Last Track, The (7 page)

“What brings you out this way?” Mike said.

“Same thing that always held me back in the Army,” Shad said. “I’m better with gear than getting promoted.” He scrawled a cell number on his business card and tucked it in the gear bag. “If you need support out there, give me a shout. Technical or otherwise.”

“I really appreciate that.”
Never shall I fail my comrades.
Part of the Ranger creed.

“You’d do the same for me,” Shad said. “And don’t sweat Dagget. He just acts like he hates everyone.”

10:00:42 AM

A public telephone at the corner of West End and 66th rang twice. The old phone booth had rusty hinges and glass covered with fingerprint smudges. Nicked and battered, the handset was slippery in his gloved hand. On the first ring of the fourth attempt, Crotty answered, and he shuttered the booth door. The barrier did little to deflect the noises of the morning commute. Horns beeped. Pedestrians shouted. And sweat beaded across his brow. Not from nerves, but rather from the heat outside.

“About time,” a voice said to Crotty in a flat tone. This was the Partner speaking. “I’ve been trying to reach you since last night. Why did you do it?”

“I’m sorry, but it just wasn’t working,” Crotty said. Dealing with the Partner angered him enough, but having to justify his decisions over the phone was intolerable. His distaste surged through his voice. “You knew this was coming. Think of it like an early retirement.” For his part, Crotty preferred thinking of it that way. He almost had to. And now David’s body had to stay missing until it was safe for someone to find it.

“But he was with us from the beginning,” the Partner said. “He was important.”

“And had his efforts remained consistent,” Crotty said, “he would still be with us. But he was slipping. Quality was down, complaints were up. I acted like an executive and made a decision. Try it sometime.”

“You have no sense of loyalty.”

“Look who’s talking,” Crotty said. “You make Dr. Jekyll look sane. One minute you’re cracking skulls, the next you’re preaching peace. It’s not like you can’t pull a trigger. Just spare me, okay? Maybe we can send some flowers anonymously.”

“Flowers? Do you realize his mother is dying of cancer? That she’s half blind? What sort of flowers would do in that situation?” The Partner continued, gathering steam. “You would understand these things if you actually talked to our employees once in a while.”

“Who do you actually talk to? You talk to me and learn about issues through my status reports.” Beyond the primary structure of the company was an elite group Crotty handpicked and trained, who answered only to him. Those men prepared reports he could trust. Those men he valued. Everyone else was a line item on the expense ledger. That included the Partner.

“Your bad judgment has placed me in an incredibly awkward position. You could not have picked a worse place for this. I hope you know that.” Yet another token of resistance from the Partner.

“Life is about risks. Some pay off.” He waited until that sunk in. Then Crotty added, “You mentioned a background check.”

The Partner sighed, yielding. This argument was over. As usual, the Partner lost against Crotty’s logic, because twisted as it seemed, Crotty delivered fiscal results. And there was no bringing back David St. John now. “Standard battery. Driving records, education, employment, medical. If you can find it, I want it.”

“Give me the name,” said Crotty. He read and spelled it back to the Partner, recording it correctly the first time. Beads of sweat smeared the ink into his palms. “Anything in particular I’m looking for?”

“Everything you can find.” The Partner paused. “Now what about the boy?”

The boy who saw too much. The boy who saw the murder. That
was
a substantial wrinkle. Crotty had some regrets about the job. Most of all he regretted that the boy had wandered into company business. The scene ran over and over in his mind, refusing to disengage, like a videotape with the
play
button jammed. His own little Frankenstein—a mess he created and lost control of.

After killing David St. John, Crotty had driven along the dusty road toward the highway, wondering how many glasses of Tanqueray it would take to blot out what had just happened. More than a few, for certain.

While he was calculating, the boy lurched across the road, waving furiously, hailing Crotty like a cab ride out of a rough neighborhood after last call. Crotty had stopped and unrolled the window.

Panic had broken out on the boy’s face, and he flat-out refused a ride back to the ranch, backing away from the sedan like Crotty’s words were toxic. Noting the grass and mud stains on the boy’s jeans, Crotty had made the connection: the boy had seen the murder. Before Crotty could give chase, the boy had dashed for the trees, disappearing among the greenery.

The only course then was to leave and dispatch his men, and break the news to the Partner. So Crotty fled. And now the morning after, the Partner wanted answers about the boy; the Partner wanted the problem fixed.

A pretty girl in a convertible and a tank top glanced at the phone booth, waiting for the stoplight on West End, jarring Crotty back into the present. He had a particular weakness for strawberry blond hair. The red tint accented the golden strands like a halo. He smiled at her.

The light changed and the car crept past the upscale shops that lined West End. When she was gone, his face morphed back into the face of a businessman who could kill, as if a fader on a light switch controlled his disposition.

With the phone held between his shoulder and chin, he removed a chain of rosary beads from his pocket. Crotty rubbed the two largest beads together. The smaller plastic spheres clicked as they slipped around in his hand. Some of his best ideas came when he did this.

“Every problem has a solution,” Crotty snarled back at the Partner. “You just might not have the stomach for it.”

Truth be told, Crotty wasn’t convinced he had the stomach for it either.

Still, he knew what had to be done.

10:01:46 AM

The tactical bag topped out at more than twenty-five pounds. Between the shells and the rifle, the entire load breached the forty-pound mark. Though brimming with niceties, the excess mass was an awkward burden, and limited their flexibility. Constraints like these they did not need, given Dagget’s physical condition.

Perhaps Dagget was in sound aerobic shape, a point he hammered again and again, but Mike was concerned. An hour a day on the treadmill, as Dagget claimed, was not the same as hiking in the open, toting a lead anchor for an unknown period of time. Mike appreciated the difference. Despite assurances from Dagget that the extra weight was a nonissue, the tracker held firm. Locked in a stalemate, yet another cell call arrived for Dagget, who ditched Mike to answer.

While the officer was out of earshot, Mike repacked the bag. First, he added back the walkie-talkies and maps. From the first aid kit—a dozen penicillins, surgical tape, a short tube of antibiotic cream, and the syringes and two vials of epinephrine. Despite the redundancy, he tucked an additional four penicillins in his pocket in a watertight container. There were also two thermal blankets, sealed in the original plastic. He added fifty feet of nylon rope. Gone were the three packs of batteries, the flashlights, and most of the food packets. This left them enough food for a day, maybe even forty-eight hours with careful rationing—nothing more. Beyond that, eating would take improvisation. In less than five minutes, Mike halved the load. His instincts said this was sufficient. He trusted his instincts.

Shad accepted the returned equipment with a wink and a nod. Nothing more needed to be said; Shad knew Dagget’s ways.

When Dagget returned, Mike asked, “All set?”

“If we must,” Dagget said, his tone disparaging.

“I’m curious,” Mike said, facing Dagget squarely. “What is the source of this latent hostility?”

“Let’s just get this done,” Dagget said.

“No. We won’t just get this done.” Mike held the bag, just as before, his tone flat. “We can play this game a thousand ways, Dagget. I’m not here to be a shock absorber and I’m sure as hell not here to argue. I could be riding horses with my son. I could be patching things up with my ex-wife. There are bigger things going on here than our petty problems. Are you willing to live with the possibility that if Sean isn’t found it was because two grown men couldn’t be civil? I’m not.”

Dagget leaned forward. “Don’t you lay that crap on me. I didn’t want this assignment.” He stared at Mike intensely, the veins in his neck swelling. His chest heaved. He leaned closer to Mike, hands gnarled in tight fists.

Lowering the bag to the ground carefully, Mike said, “Well, you got the assignment. Now what?”

The last question touched off a crack in Dagget’s armor like a pick spiked into a bed of ice. “Everyone gets what they deserve. . . .”

Ignoring the threat, Mike drove the conversation forward. “Lisbeth said you know the terrain. Let’s talk about that.”

“That’s from years back,” Dagget said. “Nobody really knows much of this area outside the ranch anymore. The tourist part wasn’t always here. It used to be a purely commercial ranch. I worked on it as a teenager for a few summers. Thousands of acres, nearly all undeveloped. You could wander for days and not see anyone.”

“Is the water safe?”

“Near the ranch?” Dagget asked. “Safe enough, or at least it was back then. Never hunted much. Always heard there’s plenty of game and fish.”

Polluted with one or more bacterial contaminants, nearly every open stream in North America required treatment before drinking, Mike mused. Most filtration techniques took time and equipment. The best choice for hikers on the move were iodine tablets. The pills were messy, fouled the water, and usually stained one’s hands and clothes, but they worked. Penicillin picked up where iodine fell short. Sean had neither option; he would have to drink from whatever water source was available. If Sean was lucky, diarrhea was the worst consequence he faced.

“What about that mountain lion sighting?” asked Mike.

“It wasn’t that far from here. Personally, I’ve never been up close to one and I hope I never am. Had an attack about six years ago. Big cat ripped a college student right off a mountain bike. Wasn’t much left to find.”

Dagget’s aversion to mountain lions resonated with Mike. Mike loved domesticated cats, and had owned a few, and still never wanted to encounter their larger brothers. Aggressive hunters, mountain lions attacked without provocation. “How’s your shot with the handgun?” Mike asked.

“Good,” Dagget said.

Mike pressed further. “What kind of groupings?”

“Two inches at a hundred yards,” Dagget said. “Roughly.”

“Closer to two or closer to three?” A huge difference between those numbers, Mike knew better than to blindly accept self-appraisals. A very fine line separated asset from liability. Before a crisis, it was best to know which he had.

“I said two,” Dagget said, irritated.

“Can I see the Marlin for a second?” Mike asked.

“Why?”

“I might need to fire it. What if a mountain lion eats you?”

Begrudgingly, Dagget handed the rifle to Mike. The maneuver was fluid enough, though Mike noticed something else: Dagget’s hands shook as he draped the big caliber weapon across Mike’s palm.

His hands shake a bit,
Mike thought.
Not good.
“Let’s split the carrying duties—one guy the pack, the other the rifle. We’ll swap based on fatigue.”

“Hell, I don’t expect to get tired,” said Dagget.

Mike slung the rifle over his shoulder.

Heading west from the road to the dude ranch, they crossed a field of burnt-out grass, then plunged into a thicket of Douglas fir. The canopy dampened the morning light, and cut the temperature by five degrees. Cooler air from the south wicked away the moisture beading on their foreheads and necks.

Beech trees, sprinkled among the pines, formed a green and silver tapestry. Unlike beech trees in more traveled areas, these trunks were spared the initials, hearts, and other etchings. So many hikers carved messages in beeches, the trees earned the nickname ‘American Graffiti’ trees. Though the hikers hoped the missives scraped into the trunks lasted lifetimes, the engravings actually weakened and killed countless specimens each year. But the ones bordering the ranch were flawless and unspoiled.

Soon the two men moved beyond the sight of the other searchers. Periodically, the voices of officers calling for Sean reached them. The trees muted their voices.

Mike breathed through his nose, the air passing through the sinus cavity almost silently. This reflected his fitness level. For Mike there was no more inhumane form of self-punishment than aerobics. He disliked cardiovascular exertion like a child loathed vegetables. Dr. Stoler, his knee surgeon, had prescribed a rigorous rehabilitation plan that included bike, elliptical, and stair work. Mike balked, yet followed the regime.

Not only was Dagget not in such good shape, he had, as Mike suspected on many other points, greatly exaggerated his capabilities. Now there was no doubt who led this expedition.

The tracker set the frenetic pace.

Mike moved like a coyote, nimble and sure of himself, ready to change course at any time. Technique came with practice, with time in the woods and dirt, out among the elements. Every tracker developed a distinctive stalking style based on his gait and personality.

Crossing among the pines, Mike halted and threw his arm out without warning, blocking the officer across the chest. The maneuver was unexpected and unappreciated. Dagget complained loudly between gasps.

Leaves shredded by exposure to the elements concealed the edges of a narrow trail. The dirt was loose, highly responsive to touch.

Crouching where the trail met the tree line, Mike cast circles with his first and second finger around several indents in the ground. As he bent down, his knee cracked. Though it happened often, he rarely noticed the popping, the way someone who lives near a highway no longer hears the drone of traffic. Busted knees; sciatica; broken backs, arms and necks—all these maladies plagued former smoke jumpers. A torn meniscus had been the price of smoke jumping for Mike—his token and burden.