Free Fire jp-7

by C. J. Box

  McCann noted that her anger had been replaced by despair.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 displayedher 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 bastardsover 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 officiallyin 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 procedureswere 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 vehicledestroyed, 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 becauseyou had to hitch a ride with a road maintenance crew. Other than that, you did real well. Did I forget anything, Del?”

  “I think you covered it,” Ashby said. “Except maybe the fact that Joe Pickett and his mystery buddy have been flashing their weaponry out in the open every place they go against Park Servicepolicy.”

  “Oh, that too,” Layborn said.

  “You two are poised to become media stars,” Ashby said, biting off his words. “We’ve got more calls for comment than all of us can handle. Just exactly what we didn’t want-more attentionon the Zone of Death and now a fully cooked Zephyr employee.”

  “I think you’re out of line,” Joe said. “Both of you.” He wonderedwhich of them, or if both, had sent the black SUV to interceptCutler that morning.

  Layborn fixed him with a cop stare, except that one of his eyes peered at something to the side of Joe’s face. “We might just have to pull over and settle this.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Let it go, Joe,” Demming said. “This is a Park Service thing, you know?”

  “That’s right,” Ashby said. “You have no say here. In fact, I’m thinking of punching your ticket and sending you back home to your governor.”

  Demming shot Joe a desperation glance, pleading with her eyes for him to keep quiet. For her sake, he did. He thought that while he could go home, she couldn’t.

  As they pulled into the parking lot of the Pagoda at dark, Joe was plotting his moves that evening. Call Chuck Ward, tell him what was going on and what had happened, let him in on his suspicions. Beg for a new vehicle. Apologize for the last one. Call Marybeth. Drink.

  “I want your full written statements by tomorrow morning,” Ashby said. “I’m meeting with the chief ranger and want to be fully briefed. Plus, I would expect we’ll be getting some calls from Washington wanting to know just what in the hell is happeningto our park.”

  Ashby said to Demming, “When I asked you to come back yesterday, I meant it. But no, you wanted to continue to play cowgirl to John Wayne here. If you would have, maybe Cutler would still be alive.”

  Demming turned ashen.

  Joe said, “That was low.” He sort of li
ked being compared to John Wayne, though.

  He and demming followed Ashby and Layborn into the Pagoda. Demming looked pale and on the verge of tears she was fighting to hold back. Joe resisted the impulse to put his hand on her shoulder, to reassure her. He thought if he did that it would make her look weak to Ashby and Layborn.

  The night dispatcher threw open the door to the lobby, his headset dangling from where he’d jerked it out of his phone. His eyes were wild.

  “Chief,” he said to Ashby, “you’ve got to take this.”

  “Take what?” Ashby said, grimacing.

  “Stevens from Bechler.”

  “Wait here,” Ashby told Demming and Joe, and followed the dispatcher.

  Five minutes later, he came back. He was seething, his face bright red: “That son of a bitch Clay McCann did it again!”

  20

  Joe finished writing his report-including the news of Clay McCann killing two more people in “self-defense” within the Zone of Death-and had it faxed from the front desk. While he watched Simon feed the pages through, something nagged at him. He needed to talk to Demming.

  Lower-level federal housing was down the mountain from the Mammoth Hotel, a half-mile walk nearly straight downhill. The moon was full and lit the sagebrush-covered hillside. A small herd of elk grazed in the moonlight. Joe could smell their familiar musky smell in the air. He noticed blue parentheses on either side of the moon. Snow was coming.

  The cluster of Park Service housing was built on a plateau on the sagebrush hillside. The houses were packed tightly togetherwith fenceless common yards. The density of the houses was claustrophobic, Joe thought, compared to the vast, empty hillsides in all directions. It reminded him of a government-builtanthill in the middle of a prairie. He found Demming’s house by the brown wooden sign outside that said LARS AND JUDY DEMMING and crossed the postage-stamp lawn. A BMX bike leaned against the house. The house was small and looked exactly like every other house on the street. The Park Service had even painted them all the same light green color. Demming’s cruiser was parked next to a jacked-up Ford 4x4 pickup that looked formidable as well as well taken care of.

  A man answered the door. Joe expected someone named Lars to be tall, strapping, blond. Instead, he was short, pudgy, with long sideburns and an acne-scarred face. Smile lines at the corners of his mouth suggested he was always of good cheer. He wore a baggy T-shirt with a silk screen of a wolf on it.

  Joe introduced himself. “Hope I didn’t get you at dinner,” Joe said.

  “Not at all,” Lars said, looking over Joe’s shoulder for his vehicle. Lars was the kind of man who judged other men by what they drove, Joe guessed. “Come on in. You walked?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Lars said, chuckling. “I heard about your Yukon. Quite a story.”

  The television was on in the living room and the house smelled of the fried hamburgers they had had for dinner. It was modest, almost spare, except for the elk heads and antlers on the wall. Joe didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Maybe more books, he thought.

  Lars introduced Joe to Jake, who was watching television. Jake, ten, was a younger, fitter version of Lars, and he self-consciouslygot up and shook Joe’s hand and returned quickly to the couch. A teenage girl looked out from her room, said hello, and ducked back in.

  “Erin,” Lars said. “Fifteen and surly.”

  Joe nodded with empathy.

  “So, Judy tells me you’re a game warden.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think of those heads on the wall?”

  “Nice.”

  “I got seven more of ’em in the garage. I was thinking you might want to take a look at them.”

  People always wanted to show Joe their game heads or hunting pictures. He was used to it. To be polite, Joe said, “Sure, you bet.”

  Judy intervened, coming from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. She was out of uniform, and she looked like, well, a mom.

  “I think Joe’s seen plenty of elk heads before, honey,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” Joe said.

  “Really,” Demming said to Lars.

  Lars did a barely noticeable man-to-man eye roll, asked, “You want a beer?”

  “You bet.”

  “Turn the television off, please, Jake,” Demming said. “Time for homework.”

  “I don’t have any,” Jake said.

  Demming gave him a look.

  “Maybe I do,” Jake said, peeling himself off the couch. As he went down the hall, Jake stopped at Erin’s room just long enough to dart in to do something that made her squeal, “Mom! He flicked my ear with his finger again!”

  “Jake, leave her alone,” Demming said, halfheartedly.

  Joe smiled. Just like home.

  Lars returned with three opened bottles of beer.

  “I didn’t really want one,” Demming said.

  “I’ll drink it,” Lars said. “We don’t want to see beer go to waste, eh, Joe?”

  “Right.”

  Joe sat on the couch. Demming and Lars settled in well-wornoverstuffed chairs.

  “Too bad about Mark Cutler,” Lars said. “He was a real nice guy. I met him a few times at Old Faithful.”

  It seemed oddly uncomfortable, Joe thought. No doubt both Lars and Demming felt the same. Demming did, he was sure, by the way she lowered her eyes while Lars told story after story about every time he had met Mark Cutler. Most of the tales had to do with Lars’s road crew fixing the potholes around Old Faithful. Demming didn’t interrupt when the stories got too long, deferring to her husband.

  When Lars went to get Joe another beer, Demming said, “Ashby called. I’ve got a meeting with him and James Langston tomorrow. I won’t be with you anymore either, providing they even let you stay. I’ve been reassigned to traffic if they don’t decideto suspend me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It gives me an excuse to quit. I wish I could. Maybe I can really try to get into interpretation now.”

  Lars came back and resumed telling stories about each of the elk on the wall, the circumstances in which he’d killed them.

  Joe wanted to ask her how she was doing, but it seemed like the wrong time and place. Instead, he finished the beer because he thought Lars would want him to.

  “I better get back,” Joe said, standing. “I need to call my wife.”

  “Yeah,” Lars said, grinning. “Don’t forget that or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Joe said, “Marybeth’s not like that.”

  Lars gave him a man-to-man wink, as if to say, They’re all like that.

  “Do you need a ride?” Demming asked.

  “I don’t mind walking.”

  “I’ll drive you back.”

  “Jeez,” Lars said, “haven’t you two spent enough time together?”

  He was joking, Joe thought, but he wasn’t.

  In the car, Demming said, “You wanted to ask me something.”

  “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “Besides that. What was it? I could tell.”

  She was Demming again, the ranger.

  “Last night, after I left you the message about the meeting with Cutler, who did you call?”

  “Ashby. Why?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who knew about the meeting ahead of time.”

  “Do you realize what you’re asking? What you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  She drove in silence the rest of the way.

  When he got out, he said, “Be careful.”

  “You too,” she said. “Maybe you ought to go home.”

  “What?”

  She looked over, concern in her eyes. “You seem to have a nice family, Joe, and obviously you care very much about them. This isn’t your fight.”

  “It’s my job,” he said. “Same thing.”

  Joe missed his family, missed them more than he thought possible, more than he should have given that
it had been only four days since he left. When he really thought about them, reallydug deep, he wondered if, in his heart, he felt out of his depth and therefore wanted them near him for comfort. Two more days, he thought. Two more days. But should he welcome them to a place where just that morning he’d seen a man boiled alive, had his state car destroyed, and come to a nagging realizationthat it was very likely that someone on the inside murdered Mark Cutler and could just as easily come after him?

  Maybe that’s what it was, Joe thought. The thought that Cutler had no one to mourn him. No wife, no kids, and a sort-of fiancee he’d made a fleeting mention of. If whoever got Cutler came afterJoe. . he tried to imagine how Marybeth, Sheridan, and Lucy would mourn him. Would it demolish them, change them forever? He hoped so as much as he hoped not. Or would they figure out a way to go on? They were tough, he knew. He wished he were that tough. And now, he thought, sitting in his room at the Mammoth Hotel at midnight on a vacant floor with the half-emptyJim Beam traveler on his tiny desk, he was crossing over a line into a kind of morbid depression he hadn’t felt since, well, since his brother died and his father left them.

  And he realized what the root of his dark meditation was- the reunion with his father. It had brought everything back, most of all feelings of inadequacy, of not being properly rooted. He had forgotten that those feelings dwelled within him.

  That, and the inevitable replaying of what he’d seen that morning as Cutler’s flesh came off his body and floated away.

  Oh, and Clay McCann. The lawyer who had upped his body count to six. The man who would very likely get away with his latest double homicide as easily as he had the first four.

  What, was he losing it?

  He needed Marybeth to tell him he wasn’t.

  And another drink. That would be okay too.

  He broached the subject of her not coming when he called home. “Marybeth, there’s so much going on that I can’t figure out,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is put you and the girls. . into this mess.” He almost said, “in danger” but re-phrasedit clumsily.