Back of Beyond (36 page)

She pushed his rain gear aside and found his briefcase on the bottom of the pannier. Grasping it by the worn handle, she pulled it up and out. Jed’s rolled yellow raincoat came out with it and fell to her feet.

Using the back of the bay like the surface of a desk, she placed the briefcase on it and unsnapped the hasps. They sprung up with two solid clicks.

The manila folder she’d glimpsed the night before in their tent was on top of his other materials and she could see the corners of the printouts peeking beyond the stiff file cover.

She took a deep breath and centered the file folder and reached for the smudged tab to open it.

The white flash in front of her eyes was not another grasshopper, but the blade of a knife wielded by someone who pressed into her back, pinning her to the side of the bay. It sliced so deeply through the flesh of her throat she felt the steel scrape on bone.

34

The sounds in the trees became more pronounced;
twigs cracking, the click of hooves against rock, the squeak of leather on leather, the nickering of horses. He felt more than saw the presence of heavy-bodied beings approaching en masse. Cody thought,
How many of them are there?

He glanced down at his rifle. Likely not enough bullets. And if they were armed? He might need to pull his Sig Sauer when the rifle was empty.

Then a deep-throated shout: “Cody?” The voice carried through the trees.

Cody closed his eyes and took a deep breath and stood up. “Bull?”

“Where the hell are you?” Mitchell grumbled.

“Here. Ahead of you, I think. In a clearing.”

“Gotcha,” Mitchell said, “so don’t shoot me. I’m coming toward your voice.”

“I won’t,” Cody said. “Who is with you? How many of you are there?”

“Just one,” Mitchell said.

Cody didn’t know if that meant just Mitchell or another. Nevertheless, he could feel heavy weights release from the tops of his shoulders. “I’ve got to say I’m glad you came back.”

“It’s taking me a while,” Mitchell grumbled, “seeing I’ve been gathering up loose horses for miles.”

Cody lowered his rifle and waited. He could hear Mitchell and the horses coming, picking their way through the timber and brush, but he couldn’t see them yet.

Finally, a horse head with a white star blaze on its forehead pushed through the brush. Mitchell’s horse.

“There you are,” Mitchell said, and Cody could see him. He was a big man but he sat the horse as if they were conjoined, and Cody had trouble discerning where the horse stopped and Bull Mitchell began.

“Damn, I’m glad to see you,” Cody said. “Why’d you come back?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “As Hank the Cowdog says, there’s a thin line between heroism and stupidity.”

Cody found himself grinning at the answer. “Then you’ll probably want your gun back.”

“Yup.”

Mitchell was leading Gipper and the packhorse that had run away. Behind them, tied with a series of lead ropes, were four more horses. The first three had empty saddles.

The last one, a gray, had a rider. Cody was surprised and instinctively raised the rifle again. A dark man, hatless, glowered back at him. So there
was
another. The man rode oddly, shifting around subtly as if he were trying to maintain his balance, as if he were simply cargo. That’s when Cody noticed the man’s hands were cuffed behind him and he’d been lashed by the waist and legs to the saddle with rope he’d last seen looped on Mitchell’s saddle.

“Says his name is Wilson,” Mitchell said. “I don’t care if you shoot him because he’s been nothing but trouble. But I was thinking you might want to talk with him, first.”

“K. W. Wilson,” Cody said, “fifty-eight, Salt Lake City. Or, as I like to call you, Suspect Number One.”

Wilson didn’t react. Cody noticed the contusion under Wilson’s left eye and his bloody and fattened lower lip.

“Doesn’t like cheese,” Cody said, remembering Wilson’s trip registration.

“I had to thump him a couple times,” Mitchell said, patting the butt of his rifle. “He didn’t want to work with me very much.”

Cody thought Wilson didn’t give off any indication of fear—or innocence. Like so many criminals he’d encountered in lockup over the years, Wilson’s bearing was a dismissive mix of arrogance and regret. Not regret at what he’d been picked up for, but regret he’d been caught.

Cody nodded. He wondered if he was meeting the killer of Hank Winters and the others.

“I found a couple of things on him you might find interesting,” Mitchell said, leaning back and digging into his saddlebag. He produced a six-inch Buck knife in a sheath and a stubby handgun. He handed them both butt-first to Cody.

Cody inspected the revolver, a snub-nosed .38 Special. It was a double-action Taurus six-shot revolver made of stainless steel with rubber grips. It had a two-inch barrel. He sniffed the muzzle and cracked open the cylinder.

“Two rounds have been fired recently,” Cody said to Mitchell, who nodded.

Cody snapped the cylinder home, spun it, and pointed the gun at Wilson. Wilson didn’t flinch. Cody said, “This is an odd choice of weapon to bring up here. It’s not big enough for bears and hard to hit anything at a distance because of the short barrel and fixed sights. I used to carry one of these as a backup in an ankle holster in Denver, but I knew this kind of piece is strictly for self-defense and it’s only good for close-in work. Meaning,” he said to Mitchell without taking his eyes off Wilson, “he was right on top of D’Amato and Russell when he shot them. Probably a couple of feet away, max. They knew him well enough to get close. I doubt it was an ambush. He probably looked right into their eyes before he pulled the trigger.”

He slid the gun into his belt and drew the knife out of the sheath. The blade had been wiped clean but there was dark gummy residue where the fixed blade met the brass guard. Cody dug some out with his fingernail and tasted it. “Blood,” Cody said, then spat it out. To Wilson, “This is what you used on Tristan Glode, then. More close-in work.”

He circled around Wilson and came up from behind him. He could sense the man start to stiffen, possibly anticipating the stab of the knife. Cody reached up and pressed the point of the blade to Wilson’s spinal column just to make him jump. But what he was interested in was an intimate view of Wilson’s bound hands.

“You’ve got blood under the fingernails of your right hand,” Cody said. “Looks just like the blood on this knife. There’s blood spatter on your cuff, too, it looks like.”

“Oh,” Mitchell said, digging something silver and square out of the front snap pocket of his shirt and flipping it through the air to Cody. “Something else. Check
this
out.”

Cody fumbled the catch and reached down in the grass for the object. “I was hoping it was a pack of cigarettes,” Cody said.

“Nope,” Mitchell said, “Wilson’s camera. You might want to take a look at some of the shots in there to see if there’s anyone you recognize. While you do that I’m gonna tie these horses up and get Wilson down.”

“I’ll help you,” Cody said, doing the math. He assumed the three riderless horses had belonged to Tristan Glode, D’Amato, and Russell.

Mitchell swung off and put his hand up to Cody. “Stay there, if you don’t mind, pard. The only thing you seem to know about horses is how to lose them.”

Cody shrugged. “True enough.” He pushed buttons and flicked toggles on the digital camera until the display came alive. The first dozen shots were obviously from the departure area. People milled around eyeing horses, their faces mixes of excitement and anticipation as they got ready to get under way. There were vehicles in the background and glimpses of a long horse trailer with
JED MCCARTHY’S WILDERNESS ADVENTURES
painted along the side.

As he advanced through the photos he tried to match up faces with the names and descriptions he’d memorized from the file he’d borrowed.

The cowboy with the mustache was obviously Jed himself, shadowed by a younger woman in a floppy sweat-stained hat. He recalled her name: Dakota Hill.

The older stiff couple were the Glodes. Cody recognized Tristan and winced. He’d been a regal man in bearing with striking silver hair, cool blue eyes, and a prominent chin.

The father and his two teenage daughters were the Sullivans; Ted, Danielle, and Gracie. The youngest girl appeared to be much more animated than the older girl, who looked bored.

A single woman, open face, attractive, looking away from the camera as if she was furious about being photographed by him. Rachel Mina. Her face reminded him of the glare Jenny had once given him when he photographed her as she stepped out of the shower. It was the last time he ever did anything like
that
again. Cody wondered why Suspect Number Two was so angry at Wilson.

Three men posed on their horses like the characters from the movie
Three Amigos.
The shot would have been amusing, Cody thought, if he hadn’t seen D’Amato’s and Russell’s mangled remains a couple of hours before.

And there were Walt and Justin, sitting side by side on horseback. Cody felt his heart race. Justin looked older and more mature than when he’d seen him last. He had a weariness in his eyes and an easy smile as he looked over at Walt in the photo.

Cody whispered,
“Yes.”
Until that second, he hadn’t been absolutely sure Justin was on the trip.

The last three shots were taken in deep timber. Although not focused well, Cody could see they were of the two Sullivan girls. One was using a camp latrine.

He looked up as Mitchell untied Wilson from the saddle. Wilson stared straight ahead.

Mitchell said, “I found this guy about a mile from where I left you. Apparently, he’d gotten off his horse to pee and the horse ran off. I seem to be surrounded by goddamned amateurs. I heard him yelling obscenities and I sneaked into the trees. I finally found him chasing his horse around a meadow with that pistol in his hand, like the horse was gonna be threatened by him. He’s as good a horseman as you.”

Cody studied Wilson’s face while Mitchell talked. It was inscrutable.

“I watched him for a while. His horse finally stopped trotting at the edge of the meadow and Wilson here walked right up to it from behind. He didn’t know that when a horse pins its ears back and positions his butt toward you you need to get ready for a kick,” Mitchell said, and chuckled.

Mitchell said, “Laid Wilson out. Caught him right in the chest. I rode out there to see if he was okay and he woke up going for his popgun. So I had to thump him a couple times. I took the liberty of borrowing a set of handcuffs from your gear. I hope you have a key somewhere.”

“Maybe,” Cody said.

Wilson reacted with a jerk of his mouth to the side when he heard that. Mitchell dismounted and tied his horse to the trunk of a tree with a lead rope. Now that he’d climbed down from his mount he looked old and he moved like a stiff old man, Cody thought. Mitchell limped down the line of horses he’d gathered to the gray. When Mitchell got the ropes untied he slid Wilson off by grasping the back of his belt and pulling. Wilson’s boots thumped onto solid ground.

Mitchell said, “I’m officially turning him over to you now while I get these critters some grain and water them.”

Mitchell put his big hand in the middle of Wilson’s back and shoved. Wilson stumbled toward Cody but managed not to trip and fall.

Cody said to him, “Is my son okay? His name is Justin. He’s seventeen.”

Wilson stared back, noncommittal.

Cody studied Wilson’s face for any kind of tell, but the man’s eyes were black, still, and unyielding. He took it as an encouraging sign, assuming there would have been at least a flinch or glimmer of reaction if something had happened to Justin.

“So that’s the way you want to play it,” Cody said. He noted the twin horseshoe impressions on the front of Wilson’s shirt where he’d been kicked. As Cody walked up to him he imagined Wilson’s chest must be badly bruised. Although the man was two inches taller, Cody was thicker. “I heard the shots and found Russell and D’Amato,” Cody said. “We located Tristan Glode’s body earlier. You’ve left a hell of a mess.”

Wilson looked back through heavy-lidded eyes.

Cody gestured toward a pedestal-like rock that jutted out of the grass. “Sit.”

Wilson didn’t move until Cody prodded him with the muzzle of the rifle, then he did so grudgingly. Wilson grunted and settled on the rock and looked at Cody with bored contempt.

Before speaking, Cody made sure Mitchell was out of earshot. He said to Wilson, “Do you know who I am?”

No response.

Cody felt himself smile as his demons took over. He said, “Do you know who I am?”

Wilson didn’t even blink.

“Let me tell you who I am, then. I’m Cody, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Wilson twitched. At last, a chord was struck.

“Thought so,” Cody said, and swung the butt of the rifle into Wilson’s face. He could hear the muffled snap as the man’s nose broke and feel the cartilage flatten through the stock of the rifle. Wilson cried out and tumbled over backwards off the rock into the grass.

Cody bounded forward and straddled the rock and pressed the muzzle of his AR-15 into the flesh between Wilson’s eyes, which had misted from the pain. Blood coursed down the sides of Wilson’s face from the twin spouts of his nostrils. Cody growled, “Let me tell you who I am. I’m the scariest fucking cop you’ll ever meet. My son is on that trip and you murdered the best man I ever knew. We’ve been finding the bodies you left behind all fucking morning. I haven’t had a drink in days and I smoked my last cigarette two hours ago. All I want is an excuse to kill you five times over and piss on your remains. Do you understand me?”

Wilson’s eyes were open wide. He looked bloody and scared.

Cody said, “What, you expected to hear your Miranda rights?”

He moved the muzzle a few inches to the right and fired into the ground so close to Wilson’s head it creased his scalp and furrowed through his hair above the temple. The concussion was deafening in the quiet woods, and when Cody’s ears stopped ringing all he could hear were Wilson’s terrified curses.