Danielle nodded. They probably didn’t fully grasp what Rachel was saying, Gracie thought, because Rachel made no sense. But she’d said it urgently and with gravity and it had worked on them.

  Gracie said, “This isn’t about getting out of here, is it?”

  Rachel looked over at her with icy contempt. She said, “We can talk later, Gracie. Right now I need you to stay with me here and keep quiet. Do you understand?”

  “She does,” Danielle said, and elbowed Gracie in the back.

  “Good,” Rachel said, giving Gracie another glance for good measure. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  Gracie couldn’t really feel her legs, although they seemed to move okay. She led Strawberry through the darkness behind Rachel, followed by the others. Protect them from whom? she thought.

  She scarcely registered the snowlike substance gathered wherever there were tufts of grass.

  But when she looked up over Rachel’s shoulder she saw a shaft of yellow light flash across the tops of the trees to the right, then to the left. The effect reminded her of Hollywood floodlights coursing through the sky from the ground. Then she heard a muffled thump and clank up ahead.

  She was about to speak when Rachel snapped on her headlamp and illuminated
the white metal tail of the airplane.

  An airplane?

  “What the hell is that?” Justin said.

  “Shhhh,” Rachel cautioned him, holding a finger to his lips. Then, whispering, “All of you come up beside me. Bring your horses. Stand by me on both sides.”

  Gracie hesitated. What were they doing?

  “Come on,” Rachel said, heat in her voice. She was addressing Gracie directly.

  Reluctantly, Gracie walked up and stopped on Rachel’s right. Danielle and Justin stood abreast on Rachel’s left. All of their horses milled and sighed behind them. The thumping and banging continued from the opening of the crevice, out of view.

  Rachel raised her pistol toward the tail of the plane, and called, “Jed, you can come out now.”

  The sounds stopped.

  “Jed,” Rachel said, “we’re here. We know what you’ve found. You need to come out now.”

  Gracie held her breath. The night was still except for the gentle shuffling of the horses behind them, nosing along the rock surface for blades of grass.

  Suddenly, Jed McCarthy’s hat appeared above the rim of the crevice, followed by his face. Rachel’s headlamp light lit his features. His brow was furrowed in confusion and his mouth, as always, was hidden by his heavy mustache. He had a headlamp on as well, and the beam bobbed from Justin across to Gracie. That’s what she’d seen, Gracie thought, the beam of Jed’s headlamp escaping from within the crevice as he moved around down there.