Trial by Ice and Fire (31 page)

FORTY-THREE

I
STOP DEAD IN MY TRACKS.
Only my right hand moves to snatch the gun from where it's clipped to one side of my hip. I jerk it out and point it at his chest as my thumb automatically flicks off the safety.

“Hey, Bill.”

Bill Laughlin is naked from the waist up except for blood and ash and huge raw blisters. A pair of what might have been jeans covering his legs are in charred tatters. The fireproof suit he'd had on last night is nowhere to be seen. It appears that it hadn't done him all that much good anyway—nearly every inch of his body has been terribly burned, from his scorched scalp to the soles of his bare feet. His face is lumpy and swollen. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth have stretched out beneath the bloating skin to resemble old knife cuts. Both his pupils have ballooned to fill the irises, and the whites of his eyes are crimson with blood. He looks like something that has crawled out of hell.

The pain he's feeling must be truly incredible—there's not supposed to be anything as agonizing as a third-degree burn. Especially a full-body burn. He would have been far better off if he'd died up on the butte. But rather than pain, I see only a chilling animosity in his gaze. A coiled, violent madness as evident here in the sunlight as it had been last night.

My hand tightens around the pistol's beveled grip as I consider my choices. I can take him in. Where? To the hospital? He'll probably die there from the burns within a few hours. If not soon, then soon enough from the inoperable aneurysm that's leaking in his head. But a soft bed and painkilling drugs are better than he deserves. For all the trouble he's caused, twenty-five years ago and then again within the past two weeks, he deserves a far less pleasant death.

“Thinking about jumping?” I ask him.

“It crossed my mind,” he says. “But you've given me a better idea, Burns.”

His voice is little more than a rasp. I have no doubt that his lungs have been seared. There's a wet rumble behind the words indicating that they're filling with fluid. He shakes his head, as if trying to clear his thoughts, then winces from the movement.

“You're not going to shoot,” he tells me. “Put the gun down. I'm no threat to you now.”

He limps down from his rock and onto the broad, flat shelf where I'm standing. Behind him he leaves a wet footprint of blood, skin, and pus. His face is twitching slightly beneath the swelling and the sores.

“How'd you get off the butte?” I keep the H&K fixed on his breastbone.

He chuckles wetly, clears his throat with effort, and says, “Guys like you and me, we're resourceful. I fought forest fires for twenty summers and fought gravity the rest of the year. There were plenty of little hidey-holes up there. Not as good as the one you took, but I found one.”

“By the looks of you, it wasn't good enough.”

He chuckles again and coughs. This time he spits out phlegm. Or maybe it's lung tissue. “I figured that while I'm still breathing, I might as well take a last look at that spring where the three of us used to swim naked. My God, even then, that woman was a goddamn tease. Thought it might be a good place to croak. Send her a last message. But I don't think I can make it on my own. So the hospital will be even better. They're there, aren't they? Cali and the bitch? Maybe she'll want to spit in my face. I can still spit right back.”

I stand immobile, frozen by the vehemence of his words, with my gun aimed steadily at his chest.
What am I going to do?
I ask myself. Laughlin must sense my ambivalence, and also must be aware of my desire to put a bullet through him, because he asks in an even quieter voice, “Is Cali okay?”

“She survived.”

He shakes his head, slower this time, while keeping his gaze on me. “I didn't want to hurt her, you know. But in the end, it was the only way.”

“To get back at Alana? For rejecting you?”

“It was never my plan to hurt Cali. Just to use her. Scare her to scare the bitch. Make her think someone was going to take away the thing she loved the most. Make her suffer a little, you know? Feel fear and loss. But I wasn't going to hurt Cali if I didn't have to. It was supposed to be the bitch up there last night for the finale. When she got away, I had to improvise. I'm resourceful, like I said.”

“Cali loved you like an uncle.”

He shrugs. “I loved her mom like a woman. You know what that's like?”

“Your brain is leaking, Bill.”

He laughs. And as soon as he does he begins coughing even harder—wet hacking that shakes through his body. When he finishes retching and sputtering, he stands up straight and looks at me again.

“Thought I'd buried you.” His Adam's apple bobs in his throat, as if he's holding back another laugh. “Under the snow. I figured that would be another good way to scare the shit out of that woman, the way she was always surrounded by bodyguards. Kill her daughter's bodyguard. Show her she's not as safe as she thinks. That she's not immune.”

The feeling of being under that mountain of snow comes over me again. The silence and the pressure and the panic. The gun is starting to shake a little in my hand.

He lurches a step closer and leaves another footprint on the rock. We're about six feet apart now. I can smell the barbecue-like scent of charred flesh rising off him. The sky behind him seems to become a sharper, brighter shade of blue. A breeze rushes up from beneath the cliff and is cold on my sweat-soaked skin.

His voice goes very soft again, becomes almost pleading. “All I wanted was a little affection, you know? My best friend gets fried after stealing the bitch from me and what does she do? She treats me like
I'm
the one who died. Avoids the sight of me. Like
I
was the corpse, not
him
.” Then his tone grows harsher. “For twenty-five years the only way I could get close to the cunt was by hanging around with her daughter. Then I get this thing in my head, and I've run out of time. I'd wasted my life for nothing. All that was left to do was make her pay for those goddamn wasted years.”

“Did you kill Patrick?”

“'Course I did,” he snaps, his tone growing harder still. It's almost a growl. “What do you think? He takes my woman and acts like we're still pals. So I pushed his ass into the fire. Right off that butte. The dumb fuck went down screaming. Cali would have gone the same way. I can almost hear Alana screaming, too. Music to my ears.”

My arms are starting to ache—both with the weight of the gun and the need to put a bullet through what remains of this man. A man I'd once admired.

His blood-filled eyes jerk to one side of me. “What's this? A wolf? Am I seeing things now?”

Mungo has finally caught up. She's walking slowly toward us with tentative steps. Her black lips are pulled high and her fangs are bared—looking nothing close to a nervous smile now. The fur around her neck and shoulders stands straight up, causing her to look huge and fierce. A low rumble vibrates from her chest.

“That's right,” I tell him. “She's a hellhound. Come to guide you to your new home.” This is a new Mungo—I've never seen her snarl before and the sight of it is almost as alarming as what I'm thinking of doing. She's watching Laughlin intently, as if frightened by the menace in our postures but intrigued by the smell of roasted flesh.

Shoot him,
I tell myself.
Just shoot the asshole and get on with it.

“Arrest me, Officer,” Laughlin says, looking at me again with what might be a swollen leer. He holds his hands out to me, the insides of his wrists touching. “Cuff me and take me in. Let's go see the bitch at the hospital.”

“Under other circumstances it would be my pleasure, old man. But now, why don't you just jump?” I gesture with my free hand toward the cliff edge behind him.

“Because there's opportunity in terminal illness, Burns. Doesn't a dying man get a last request? Her bill is still outstanding. She hasn't paid enough.”

I step forward—one long step across the line—and raise my right arm higher so that the pistol is pressing against the blistered flesh of the bridge of his nose. He doesn't even blink. I hear myself say, “You remember Charlie Wokowski?”

“Who?” Laughlin asks with his eyes—all pupil like a shark's—fixed on me over the short barrel of my gun. They're narrowed in puzzlement. I can feel the rumble from Mungo's chest building in my own.

“Charles Wokowski. The other man who was with me last night? The one who's in love with Cali? The one who was going to ask her to marry him?”

Laughlin doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what I'm talking about, and a part of me wonders if I've been infected by his hatred and madness.

“He's dead,” I tell him. “He burned to death because of you, just like your friend Patrick. I want you to know because he was a friend of mine. He burned for me.”

Laughlin finally closes his eyes, realizing now that I'm not going to take him anywhere. He yells very loud, “Go to hell!” Then he hugs himself, wrapping his blistered arms around his equally burnt chest.

I feel a wolfish smile pulling back my lips. I'm thinking of Wokowski and how my fingers had permanently dimpled his dry skin when I tried to take his pulse. Of how when I'd reached around behind his neck I'd touched charred bone. With these same fingers that now hold the plastic grip and the steel trigger.

“Go to hell!” Laughlin yells again, spraying me with spittle. Those monstrous pupils open again and bore into me.

“Okay. But you first.”

A smile bends his lips and they start to bleed. The rictus of pain seizing his facial muscles causes the smile to widen and narrow as if it were hooked up to a strobe. His red eyes begin spasming from side to side—from me to somewhere behind me. I almost laugh, thinking he's sane enough to try that old trick. My finger takes up the slack on the trigger.

A soft voice says from behind me, “I knew you were up to something,
che.
Shit, just when I'm about to step into the light, here you are, jumping off into the darkness.”

“What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be heading south.”

“I thought you looked a little freaked out. So I followed you.”

Roberto walks up beside me. He leans around me and looks closely at Laughlin's face and where the gun is touching his scalded skin. What he sees there doesn't even make him flinch.

“Who's this scabby motherfucker anyway?”

“Believe it or not, this is Bill Laughlin. The legendary hardman. He somehow lived through the fire and showed up here. I remember you saying you wanted him dead after we repeated that sandbag of a route in the Bugaboos. Your wish is about to come true.”

Roberto looks at me and cocks his head to the side. “You gonna arrest him or shoot him?”

“Shoot him.”

“Even though he's unarmed?”

“Yeah.”

Roberto laughs. “You wouldn't be standing around talking if you were going to do it. You aren't cut out for this,
che.
You're a lawman, not a killer. And now you're even forgetting the cop stuff. Remember anything 'bout powder burns?” He points at where the short black barrel still presses against the bridge of Laughlin's nose.

“That's right,” Laughlin blurts. “An execution and everyone will know it! You've got to take me to the hospital!”

For the first time I think of the consequences. The real world consequences, not just those to my soul. It's almost funny—I haven't been thinking of them at all, but my
destraillado
brother is. I slowly pull the gun away from Laughlin's face—his eyes twitching from my brother to me—and shuffle back three feet. I keep it aimed at the same spot.

Roberto moves back with me,
tsk
ing his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Give me the gun, bro. This is my kind of thing, not yours. You aren't cut out for shooting an unarmed asshole. I am.”

He reaches out and grabs the short barrel.

“I'm not going to let you—” I start to say. Roberto tugs at the gun but I won't let go.

Then Bill Laughlin moves. He takes a single, staggering step toward us, his arms flying wide as if begging to be shot. Or to fall prostrate at our feet. Mungo moves, too, faster than a rattlesnake's strike. In the lower periphery of my vision I see a flash of white teeth before they clamp down on the scorched flesh of Laughlin's ankle. Through his scream I think I can hear the sound of bone on bone.

Roberto and I watch, both of us still holding my gun, as Laughlin stumbles backward. Howling. Mungo's head jerks from side to side with lightning-fast tugs, pulling his leg out from under him. Laughlin is falling backward now, and not stopping. His arms are windmilling wildly in the air. He's going over the edge, I realize.

Mungo releases her jaw from his ankle just as her big front paws start to skid over the edge after him. I let Roberto have the gun and snatch at the tail that's flailing in the air. Grabbing a fistful of hair, I hang on. Then I pull her back.

“There you go,” my brother says happily, his eyes crinkling with mirth. “Your soul's intact, lawman. You,
mariquita,
are one
bad
dog.”

I lean over the edge in time to watch Laughlin cartwheel in the air. He only bounces once, and for a moment I'm filled with the horror that his madness will somehow allow him to survive yet another of nature's deadliest forces, one that he's escaped from so often. That he'll land in the river and again escape. But he doesn't. He doesn't reach the river and he doesn't escape. He splatters onto the rocks at the river's edge and bursts like a paper bag full of ketchup and white china.

Roberto leans over next to me and chuckles. “Fucker's taking a dirt nap now.”

FORTY-FOUR

I
LOOK AT MY WATCH
. “You're going to be late, 'Berto. You've only got five hours to make the drive. Are you going to Salt Lake or not?”

Roberto's still looking over the edge, transfixed by the sight of the same death he's been toying with for all these years. The end he's been taunting, allowing it to pad just behind him as close as a shadow. I've done it, too, but far less recklessly. With the exception of that single mad night on the Grand, anyway.

Laughlin had also allowed it to pursue him for years—for decades—and now it had finally caught up with him. The end looks bad, very bad, but it's still a better one than he deserved. After what he'd done to Cali's father, after what he tried to do to Cali and her mom, after what he'd done to me on Mt. Wister, and after what he managed to inflict on Wook, I wish he'd hit the rocks in slow motion. I wish it had taken him minutes of super-slow-mo to burst open.

At least now all that envy and spite has been squeezed out of him. Exposed to the light and the mountain air. Like with Wook, I know there's nothing left down there but a carcass. But I still have the urge to spit over the edge.

My brother doesn't answer my question right away. The sun is hot on my head and neck, and cold sweat is running down my flanks. The hanging valley that cups the little lake in its palm is only a quarter-mile farther up the ridge. I need to get up there. Fast.

I repeat my question.

My brother turns to me, handing me back my gun. “If I square things with the Feds,” he says, “I can spend more time hanging out with you, little bro. In a while, at least. Someone's got to watch your ass, you know, 'cause you don't know what the hell you're doing. Or even who the fuck you are.” A slight smile comes and goes as he talks. “And this guy they want, my old
compadre
Jesus? He's gotten crazy. Not in that way”—he jerks a thumb down at Laughlin's corpse—“but even worse. I won't mind fucking with him some. Looking forward to it, actually.”

It's my turn to smile. “So you're going to become a lawman. My big brother. Who'd of thunk it?”

He chuckles and holds up his hands. “Whoa! Now don't start talking shit.”

“Good luck, 'Berto. Call me. Let me know how it goes.”

He steps forward and puts his arms around me. He thumps my back twice with the heels of both fists. I feel all that wild energy throbbing like a nuclear reactor beneath his skin. My gun is in my hand as I grasp his back. I don't know which feels harder or more dangerous—the gun or him.

He pushes away from me. “C'mon,
che
. Let's get out of here.”

“You've got to head down on your own. There's something I've got to do up here. The reason I came in the first place.”

“You didn't come just to snuff this guy?”

I point up at the hanging valley, unconsciously using my gun hand. “Nope. I think Rebecca's up there, farther along the ridge at a hot spring. I think she's with a guy who doesn't like me too much.”

Stepping back, Roberto looks at the gun and his blue eyes narrow to slits. My blood is starting to rush in my veins again and he senses it.

“Let's go find her then.”

I hold up a hand—the empty one—with the palm out in a restraining gesture. “No, this is just me. Don't follow. Don't interfere again. Go to Salt Lake. This is very, very personal, 'Berto. Something between me, Rebecca, and this guy.”

His eyes keep roving up and down from my face to the gun. “That's exactly what I was talking about. I got to keep you from getting down to your baser self, see. There can only be one sociopath in the family, and that's me. It's what big brothers are for. Riding herd. Kicking ass. I'm coming with you.”

It takes more time than either of us has to spare for me to convince him that I'm not intending to kill anyone. I'm impatient as I do it—we've already said good-bye and in my mind he's already gone. Roberto doesn't look convinced. But I finally manage to get him to leave, and my brother begins to disappear down the trail. He looks back a couple of times before he fully fades from view. I call Mungo to my side and we head away from the sun toward the hanging valley.

The valley itself descends in a broad scoop from a saddle between two minor peaks. Ash-covered snow still lingers high up in the pass. Farther down is a slope of talus, and below that is a field of grass and alpine flowers. The little pool is at the very bottom of the valley, just before it drops off a cliff. It's surrounded by a thick stand of aspens. Except for the occasional shimmer of water, my view of the pool is blocked by all the new green leaves. Overflow water spills down the cliff beneath the lake and drowns out any other sound.

Mungo slinks along at my side. Her lips are lifted only a little now, exposing her usual shifty grin, but the blood matting her muzzle makes her look very different.

I don't know what I expect to find. But two images play prominently in my thoughts no matter how hard I try to shut them off. One is of Danny Gorgon attacking Rebecca. Forcing her. The other is of him and Rebecca embracing in the warm water of the thermal lake. I refuse to contemplate my response to either scenario, but I know that if it turns out to be the former, then Danny Gorgon will die no matter what I told my brother or whether or not he believes I'm capable. If it turns out to be the latter, I think I might die.

I feel like an angry, vengeful phantom when I enter the trees. Mungo, too, seems to be in a stalking mode. The bone-white trunks rise from dark, rocky earth that slopes down to the pool. The sound of falling water covers whatever noise we make, masking even the rattling of the leaves. But it doesn't cover the roar rising up my spine and buzzing in my skull like a swarm of wasps. Then, before I'm anywhere near ready, the trees fall away behind me. Mungo and I step out onto a rock shelf a few feet above a small beach and the water.

The pool is no more than fifty feet across. It's shaped like a frying pan, the handle being a stream of mingled hot thermal water and snowmelt flowing down into the shallow basin. Visitors have piled rocks against the cliff edge to form a sort of protective wall there, through the cracks of which leak the waterfall. The water is the color of pennies and it smells of sulfur.

Danny Gorgon is alone in the water.

He stands thigh deep with the sun shining in his golden hair and darkening his tan. One hand is rubbing his erect penis while he leers at someone below me and to my left. Somewhere close to where the waterfall spills off the cliff edge. A vibration at my hip tells me that Mungo is growling again.

Rebecca is sitting on a boulder. She is fully clothed, in hiking boots, baggy shorts, and one of my T-shirts from a guiding service in Alaska. She's not looking at Danny but out over Jackson Hole and beyond it to where the Tetons pierce the sky. The aspens block out all sight of the blackened moonscape in the valley directly below. Her profile is to me. Her thick hair is loose in the breeze and it veils her face.

“C'mon in, girl,” Danny calls to her, stroking himself. “I
know
you want some of this.”

I watch Rebecca, waiting for her response. But she still doesn't look his way.

“C'mon,” Danny says again. “Get your sweet ass in here!”

It looks as if Rebecca is shaking slightly. I stare at her, trying to read what's going on. Is she shaking from excitement, the way she sometimes did with me? Is she crying?

With both hands she pushes her hair behind her ears and holds it there. She looks at Danny before quickly looking away again. For that single second of time, her face is clear to me. She's laughing.

“You're the most pathetic man . . . I've ever seen!” she calls back to him over the falling water's noise. “Do you really think I'm just going to jump in there . . . because you show me your thing. . . . I'd like to write about it . . . but no one would believe me.” She's laughing so hard she has to support herself with her elbows on her knees. “God, I wish I'd brought a camera! I can't wait to tell my boyfriend.” Her hair comes loose again and falls over her face as she turns back to look toward the Tetons. “And you know my boyfriend, don't you? He's a cop. His name's Antonio Burns.”

The wasps fly out my ears and disperse into the air. I feel a huge grin creasing my face at the same time the leer sinks from Gorgon's. His skin darkens but his hand doesn't stop moving. It keeps stroking, but it's now a mechanical motion rather than a passionate one. I have to hold back a snort.

“Bitch,” he says. “Your boyfriend's—”

I flip a pebble into the water directly in front of him. It splashes a small spout of water against his side. His head jerks toward me. I'm pointing the gun at his chest, a bloody-mouthed wolf at my side. With my free hand I touch a finger to my lips.

His square jaw drops and his mouth opens in a wide O. The hand finally stops its back-and-forth motion but remains gripped to the fast-fading erection. Then he begins to involuntarily urinate into the copper-colored water.

Keeping the gun aimed in his general direction, I step down to the beach. By walking carefully on the larger stones so as not to make a sound, I come up behind Rebecca. Mungo isn't so stealthy now—she rushes toward her while making crying sounds. I have to hurry to keep up. Gorgon takes the opportunity to run. He splashes through the water like a startled deer pursued by a bear. I stop paying attention to him altogether when he scrambles up a bank on the opposite side and crouches among some rocks and baby aspens. I put the gun back in the clip holster on my hip.

“Rebecca,” I say at the same time Mungo clatters up to her, dancing, and shoves her pointed face under one of her arms.

She stands and whirls around in alarm, mid-laugh. The laugh is frozen in her throat for a moment, uncertainly, until she sees my grin. Then it spills the rest of the way out, harder now but without a sound. She meets me halfway when I put my arms around her. Her eyes look wet before they disappear from view against my shoulder. Her silent laughter caresses my neck and her body quivers in my arms.

It's a good minute before either of us speaks. Then she asks, “What happened to Danny?” as she loosens her grip on me and glances around.

I point to where he's peeking out at us.

“What's he doing over there in the bushes?”

“Search me.”

She shakes her head and laughs again. “What are you doing here, Anton? How did you get so dirty? And what happened with Cali Morrow? I couldn't just sit around waiting, so I thought I'd do some work. Maybe take a look at the fire and get an interview from that creep.”

“I'll tell you about it some other time. But I need to know something now. Can we work things out?”

She rises up on her toes and tilts her head forward until her forehead is touching mine. Our eyes are two inches apart and staring. Creating their own little world against everything out there in this one. I study the flecks of gold, green, and black in her brown irises.

“I did a lot of thinking last night,” she says slowly, picking her words as carefully as if she were writing. “It was so unexpected. I know it can happen, but still, I didn't expect it. It made me a little crazy. And I didn't know what you'd do, what you'd say. You'd been having such a hard time with that trial in Cheyenne. You seemed to have enough stress in your life.” I remember how I'd come home every day with clenched fists and almost dizzy with pure anger and outrage that was undissipated even after the hours on the road. I remember how much I'd needed her—and how I'd used her.

“My first impulse was to schedule an abortion for the day you were leaving town. And that's what I did, too. But then I couldn't go through with it. I ended up out at my dad's, and I told him everything.”

“You should have told
me
.”

She nods slightly. “But you weren't acting very approachable. And it was
my
choice. I was afraid you'd try to insist I get an abortion, and that I'd hate you for it. I know you don't like things tying you down, Anton.” Her eyes cant up in a smile here. “For the past decade you've been pretty much living out of your ugly truck. . . . And then there's your recklessness. What kind of father will you make?”

I want to close my eyes here, with guilt and shame, but I don't allow myself to.

“And how will I stand it? Well, I've figured out how. I just will. That's all. The problem is with me, not you. I'm just so scared of losing you. You have to convince me that I'm not going to lose you. That's your job.”

“It could happen a million ways, 'Becca. A car accident. A plane crash. A brain tumor. I can't convince you—”

“But the soloing. That's pushing it, Ant. Don't try to tell me otherwise.”

I close my eyes and open them. The spectacular slivers of color are still there, only two inches away and even brighter now.

“No more soloing. I swear. And I'm reconsidering my retirement. Believe me, I want us to have a lot of years together. Are we cool?”

She kisses my mouth. “Okay. We're cool.”

I pull away. Beyond her the Teton spires are huge in the periphery of my vision. The snow and ice on the summits reflect sunlight all the way across the valley to where we stand. With Danny Gorgon cowering across the water as my only witness, I slide down out from her embrace and sink onto a knee in the damp earth.