“And we’re supposed to just stand here and let it happen?”
Walt shrugged. “We could be completely wrong.”
“But we aren’t.” Webb leaned his head in the bathroom. “Thing of it is, when this door’s shut and the light’s off in there, no camera’s going to pick up anything.” He paused. “I thought you had a call to make.”
“I can’t back you up on this,” Walt warned.
“I’m a big boy. Go make your call.”
“Remember, Chuck: if this comes out that Danny’s culpable, he goes away for it, so don’t get your prints on that bag. You hear? And keep it somewhere handy. I may need it.”
“Hurry,” Webb said. “Before I lose my nerve.”
35
ROY COATS CAME THROUGH THE DOOR OF THE CABIN, LOOKING like Bigfoot. He was wrapped in layers of frost-coated clothing, his beard and mustache were white with globs of snotty ice, his face wind-burned from what had to have been a long snowmobile ride.
“Nice trip?” Mark Aker asked.
“Have you finished your paper?” Coats hung various pieces of clothing on wall hooks and the backs of chairs, in a semicircle around the woodstove. The Samakinn member who had delivered the insulin and stayed to watch Aker-Coats had called him Gearbox-he began dressing for outside. With the return of Coats, Gearbox was assigned perimeter patrol.
“Haven’t started it,” Mark Aker replied. “If it’s to be credible it has to be scientific. That takes time.”
Gearbox took off. Coats installed himself on a footstool in front of Aker, his left elbow up on the room’s only table.
“You’re stalling,” Coats said. “You’ve got all the insulin you need. We brought everything in from your cabin with us, so you’ve got your papers. Don’t push your luck, Doc.”
“They’re searching for me by now.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
There was something about his confidence. Aker studied him carefully. “You have contacts in the sheriff’s office?” He waited for even the faintest of signs. “Challis?” He sighed. “So it’s Challis, is it?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Coats reminded.
“Didn’t have to. Your heartbeat gave you away. Your interior jugular vein. It runs continuous with the sigmoid sinus. A barometer to the soul, and your soul was disturbed when I mentioned the Challis sheriff’s office. So that much we both know: you’ve got an insider with Challis. And perhaps they might have ways of knowing what Custer or Lemhi County is up to. But do you think they could possibly know what Blaine is up to? Walt Fleming has trained with the FBI. Did you know that? His father invented the first SWAT team ever. You think he’s going to let Custer or Lemhi know what he’s doing? You think? Seriously? You know the toys he’s got available to him, all that money down in Blaine? Have you been listening for flyovers, Roy? Your boy out there on patrol-what kind of a heat signature does he throw off when he’s out there? How about this cabin? Your snowmobiles? You think Walt Fleming’s working with satellite images? I do. How long do you think you can keep this up?”
Coats turned, ostensibly to adjust his jacket on the back of a ladder-back chair, to help speed up drying. More than anything, he didn’t want Aker reading him like that. Not only did it creep him out, that someone could read his neck, but giving anything away cost him.
He settled back onto the footstool, facing his hostage with a calm, almost serene face.
“You ever heard of Shays’ Rebellion?” Coats asked.
Mark Aker stared back, his eyes flat.
“You know your American history?”
“Don’t do this,” Aker said.
“This was near the end of the war, the Revolutionary War. The Boston merchants pressed the state legislature to levy a tax on all the farmers. And they couldn’t pay the taxes-same as we can’t pay ’ em today. Shays organized an open rebellion, put together an army of some eight hundred-odd and went after them, pitchforks and rifles. What they did was against the law, and they paid mightily for it, but that rebellion is considered the last battle of the Revolutionary War because it changed opinion forever. The federal and state governments realized they had failed at representing the people. The People, Doc. Capital P.
“Now, I’m not saying we aren’t breaking the law, because we are. And I’m not claiming to be a tree hugger. Not hardly. I’m more what you might call a militant libertarian.” That won a bemused smile. Mark eyed all the books again, his opinion of his captor changing. He’d read about Stockholm syndrome, had no desire to go there. “But we did what we did for a reason. A purpose. Our government should not be dictating to other countries about things it doesn’t have under control itself. Plain and simple: someone’s got to show the people what’s going on.”
“And that’s you? You’re Shays? That’s supposed to justify this?” he said, indicating his own situation.
“Shays’ Rebellion was put down. Eighteen were given death sentences. Two were actually executed. I understand what’s in store for me. But, goddamn it…” he said, raising his voice. His intensity lit up the air between them. Then his face softened. “I’m giving you a real chance here. All I’m asking from you, Doc, is to tell the truth. I’m not some raghead holding an AK, trying to put words in your mouth. That’s the beauty of it: I don’t have to. The truth will hang them. Whether they hang me or not.”
“Okay,” Aker said.
Coats did a double take. He looked Aker over like it was someone else sitting in that chair. “You’ll write it,” he said to himself. He tried to contain a childlike enthusiasm.
“I said I would. And I mean it this time. But I’ve got to ask: is any of what you just told me for real?”
“All of it,” Coats said proudly. “That’s our heritage, Doc.”
“Because I’ve got a story for you.”
Coats leaned in toward Aker a little too close, a changed man, gloating over his victory.
“Have you ever heard of Aker’s Rebellion?” Mark asked.
Coats’s brow knitted. At the last second, he seemed to anticipate what was coming, to understand that Mark Aker had drawn him into a trap. But it was too late.
“Now you have.” The doc moved with the quickness of a snake.
A sudden heat flashed in Coats’s thigh, followed by a searing pain that bent him over. The doc had been concealing a pair of scissors behind his back. As Coats fell forward with the pain, the doc drove both elbows into his back and forced his face against the cast iron of the hot stove. The smell of burning hair and blistering skin filled the air as Coats sat upright, at which point the scissors plunged deeply up and into his left armpit, remaining there as the doc let go and grabbed a chair. He swung the chair and a light-headed Coats ducked to avoid the blow, only to realize too late that he was not the intended target. Instead, the sheet metal stovepipe dislodged with the chair’s clanging contact and the small cabin immediately filled with acrid gray smoke. The doc snagged Coats’s winter jacket and threw it on the stove. It smoldered only seconds before melting and smoking. The doc seized his own jacket from the wall, grabbed a flashlight from the windowsill, and was out the door.
Coats vomited. The skin on his burned face felt as if it were shrinking and tightening on his skull. His beard was singed off on that side, and, in its place, branded on his cheek at an awkward angle, were the reversed letters: SGNITSAC-VERMONT CASTINGS, the embossed name on the stove.
He dragged himself toward the door, his leg wound bleeding badly, his arm in pain. The doc had known exactly what he was doing: both wounds immobilized him.
He reached the door, a blood trail painted behind him. Hacking. Unable to breathe for the pain. He tried to get to his knees, to reach the doorknob, but his leg wound wouldn’t let him. He grabbed hold of the knob, only to realize his bulk was blocking the door. He collapsed back down to the floor. Reached for his ankle. A.38 revolver, in a calf holster.
Fired off three rounds. Waited.
Debated using the last three. Decide
d against it: if Aker returned, Coats wanted some rounds left for self-defense.
“FUCK!” he screamed. Smoke swirled just above his head. He coughed and gagged, and forced himself up through insurmountable pain toward the door.
The doorknob.
It was Gearbox, horrified. He wretched at the sight of Coats’s face.
“Air!” Coats groaned, as he tasted blood at the back of his throat.
The cold came through the door like a hammer.
“The doc,” Coats mumbled. Right before he passed out.
36
MARTY, WALT’S FOUR-YEAR-OLD GOLDEN, BANGED AGAINST the fire screen and sent one of Emily’s mittens flying. The mitten landed on a fresh ember and soon the wet wool began to smolder, producing a god-awful stink.
The foul smell brought Walt from the kitchen. To the twins, who knew they weren’t supposed to play fetch indoors, their father’s expression came as a complete surprise. Not one of anger but curiosity. Laughing, they ran for cover behind the couch. But the admonishment never came.
Instead, a moment later, they overheard him speaking on the phone with Lisa and they mistakenly believed his leaving was the punishment for their crime.
“Could you possibly come over and get them to bed?” he asked. “Something’s come up at work.”
“THE SMELL?” Brandon asked, nursing his arm in the sling from the passenger seat of the Cherokee.
“A wool mitten. Yes. At first, I was pissed at the girls. Same old same old. But then I recognized that smell; I remembered that smell. Lon Bernie’s ranch. Remember that stink?”
“Impossible to forget.”
“Burning wool,” Walt said. “That’s what the smell was: burning wool.”
WALT KILLED the headlights way out on the plowed two-lane state road and continued on by the dim glow of a fingernail moon. They parked the vehicle a half mile from the driveway leading onto Lon Bernie’s ranch and went on foot, both sporting day packs, six-cell flashlights that doubled as nightsticks, and their 9mm Berettas.
They made quite the pair, throwing night shadows in the soft moonlight. Walt, cursed with DNA that got him to five foot ten only with boots on, had compensated by working the weight room until he was as wide in the chest as he was tall. Brandon, meanwhile, shopped the Big and Tall Guys stores. Now the deputy was one-winged and walking awkwardly because of it.
They held to the left of the road, putting the fence as a screen between them and Lon Bernie’s farmhouse.
“Does it bother you that we have no authority in this county?” Brandon said, his words puffing out from his mouth as gray fog.
“I wouldn’t say no authority, but it does make things a little tricky.”
“Tricky? If he’s up to something he’ll shoot us like dogs and ask questions later. Welcome to Lemhi County.”
“I’m aware of that,” Walt said.
“Oh, and this just in: he wasn’t real thrilled to see us last time, in daylight.”
“Point taken.”
“Are you trying to get me killed in the line of duty?”
Walt didn’t dignify that.
“It’s midnight, Sheriff. Couldn’t we have-”
Walt cut him off. “If we’d come by day, all we’d have accomplished was to tip him off to our interest in his burn pit. He’d have snuffed it, buried it, and it would have froze solid, leaving us waiting ’til April or May to dig for evidence.” Walt tugged on Brandon ’s sheriff’s coat, pulling him lower as they drew closer to the gate. “It has to be now, when we can get a good look at whatever’s in there. We owe that to Mark.”
When the wind shifted, the putrid smell hit them both at the same moment.
“Damn,” Brandon said.
They turned onto the property, staying low. The burn pit was on the far side of the ranch, requiring them to pass the farmhouse and the outbuildings to reach it. Walt assumed there would be dogs-there were always dogs on ranches-but that wild game was more likely to wake dogs than humans, and so the trick was to move quickly and keep to shadows.
It was bitterly cold, somewhere in the teens. Each light breeze penetrated and burned their faces. Ducking, they hurried through the dry, crunching snow. As barking erupted from inside the farmhouse, to their right, they ran across the plowed driveway and ducked into the deep snow behind a hay swather. If Lon Bernie was awakened by the barking, he might think he had a shot at poaching an elk or deer from his bedroom window.
They waited. Brandon began to shiver, though didn’t say a thing.
Finally, the dogs stopped their noise. Walt held Brandon there another few minutes-long minutes-knowing that Bernie could be moving window to window in hopes of spotting some trespassing game. Then they stood, returned to the plowed driveway, and moved together toward the far side of a toolshed. From there, around a granary, and, from the granary, around the far side of the main barn. Here, Walt picked up tractor tracks-dualies-two tracks of double tires, each pair four feet wide, running parallel to the barn and disappearing like train tracks into the dark. He and Brandon followed these away from the glow of the mercury lamp, out into an artificial dusk, and finally into the coal black night, clouds having moved in to mask the moon, the hideous smell growing stronger with every step. They never dared use their flashlights for fear of being spotted. At times, they stopped, awaiting a cloud to pass by the moon, the surrounding dark so intense, the silence so complete, that, had it not been for his heartbeat in his ears and the stinging cold in his toes, Walt might have thought he’d died.
It took forever to reach the burn pit. Nearly an hour had passed since they’d left the Cherokee by the side of the road. Finally, the tractor tire tracks gave way to a wide disturbance in the velvet field of snow just as the stink from the pit achieved epic proportions. The pit appeared before them as a square black shadow amid the white glaze of snowfall. Slash had been pushed into a pile on the left side, a tangle of dead limbs and detritus stacked well over ten feet high. The pit itself had been dug crudely into the brown earth some years before, a catchall of burnable waste, which to a rancher meant anything from plastic pesticide containers and fertilizer bags to household paper trash and spent gearbox oil. Walt kneeled and, cupping his flashlight to mute its light, aimed a diffused beam down into the pit.
Brandon projectile-vomited down into the pit, staggered, and stepped away. Normally he was a man of a strong constitution, but his reaction reflected the horror there: an assortment of limbs, bodies, and heads of dozens of sheep, all blackened, the burned skin peeling back in leaflike flakes, the scabbed, unmoving eyes bulging or missing, having exploded from the heat. Fuel had been poured over everything and lit, further discoloring the skin and patches of wool, and leaving a mass of twisting limbs and burgeoning flesh, ripped open by the gases of decomposition to expose frozen pink tears in the carbon wasteland of dead animal.
The smell was of everything bad in the world: excrement, burned hair, lost life.
Walt dug around in his day pack, withdrew the Gamma-Scout and a Dell laptop that was part of his office’s mobile command center.
“Jesus,” Brandon said, pulling himself together. “Sorry about the hurl, Sheriff.”
“It ain’t pretty,” Walt said.
“And then some.”
“Get rope ready.”
Brandon slipped his day pack off. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“Stop thinking so much.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Walt had the Gamma-Scout plugged into the laptop; the laptop powering up. “The cord isn’t near long enough.”
“Sheriff…”
“I’ve got to go down there. Look for a decent hold. Try that fence post.”
“Sheriff…”
“You don’t burn your hoof stock. You sell its meat. The only reason you wouldn’t sell the meat is if the meat is contaminated. Wholesale slaughter like this? Come on! It’s the only explanation. But we’ve got to prove something’s going on. And you’ve got one g
ood arm, Tommy. You can’t go down in there and you can’t pull me out. So get that rope tied off. And do it quickly,” he said calmly. He lifted his chin, indicating the distant ranch. “We may have company.”
Brandon spun around. A flickering light appeared in flashes between the outbuildings. A powerful flashlight.
“Probably the dogs barking,” Walt said. “When a guy like Lon Bernie’s got something to hide, he sleeps a lot lighter.”
“Turn that laptop around so the screen faces away,” Brandon said.
Walt did so. His gloves were off, his fingers stinging. He doubted the screen would show at such a great distance given that they were surrounded by higher walls of moved snow, but it was a worthy precaution. A rancher out at midnight was not yet cause for alarm. It could be anything from a sick animal that needed checking to a freeze patrol- making sure all the heaters were working prior to turning in. Even if Lon Bernie’s guilt had gotten the better of him, there would be no reason to look beyond the barns and outbuildings. A vision flashed in Walt’s imagination: the twin chevrons of the massive tire treads that the tractor had imprinted in the snow. He and Brandon had followed the tracks out here, no doubt leaving a trail of boot prints.
“We should keep going,” he encouraged.
“Rope’s tied off.”
There was no way for Walt to climb down the rope with the laptop in hand, so he put it back into the day pack but without fully closing the screen so it would remain running. Then he lowered himself down the dirt wall and into a piece of semifrozen hell. Brandon trained the light down on him. Walt arrived at a muddy layer in the corner of the pit where the pile of carcasses left a gap. Despite the freezing temperature, the smell wafting up from the decomposing carcasses was as bad as anything he’d ever experienced. He zipped his coat up over his face so that only his eyes showed, one-armed the day pack around to where he could dig the laptop out, and, balancing the laptop on his left forearm like a waiter would a tray, handled the Gamma-Scout with his right hand. He trained the Geiger counter on the nearest bloated carcass. Its digital readout fell well within the range of the acceptable amounts of radiation. He’d expected to see a much higher reading.
Killer View Page 16
