Free Fire

by C. J. Box

  “Joe, did you hear me?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I said, do you know what we call it?”

  “No.”

  “Yellowstone Time. Everybody here is on Yellowstone Time.”

  “I see,” he said, distracted.

  They drove under the arch with the words FOR THE BENEFIT AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE carved into the rock. The corner was still scarred and had not been patched. It receded in his rearview mirror.

  “Joe, are you okay?” Demming asked.

  “Why?”

  “Your face is white. Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  “Yes.”

  She settled back in her seat, silent, but stealing looks at him.

  “I haven’t seen that arch for twenty-one years,” Joe said finally. “It brings back all kinds of bad memories. I’m sorry, but it sort of took me by surprise.”

  “A stone archway took you by surprise?” she said gently.

  He nodded. “My family used to vacation in the park. This is the way we came in. I still have pictures of us standing by the arch, my dad and mom, my brother and me. Victor was two years younger. We were close. The park was our special place, maybe because it was the only place where my dad was happy. He loved Teddy Roosevelt’s words: ‘For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.’ He used to say it all the time.”

  Joe hesitated, surprised how hard it was to tell the story, surprised he wanted to tell it.

  Demming didn’t prompt him for more. They drove north through Paradise Valley in Montana as the morning sun poured over the Absaroka Mountains.

  He swallowed, continued. “I was in college. On my brother’s sixteenth birthday he called me in my dorm room at two in the morning. He was drunk and real upset. His girlfriend had dumped him that day and he was, well, sixteen. Everything was a crisis. He wanted to talk but I told him to go home, get some sleep, I had a test in the morning.”

  Joe slowed while a rancher and two cowboys herded cows down the borrow pit next to the highway. Puffs of condensation came out of their mouths like silent word balloons. Calves bawled. When they were past, Joe sped up.

  “After I hung up on him, Victor went home like I told him but took my dad’s car. Stole it, actually. He drove five hours in the middle of the night and crashed it head-on into that arch. The police said later they estimated he was going a hundred and ten miles an hour.”

  She said, “My God.”

  “We stayed at the Mammoth Hotel for the funeral. Victor’s buried in the Gardiner cemetery somewhere. My dad said he didn’t want him back. I haven’t been to his grave since.”

  Tears formed in his eyes and he didn’t want them there. He wiped brusquely at his face with the back of his hand, hoping she didn’t see them.

  “Do you want to turn around and go there?”

  Joe turned his head away from her. “Later, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “I’m sorry I started your morning out with such a downer.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  “Okay.”

  What he didn’t tell her, couldn’t tell her, was that when his family returned home after the funeral his mother never unpacked. She left without saying good-bye. His mother and father blamed each other for Victor’s death, although Joe knew it was his fault. The implosion had been in the cards for years, fueled by alcohol. He went back to college after that. While he was gone, his father sold the house and vanished as well. Getting back at her, Joe supposed. He’d not heard from either of them in years, although an Internet search by Marybeth indicated his mother had remarried and moved to New Mexico. His father’s name produced no hits. Joe tried not to think of them at all, and asked Marybeth to stop searching. His parents could be happy, or dead. His family consisted of Marybeth and the girls. Period.

  AFTER THEY CLEARED Bozeman, Joe said, “Really, I’m sorry about telling you that story. Don’t pay any attention to me. Forget you heard it.”

  She was puzzled. “You probably needed to get it out.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “It’s okay, Joe.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said. “I’m not really a touchy-feely guy and I don’t want you to think I’m sensitive.”

  She laughed and shook her head, reached over and patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry—your secret’s safe with me.”

  He glowered at her.

  JOE SAID, “YOU mentioned last night that the park has its own language. What are some of the other terms you can think of unique to here?”

  She smiled. “Over the years, I’ve kept a list of them. ‘Bub ble queens’ are laundry room workers; ‘pearl divers’ are dishwashers; ‘pillow punchers’ change sheets on the beds; ‘heavers’ are waiters and waitresses. All guests are called ‘dudes’ behind their backs long before everybody called everybody dudes.”

  “What are flamers?” Joe asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I read Hoening’s e-mails to prospective women, he always wrote, ‘We’ll go hot-potting and light a couple of flamers.’ ”

  Demming shrugged. “I’m not sure. Zephyr people have their own language within a language.”

  “Is he talking about dope?”

  “I assume.”

  “Maybe Layborn was on to something,” Joe said.

  “Maybe.”

  THEY STOPPED FOR lunch at Rocky’s in West Yellowstone. It was one of the few places open. The streets were deserted, most businesses closed until the winter season. While they waited for their sandwiches, Joe surveyed the crowd. Everyone looked local and had the same logy listlessness about them as the people he saw in Mammoth; no doubt recovering from the tourist season, he thought.

  “James Langston,” Joe asked Demming, “what’s he like?”

  “The chief ranger? He’s a bureaucrat of rare order. I’ve always found him arrogant and very political. He didn’t get to where he’s at by being everyone’s friend, that’s for sure. I heard him say once he thinks he’s underappreciated given all he has to put up with. By underappreciated he meant underpaid. Ha! He should take home my government paycheck.”

  Joe said, “Maybe he should quit the Park Service and work in the private sector if he wants more money.”

  “What—and have to be accountable to shareholders? Work past five? And not live in a mansion that’s financed by taxpayers? Are you crazy, Joe? What are you saying?”

  She caught herself and looked horrified. “But I shouldn’t be saying that.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” Joe said slyly. “Why do you suppose he was checking up on me?”

  She sighed. “I’m sure he just wants you gone. He doesn’t want this McCann thing in the news again.”

  “Speaking of McCann,” Joe said. “We’re in his hometown. Have you guys kept track of him since he was released?”

  “I assume he’s back here,” she said, “that he came home. If he left I haven’t heard. Why, do you want to check up on him?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Now?”

  “I’m curious. Aren’t you?”

  IN THE CAR, Joe turned on Madison.

  “This isn’t the road to Bechler,” Demming said.

  “Nope.”

  “Then what . . .”

  He gestured out the window. “Look.”

  The law office of Clay McCann was a simple single-story structure made of logs. It looked like the type of place that was once an art gallery or a Laundromat.

  “Think he’s in there?” she asked.

  Joe shrugged, but felt a tug of anxiety. He stared at the law office as if he might get a better read on McCann by studying it. The news photos of McCann made the lawyer look bland and soft. Joe wanted to see him in the flesh, look into his eyes, see what was there. Joe parked the Yukon on the other side of the street.

  “Maybe we should go in and say hello,” Joe said.

  As they climbed ou
t, Joe dug the Glock out of his daypack and shoved it into his Wranglers behind his back.

  “Did you have that gun in the park?” Demming asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re breaking the law. You can’t have firearms in the park.”

  “I know.”

  “Joe . . .”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I can’t hit anything with it.”

  She continued to shake her head at him as they crossed the street.

  Joe entered the office, Demming behind him. A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman sat at a reception desk reading a glossy magazine. She looked as out of place as a nail salon in a cow pasture and she raised a face filled with undisguised suspicion.

  “Is Clay McCann in?” Joe asked.

  “Who are you?” she asked in a hard-edged East Coast accent.

  “I’m Joe, this is Judy.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To see Clay McCann.”

  “Sorry, he’s not in at the moment and you don’t have an appointment,” she said, running a lacquered nail down a calendar on her desk. Joe noted there were no appointments at all written on it.

  “When will he be back?”

  “He’s off making a call at the supermarket,” she said, apparently unaware how odd that sounded. “That takes him hours sometimes. So, Punch and Judy, if you want to meet with him you can schedule an appointment.”

  “You’re his secretary?”

  She performed what amounted to a dry spit take. “Secretary? Hardly. I’m Sheila D’Amato and I’m stuck in this one-horse town. I’m filling in because his real secretary quit.”

  Joe and Demming looked at each other. Joe didn’t want to wait, neither did Demming.

  “We’ll be back,” Joe said, handing Sheila his card, as did Demming. He used the opportunity to steal a look through an open door behind Sheila into what was undoubtedly McCann’s office. One entire wall was filled with Montana statute books. There was a messy desk stacked high with unopened mail. On a credenza behind McCann’s desk were binders emblazoned with corporate names and logos: Allied, Genetech, BioCorp, Schroeder Engineering, EnerDyne. The names rang no bells, but the collection of them struck the same discordant note as Sheila.

  “A game warden and a park ranger,” Sheila said, curling her lip with distaste. “Punch and Judy. I bet I know what you want to talk to him about.”

  Outside, Joe paused on the sidewalk to scribble the company names into a notebook he withdrew from his pocket. While he did, Demming said, “Let’s go, Punch.”

  “WHY WOULD HE be making a call at the supermarket?” Demming asked as they cleared West Yellowstone. “I assume he’s using a pay phone. Why not just call from his office?”

  “Probably thinks his lines are tapped,” Joe said. “Or he doesn’t want Sheila D’Amato to know what he’s up to.”

  “What is he up to?”

  10

  TO GET TO BECHLER RANGER STATION, THEY DROVE south toward Ashton, Idaho, skirting the western boundary of the park, which loomed darkly to the east and was constantly in sight. The terrain opened up into plowed fields, and they caught a glimpse of the Tetons on the horizon before turning back toward Yellowstone. The Bechler area was dense and heavily wooded. Stray shafts of sunlight filtered through the tree branches to the pine needle floor. Deadfall littered the ground. There was no traffic on the road. Joe pulled into the ranger station and parked facing an old-fashioned hitching post.

  The station had the feel of a frontier outpost, very much unlike the government buildings at Mammoth. There were five rough log structures built on short stilts, including a barn with horses in the corral, a long bunkhouse with a porch, and a small visitor center the size of a large outhouse. At the western corner of the complex was a trailhead for a narrow rocky path that meandered into the forest. No one was about, but a generator hummed in one of the buildings.

  They clomped up the wooden stairway and entered the station, surprising a young seasonal ranger behind the counter.

  “Wow,” the man said, “I didn’t see you pull in.”

  Joe smiled. “It gets lonely here, huh?”

  The ranger, whose name tag said B. Stevens, nodded. “You’re the first people here today. It gets real slow this late in the season.”

  B. Stevens hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and hadn’t combed his hair that morning. He was the polar opposite of the spit-shined James Langston Joe had met that morning.

  Demming took over, telling Stevens they were following up on the murders, that Joe was with the State of Wyoming and she was providing assistance. While they talked, Joe flipped through the guest register, going back to July 21.

  “Stevens was working that morning,” Demming told Joe. “He was here when Clay McCann checked in.”

  “I was here when he came back too,” Stevens said with unmistakable pride. “He put his guns right here on this counter and told me what he’d done. That’s when I called for backup.”

  Joe nodded, asked Stevens to recall the morning. Stevens told the story without embellishment, replicating the chain of events Joe had studied in the incident reports.

  “When he checked in before going on his hike,” Joe asked, “did you see any weapons on him?”

  Stevens said he didn’t, McCann must have left them in his car. What struck him, though, was how McCann was dressed, “like he’d just taken all of his clothes out of the packages. Most of the people we see down here are hard-core hikers or fishermen. They don’t look so . . . neat.”

  “He didn’t seem nervous or jumpy?”

  “No. He just seemed . . . uncomfortable. Like he was out of his element, which he was, I guess.”

  “Can you remember how much time he spent signing in? Did he do it quickly, or did it take a few minutes?”

  Stevens scratched his head. “I just can’t recall. No one’s asked me that before. He didn’t make that much of an impression on me. The first time he was in here, I mean. When he came back with those guns, that’s what I remember.”

  “Can I get a copy of this page he signed in on?”

  Stevens shot a look at Demming, said, “We don’t have a copy machine here. We’ve been requesting one for years, but headquarters won’t give us one.”

  “Bureaucracy,” Demming mumbled.

  Joe asked if he could borrow the register and send it back, and the ranger agreed.

  “We can’t even get a phone line,” Stevens said. “In order to call out we use radios or cell phones that get a signal about an hour a day, if that.”

  Joe said, “Does this entrance have a camera set up at the border like the others?”

  Stevens laughed. “We have a camera,” he said, “but it hasn’t worked for a few years. We’ve requested a repairman, but . . .”

  “We were thinking of hiking to the crime scene,” Joe said. “Is it straight down that trail out there?”

  “We were?” Demming asked, slightly alarmed.

  Stevens nodded. “There’s a fork in the trail right off, but it’s well marked.” The ranger hesitated. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “Yup.”

  Stevens looked at Demming, then back at Joe. “Be damned careful. This area has become pretty well known with all of the publicity. They call it the Zone of Death once you cross the line into Idaho. Lots more people show up here than they used to. Some of them get as far as the border but chicken out and come back giggling. But others are just plain scary-looking. The Zone draws them, I guess. They want to be in a place with no law. It’s not my idea of a good time, but we can’t stop them from walking into it if they’ve paid their fee and signed in. Personally, I think we ought to close the trail until the situation is resolved, or everybody just forgets about what happened.”

  Demming asked, “Are there people in there now?”

  Stevens shrugged. “It’s hard to say. More folks have signed in than have come out. Of course, the stragglers could have gone on from here, or come back after we’re closed. But you never
know. Our rangers are a little reluctant to patrol in there now, if you know what I mean. They’re afraid of getting am-bushed by somebody who thinks they can’t ever be prosecuted for it.”

  “You’re right,” Demming said. “We should close the trail.”

  “We’ll be okay in a few weeks,” Stevens said, “when the snow comes. We’ve had twelve feet by Halloween in the past. That’ll give us the winter to make our case.”

  Joe thanked Stevens and left with Demming. “Why did you take the register?” Demming asked.

  Joe showed her the page with Clay McCann’s name on it. Above his name were signatures from the day before for R. Hoening, J. McCaleb, C. Williams, and C. Wade. They listed their destination as “Nirvana.”

  Joe said, “If he wanted to make sure they were here, all he had to do was read the register.”

  As they stood near the Yukon they both looked at the trailhead, as if it were calling to them.

  “I don’t know, Joe . . .” Demming said cautiously.

  “I want to see the crime scene,” Joe said. “It’ll help me get my bearings. You can wait for me here if you want.”

  She thought about it for a few seconds, looking from Joe to the trailhead and back before saying, “I’m going with you.”

  THE SIGN AT the fork in the trail indicated it was thirty miles to Old Faithful to the right, two miles to Robinson Lake on the left. The trail on the right fork was more heavily traveled. They went left.

  The forest closed in around them. Because there was no plan or program to clear brush in the park, the floor of the timber on both sides of the trail was thick and tangled with rotting deadfall. Joe was struck by how “un-Yellowstone-like” this part of the park was. There were no geysers or thermal areas, and they’d seen no wildlife. Only thick, lush vegetation and old-growth trees. He studied the surface of the trail as he hiked, looking for fresh tracks either in or out, and stopped at a mud hole to study a wide Vibram-soled footprint.

  “Someone’s been in here recently,” he said.

  “Great,” Demming whispered.

  There was no delineation sign or post to indicate where they crossed the Idaho border. Joe assumed they had because the line, according to his map, was less than two hundred yards from the ranger station and they’d gone much farther than that. The trail meandered at a slight decline, but it was easy walking.