Killer View (22 page)

The smell was of everything bad in the world: excrement, burned hair, lost life.

Walt dug around in his day pack, withdrew the Gamma-Scout and a Dell laptop that was part of his office’s mobile command center.

“Jesus,” Brandon said, pulling himself together. “Sorry about the hurl, Sheriff.”

“It ain’t pretty,” Walt said.

“And then some.”

“Get rope ready.”

Brandon slipped his day pack off. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“Stop thinking so much.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Walt had the Gamma-Scout plugged into the laptop; the laptop powering up. “The cord isn’t near long enough.”

“Sheriff . . .”

“I’ve got to go down there. Look for a decent hold. Try that fence post.”

“Sheriff . . .”

“You don’t burn your hoof stock. You sell its meat. The
only
reason you wouldn’t sell the meat is if the meat is contaminated. Wholesale slaughter like this? Come on! It’s the only explanation. But we’ve got to prove something’s going on. And you’ve got one good arm, Tommy. You can’t go down in there and you can’t pull me out. So get that rope tied off. And do it quickly,” he said calmly. He lifted his chin, indicating the distant ranch. “We may have company.”

Brandon spun around. A flickering light appeared in flashes between the outbuildings. A powerful flashlight.

“Probably the dogs barking,” Walt said. “When a guy like Lon Bernie’s got something to hide, he sleeps a lot lighter.”

“Turn that laptop around so the screen faces away,” Brandon said.

Walt did so. His gloves were off, his fingers stinging. He doubted the screen would show at such a great distance given that they were surrounded by higher walls of moved snow, but it was a worthy precaution. A rancher out at midnight was not yet cause for alarm. It could be anything from a sick animal that needed checking to a freeze patrol— making sure all the heaters were working prior to turning in. Even if Lon Bernie’s guilt had gotten the better of him, there would be no reason to look beyond the barns and outbuildings. A vision flashed in Walt’s imagination: the twin chevrons of the massive tire treads that the tractor had imprinted in the snow. He and Brandon had followed the tracks out here, no doubt leaving a trail of boot prints.

“We should keep going,” he encouraged.

“Rope’s tied off.”

There was no way for Walt to climb down the rope with the laptop in hand, so he put it back into the day pack but without fully closing the screen so it would remain running. Then he lowered himself down the dirt wall and into a piece of semifrozen hell. Brandon trained the light down on him. Walt arrived at a muddy layer in the corner of the pit where the pile of carcasses left a gap. Despite the freezing temperature, the smell wafting up from the decomposing carcasses was as bad as anything he’d ever experienced. He zipped his coat up over his face so that only his eyes showed, one-armed the day pack around to where he could dig the laptop out, and, balancing the laptop on his left forearm like a waiter would a tray, handled the Gamma-Scout with his right hand. He trained the Geiger counter on the nearest bloated carcass. Its digital readout fell well within the range of the acceptable amounts of radiation. He’d expected to see a much higher reading.

Gagging from the odor, he aimed the Gamma-Scout up the carcass toward the rotting, burned head. The bloat had cracked open the animal’s blackened skin with expansion, and this is where the meter’s numbers edged up slightly—the frozen, exposed flesh.

Water,
Walt thought.

“Sheriff! We got company!” Brandon called down into the pit, his hand cupped so tightly over his mouth and nose that Walt barely understood him. “An ATV, maybe. Two small headlights.”

Walt set the Gamma-Scout onto the keyboard and dug around the day pack with his free hand. He came out with a hunting knife with a six-inch serrated blade of carbon steel. He hesitated only briefly before plunging the tip through the hardened shell of burned skin. The bloated carcass spit through the rent and hissed out a gas that made Walt retch.

“Christ Almighty!” Brandon complained, the stink quickly reaching him.

The meter’s readout jumped significantly, this time to dangerous levels.

“Light!” Walt called out.

Brandon, in monitoring the approaching vehicle, had neglected his responsibility. Now the light caught Walt, and the sheriff glanced down at the fresh biosensor tag he had clipped to his uniform a day earlier. The same wedge was shaded a ghostly purple, indicating additional exposure to radioactivity.

“Check your tag!” Walt hollered up from the pit.

“Shit!” Brandon said a moment later. “I’m hot.”

His voice was now overcome by the whine of the ATV’s motor.

“How close?” Walt shouted.

“A minute. Maybe less.”

“Bury the rope in the snow. Hide yourself in that slash pile.”

“Hide?”

“Now, Tommy. That’s an order!”

Walt felt the same way as his deputy: it was not in his nature to hide. But for a rancher to burn this many sheep—to throw away that kind of money—the stakes had to be extremely high. High enough to kidnap or kill? A rancher like Lon Bernie was likely to shoot first and ask questions later, and Walt had no great desire to test that theory. If Lon Bernie figured out his burned sheep had been discovered, he and Brandon might wind up buried along with them.

Walt slapped the laptop shut and zipped it and the Gamma-Scout in the day pack. He kept the pack in front of him, as he curled down into the corner of the pit, his head lower than the nearest sheep, and huddled there. The sound of the ATV grew progressively closer and louder, like the buzzing of a bee. The cold penetrated, as he held his head between his legs, offering only the back of his jacket to the night sky. Bernie would have to shine a light and look right down at him in order to see him.

The ATV arrived and quieted, its motor idling.

Out of the corner of his eye, Walt caught the light from the headlights shifting, as the driver moved the vehicle to spread the light around the edges of the pit.

Walt believed he’d discovered the boot prints behind the barn, had followed them out to the pit. So now, finding no one, Bernie had to wonder if they were fresh tracks or if a couple of his hands had come out here on foot. It was the wrong time of year to go marching around the ranch on foot. Bernie—or whoever was driving the ATV—would be trying to reconcile things.

At last, Walt heard the dry crunch of footfalls. The driver was off the ATV and heading toward the pit. Silence followed. Walt could picture the man up there, studying the pile of bloated carcasses, troubled by the sensation that all was not well. Walt had been there enough times himself: trusting his senses more than his reasoning.

He heard something unexpected: a stream of water. Lon Bernie, or whoever was up there, was urinating into the pit—not a pleasant practice in these temperatures. But then Walt’s nose took over: not urine but petroleum. Diesel fuel.

A shudder rushed through him.

The driver of the ATV had not come looking for them; he’d come to douse the pit and burn the sheep in the dead of night. With the pit dug as deeply as it was, the flames would show as no more than a glow at night, the rising black smoke not revealing itself to the distant neighbors. Only a plume would linger by daylight. Burning trash and debris was a year-round practice on any ranch. A little smoke wasn’t going to raise eyebrows. The ATV held a drum of fuel oil. It was hand pumped, and it showered onto the carcasses. None of the fuel fell directly on Walt; it was concentrated toward the pit’s center and the heaped carcasses. But it came, gallon after gallon, the stench alone enough to choke him.

And then, minutes later, the match.

The pit lit on fire all of a sudden. Diesel is a slow-burning fuel. There was no great explosion, or even a
whoosh
. Flame simply ran across the pile, chasing the spent fuel. The heat increased. The flesh began to pop.

Walt knew Brandon would be anxious, might ruin things by leaping to Walt’s rescue, but then the ATV’s motor whirred. And grew faint.

The rope struck Walt on his back.

“Jesus, Sheriff!”

The concentration of flames was well away from Walt, but the heat was intense and the fire was spreading. He grabbed on to the rope, placed his feet on the wall of the pit, and drew himself up and out, where Brandon offered his one good hand and pulled hard.

The ATV’s taillights receded down the access road.

“You’re out of your mind,” Brandon said, his face aglow in the light of the fire. His skin shined from the sweat of anxiety. His eyes flashed white, wide with anger that he disguised as outrage.

“I would have called for help if I’d needed it,” Walt said offhandedly.

“Jesus! How was that possibly worth it, Sheriff ?” Indignant. “How is that possibly—”

Walt patted the day pack. “It was well worth it, Tommy.” He looked back at the burning heap of flesh, popping and bubbling. He was thinking about Mark Aker and how much time had passed since his abduction. He was thinking that in these temperatures fire connected one person to another, one ranch to another, one life to another, and that somewhere out there Mark Aker hopefully was near a fire just like he was. Walt’s chance of finding and rescuing Mark Aker came down to efficiency, of turning a number on a Geiger counter into hard evidence, of uncovering an evidence trail that could connect the discolored biosensor to the missing veterinarian.

He understood where that trail would start and, rising to his toes, could almost see it in the blanket of darkness that stretched for miles up this nearly uninhabited valley.

Senator James Peavy’s ranch lay just out of view.

MARK AKER WAS SURPRISED BY HIS OWN STRENGTH. HIS legs felt good. Adrenaline, perhaps. He walked in the snowmobile track because it was easier going. It followed what appeared to be a road, given the lack of trees and shrubs. Not only could he move faster on the track, but he was less likely to leave tracks to follow. The moon turned the snow lavender. He heard shouting behind him, coming from the cabin. Coats and Gearbox. These first few minutes were critical. They wouldn’t know where he’d gone: around back to the shed, toward the woodpile, or up the snowmobile track. They’d search for tracks leading into the woods.

It wouldn’t take them long—five minutes, maybe less—to realize he hadn’t headed into virgin snow, that he must have taken the snowmobile track. And then they’d come after him.

He’d hurt Coats badly with that burn. Would Coats stay and lick his wounds or join the hunt? The answer came immediately, as more shouting erupted behind him, and the coughing of the snowmobile trying to start rumbled through the woods.

Aker had yet to turn on the flashlight, still negotiating by the light of the moon. If he left the snowmobile track, his prints would give him away. But if he stayed, he was only minutes from being caught. He could try jumping off the track, making his first prints in the virgin snow as far off the beaten track as possible, but he knew Coats to be a professional tracker. He had to outsmart him.

At the first curve, the snowmobile track left the road and weaved through the thick forest of lodgepole pine and aspen, no doubt following a shortcut only available in winter months. He passed a dozen or more trees before he heard the chain-saw-like buzz of the snowmobile’s motor catching life. They’d be on him in less than a minute.

He stopped. Turned. His mind counting down the time he was wasting. Then he saw it: a branch.

The track cut incredibly close to a twisted pine that had once been struck by lightning. It was a craggy old tree with a few sparse branches low enough to the ground to reach by jumping. Aker squatted and leaped, but his gloves slid off the only branch close enough to reach. He tried again, and again, but could not grab hold.

Now the snowmobile was crying out, well under way.

He jumped a fourth time and managed to hook his hands and lace his fingers over the branch. He walked his feet up the trunk, hooked a knee over the branch, and struggled up to a sitting position. With the adrenaline spent, he was far weaker than he’d first thought. He continued to climb, following the tree’s natural ladder. Two, three, four branches up; and now, looking down, he saw only branches. He moved himself higher, and on the opposite side of the tree from the track. He straddled the branch and kept himself against the trunk.

The snowmobile’s headlight winked through the woods, as the grind of the motor drew nearer. It was traveling slowly, and now a second light was revealed: a flashlight, searching both sides of the track.

Aker caught himself holding his breath as it came into view, staying in the track.
Two
men. Gearbox was driving, Coats, straddling the motorcycle-style seat behind Gearbox, holding the flashlight.

The snowmobile purred up the track approaching Aker’s tree, the flashlight alternately illuminating the forest on both sides, throwing harsh shadows that moved around in a jarring dance. It continued past.

A red taillight now. Nothing more. The sound grew more and more distant.

A person on foot was no match for a snowmobile. It would only take them minutes to realize they’d missed him.

Aker climbed down out of the tree as quickly as humanly possible. He landed back on the track and took off for the cabin. He tried to run but wasn’t up to it. It seemed to take forever to reach the camp, but it was only minutes. But how long until the snowmobile returned?

Inside the cabin now—the smell of burned hair and flesh, a nauseating stink—he stole a backpack, ripped a regional map off the wall, and stuffed it and other items into the zippered compartment: canned foods, matches, a church key, can opener, saltshaker, a fork, and a kitchen knife. He snatched up the syringes from the table and took the vials of insulin and the medication Coats had used to subdue him: opiates and narcotics. A pair of wool socks hanging by the woodstove. A wool cap. He grabbed a pair of snowshoes from a peg.