“You’re right. Her brother. But he moved to Maine, I think it was. This is like a year ago, and Mark and Francine took over caring for the place.”
“So he’d been going up there to fix it up.”
“Initially, yes. But then he and Randy started using it…”
“To hunt,” Walt said, when she failed to finish.
“Yeah. You knew about that? They didn’t exactly want that to be public knowledge. Bad for business.”
“I’ve known Mark a long time,” Walt said, still angry at himself for having forgotten about the cabin. “Do you know where it is, exactly?”
She shook her head. “Randy’s death was an accident, right?”
“Sure looks like it,” Walt said, not wanting to start anything, “but we have to investigate it, anyway.”
“They were superclose. It doesn’t surprise me Mark’s gone off like this.” Tears formed in her eyes. They weren’t the first.
“Who else might know?” Walt said. “About the cabin? Anyone who works here?”
“I doubt it. Francine, of course.” As she met eyes with Walt, a spark of realization ignited in hers. “She’s missing too, isn’t she? Oh my God. You can’t find either of them.”
“As you said,” Walt reminded, keeping his voice level, “they probably just need a day or two in private to grieve. My guess is, we’ll find them at the cabin. I might give them another day before trying.”
Her eyes softened, thanking him, and she nodded. “Good people,” she choked out.
“Yeah.”
The tears finally spilled, and she laughed at herself out of embarrassment, saying, “I thought I was done with this.” She dabbed her eyes with tissue.
“If Sally could get back to me about those deliveries…” he said.
“Will do.”
As Walt stood, the dozen dogs in the room hurried to him, nosing him and whining.
She laughed. “We kind of spoil them in here.”
“I’ll say.” He pet several.
“You might try Kira,” she said.
“Excuse me?” he said. Mention of the name turned Walt around sharply to face Jillian.
“Mark’s assistant, Kira. I suppose there’s a chance she might know how to find the cabin.”
Walt felt it like a blow to his sternum. He took a moment to recover, to clear his head, so that his voice didn’t give away his surprise. “Kira Tulivich?” he asked. He’d left her in the hospital only hours earlier.
“You’ve already spoken to her?”
“Kira’s Mark’s assistant?” He tried to keep the shock from his face. He had a good deal of practice with such things, but this one hit him hard and he was afraid he’d shown his cards. “I didn’t know that,” he said.
“You know, she didn’t show up today either.” She paused. “You don’t think Mark and Kira…”
“Absolutely not,” Walt said. The idea swam around in his head. “Do you?”
“No, of course not.”
Walt needed some time to think this through.
“I doubt she knows anything more than I do,” Jillian said. “Whatever he was up to, he wasn’t sharing. And, yes, I thought it might have something to do with Randy-you know, because of the inventory. But that was never anything more than a wild hunch.”
His cell phone rang, and he chased a decent signal across the room and out the door. He took the call in a back lot used for animal exercise and training.
His office informed him that AmeriCell had traced the emergency call that had sent Search and Rescue into the mountains the night before. The owner of the cell phone that had made the call had a billing address in West Ketchum.
He returned to the door, thanked Jillian, and asked that she keep their discussion private. “You know about this valley and rumors,” he said. “Mark doesn’t need that on top of everything else.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” she said.
AS WALT PULLED DOWN Bird Drive in West Ketchum, a KPD patrol car pulled away from the corner and followed him. Out of courtesy, he’d called ahead to his friend, Cory Limon, the Ketchum police chief, detailing his intention of making an arrest, and Cory had assigned the backup.
Walt and one of the KPD officers approached the front door of a gray-and-white, board-and-batten single-family residence while the other officer sludged through the snow to cover the back. The clutter of snowboards, mountain bikes, and other gear on the covered porch suggested a rental property. Walt rapped sharply on the door and called out: “Sheriff’s Office. Open the door, please.”
It took another try before the door finally was opened, by a girl in a tight-fitting T-shirt, black Lycra stretch pants, and gray wool socks. Walt and the officer stepped inside. For the time being, Walt ignored the faint smell of pot, looked past the clutter of pizza boxes and the clumps of clothes on the floor. A dormitory room.
“May I help you?” she asked, a little taken aback by their entering.
“I’m looking for Charles Jones,” Walt said, glancing around.
“CASEY!” she shouted over her shoulder. Then, more softly, “Can I help you?”
“Do you live here?” Walt asked.
“No. Just a friend. We all went boarding today. Amazing powder.”
“You might want to take off,” Walt said. “I’m only interested in Charles-Casey. But Officer”-Walt read the man’s name tag- “Shanklin might have an interest in the incense.”
“Got it,” she said, and immediately went searching for boots and a jacket. She was out of the house before the boy arrived downstairs.
“Charles Jones?”
“Yeah?” he said.
He was a gangly boy with curly, unkempt hair, a skier’s tan, and a failed attempt at facial hair. Like most of the kids his age that Walt encountered, he did not cower at the sight of law enforcement. He carried his shoulders straight and high, and his mouth remained small as he talked, like he’d been sucking on a lemon.
“Your cell phone placed an emergency call to the county’s ERC- the Emergency Response Center-at six thirty-two P.M. yesterday.”
The boy appeared to be chiseled out of marble. For a moment, he didn’t breathe and didn’t blink.
“Think carefully… Casey,” Walt warned. “Can I call you ‘Casey’?”
“Yes, sir.” The shoulders hunched forward. Eye contact was broken.
“Think carefully about how you answer. These next few minutes are critical. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your cell phone bills are being sent to this address,” Walt said. “That’s how we found you. You’ve cost this county time and money. The money will have to be repaid. But whether or not we treat this as a crime… well, that depends on you and how forthcoming you are.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was it a prank? A dare?”
Jones looked up, his face a pool of shame.
“It wasn’t, was it?” Walt said. “A thing like this… you get one chance and one chance only. That chance is to tell the truth. You lie to me, son, and you’ll pay for it for the rest of your life. So you want to think about that, okay? You want to think about your parents, your friends, your family, and how this is going to reflect on all of them. Because there are no second chances. You lie to me and you’ll start a progression of events that you’ll look back and regret forever. I need to know you understand that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, then. There are two ways to do this. I can arrest you, right here and now. If I do, Officer Shanklin here is likely going to search your residence and that may complicate your situation, judging by the odor in the air. The situations of others living with you as well. So that’s one way. The other is to talk this out for a few minutes, for you to tell me the truth. For me to decide where to go from here. You agree to do that and Officer Shanklin goes back to his cruiser and waits for me. Do you understand? It’s just you and me. But I’m only interested in door number two if you’re interested in sharing the t
ruth with me. In my line of work, you get so you can spot the truth, son. So don’t even think about trying to lie to me. The choice is yours: door one or door two? Time’s up, so which is it?”
Shanklin shut the door on his way out.
Walt took a seat on the spongy couch, moving an Xbox controller out of the way. Jones took the dilapidated, overstuffed chair across the coffee table from him.
“You all set?” Walt asked.
The boy nodded.
“Did you make that call to 911?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was it the truth?”
“No, sir.”
“There was no skier left behind on Galena?”
“No.”
Walt fought back the emotions that set his teeth grinding.
“Why’d you do it?”
The boy wouldn’t answer. Walt asked a second time.
“I was paid. By the government.”
“The government?” Walt said, unable to disguise his astonishment.
“A guy from, you know… I don’t know… some agency. He told me, but I forget exactly which one. He said it’s, like, routine to check the response time of Search and Rescue teams. That with caller ID, and everything, the government can’t make the calls, because then people know it’s a test, so they ask common citizens-like me-to make the calls for them.”
“You were paid to make the call.”
“Exactly. Then they time the search and rescue…” His voice trailed off. “What are you saying, exactly? This guy was for real, right?”
Walt removed his notebook from his uniform’s breast pocket. “Can you describe him, please?”
“I don’t know. About my height, I guess. Khakis. Coat and tie. Mustache. Kinda short hair. Your color-you know, kinda sandy and gray. Normal-looking dude.”
“He told you what to say,” Walt stated. Gray? he wondered.
“Yeah. Said it had to be done a certain way to make all the tests comparable. He had it typed out.”
“He had the message you were to read typed out?”
“Yeah.”
“And you read it exactly as he’d written it.”
“Yes.”
“And do you have that… I don’t know… card, sheet of paper, currently in your possession?”
“He took it back.”
“Of course he did,” Walt muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“Did I fuck up or something?”
“How much did he pay you for this service?”
“A C-note.”
“A man offered you a hundred dollars to make a phone call and you didn’t question it?”
“I questioned it, all right. I demanded to see the money up front.”
Walt hurried out to the car and radioed in to call off the search. He took a minute to settle himself, reeling over the wasted manpower and the risk to the searchers.
When he returned inside, his voice was irrationally calm.
“How ’bout credentials? Did you demand or did he show you any credentials confirming he was with the government?”
“He flipped open some ID when he first came up to me. Not that I took that good a look or anything. I wasn’t going to blow off some government dude. And then when he got explaining it, it sounded good to me.”
“But not too good to be true?”
“What’s that?”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again? A photo maybe?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Lay off the pot for a while, okay? I need your memory clear.”
If the boy could have dissolved into the chair, he would have. Eyes to the dirty carpet, chin down, he said nothing for a moment. Then he looked up. “I take it he wasn’t with the government.”
“Mr. Jones, you’re not to leave the county without my permission. You do so and you will be considered at flight. Is that clear?”
“Is that legal?”
“You want to involve the courts? I’m happy to do so.”
“It’s clear,” the boy said.
“I want a written statement from you. Exactly what happened. Where, when, who, what. Every detail you can recall: accent, clothes, mannerisms, expressions, shoes, car, glasses, gloves-I don’t care how insignificant you think it might have been. I want that on my desk, in Hailey, by six P.M. this evening. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No excuses. No delays. No makeups. Six P.M.”
“Does it have to be typed?” Jones asked.
Walt shook his head in frustration. “It has to be truthful. I don’t care if it’s a podcast; I just want to know what happened. In your words, to the best of your ability.” He dug himself out of the couch and made for the door. “And I’d lose the weed, if I were you. Ketchum police will be watching you now.”
He headed out the door and, as he did so, he tugged on his jacket against the cold. The process of pulling the jacket up onto his shoulders instantly took him back to Randy’s coming out of the pickup truck the night before. Randy and Mark had been throwing jabs about Randy borrowing the coat.
Walt recalled Randy’s complaining about the smell of the winter jacket and Mark’s chastising him for forgetting a coat of his own in the middle of a blizzard. It had been Mark’s coat that Randy had been wearing up on the mountain. A loaner. A coat carrying Mark’s scent, not Randy’s. Walt had all but proven that dogs had been involved-the prints found alongside the tire track.
What if Randy had been pursued by dogs meant to target Mark?
We never talk politics.
Mark had tried to discuss something. Walt had joked about it, had failed to listen.
The same complaint he’d gotten from Gail on her way out the door.
TUESDAY
*
14
ROY COATS LEFT THE DOGS BEHIND THIS TIME. HE DIDN’T need to track some guy through a snowstorm. He didn’t need a cage to hide a girl.
Pulling a sled, he rode the snowmobile, a Yamaha Phazer, several miles up Sunbeam Road, pulled it into the trees, and locked and chained it. To some, this was the middle of nowhere-fifty miles past Galena Summit in a national forest of four million acres, so vast that it included the one-million-acre River of No Return Wilderness Area, the largest wilderness in the continental United States. He could have called upon the others to help him, but he was the best shot. He pursued this alone.
During the “work” on the girl, with the client in the other room cleaning himself up, Coats had made promises to her that he’d be gentler than the visitor had been. He’d won a moment of compromise on her part. She’d mentioned the doc’s frequent trips to a cabin in Challis. She didn’t know anything about any sheep but knew he’d been hauling mail-order gear up there. Coats had still done her, but he hadn’t yanked her hair or slapped her around the way the client had.
Now, he snowshoed the final mile, following nothing more than his internal compass, working from memory, having viewed a topographical map only once. He ascended a steep mountain ridge, holding just below the tree line, and then dropped down into thick forest, as the cabin came into view.
He picked up the fresh tracks of an elk herd and stayed among them for the sake of covering his own prints in the snow. He carried a CheyTac Intervention M-200 slung over his right shoulder. The weapon carried a Nightforce scope, which could be upgraded all the way to a digital device that plugged into a PDA and gave the weapon an effective range of twenty-five hundred yards-well over a mile-that accounted for wind speed and atmospheric pressure. The newspapers called it a sniper rifle. To enthusiasts like himself, it was an antipersonnel rifle, providing long-range, soft-target interdiction. He’d replaced the muzzle brake with an OPSINC suppressor. It wouldn’t scare a chickadee in the next tree over, if he had to use it.
His choice was not to use it, because it would be one hell of a tricky double shot. He had it sighted for two hundred yards. If needed, his target would never have a clue to his position. T
he target would not hear a thing until the wet thwack of his own shredded flesh. Thankfully, the contracted inventory included only the adults, and excluded any children. He didn’t have any desire to chalk a kid.
Tied onto the left side of his day pack was a D93S cartridge-fired rifle that he often employed in his private client work. With his special loads and the four-power scope, he could accurately project a dart from one hundred twenty-five yards. A single-shot rifle, it weighed eight pounds but was worth every ounce. The D93S was his weapon of choice for the work that lay ahead, but it was the CheyTac that made him feel secure.
He rubbed his sore knuckles through the glove, mulling over his recent mistakes. How he’d killed the wrong brother was beyond him- the dogs didn’t make such errors. He pushed that from his mind and stayed with the elk tracks, huge half-moons the size of horse hooves. As hard as it was to get past his mistakes, they had given him time to rethink his own priorities. He had his own uses for the doctor.
He climbed a tree to verify his position, keeping the pack and both rifles with him. From his position thirty feet up, he had an unobstructed view of a cirque of rock to the south, bejeweled and glistening in the spectacular afternoon sunlight; to the east, a semiforested expanse that trailed down toward the small town of Challis, just the roofs of a few small buildings visible. Dead center, looking southeast, stood a small log cabin in a sea of white, alone at the top of an escarpment, looking to him like a mole on a man’s bald head.
Carefully scanning the area with a pair of binoculars, he spotted the elk herd slightly north, watering at a spring above the bald man’s left ear. A mighty herd at that-thirty to fifty head. He located the herd’s only buck, carrying a monstrous twelve-point rack that he’d have loved to have on the wall of his own cabin. But that was for another day.
He returned to the snow and moved deeper into the forest, working his way silently to the very edge of the trees, less than fifty yards from the front of the cabin and the apron of snow that surrounded it. The snow was deep, so he climbed fifteen feet into a lesser tree and found a perch. He sighted the CheyTac and strapped it to a branch so that it was firmly locked onto the lower-left corner of a window to the left of the cabin’s front door. At this distance, he could have shot a screw out of the door hardware, if he’d chosen to.
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