Free Fire (27 page)

“I’ll call dispatch and get some rangers here as fast as I can,” she said. “An ambulance too.”

Joe didn’t ask what she thought an ambulance would pick up.

Nate sat on an overturned dead tree trunk that was white with absorbed minerals. The morning had heated twenty degrees already with the rising sun, and the ankle-high grass was now wet instead of frozen. Three bison had emerged from a stand of trees and were slowly grazing their way up the trail toward Sunburst.

Joe sat down next to him and stared at the hulk of the Yukon. The fissure beneath it had stopped erupting, although he could hear burbling and see an occasional puff of steam.

“Man,” Joe said, sighing, nodding toward the Yukon. “This keeps happening to me.”

“I know,” Nate said. “If you would have parked ten feet eitherway, it would have missed it.”

“Cutler was a damned good guy,” Joe said. “I really liked him.”

Nate nodded. “Somebody didn’t. Question is, who knew he’d be here?”

Joe hadn’t thought of that. “Hérve,” Joe said. “And whoever took the message or saw it before it was given to us.”

“Or anyone you, me, or Demming told about the meeting this morning,” Nate said.

Joe hadn’t told anyone. There was no one to tell.

“I wonder if Demming called her bosses,” Joe said, not wanting to go where his thoughts seemed to be taking him.

Nate nodded. “Maybe we’ve got a big problem on the inside. I can’t say I’m shocked at the idea.”

“Damn, you’re cynical.”

“You forget,” Nate said, “I used to work for the Feds myself in another, um, capacity. No personal agenda in a closed bureaucracycan surprise me.”

A black raven the size of a football cruised along the basin, calling out rudely. It skimmed the rivulet, saw something in the water, turned and landed. The raven quickly speared something in the stream—a piece of Mark Cutler—and ate it a second beforeit blew up in an explosion of black feathers.

“I hate ravens,” Nate said, holstering his .454.

Joe hadn’t even tried to stop Nate from drawing his weapon and firing because he agreed with the sentiment, given the circumstances.

A half-hour before approaching sirens split the silence, Nate patted Joe on the shoulder and said he had to go. “There will be lots of questions,” Nate said. “Portenson might even be here. I don’t have time for that now.”

“I understand.”

“Besides, you and Demming can cover everything,” Nate said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

18

That afternoon, clay mccann drove south from West Yellowstone and the sun streamed in through the windowsbut didn’t take the chill off the inside of the car one bit, he thought. In fact, it felt like it was getting colder, despite the digitalgauge on the dash that showed it was nearing sixty degrees.

Butch Toomer sat in the passenger seat, reaching incessantly to fiddle with the radio to try to find a station he liked. He had a toothpick in his mouth that never stopped dancing, and he was wearing his shades.

Sheila sat in the back, fuming. Her rage was palpable, an emotional cold front that could close schools and government buildings in seven states.

“Why the
fuck
is he here?” she asked McCann. “This was supposed to be a special day.”

“I told you,” McCann said. “I owe him some money. I told him I’d get it in Idaho Falls, and he insisted on coming along.”

“I wish you two would stop talking like I’m not here,” Toomer said. “It’s getting on my nerves.”

“
You’re
getting on my nerves,” Sheila said. “And don’t get me started on Clay.”

McCann shrugged. Fall colors were bursting like fireworks in the wooded folds of the mountains. Not that he cared. Scenery got old. Instead, he recalled how Sheila had looked that morning when he pulled into the parking lot of her shabby apartment building to pick her up. She had never looked better, he thought. Tight black sweater, charcoal skirt, black nylons, strappy shoes. And where in the hell did she get those pearls?

Oh, how her face fell when she saw Toomer in the car. Oh, the words she used. McCann was a little surprised when she was through that blisters had not formed on his exposed face and hands.

Several times, he had tried to catch her eye in the rearview mirror. He wanted to smile at her, have her know he was smiling at her. The only time she looked back her eyes were fearsome black daggers and when they connected with his he thought the temperature in the car dropped another ten degrees.

“Do you think we’ll have time to look at a couple of horse trailers in Idaho Falls?” Toomer asked. They had just crossed the state line from Montana into Idaho.

“Why?” McCann said.

“Elk season,” Toomer said. “Christ, don’t you pay any attentionaround here? Haven’t you seen all those men wearing orangeand driving around with dead animals in their trucks?”

McCann didn’t respond. He tried to catch Sheila’s eye in the mirror again but she wouldn’t look back.

“I got a two-horse slant load,” Toomer said. “I want to upgradeto a four-horse stock, now that I’m coming into a little money. I like them stocks. They pull good and I got a mare that blows up when I try to get her to load into the slant.”

It was as if he were speaking Martian, McCann thought.

“Clay,” Sheila sighed from the back, “please take me somewherewithout horses. Or hunters. Or ex-sheriff assholes who won’t take their sunglasses off.”

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 liked 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.