Back of Beyond (3 page)

He leaned into the back of the Expedition while he wrestled with the box. It was jammed against the backseat and he had to pull it over the top of the rest of his gear—his long-gun case, large evidence box, canvas duffel packed with two armored vests, a survival crate the sheriff insisted they carry with them filled with a sleeping bag, candles, food, and water. While he threw the boxes around and got the one with his crime-scene clothing, he could feel the rain soaking through the back of his shirt and jeans. His boots were already wet from the puddle in the parking lot.

Even though it was getting more pointless by the second, he pulled on rain pants and slipped Tyvek booties over his wet boots. Instead of a raincoat he pulled on a full-length Australian oilcloth duster. Rain immediately beaded on the fabric.

His cell phone burred and he dug it out and saw the call was from his son Justin. Justin was an anomaly to Cody—miraculously, the only genuinely good person he knew. Justin was kind, selfless, and admirable. Plus he was tall and nice-looking and had a sweet temperament. Cody had no idea how he could have spawned such a child, given his own foibles and his long lineage of white-trash relatives. Every time Cody saw his son he looked for signs of his own obsessions and bad traits and had yet to see them. Justin was a fucking miracle at seventeen years old, Cody thought.

“Hey,” Cody said. “This is bad timing and my signal’s weak.”

“Hi, Dad. Sorry, but I wanted to ask you something.”

“I’m on a crime scene,” Cody said. “Can I call you back later?”

“Yeah, but do it quick. I’m gonna be gone for a while.”

“Gone where?”

“Didn’t Mom tell you?”

“I haven’t talked to her.”

“Oh.”

“Look, Justin, this is a really bad time.”

“You said that,” his son said, not masking his disappointment well. “I wanted to ask you if I could borrow—”

“You can borrow anything you want of mine,” Cody said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to go. Later.”

He snapped the phone shut and crammed it in his pocket, feeling guilty and angry at himself for cutting off Justin.

*   *   *

Cody grabbed his digital camera
and light setup and his favorite flashlight, a Maglite with an extension that held six batteries and could be swung like a heavy lead pipe—with the same results. It was better than that twenty-eight-inch maple bat. The long flashlights had been banned from most police departments, which Cody saw as a further sign of official wimpification. He turned toward the burned-up cabin.

As Dougherty escorted the female hiker into Cody’s SUV, he said, “Look at you. You look like a gunfighter in that coat. I need to get me one of those.
Cool.
”

Cody sighed.

*   *   *

As he approached the cabin
he tried to clear his mind of everything in it, including Justin’s call, to make it a fresh whiteboard. He wanted to view the scene with absolute open-minded clarity. He knew this was his only chance to investigate the scene without anyone around. If there was a body, the place would be swarming with people within the hour. Skeeter would be there with his deputy coroner and perhaps a reporter from the Helena
Independent Record.
Skeeter would feign innocence as to why the reporter was there, but everybody would know he called her before he rolled. There might even be a team from one of two local television stations, although he knew they operated lean going into the weekends. And Sheriff Tub Tubman, also up for reelection, would no doubt arrive in his Suburban with Undersheriff Cliff Bodean just a few steps behind him. Mike Sanders, the other detective on call, might surprise him with his presence because the sheriff was there, no doubt bitching about the fact no one had called him. The forensics unit shared by the Helena PD would be present, as would the county evidence tech. So until the scene became chaotic, this was his opportunity to see it fresh. He couldn’t do anything about the fact that the hikers had reported seeing a hand, but he tried to ignore that, also. He wanted to see the hand for himself as if he’d stumbled upon it. If there was a hand.

If there was a body.

Because if there was a body and it belonged to whom he thought and if the evidence pointed to a homicide, he’d personally go after who did it like a rabid dog until he took that person down. And he wasn’t thinking Deer Lodge, Montana, where the state penitentiary was located. He was thinking Dirt Nap, Montana. Which was just about anywhere he wanted it to be.

*   *   *

Cody opened the beam
on his Maglite as he approached on a flagstone footpath. He moved slowly, taking in not only the cabin itself but anything of note on the path, which was the only walkway to the place from a gravel parking area. Looking for anything out of place; a wrapper, a cigarette butt, a spent cartridge. He saw nothing unusual.

The cabin was originally built in the 1920s on the edge of a meadow that sloped down to Trout Creek. The twenty acres of wooded land that went with it was surrounded on three sides by the Helena National Forest. An agreement had been granted years before to the Forest Service for a public easement for access to the trails in the Big Belts. That’s how the hikers stumbled on the scene.

The cabin was built of logs and had a deck overlooking the meadow in back and a covered porch in front. Tall spruce trees bordered it on three sides. Although it had fallen into disrepair in the 1970s, the structure had been expensively renovated and restored. At least before half of it burned down, that is.

The cabin was, quite simply, half the size it should have been. The left side was burned to the ground except for a black woodstove and chimney that leaned dangerously toward the creek. The right side was perfectly intact. He looked at the right side first, where the bedrooms and kitchen were. Rainwater coursed down bronze-colored logs, and there were lace curtains in the windows. A plaque near the front door read
LEAVE YOUR TROUBLES OUTSIDE BEFORE ENTERING.
He smiled bitterly at that.

He slowly circled the outside of the cabin, flashlight down, walking a perimeter he would later flag with yellow plastic
CRIME SCENE
tape to keep the press and public out. The ground was soaked and muddy. There was standing water in every depression. The grass was long and hadn’t been mowed for a while. Long blades of it bent down as if depressed, heavy droplets on every point. He looked for footprints wherever the grass gave way to dirt. He saw none except for two sets of fresh hiking boot impressions. He shot photos of the footprints and checked to see if they were good shots on the display screen on the back of his camera. He knew where they came from, and glanced back toward the parking area. Dougherty had moved from interviewing the male in his Ford to the department vehicle where the female hiker had been asked to stay.

Then he carefully approached the burned-out part of the cabin, and twisted the lens of his Maglite to narrow and brighten his field of view.

The floor of the burned rooms consisted of black wet tarlike sludge; ash mixed with rainwater. It looked like wet black cement. Fallen timbers and collapsed framing stuck out from the soup. As did the woodstove, a charred black metal desk with a squared-off black box on top of it, and the metal frames of an easy chair, fold-out couch, and gun safe.

It all smelled of charcoal, smoke, rain, and damp. And something else: barbecued pork.

A tangle of wooden beams and wall joints had fallen on the metal skeleton of the couch. But protruding from the tangle was a swelled and waxy-looking arm. On the end of the arm was an outstretched human hand, the fingers splayed out as if to say
Stop!,
the hand so bloated he could barely see the glint of a gold wedding band on the third finger. The skin of the forearm looked crispy and black, like the burn on the side of a roasted marshmallow. Cody further narrowed the beam on the flashlight to a five-inch spot to peer further inside the load of burned wood. A naked thigh, the skin burned and split to reveal neon orange fat like a pig or a goose.

Cody closed his eyes and reached up and took his cap off and let the rain hit him in the face.

*   *   *

Larry Olson arrived a half hour
later. By then, Cody had thoroughly photographed the scene. He’d placed plastic numbered tents near the body, the stove, the desk, and the couch. He’d set up his remote flashes on mounts that lit it up like daylight. The photos he saw on his display were sharp, focused, and thorough. He tried not to think about what he was shooting or who the body had belonged to. He shut off his mind from speculation, and made sure every possible angle and object was preserved digitally. He never once walked into the burned-out rooms, but did all of his shooting from outside. As he did, he found other objects of interest: a metal briefcase swimming in the black soup, the frame of a Winchester rifle with the stock and forestock burned off, a blackened bottle shape he recognized with such intimacy and disappointment that it was as if someone had punched him in the throat.

He looked up as Larry’s flashlight bobbed along the flagstone path and eventually raised to take him in.

Larry said, “Nice raincoat. You headed to the OK Corral later tonight? You and the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday?”

“Yeah. I’ve got issues with Ike Clanton, that bastard.”

Larry actually laughed. “Suicide? Tell me it’s a suicide.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Cody said. “I’m going to go back to my truck and burn one. I’ll stay out of your way. Then I’m going to come back and listen to your initial theory. I’ve looked over the scene and I’ve got more than enough shots of it. And I’ve got a theory of my own, but I don’t want to steer you one way or the other.”

Because it was dark, Cody couldn’t tell what Larry was thinking.

“Have you been in the unburned section?” Larry asked.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Let’s do that together.”

“All right.”

“Bad fucking night for this,” Larry said. “You must really hate me to call me out on a night like this.”

“I don’t hate you, Larry. I want your opinion.”

“Have you called the coroner?”

“Not yet.”

“Jesus, Cody. You should have called him already.”

Cody shrugged.

“I’ll look things over and give you my opinion as long as you call Skeeter and the sheriff and we do this thing properly. Remember what I said. You remember, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“A deal’s a deal.”

Cody nodded. He said, “Take as much time as you need. The scene is yours. I’ve got great photos, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just look it over, tell me what you think. And I’ll make the calls I need to.”

Larry reached up and squeegeed the beads of rain off his shaved head with his hand. “I should have brought a hat.”

“You can have mine,” Cody said, handing him his cap as he passed. It was sodden and heavy with rain.

“Keep it,” Larry said. Then: “Hey, what did you do to your unit? You’ve only got one headlight.”

“Hit an elk on the way up.”

“Yeah, I saw it on the side of the road. You must have been in a hell of a hurry.”

Cody left Larry and walked toward his Ford. He looked up at the dark sky, hoping for an opening in the rain clouds. Nope.

“Hey, Cody,” Larry called.

“What?”

“You got a cow permit?”

*   *   *

His cell signal had faded
further, so Cody shooed Dougherty and the hiker out of his Ford. As Dougherty climbed out, Cody said, “Any discrepancies in their stories?”

“No, sir.”

“Good work. Keep them here for a while in case we have more questions, then take them back to the York Bar or wherever they’re headed. Just make sure we’ve got contact details on them if we need to get in touch later.”

The patrol officer patted his notebook. “I’ve got all that.”

“Okay then,” Cody said.

Dougherty paused. “So you aren’t going to write me up?”

“Go. Just go. But remember, never shut off an area of inquiry in any situation. Never assume anything. Always assume everybody is guilty as hell but act like they’re innocent to their face. Remember that. Everybody is guilty of something, every single one of ’em. It may not be this,” he said, chinning toward the cabin. “But it’s something. No one is clean and pure and perfect.”

Dougherty didn’t say
Yes, sir.
He just stood there.

“What?” Cody said.

“I hope I never get like you,” Dougherty said, and went back to his truck.

Cody said to no one in particular, “I hope you don’t, either.”

*   *   *

It was warm and dry
in his Ford. The windows steamed on the inside of the cab due to his wet clothing. He called Edna on the radio. While he talked to her he watched Larry Olson retrace his own steps around the cabin, shooting his flashlight about, moving slow.

“Edna, please alert Skeeter and Tubby—”

“You mean Sheriff Tubman.”

“Of course,” Cody said, glad she pointed that out since there were plenty of locals who monitored the police band. “Sheriff Tubman.”

“What should I tell them?” Edna asked.

“We’ve got a body,” he said, signing off.

*   *   *

He gave Larry plenty of time.
Dougherty and the hikers sat in Dougherty’s vehicle waiting for the word to be given for clearance to leave. As Cody waited for Larry to finish up, he glanced into the backseat. The male hiker had left his daypack, the idiot. Cody thought he may need to call Dougherty, tell him to bring the guy over to get his property.

Before he reached for the radio, he slung the pack up to the front seat and unzipped it. He kept the interior light off and the pack below the window so the deputy or hikers couldn’t see what he was doing. The contents smelled of woodsmoke. He felt sorry for the hikers, having to camp night after night in the rain. How fun could that be? Plus, the female wasn’t exactly a looker with her matted hair, hairy legs and underarms (he’d noticed), and no makeup. A typical Missoula or Bozeman bark beetle type.