Free Fire

by C. J. Box

  “Man!” he shouted. “Where’d he come from?”

  Demming squirmed in her seat, lap soaked with spilled hot coffee.

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “My fault. I wasn’t expecting anyone because we haven’t seen another car all morning.”

  Nate was half-turned in the seat, watching glimpses of the SUV wink through the trees. “Two in the car but I couldn’t see them clearly,” he said. “Wyoming plates, but I didn’t get a number.”

  Demming said, “I look like I wet my pants.”

  “His driving does that to people,” Nate said.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said to Demming, shooting Nate a glance. Nate smiled back.

  Joe breathed slowly until his nerves calmed, then pulled back onto the road.

  CUTLER’S PARK SERVICE pickup was sitting where they had parked the day before. Joe pulled up beside it as Demming used the last of a box of tissues to absorb the coffee on her uniform pants. He put the close call behind him and climbed out.

  The odor in the air was familiar, he thought, but it was from a different time and place. It reminded him of Sundays, growing up, and the smell that came from the kitchen while he lounged in the living room with his brother, Victor, watching football.

  Joe wondered if the meeting with his father had skewed his mind, triggered reminiscences that had long been put away.

  Nate got out, sniffed, squinted with puzzlement, said, “Pork roast?”

  Joe clipped the Glock onto his belt, cold dread gripping his stomach, remembering something Cutler had said the day before.

  BY THE TIME they found Mark Cutler’s body in Sunburst Hot Springs, his volunteer Park Service uniform and most of his flesh had separated from the skeleton and was floating free, boiling in the water. Commas of black curly hair were being carried down the runoff chute along with bouncing yellow globules of parboiled fat.

  “No . . .” Demming gasped, stuffing her fist in her mouth, turning away.

  Joe froze, stared in absolute horror, and forgot for the longest time how to breathe. Finally, he unclenched himself and put his arms around Demming and held her. She didn’t resist. He felt her hot tears on his neck.

  He looked over her head at the scene. The trunk of the body turned slowly in the hot springs and more pieces came loose. The spring boiled angrily. Joe made himself look away, despite a morbid fascination that shamed him.

  “That poor son of a bitch,” Nate said as he joined them. “When I go, I want it to be from a bullet to the head. I sure as hell don’t want to be stew.”

  DEMMING WAS THE first to recall the encounter with the black SUV. Voice trembling, she tried to contact dispatch on her handheld to alert rangers on patrol as well as the personnel at the park gates. No one answered.

  “Come in, anyone,” she said.

  Static.

  “We’re out of range,” she said dully, indicating the radio. “Let’s try Mark’s truck radio.”

  “On the chance he left it unlocked and his keys in it,” Joe said, clearly remembering how fastidious Cutler had been about taking his keys and locking the truck at every stop the day before.

  As they trudged back toward the vehicles, Joe said, “That SUV can’t be more than fifteen minutes away. Maybe we can catch it.”

  “Mark was such a nice guy,” Demming said. “No one deserves what happened to him. If whoever was driving that SUV did this, I’ll shoot and ask questions later.”

  “I like her style,” Nate said to Joe.

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Joe said. “We don’t even know if the SUV driver even saw Mark, much less knocked him into Sunburst. But he sure was in a hurry to get out of here.”

  Nate said, “Luckily, there aren’t that many roads. Whoever it is has three options: He could be on the way to the gate at West, or continuing north toward Mammoth. Or he could have cut through the middle of the park by now toward Canyon Village. If he gets to Canyon, that would give him three other ways out.”

  “God, this is horrible,” Demming said, shuddering. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Joe hadn’t either. He couldn’t get the scene out of his mind. He made a point not to look over at the rivulet of cooling springwater that bordered the path they were on in the chance he would see more of Cutler’s body floating away. He imagined the truck keys were likely somewhere deep in the thermal pool, caught on a ledge, heating to over two hundred degrees. At what temperature would metal melt? He didn’t know. How long would it take for Cutler’s bones to boil clean white and sink, like the bison bones he had seen deep in the water the day before? He jolted off the trail into the trees and threw up.

  “Sorry,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

  He could tell by the look on Demming’s face that she might be next, and she was.

  THEY HEARD A roar ahead of them in the direction of the road. By now, the sound was familiar.

  “Geyser going off,” Joe said. “I wonder which one it is.” He also wondered if the body in the spring had upset the delicate interconnected underground plumbing of the thermal basin enough to cause an unscheduled eruption. Cutler would have known the answer to that question, he thought.

  Nate was in the lead and he topped the hill ahead of Demming and Joe, and was the first to see the geyser.

  “Oh, no,” Nate said, shaking his head.

  “What now?” Joe asked.

  “We won’t be chasing any SUV,” Nate said. “And, Joe, you aren’t going to like this one bit.”

  Joe didn’t.

  A fissure had opened through the thin asphalt of the road directly under the Yukon. Steam and superheated water were blasting up from the ground into the chassis. The windows of the vehicle had been blown out, the paint was peeling off the sides in curled shards, and the tires and plastic grille were melting.

  “Jesus,” Demming said.

  Joe thought, How can this possibly be happening?—although he knew that in Yellowstone, it happened all the time. Things just came out of the ground anytime, anywhere.

  “Your old boss was right,” Nate said. “You’re really rough on trucks.”

  “Not now,” Joe said.

  “The SUV will get away,” Demming said softly, shaking her head.

  Joe found Cutler’s pickup locked and the keys missing. There was nothing they could do to pursue the SUV, call for help, or get out of there.

  “This place is kicking our asses,” Nate grumbled.

  IT TOOK AN hour for Joe and Demming to flag down a road maintenance truck on the highway. An old couple from Nebraska had swerved to avoid them and never slowed down, and an RV speeded up, despite the fact that Demming had flashed her badge and put her hand on her weapon. When the truck stopped, Demming crowded in and Joe said he would stay and wait.

  “I’ll call dispatch and get some rangers here as fast as I can,” she said. “An ambulance too.”

  Joe didn’t ask what she thought an ambulance would pick up.

  NATE SAT ON an overturned dead tree trunk that was white with absorbed minerals. The morning had heated twenty degrees already with the rising sun, and the ankle-high grass was now wet instead of frozen. Three bison had emerged from a stand of trees and were slowly grazing their way up the trail toward Sunburst.

  Joe sat down next to him and stared at the hulk of the Yukon. The fissure beneath it had stopped erupting, although he could hear burbling and see an occasional puff of steam.

  “Man,” Joe said, sighing, nodding toward the Yukon. “This keeps happening to me.”

  “I know,” Nate said. “If you would have parked ten feet either way, it would have missed it.”

  “Cutler was a damned good guy,” Joe said. “I really liked him.”

  Nate nodded. “Somebody didn’t. Question is, who knew he’d be here?”

  Joe hadn’t thought of that. “Hérve,” Joe said. “And whoever took the message or saw it before it was given to us.”

  “Or anyone
you, me, or Demming told about the meeting this morning,” Nate said.

  Joe hadn’t told anyone. There was no one to tell.

  “I wonder if Demming called her bosses,” Joe said, not wanting to go where his thoughts seemed to be taking him.

  Nate nodded. “Maybe we’ve got a big problem on the inside. I can’t say I’m shocked at the idea.”

  “Damn, you’re cynical.”

  “You forget,” Nate said, “I used to work for the Feds myself in another, um, capacity. No personal agenda in a closed bureaucracy can surprise me.”

  A black raven the size of a football cruised along the basin, calling out rudely. It skimmed the rivulet, saw something in the water, turned and landed. The raven quickly speared something in the stream—a piece of Mark Cutler—and ate it a second before it blew up in an explosion of black feathers.

  “I hate ravens,” Nate said, holstering his .454.

  Joe hadn’t even tried to stop Nate from drawing his weapon and firing because he agreed with the sentiment, given the circumstances.

  A HALF-HOUR BEFORE approaching sirens split the silence, Nate patted Joe on the shoulder and said he had to go. “There will be lots of questions,” Nate said. “Portenson might even be here. I don’t have time for that now.”

  “I understand.”

  “Besides, you and Demming can cover everything,” Nate said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  18

  THAT AFTERNOON, CLAY MCCANN DROVE SOUTH from West Yellowstone and the sun streamed in through the windows but didn’t take the chill off the inside of the car one bit, he thought. In fact, it felt like it was getting colder, despite the digital gauge on the dash that showed it was nearing sixty degrees.

  Butch Toomer sat in the passenger seat, reaching incessantly to fiddle with the radio to try to find a station he liked. He had a toothpick in his mouth that never stopped dancing, and he was wearing his shades.

  Sheila sat in the back, fuming. Her rage was palpable, an emotional cold front that could close schools and government buildings in seven states.

  “Why the fuck is he here?” she asked McCann. “This was supposed to be a special day.”

  “I told you,” McCann said. “I owe him some money. I told him I’d get it in Idaho Falls, and he insisted on coming along.”

  “I wish you two would stop talking like I’m not here,” Toomer said. “It’s getting on my nerves.”

  “You’re getting on my nerves,” Sheila said. “And don’t get me started on Clay.”

  McCann shrugged. Fall colors were bursting like fireworks in the wooded folds of the mountains. Not that he cared. Scenery got old. Instead, he recalled how Sheila had looked that morning when he pulled into the parking lot of her shabby apartment building to pick her up. She had never looked better, he thought. Tight black sweater, charcoal skirt, black nylons, strappy shoes. And where in the hell did she get those pearls?

  Oh, how her face fell when she saw Toomer in the car. Oh, the words she used. McCann was a little surprised when she was through that blisters had not formed on his exposed face and hands.

  Several times, he had tried to catch her eye in the rearview mirror. He wanted to smile at her, have her know he was smiling at her. The only time she looked back her eyes were fearsome black daggers and when they connected with his he thought the temperature in the car dropped another ten degrees.

  “DO YOU THINK we’ll have time to look at a couple of horse trailers in Idaho Falls?” Toomer asked. They had just crossed the state line from Montana into Idaho.

  “Why?” McCann said.

  “Elk season,” Toomer said. “Christ, don’t you pay any attention around here? Haven’t you seen all those men wearing orange and driving around with dead animals in their trucks?”

  McCann didn’t respond. He tried to catch Sheila’s eye in the mirror again but she wouldn’t look back.

  “I got a two-horse slant load,” Toomer said. “I want to upgrade to a four-horse stock, now that I’m coming into a little money. I like them stocks. They pull good and I got a mare that blows up when I try to get her to load into the slant.”

  It was as if he were speaking Martian, McCann thought.

  “Clay,” Sheila sighed from the back, “please take me somewhere without horses. Or hunters. Or ex-sheriff assholes who won’t take their sunglasses off.”

  McCann noted that her anger had been replaced by despair. He felt sorry for her. All dressed up and stuck in a car with Butch Toomer. And him. She deserved better, he thought. He wished Toomer was gone and she’d take her sweater off.

  “Make her shut up, or I’ll do it,” Toomer growled at him.

  “Leave her alone,” McCann said.

  “Don’t you tell me what to do.”

  McCann could tell the ex-sheriff meant it.

  “Okay,” McCann said. “Let’s all settle down, please.” He tried to catch Sheila’s eye in the rearview. When he did she displayed her middle finger at him.

  MCCANN HAD HEARD nothing from Layton Barron. That alone told him all he needed to know. If Barron and his partner were playing straight with him, there would have been at least a call that morning. And if Barron had been unable to reach his man on the inside, he should have let McCann know he was working on it and beg him not to carry out his threat.

  And when his banker told him no money had been deposited into his account, McCann knew Barron had talked to his partner, and they’d decided not to pay up, but to take another course of action. Either they didn’t believe he’d go to the police or they had plans for him. He guessed the latter.

  Which meant, McCann decided, that his situation was desperate. And desperate men, well . . . they hire lawyers to think of ways to use the law to save themselves. Fortunately, he had that part covered.

  THE ROAD GOT narrower, more rural. Straightaways turned into meandering turns through farmland. The Tetons sparkled in the distance, looking clean, white, and fake.

  Toomer said, “It always pisses me off that the snooty bastards over there in Jackson Hole always refer to our side of the mountains as ‘the back side of the Tetons.’ Who in the hell gave them the ‘front’?”

  McCann watched for the turnoff and ignored Toomer. Sheila had seemed to make it her mission to ignore both of them now. Instead, she kept sighing.

  “I need a drink,” she said, breaking her silence. “Are there any bars ahead?”

  “This is Mormon country,” Toomer said. “No bars.”

  “Mormons drink,” she said. “Especially if there’s just one of them. I’ve seen ’em go at it at Rocky’s. If there’s two, they watch each other and neither one will drink. It cracks me up.”

  “That’s what they always say in elk camp,” Toomer said, laughing with loud guffaws. “If a Mormon comes and he’s alone, hide the whiskey!”

  They seemed to be getting along so well, McCann thought, neither noticed he had turned off the main road toward the east. Or that the bridge that crossed Boundary Creek was just ahead. Or that despite the absence of a sign or a gate, they were officially in Yellowstone Park.

  With his left hand, McCann pushed the button on the door handle that lowered the passenger window by Toomer’s head.

  “Hey,” Toomer said, “why’d you do that? Did you fart or something?” He looked back to see if Sheila, his new pal, would laugh at his joke.

  “No,” McCann said, pulling the .38 out of his jacket, “so your brains won’t splash all over the glass.”

  Toomer’s mouth made an O and McCann fired into the left lens of his sunglasses, and then the right. The sounds were sharp and deafening. The ex-sheriff slumped back, his mouth still open, a string of saliva connecting his upper and lower teeth.

  Sheila screamed, “Clay! Clay! Clay! Oh my God!” her hands to her face, her knees clamped together.

  McCann said, “I’m really sorry, honey,” and shot her three times. One bullet passed through her necklace and sent pearls flying all over the inside of the car.

  AT DUSK,
TEN minutes before he’d close the office for the night, B. Stevens heard the clump of a shoe on the wooden stairs outside the Bechler ranger station and looked up as Clay McCann opened the door and came in. He looked flushed.

  The ranger was stunned. “You . . .” he said.

  “It happened again, can you believe it?” McCann said as he wearily dropped a snub-nosed revolver on the counter. “I was giving a couple of locals a ride to Idaho Falls and they pulled this damned gun on me.”

  Stevens was speechless.

  McCann held his arms out, wrists together, making it as easy as possible to put cuffs on them. The lawyer shook his head, said, “They’re out there in the car. I guess they didn’t realize who they were dealing with.”

  19

  DEL ASHBY AND ERIC LAYBORN DROVE JOE AND Demming back to Mammoth after the initial crime-scene procedures were accomplished at Sunburst Hot Springs. They left at mid-afternoon while more and more rangers arrived until the basin was packed with them. The flood of vehicles to the scene attracted what few visitors were still in the park, who assumed that so much ranger action must mean bears had been spotted. Families in cars and RVs lined the narrow road into the area, causing a snarl of traffic that forced Ashby to break regulations and drive on the side of the road.

  Joe listened as Ashby and Layborn complained about the quality of the crime scene, how the pathway had been trampled by Joe and Demming, thus obscuring the footprints of the killer or killers, how the condition of Cutler’s body was such that it would be nearly impossible to tell if he fell, was pushed, or was murdered and then thrown in.

  Demming defended their actions. “We did nothing wrong,” she said.

  “Of course not,” Layborn said, rolling his eyes. “It’s just the small things. You know, like getting into a confrontation with an Iowa mountain man who gets shot up and flown to the hospital at our expense. Or getting forced off the road by the likely killers, not getting a description or a plate number, walking all over the crime scene throwing up, getting your vehicle destroyed, not giving chase or calling it in, letting the third member of your party go on a walkabout, and delaying the initial investigation of the crime scene by three hours because you had to hitch a ride with a road maintenance crew. Other than that, you did real well. Did I forget anything, Del?”