“You think...” Ferris began, letting his voice trail off, reaching the same thought I had just a moment before.
“An explosion would explain why they needed a doctor in the middle of the night, why they couldn’t just walk inside to get treatment.”
Adjusting himself slightly behind the wheel, Ferris resumed his death grip on it, his mouth pulled back into a tight line.
I had no way of knowing what he was thinking, but to me the next thought was an obvious one.
“I don’t suppose you have an extra weapon in here, do you?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jasper Maxx wasn’t concerned about the people inside the store. Dealing with the occasional stare was something he was used to, the kind of thing that had occurred his entire life. His mama had always said it was because he was special and people were attracted to things that were special, but his daddy had always just said it was because he was an idiot and people liked to gawk at idiots.
As a kid Jasper always tried to believe his mama, to think that she would never lie to him.
Now, 30 years later, he knew his daddy was right, just as he had been about most things, no matter how much twisted pleasure he got from pointing them out.
Each person in the store seemed to be glancing his way as he walked through the aisles, his shoulders rolled forward, holding the piece of paper in front of him. Every few seconds he glanced down at the blue ink scrawled in even lines, at the spots where water had smudged it just slightly.
The list, that small scrap of paper, was what he was most concerned with. Not because of anything written on it, even though it might be the key to helping Elias, but because Cuddy had trusted him with it.
In all their years together it was the first time Jasper could remember being allowed to drive, much less having such an important task put on his shoulders.
For as bad as the last 18 hours had been, this was a turning point in their group. No longer was Jasper the lowest of the three, the ne’er-do-well who could be given tasks of menial labor and nothing more. Now it was Elias’s turn to be the screw-up, the one getting the dismissive look from Cuddy that cut to the core.
The mere thought of it, of a new world view in which he was important, in which he mattered, drew Jasper’s head up a little higher as he scanned the aisles, in search of the things on his list.
Starting at the top, Jasper took up a red plastic basket from the floor beside a front register, rounding the aisles until he found Neosporin ointment, placing six tubes in the basket before moving on.
Second on his list were cotton swabs, starting over again on Aisle One, beginning his slow meander back through the store. He paid no attention to the young girl at the end of the second aisle pointing toward him, at the woman in the red apron looking his way and nodding slightly.
All he could think of was the next item on his list, of how proud Cuddy would be when he returned with everything, having braved the storm and saved the day.
Halfway down the third aisle he found the cotton swabs, two options presenting themselves, one box containing items just a few inches long, used for cleaning ears, the other, longer sticks with cotton on one end.
Glancing down at the list for help, Jasper stared at the words on the paper, scratching his head in thought.
“Excuse me, sir?”
The sound barely penetrated Jasper’s consciousness as he examined the items before him, trying to decide which he needed.
He couldn’t imagine that cleaning Elias’s ears in his current state would do much good, but at the same time he didn’t know what most of the items on the list were for.
“Sir?”
The second time, the question was asked a little louder with a bit more urgency to it, enough to grab Jasper’s attention, ripping him from his thoughts.
“Hmm?” Jasper asked, his eyebrows rising as he turned to see the same woman in the red apron he’d noticed a few moments before standing in front of him.
“Is there something I can help you with?” she asked, a look on her face Jasper couldn’t quite decipher, just knowing that it sent an uncomfortable feeling into his stomach.
“Oh...no,” he managed, shaking his head, letting his hands fall by his side. “Just need to get the things on my list.”
Rocking forward a few inches, the woman extended a hand toward him, her attention on the paper clutched in his hand. “Well, let me take a look here, maybe I can help.”
A flash of anger, fear, agitation, roiled through Jasper as his hand shot back, his entire body recoiling out of her reach. There he remained as he stared at the woman, his head slowly shaking.
There was no way anyone, not this woman or anybody else, was going to keep him from doing what Cuddy told him to.
This was his chance to shine.
“No thanks, ma’am. I just need a few things, and I’ll be on my way.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I’d half expected Ferris to look at me like I was crazy, telling me there was a wrench or hammer or something equally archaic buried under snow in the bed of the truck if I needed a weapon. I still had the MK-3 tucked away in its usual position, but given the potential enemy and the elements, there wasn’t much difference between that and carrying a blunt force tool.
To be fair, my status in the investigation was fuzzy, and despite my extensive background with the navy and DEA, having handled a weapon almost daily for a decade, I was now a civilian.
Albeit one living in Montana, where firearms were much more a common part of life than, say, anywhere else in the country.
The other half of me expected him to come out with an old revolver, the barrel rusted, a relic from another time that had been buried on the rear floorboards of his truck for years. It seemed most every person past the age of 40 I’d encountered since moving up north from southern California had at least one around, many displaying them on their mantles, others using them as paper weights.
No part of me expected what he handed me though.
The Kimber Ultra Carry was a newer model of something I had used a bit with the DEA, a smaller piece that was easily concealed, designed for a holster that rode under the arm, hidden by a jacket. Matte black in finish, it held a mid-sized magazine and operated on a gas powered projection system, capable of emptying the entire clip in a couple of seconds.
Ferris passed it over to me without comment, extracting the weapon from the base of the driver’s side door and handing it across as casually as if it were a soda.
The location and condition of it gave me the impression he had brought it along for this very purpose, though I said nothing as I slid it from the leather holster it was in and checked the slide, making sure a round was chambered, the safety on.
Unlike a majority of my brethren from both previous careers, I had never been an overt gun enthusiast. In my new job as a guide in Yellowstone I made sure to have at least one on hand at all times, never quite knowing when I or my party might unexpectedly come upon a bear and her cubs or a mountain lion crouched over a fresh kill.
Pacifists would say that a can of spray should be sufficient in such situations, but not once had I ever heard someone make that claim after standing in the forest, feeling their heart race as an animal stared at them, blood lust in its eyes.
In addition to a pair of handguns for use on the trail I had a Winchester 30.06 that was purchased a few months before, a weapon that oddly enough had a few human kills under its belt thanks to the incident at the cabin that everybody in town seemed to be intimately familiar with.
Of the three, none were with me, the Smith & Wesson still under my pillow at the hotel the only one even within 100 miles of me, all others safely locked away at my office in West Yellowstone. The trip to Glasgow was intended to be a quick one, the need for additional weaponry never once crossing my mind.
Placing the Kimber on the console beside me, I turned my attention back to the world outside, the smell of ether growing stronger, pulling us forward. Beside me Ferris
alternated glances between the windshield and his side window, both of us scanning.
I was the first to spot it, my visibility cut to less than 90 yards, the truck almost on top of the place before I noticed it.
“There,” I said, raising my right hand and tapping it against the cold window, the contact making a dull thumping sound as I leaned forward.
Sitting back about 30 yards off the road was a small white clapboard farmhouse, standing two stories tall. The white of the exterior was matched in color by the blanket of snow covering the roof.
“You sure?” Ferris asked.
Standing behind the house were the remains of some sort of structure, either a large garage or a small barn.
By the time my gaze reached the opposite end there was nothing left at all, the back of the structure seeming to have been blown away, shards of charred debris sticking up out of the snow.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning away from the vents as Ferris pulled past the top half of a mailbox along the road, the post it sat on buried in the snow. Hooking a hard right, he laid on the gas, the front of the truck bucking as we pushed forward.
Both of us remained silent as we drew closer, the house and the grounds looked deserted. Nowhere in any of the windows could a light, or any kind of activity, be seen as we made our noisy approach.
“Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Ferris said, stating the obvious as he pulled to a stop and lowered his head a few inches to look up at the front of the house.
“No, but they have been,” I said, motioning to a hollow spot just outside the garage, the snow clearly far less deep than everywhere else, large enough for at least one vehicle. Several sets of footprints, looking more like dents in the snow, dotted the area around it.
Ferris nodded, reaching up inside the flap of his jacket and tapping at the butt of his weapon. “I’ll go try the front door, just to be sure. You want to go around and check out that building?”
I wrenched the front door open with only a nod in response, the same pervasive wind that had been on us for days gripping me in a swirl, managing to pull away any warmth from the truck in just seconds. It rode along the inside of my coat and up under my shirt, causing my teeth to clamp together as I pushed off for the side of the house.
There was no point in trying to raise my feet above the snow and take things one step at a time the way the sheriff did, the stuff too deep to bother. Instead, I locked my knees and pushed straight ahead, the fronts of my shins shoving snow to the side like a bulldozer, twisting my hips for leverage.
My first stop was the spot by the barn, the scene revealing what we already knew and not much else.
Just like at the hospital, there appeared to be two people present, one for each side of the truck. From what I could tell both had made multiple trips, the rear of the truck backed up just short of the garage.
What or who they were loading I could merely speculate at, the only clear evidence provided being that they had been gone for several hours at a minimum, probably most of the night.
The smell of ether and wood smoke, the same exact combination Rigby Myers had alluded to, hung thick in the air, the wind doing little to carry it away, the scent seeming to hover over the ground like a fog.
Each step closer to the remains of the structure seemed to bring me closer to the source, the odor causing my eyes to water, the wind pulling the moisture away just as fast.
It appeared to be a barn, or at least what used to be one. If I were to guess, I would estimate that at some point it had been nearly as large as the house, though less than one-third remained.
What from the road had looked to be a fire actually appeared to be more the result of an explosion, powerful enough to rip away most of the structure.
As I walked closer to the damage, I was forced to stop as bits of wood and metal smashed into my legs, shrapnel and debris having been tossed from the blast, buried in the snow.
Setting my jaw, I slowly worked my way over the last few yards before entering the remains, the stench almost overwhelming. Standing there I could see pieces of heavy wooden tables, most of them turned into matchsticks, some copper piping twisted and scorched, and in one place, a crater that had once been the floor.
Even with several inches of snow clinging to every surface, it was clear that this place had all the makings of a full-fledged meth lab, a large one.
“Jesus,” Ferris said, stomping his way across the backyard toward me, a red handkerchief pressed to his face. “How the hell can you stand to be in there like that?”
Glancing in his direction, I scrunched my nose once at him before turning back to face the carnage before me.
“Busted my nose on a case in Panama years ago,” I said, my delivery deadpan. “Lost some of my ability to smell stuff.”
Ferris used my tracks to work his way forward, coming to a stop beside me, panting loudly.
“Son of a...” he said, the hanky dropping away to reveal his mouth hanging open as he gawked at the sight before us.
“Yep.”
“Meth?” he asked, the question seeming to seek more confirmation than anything.
“Oh yeah,” I said, “and this is high end stuff too. These guys weren’t using lye and fertilizer in their bathtub here.”
His jaw still hanging open, Ferris glanced in my direction, seemingly wanting to ask me how I knew all of that, before turning back to the tangle of piping before us.
“Best guess,” he asked, “how much could a lab like this knock out?”
At the time I left the DEA, meth was still just beginning its ascent to prominence. It was seen as the younger, uglier stepsister of the major drugs on the market, a minor blip compared to cocaine or heroin, the kind of thing trailer trash brewed up one batch at a time, more often lighting themselves on fire than producing usable product.
The majority of my time was spent abroad, working our way through the South and Central American cartels, pissing off a lot of people in our attempts to control the drugs entering the States.
It was some of those people who eventually drove me away from the agency, taking away the two people I held most dear in the world as a parting gift.
“Based on what’s left here,” I said, “and assuming the rest of the place looked much the same? I’d say, maybe couple hundred pounds per batch.”
“Jesus,” Ferris repeated, his voice low. He just stood there, not saying anything, taking in everything before him.
It was not the first time I’d seen such a reaction, someone like him believing they were doing a good job, that their community was insulated from any of the major evils of the world.
Those were the things that went on elsewhere, plagued major cities, but surely not their little corner of Montana.
“I’m guessing nobody was home?” I asked, stopping him before he could get drawn too deep into thought, needing him to remain in the present.
There would be time for pity or loathing or whatever other self-imposed emotion he was feeling later.
“Uh,” he replied, opening his mouth twice before saying, “no, nothing.”
The news didn’t surprise me in the least, the outside evidence already telling me they had packed up and left, most likely right after the explosion.
“Any idea who owns the place?”
“Used to,” Ferris said, “but it sold a couple of years ago. I’ll call in and have Mavis run it as soon as we get back to the truck.”
“Hmm,” I said, nodding once as I looked down at the wreckage, the scene already having told us everything it was going to for now.
As best I could tell, our working theory seemed to be looking the most likely. Whoever lived here had quite a lucrative lab going until they messed up, ripping the place apart. A hunch said that the head chef was inside when it happened, surviving the ordeal but getting torn up pretty good in the process.
That’s where Yvonne Endicott entered the picture.
“The question still is,” I said, thinking out loud, “where woul
d they take an injured man and the doctor? They knew they couldn’t stay here, knew they would have to have someplace to go so she could work on him.”
Beside me Ferris started to answer, raising his eyebrows as he considered the information, his mouth opening slightly. Before a single sound crossed his lips, I cut him off, reaching out and grabbing his arm, my head twisted to the side.
“Shh,” I hissed, eyes narrowed, listening intently. “You hear that?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Trick Reynolds’s entire body was numb. Despite the fact that the snow coach had been purchased directly from Xanterra, the very company that conducted winter excursions throughout Yellowstone, and was equipped for covering long distances, four hours was still too long to spend seated in one position that didn’t involve straddling a motorcycle.
The trek west had started just after 7:00 a.m., pulling away from the garage The Dogs kept all of their winter gear in, including the coaches and snowmobiles. At the time of their purchase both he and Wood had questioned the wisdom in spending so much on something so frivolous, but the decision was made far above their station, one of the last made by the old regime.
Upon assuming control, they had agreed it would be foolhardy to cast aside something potentially useful, especially given where the bulk of their business now resided.
This was the first time Trick had ever been forced to ride in one of the converted coaches, as far as he knew the first time either had ever been out of the barn for anything more than washing or tune-ups.
From a purely objective standpoint there was nothing wrong with the vehicle, the interior outfitted in leather and fine wood, plush carpeting on the floor. Two captain chairs up front, a padded bench seat behind it, a second one in the rear removed to make room for additional storage.
On this particular trip that meant a pair of extra fuel cans, some tools and copper piping to help nudge along the operation at Cuddyer’s, and enough small arms to take out an army, should it come to that.
Fire and Ice: A Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 3) Page 13
