Trial by Ice and Fire (20 page)

Over the night noise of crickets and other insects I can hear the distinctive hiss of a Coleman lantern. Then, after a moment of listening, I distinguish the buzz of many flies. The additional sound comes from where a large shape is hanging from a stout branch. Too big to be a person. An elk, probably, poached from the preserve.

The shack becomes clearer the longer we stand in the protective embrace of the night and the forest. It has been hammered together out of rusty sheets of corrugated iron, rotting boards, and what looks like the hood of a car. The structure is tiny—it can't be more than five feet high, eight feet across, and six feet deep. I guess that it's been partially dug out and into the ridge because of the low roof. An old Ford pickup hulks to one side of the hut. God only knows how he gets it in and out of here.

There is no good way to approach such a place. I want to surprise him, but knocking on the door made of split boards seems like a good way to take a bullet right through it. Waiting for him to come out—maybe until morning and thereby missing my dinner with Rebecca—is out of the question. I remember the feeling I'd had yesterday of being scoped, feeling crosshairs tattooing the small of my back.

“You want me to yell?” Wokowski asks from behind me.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

He calls in a loud voice, so loud it causes me to jump, “Hey, Myron. It's Charlie Wokowski. Teton County Sheriff's. You home, man?”

Immediately the light goes out in the cracks around the covered window. Then there is the distinct sound of a rifle's bolt sliding a shell into the chamber.
Chick-chick.

“Shit,” Wokowski says quietly as he slips off the trail with his gun in his hand. He stands, crouching slightly, behind some thick pine trunks. I do the same on the opposite side. None of the trees here are broad enough to provide total cover. But in the darkness it's safe enough.

“What do you want?” a voice shouts from the hut. It's a high voice, almost cracking. Like an awkward teenager.

“You remember me, don't you, Myron? I've had to lock you up a few times in town but I always fed you and let you go. Remember?”

I note that Wokowski is smart—he doesn't look out from behind his tree and he doesn't speak toward the hut, where the sound of his voice would be easy to trace to the source. Instead he throws his voice by yelling in another direction. I just wish that it weren't
my
direction.

“What do you want?” the high voice demands again.

“We just want to talk to you.”

“Who else is out there?”

Before Wokowski can do his ventriloquist's trick again, I call out, “I'm Special Agent Antonio Burns of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. We just want to talk to you. Put your weapon outside the door right now.”

There's a long pause. Then the voice from the hut says, “I don't know you. Didn't you see the ‘No Trespassing' sign? No one's supposed to be out here. This is my land.”

At least he doesn't ask if we have a warrant. “This is government land, Myron,” I yell back. “Either you come out right this minute or we're going to fill your shack with holes and drag your corpse out.” Wokowski looks at me sharply, and I guess that my bluff sounds convincing. My tone comes with the weight and pressure of a hundred thousand pounds of snow.

When he doesn't respond, Wokowski whispers from across the trail, “What do you want to do?”

I'm thinking about how this has to be the guy who took a stun gun with him when he tried to go through Cali's window. Who attacked her a second time in the dark of a barroom bathroom and made a fool of me. Who buried me in that avalanche. What I'd like to do is find a shovel and dig a pit here in the dirt, put him in it, fill it up, and never come back. I'd like to walk away hearing him scream from under the ground the way I'd been screaming beneath the snow.

I'm still savoring this thought—it's far better than pondering the frustration of our apparent standoff—when Myron calls, “What do you want to talk to me about?”

“Either put your weapon outside and turn your lantern back on or I'm going to start shooting,” I yell back.

I sense Wokowski looking in my direction. Wondering if I'm really serious and maybe having a moment's doubt about the denial I'd made earlier in the truck.

Some scurrying noises come from inside the hut. A match scratches and a minute later there's the hiss and the leaking yellow light of a propane lantern coming from the cracks in the plank walls. Finally a door stutters open on the earth before it. More light spills out, becoming a flood.

“Throw out the rifle, too.”

A man's silhouette appears in the small doorway—just a head and torso, as if he doesn't have any legs. It looks remarkably like the targets we use on the range. He's leaning forward a little, peering out into the night.

“I don't have a gun,” he says in the same high voice but softer now.

“Yeah, sure he don't,” Wokowski whispers to me.

I'm not going to stand in the trees all night arguing with the psycho in the hut. I make a decision. “Just cover me,” I whisper back.

I step out from behind my screen of spruce trunks and walk toward the legless figure. I have my H&K tight in my hand. The short barrel is pointed at the doorway, my index finger caressing the trigger guard. It would be a simple thing for the shadowy figure to reach to either side and grab the hidden and far more accurate rifle. But I know I can at least get off a couple of shots before he'll be able to bring the longer weapon around. And, while my aim's always sucked at a distance, I'm confident I can at least dive for the shrubbery and wriggle into the darkness out of a rifle's sight.

It feels funny, having Wokowski behind me, pointing his pistol in the general direction of my back, and Armalli, a certified psychopath who's already almost succeeded in killing me once, in front of me with a rifle probably within reach. It gets my blood pumping. I step carefully. It would be a bad time to trip.

And an unsettling thought overtakes me. I wonder if Wokowski could have been screwing with me in the truck, acting like everything was cool. Putting on a show to get me in a position just like this. I hadn't thought so at the time, but now, with his gun pointed in the general bearing of my back and a psycho in front of me, I'm not so sure.

The shadow in the doorway comes into focus as I crunch closer on the litter of small stones and pine needles. He's still standing in the doorway but within the hut, no longer leaning forward. Myron Armalli is wearing a too-small sweater that's tight on his torso. His face looks a satanic red from the way the propane lantern's light behind him is reflecting off the interior walls on either side of him; the interior walls have been painted a vivid crimson. Like blood. You'd have to be crazy to paint walls that color. You'd definitely be crazier after spending a night between them.

Aside from the red glow, his face is thinner than in the picture but normal-looking. The only other difference is that bags of skin hang from beneath his dark eyes. Young, little more than a kid.

“You know who I am?” I ask.

He looks at me in the starlight then looks down at my gun. With almost wonder in his voice he says, “You're the man in the mirror.”

I hear a strange-sounding chuckle come out of my own throat. And I feel myself shiver. “I don't know what you're talking about,” I say. “Now where's the rifle, Myron? I heard you pull the bolt.”
Make a move,
I'm thinking.
Make a move.
The sound of the avalanche is in my head.

His face remains expressionless. I'm only ten feet away now with my pistol unsighted but plainly pointed at his chest. I stop. The feeling of being trapped beneath the snow swims up again as I look at him. My finger is not over the guard the way it should be—it's on the trigger. God, he looks young.

“I, uh, don't have a rifle. I don't know what you're talking about.”

I'm tempted to question him, to bring up that I'd clearly heard a rifle and that he'd definitely used a gun that morning to bring down the avalanche on me. For evidentiary purposes, I'd like to have an admission. But the answers would be useless—there's no question that he's in custody here with my gun pointed at him and the admission would be worth nothing in court. Besides, the only court this guy's probably going to see is a competency hearing.

“Come out of there,” I say instead. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

He reaches forward and grabs the door frame on each side to pull himself out. I notice the big hiking boots he wears. They're covered in dried mud, just as my randonee boots had been when Cali and I had finally managed to make it down to the trailhead.

Of course the mud could be explained a thousand other ways—he lives in the forest, after all, among streams and small lakes and marshy meadows—but it's all the confirmation I need.

Myron pulls himself all the way out to stand in front of me. At full height on level ground, he's not much taller than I am. He would be a lot taller if he stood at full height instead of cringing slightly. Like Mungo. He's thin to the point of emaciation. It's a wonder he'd been able to keep up with Cali and me on the trail.

“Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”

I hesitate before stepping forward to pat him down. I remember something I'd once seen at the state prison when I was there to bust the guards for selling contraband. A bunch of convicts in the exercise yard were taking turns bracing themselves against a wall. One inmate, playing the role of cop, would come up from behind another to check for weapons. The one bracing the wall would reach between his own legs in a lightning-fast move and grab the “cop's” ankle then pull up hard. The “cop” would go down on his back between the prisoner's legs. The prisoner would pretend to stomp him. The sight of this practice session had given me nightmares. And now I think about how madness can make you very strong and very quick.

“Wokowski!” I shout into the night behind me. “Come up here.”

I don't turn around but I can already hear him walking on the carpet of pine needles.

“I thought you said you just wanted to talk,” Myron says to the wall.

“We've talked. Now you're under arrest.”

“You sure you've got enough?” Wokowski says from behind me.

Reluctantly holstering my gun in the plastic clip on my belt, I run my hands around Myron's waistband and over his sides. Where the legs of his dirty jeans meet his boots, I point at the mud and look up over my shoulder at Wokowski. He's standing just behind me with his gun in his hand. I'm relieved to see that it's pointed down at his feet.

He furrows his brow then nods in comprehension. But he doesn't look so sure. I pull Armalli's thin wrists behind him one at a time and cuff them together.

“Let's take a look in there,” I tell Wokowski.

“You c-c-can't,” Armalli stammers. He's shaking now. “You gotta have a warrant.”

“This is government land, Myron. We can look wherever we want.” I check to see that the cuffs are ratcheted as tight as they'll go and jerk him around to face me. Instead of the bullet I'd like to give him, I shoot him through the head with the best glare I've got. But he won't meet it. He just stares at the ground.

Wokowski looks as though he thinks I'm being hard on this madman barely out of his teens. But Wokowski hadn't been buried ten feet deep under all that snow. And he doesn't know what I'd been thinking of doing.

“You remember me, don't you, Myron?” the sergeant says to him in a gentle voice. “We've got to take you to the police station for a little while. But I'll take care of you like I always do. Don't worry.”

“Watch him,” I say to Wokowski. Then I step down into the hovel.

In the harsh, hissing light of the propane lantern the red paint hurts my eyes. The first thing I see is a rifle propped just inside the door. It's a long-barreled 30.30 with a scope mounted on top. I sniff the muzzle and smell oil and old powder. There's no way to tell if it's been fired recently, this morning or a week ago. But I pick it up anyway and work the bolt. A single bullet pops out.

I scan the rest of the tiny interior. The entire place is not much bigger than a king-size bed. The floor has been dug down almost three feet into the sandy and thickly rooted earth. It's covered with planks and other debris. There's an old army cot alongside the far wall, which is made of the ridge's stone. A square-shaped rock holds a backpacking stove—the same kind of WhisperLite I have in my gear room. To one side is a shelf with a variety of canned food stacked on it.

What's even more arresting than the paint and the rifle are the pictures thumbtacked to the walls. All are of Cali. Most of them have been roughly cut out of magazines and show her from childhood to her teens. But some are also yellowed photographs taken from a distance. They show a contemporary Cali. Coming out of the courthouse, coming out of the front door of her house in town, and several that show her outside an enormous log mansion that must be her mother's. In several she's lying in the sun wearing only a small bikini. Some of the photographs and old magazine clippings have been defaced in an obscene way. CALI CALI CALI is scrawled in black paint. All caps, just like in the letters.

I climb back out into the night. Wokowski is still talking gently to Myron but he looks at me. I wave my hand for him to take a look. He sticks his head in, the glow of the red paint making his face turn red. As he stands there looking without moving, his face grows redder still. He steps away from the doorway and slams shut the rickety door.

In the darkness Myron looks at the cop then drops his eyes. Then he looks at me.

“You've got quite a thing for Cali Morrow, don't you?” I ask him.

Something happens behind his eyes when I say her name. There is a sudden pop of energy like a flashbulb going off. It's there and then it's gone in an instant. But for that split second my hand jerks a little toward my gun and my heart pumps faster.

“I would never hurt her,” he whispers, looking down again quickly.

“Sure. Just beat her up twice and avalanche me.”

Myron remains motionless with his head hanging on his scrawny neck.

“C'mon, Myron,” Wokowski says in a harder voice. “You're going to jail. You're either going to stay there for a while or you're going to the state hospital at Evanston.”