Below Zero

by C. J. Box

  Joe stood transfixed, staring at the open window where he had last seen April. It was now a blazing hole.

  The Sovereigns had scattered on snowmobiles, Sno-Cats, skis, and four-wheel-drives. It was chaos. He’d chased down Munker and found him mortally injured.

  When he returned to the Sovereigns’ camp . . .

  He couldn’t even speak. He stared at the smoldering carcass of the trailer. It had scorched the snow and exposed the earth beneath it—dark earth and green grass that didn’t belong here. Melted snow mixed with soot had cut miniature troughs, like spindly black fingers, down the hillside. When he stared at the black framework, all he could see was the face of April Keeley as he last saw her. She was looking out of the window, her head tucked under the chin of her mother. April’s face had been emotionless, and haunted. April had always been haunted. She had never, it seemed, had much of a chance, no matter how hard he and Marybeth had tried. He had failed her, and as a result, she was gone. It tore his heart out.

  Joe stood there, as the snow swirled around him, then felt a wracking sob burst in his chest, taking his remaining strength away. His knees buckled and his hands dropped to his sides and he sank down into the snow, hung his head, and cried.

  And he cried now, six years later, hot tears dropping on Tube’s head and snout. Joe was always shocked by the appearance of his own tears, as if he’d forgotten he was capable of them. Angrily, he wiped them away.

  When he recovered, he called Marybeth. It was after one in the morning, but he knew she’d be awake.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Nearly to Casper,” he said. Which meant still three hours away.

  “This won’t be like our usual reunion,” she said, as if in warning.

  “I know.” The only good thing about the distance of his district from their home was getting back together. They missed each other and yearned for each other terribly, and seeing each other was still . . . wild. Not this time, though.

  He said, “You know what’s always bothered me about that day on Battle Mountain? I’ve replayed that day over and over in my head for six years. But you know what’s always bothered me the most?”

  “What?”

  “If it had been Sheridan or Lucy in that trailer, I think I would have gone in after either one of them.”

  “You could have been killed trying, Joe.”

  “I know that. But I think I would have tried. I think something inside of me would have made me go into that camp after them, after my daughters. I wouldn’t have waited to see how the situation played out like I did with our foster child. That’s always haunted me . . .”

  There was a long pause. “So what are you saying?”

  “That if there’s even a remote chance—even a sliver of a chance—that April is alive, I don’t want to screw up again. I want to find her and save her. I want to set things right.”

  “Joe . . . it’s time you let that go. I don’t think you did the wrong thing that day. You would have been killed trying, and where would that leave the rest of us?”

  He didn’t respond, couldn’t respond.

  After a long time, Marybeth said, “Joe, I can’t even imagine a scenario where she’s alive. But if she were, if she were . . .” her voice tailed off. He thought he was losing the signal.

  Then she said: “What makes you think she wants to be saved?”

  THREE YEARS AFTER the incident on Battle Mountain, a man named J. W. Keeley showed up in Saddlestring seeking revenge on Joe. J.W. was April’s uncle. He was also a violent ex-con suspected of murdering a rich couple from Atlanta in his hunting camp. The ending of that encounter still made Joe shudder with guilt.

  BOTH EXPERIENCES stayed with him, messed him up, and made it difficult to concentrate on I-25 as he coursed north. He nearly forgot to acknowledge the memory of former Wyoming icon Chris LeDoux as he passed Kaycee.

  But he snapped right back when his phone rang at two-thirty in the morning, when Marybeth said, “Sheridan got a text message an hour ago, Joe. From April.”

  5

  Aspen, Colorado

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” ROBERT ASKED HER. SHE QUICKLY jammed the phone between the arm of the overstuffed chair and outside of her leg so he couldn’t see it if he looked closely. She hoped her face wouldn’t reveal anything, but he’d startled her and she hadn’t seen him coming up behind her in the hotel lobby.

  “Nothing,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound guilty.

  “I thought I saw you doing something with your hands.”

  She’d been texting. She was fast, a blur of thumbs. But because Robert was in back of her when he asked, she was fairly certain he couldn’t have seen the phone. All he could have seen, she thought, was her leaning forward in the chair, head bent forward, intent on something. Any kid would have known what she was doing, but despite what he seemed to think of himself, Robert was no kid. She doubted he’d ever sent a text message. Robert thought cell phones were for calls. That’s how old he was.

  She held up her right hand. “My nails,” she said. “I hate my nails. I chew on them too much.”

  She thought it was a pretty good lie. She did hate her nails.

  Robert looked at her suspiciously, narrowing his eyes, darting them all over her and around her like a mental frisking. But he skimmed right over her legs and the arm of the chair where the cell phone was.

  She’d had the phone for three days, and neither Robert nor Stenko knew she had it. It had been fairly simple to get. She’d asked them to stop at a Wal-Mart as they were passing through Cheyenne on the way to Colorado. She’d said she needed to buy some things. When Robert asked what she needed, she’d said, “Feminine things, if you gotta know,” and that shut him up. She knew they wouldn’t want to go inside with her to buy Kotex, or whatever else the two of them assumed were “feminine things.” She borrowed $50 cash from Stenko and he peeled it off the roll he had taken from the motor home.

  The TracFones were located in the electronics section. While standing in line at the cashier’s, she bought a 120-minute Airtime card from a display.

  She’d activated the phone in a restroom stall by calling an 800 number with the ten free minutes that came with the phone. Following the prompts, she loaded two hours of talk time onto the phone from the code on the Airtime card. Once it was loaded, she muted the ring and placed the call to the number she remembered from so many years ago to the house on Bighorn Road. She didn’t recognize the voice of the boy who answered, but he did give her Sheridan’s number, which she punched into the memory of the phone before powering it off. Then she threw away the packaging and the charger and slipped the phone down the front of her jeans. She knew that when the battery ran out she could buy another phone at any Wal-Mart or convenience store.

  On the way out of the store, she gathered up a large package of Tampax, some nail polish and lotion, and her favorite shampoo. She’d learned years before from one of her many foster brothers that the best time to steal from Wal-Mart was early in the morning, when the employees were lethargic. So she bagged them all up at a self-service checkout and walked out past the staffer near the door who never looked twice.

  Outside, she’d offered to give Stenko the change but he smiled and said, “Keep it.”

  THEY WERE IN THE LOBBY of the nicest hotel she had ever been in. Such luxury! It was warm and comfortable with crowded couches and chairs, bowls of fresh fruit on tables, dark red wallpaper, hanging chandeliers turned low, exposed ceilings with thick wooden beams, deer heads on the walls. It was late, but she couldn’t sleep since she’d dozed so much in the car all day getting here. The key card to their suite was on a table in front of her. The sleeve for the card read: HOTEL JEROME. Outside, it smelled of pine trees.

  Robert sat down in a chair across from her. He had a large tumbler of amber liquid on ice. He was dressed casually, but in a studied way, as if trying to fit in with the surroundings. Open-collar shirt, sports jacket, chinos, leather shoes without socks. And of cours
e he carried his laptop case.

  “Dad’s in the bar,” he said. “He’s likely to be in there a while.”

  “I’d like to go to bed,” she said. “I’m really tired. It’s one in the morning.”

  “I know what time it is. What, do you have an important meeting tomorrow or something? Besides, all you did all day was sleep in the car.” And he laughed.

  She really didn’t like him at all, she thought. If it weren’t for Stenko and what he’d done for her, she would have thought of a way to get away already. In fact, the thought had crossed her mind in the Cheyenne Wal-Mart when she was alone from the both of them for the first time since they’d left Chicago.

  “What’s he doing in the bar?” she asked, trying to divert the subject away from what she’d been doing previously.

  Robert smirked. “Toasting the groom.”

  “What groom?” she asked, although she knew.

  “The groom. There’s going to be a big wedding in the hotel in a few days. But you don’t need to know anything more about it.”

  “Why don’t you trust me?” she asked.

  “Because,” he said, taking a sip from his drink, “I think you’re a devious little tramp.”

  “I’m not a tramp.”

  “Yeah, I forgot,” Robert said. “That was a nunnery Dad found you in, not a brothel.”

  “He saved me,” she said. She was so angry she nearly forgot that if she stood up to slap his face he’d see the phone.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “Why are you doing this to him? Making him do these things?”

  Robert sat back, steepled his fingers, and stared at her as if weighing how much to tell. “I’m actually helping him.”

  “How does doing these things help him?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, girlie.”

  Oh, how she disliked him.

  SHE’D OVERHEARD some of the conversation in the car earlier that day as they drove south from Wyoming into Colorado. Stenko and his son, Robert, spoke in hushed tones, but she sensed it when Robert would shoot looks at her in the back seat. She pretended to sleep so she could listen and they’d feel like they could talk freely.

  Stenko had said, “So the name of the groom is what again?”

  “Alexander Stumpf,” Robert said, reading off the screen of his laptop. “Son of Cornelius and Binkie Stumpf of La Jolla, California. Heir to the Stumpf shipping fortune. Reading this, he sounds like a snooty little bastard. The bride is named Patty Johnston. You know, Johnston Cosmetics?”

  “I guess I’ve heard of it.”

  “Everybody’s heard of Johnston Cosmetics, Dad. Sometimes you astound me. They’re one of the biggest of the multinationals. They make billions on the backs of Third World workers they exploit so rich women can smell good.”

  Stenko didn’t reply.

  “There’s a picture of Patty Johnston here. She’s kind of a looker. But now she wants to be known as Patty Johnston-Stumpf. Christ Almighty.”

  “You don’t even know her,” Stenko said.

  Robert snorted. “It sounds like a royal wedding. Guests are flying in from Europe and both coasts for it. Two trust fund babies getting together in Aspen to tie the knot. It’s one of the biggest society shindigs of the year, or at least the only one I can find online that’s close to us.”

  “You’ve got a trust fund,” Stenko said.

  Said Robert, “Considering what you put me through and the dying planet you’re leaving me with, it was the least you could do. And unlike Patty Johnston or Alexander Stumpf, I’m spending mine in a responsible way, aren’t I? At least I’m giving back, Dad. And because of the way the trust fund came about, I have a hell of a lot to account for, don’t I?”

  Stenko sighed. “Don’t be like that.”

  “How do you expect me to be? How would you expect different, Dad?”

  “Maybe you could be a little nicer.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  She didn’t like the way Robert spoke to his father, the man who had saved her life and been nothing but sweet to her.

  “Is she still sleeping?” Stenko whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t be so loud. You’ll wake her up.”

  “Fuck her.”

  “Robert, please.”

  “You’re more considerate of her than you ever were of me,” Robert said. “Of course, Carmen was another matter. Carmen loved her daddy, and you called her Little Angel right in front of me. She was Little Angel and I was what? You never really got around to a nickname for me, did you? I mean, we hardly even saw you growing up. And when we did, you were too busy for us. Remember that time we went to the Wisconsin Dells and got that cabin? You left the first morning and didn’t show up for a week afterward.”

  A long pause. “I had business. We were opening a new casino and there were labor problems. I’m sorry about leaving you kids with your mother for so long.”

  “But you did,” Robert said, triumphant. “But you did. All I can remember about that place is being eaten alive by mosquitoes. It was hot and humid, and the crickets kept me awake all night. Do you remember when I told you I wanted to learn how to fish? Do you remember that?”

  Stenko moaned with the memory.

  “Right, you remember. So instead of you teaching me dad to son, you get that ape Charlie Sera to take me out on the lake. That goon didn’t know fishing from cathedral architecture! He told me to bait my own hook, and he spent the whole time drinking from a flask and shooting at rising trout with a thirty-eight. Boy, what a great bonding experience.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know about it until later.”

  “Right, you were gone by then. And your Little Angel Carmen—that’s when she started hanging out with local losers. That’s when it started with her, you know. She missed her daddy so she found other males who liked her. And mom drowning herself in vodka every night. It was a living hell. But you wouldn’t know. You left us there.”

  “It was a five-room vacation home, if I recall,” Stenko said patiently, “the best available. It wasn’t like you were in some shack with an outdoor toilet. Besides, I thought you liked nature. I thought that was what this was all about.”

  “I despise nature,” Robert said, “thanks to you.”

  “But . . .”

  “I want to save the planet,” Robert said. “That’s different.”

  “THERE SHE IS,” Robert said, taking the last gulp from his drink and gesturing at a woman checking in with his glass.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Patty Johnston, the bride to be.”

  Tall, very thin, thick auburn hair, and green eyes. She had a graceful way of moving and a quick smile. She sure had a lot of luggage, though: two bell-stands worth. The hotel staff hovered around her while she got her key. She was with another woman who looked like an older version of Johnston.

  “She just arrived, and that must be her mother,” Robert said with a smirk. “She doesn’t know her future husband is in the bar with Stenko.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “I could have her if I wanted to,” Robert said. “The easiest pickings in the world is a woman about to be married. They always want one last blast. And especially if they’re going to get married to a guy named Stumpf.”

  She looked at Robert. His eyes were glassy, and she realized he must have had more to drink than she thought.

  “What?” he said, noticing her staring at him.

  You’re such a prick, she thought.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” he said. “You’re just a kid. You shouldn’t even be here. And you wouldn’t be here if it were up to me.”

  Robert stood up a little unevenly, smoothed his chinos with both hands and raked his fingers through his streaked blond hair. “Stay put and watch this.”

  She watched. He shot out his cuffs and detoured on his way to the bar via the front desk. He succeeded in catching the eye of Patty Johnston. Robert flashed his bril
liant smile, said, “You must be the bride because you’ve got a wonderful glow about you.”

  Patty Johnston looked at him as if he had something in his teeth. Her mother put on a stern face and glared at him.

  “I’d be pleased to buy you a drink later,” Robert pushed on.

  Patty Johnston dismissed him with an embarrassed smile and turned back to the front desk.

  Robert’s shoulders slumped and his neck turned red. He let a beat pass, then continued his way toward the bar. From her overstuffed chair in the lobby, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  When he came back to his chair, the bride-to-be and her mother were gone.

  She said, “I guess that didn’t work out.”

  He shook his head as if harboring secret knowledge. “You didn’t see how she looked at me. She looked me over, girlie, and Patty liked what she saw. I could have pursued it, and she would have let me. If she wasn’t with her mother, it would be a whole different outcome, believe me.”

  He sipped his drink, trying to act nonchalant. “But I figure Stenko’s working the groom, so why bother?”

  Then he did something she was getting used to: he withdrew his laptop from his computer case and opened it on his thighs.

  “Stenko got all the numbers from the groom,” Robert said, as much to himself as to her. He handed her the spiral notebook opened to a page filled with scrawled words and numbers.

  “Read this to me so I can input the data,” he said.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense to you,” he said, annoyed. “It makes sense to me. Now just start at the top and read out each entry while I put it into the database.”

  She sighed. “Twenty international guests from Europe.”

  Tap-tap-tap.

  He said, “That’s eight thousand nine hundred fifty KM each. Seventeen hundred seventy-two KG of carbon per. Seventeen thousand nine hundred KM total, seventy tons of carbon total. Okay, next.”