Paradise Valley

by C. J. Box

  “Climb the hill and be careful of loose rocks,” Ron said.

  Kyle had to get down on his hands and knees to propel himself up the rocky slope. He could hear Ron struggling behind him and breathing hard.

  “Slow down,” Ron said.

  Kyle suddenly had a thought: what if he could get far enough ahead of Ron to break over the top and run away? He could dislodge some of the rocks under his feet to slow Ron down further and leave the wheezing old man behind him.

  Then he remembered the collar.

  * * *

  THE TREES CLEARED near the top of the ridge and Kyle climbed out of them. It was colder than below and if anything the air was even thinner. A cold breeze wafted through his hair.

  There was a bald knob on the top of the rim that was rough with granite outcroppings. Kyle stood between two thigh-high boulders and looked out.

  He’d never seen a vista like it before. Beyond a tremendous ocean of trees—it looked like an undulating ocean of green had been frozen in place—blue snowcapped mountains jutted into the pale sky.

  Kyle had never seen mountains like this before. The closest thing to them were the badlands terrain of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where Grandma Lottie had taken him. But those dryland buttes and spires weren’t even close to what there was out there on the horizon.

  The mountains were so high that there were clouds below them, stringy clouds pushing through valleys as if they were bony fingers fitting into a glove. And not a single structure, wire, or road anywhere.

  What looked like steam wafted above the trees to the south. Kyle smelled something acrid.

  “You know what that is, right?” Ron asked between gasps for air. “That smell?”

  Kyle shook his head.

  “It’s sulfur. Kind of smells like rotten eggs, doesn’t it?”

  When Kyle didn’t respond, Ron said, “If you’re familiar with that smell you can guess where we are.”

  Hell, Kyle thought.

  “Any ideas?” Ron asked. He stood slightly bent forward with his hands on his hips until he could recover his breath.

  Kyle shook his head.

  “My guess is you haven’t seen much of this country, have you?”

  Kyle indicated he hadn’t.

  “I’ve seen it all,” Ron said. “Coast to coast. North and south. This country is bigger than hell. Parts of it are beautiful, like this. Most of the other parts are nothing more than a human cesspool.”

  He spat out the last few words. Then: “Day after day I’d wonder why I was spending all my time and labor providing goods to those people out there. Every appliance—every big-screen TV, food, furniture—just about everything they have came to them in my truck and trailer or one just like it. But do you think they ever once said thank you?

  “Not a chance. They’d cut me off on the highway. They’d flip me off when my rig was laboring up a hill and they had to pass. At rest stops they’d see me coming and look away like I was human trash.

  “But look at me now,” Ron said. “I’m on the top of the fucking world.”

  * * *

  AFTER A FEW MOMENTS of silence except for the breeze, Ron said, “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  Kyle looked up to him for more clarification.

  Ron said, “You watch everything. You take it all in—all the shit life throws at you—but you don’t say anything. You remind me of what I was like when I was a boy.”

  Kyle hugged himself to try and keep warm. It was exhilarating to see so much wide-open mountain terrain. But it was cold up there and the wind was harsh. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he was ready to go back down the mountain to the warmth of the cabin.

  And he wanted Ron to shut up. The man seemed to think he was imparting some kind of special insight or wisdom, Kyle thought. But for the first time since they’d left the cabin, Kyle thought that perhaps he’d make it back there alive.

  “We know what it’s like to be different, don’t we?” Ron asked. “I thought about it the first time I saw you when you came off that river. When I saw you I thought to myself, ‘He’s an other,’ just like me. You and me, we know what it’s like to look out at the world from a dark place. And when people see us coming they see something damaged. They see something inferior to them. Right, Kyle?”

  He wished Ron would stop talking.

  “Some people used to call me the Lizard King and for a while I liked that name,” Ron said. “God knows I earned it. But they really used that name because it made me into something less than human. Something twisted. But that ain’t me, Kyle. I’m not really like that most of the time.

  “You stick with me and you’ll learn things,” Ron said. “I had to learn everything on my own because I grew up in a house of idiots and morons. Those people had real problems. I’ll tell you about my mother some time. She didn’t even know what it was like to be happy. She didn’t teach me how to be happy. I had to learn it myself. And I’m happy, Kyle.

  “Especially now,” Ron said. “Now that I finally have what I’ve always wanted: my own family.”

  Ron reached out and patted Kyle on his shoulder. “You’re like the son I never had,” Ron said.

  Kyle felt cold and sick.

  * * *

  ON THEIR WAY BACK DOWN the hill, Ron walked side by side with Kyle. When he placed his hand on his shoulder Kyle tried not to recoil from the touch.

  “You’ll learn things from me, Kyle,” Ron said again. “You’ll learn that you don’t need to take anyone’s shit ever again. You’ll find out that it doesn’t matter how people look at you because you’re actually superior to them. You’ll have contempt for them but I’ll teach you how to hide it and how to use it to your advantage.”

  He went on along that line and Kyle tuned him out. But Ron’s hand stayed on his shoulder.

  * * *

  “WELL, LOOK AT THAT,” Ron said. His voice was cold.

  They were approaching the cabin and at first Kyle didn’t know what Ron was talking about because there were too many trees in the way. But when he stepped to the side a couple of feet, and away from Ron’s hand, which fell away, he saw it.

  Tiffany’s upper body was halfway out of the side window. She was stuck fast and was frantically wriggling her hips in an attempt to get free of the window frame.

  Kyle had the strange thought: She looked like a thrashing tongue sticking out of the exterior wall.

  “Stupid whore,” Ron said in a low tone. “Stupid fucking whore. What is she thinking?”

  Ron reached over and instead of placing his hand on Kyle’s shoulder he gathered the back collar of his shirt in his hand and pushed, propelling him down the hill.

  “Stupid fucking whore—hips too wide to fit out the window,” Ron said in a furious whisper.

  Kyle had to break into a jog to prevent himself from being run over.

  Their footfalls must have made a racket and alarmed her because Kyle saw Tiffany stiffen and look up to see them coming. There was absolute terror in her eyes.

  “It was her idea!” she yelled. “Amanda was the one who made me do it.”

  Kyle felt terrible for Tiffany. She was just stuck there, completely exposed. The glass from the window she’d broken out was in shards in the grass near the foundation of the cabin. He could see long cuts in her arms that were bleeding.

  “Stupid, stupid,” Ron said as much to himself as Kyle. Then Kyle was heaved aside. He landed on his hands and knees as Ron rushed past.

  “Stay!”

  As if he were commanding a dog.

  Kyle looked up as Ron lumbered toward Tiffany in a half-run. He could see the man fishing inside his jacket with his right hand.

  “I’d blow your head off but I don’t want to do any more damage to the cabin,” Ron said to Tiffany in a roar.

  “Please, no,” she begged. “It was Amanda’s idea. She made me do it, really. She’s back in there pushing right now. Please, Ron, no.”

  He slowed as he got to her. Kyle could s
ee that Ron was flushed and was breathing heavy again from coming so quickly down the mountain.

  Tiffany had her hands braced below her under the sill of the window so she could keep her head up. There were tears in her eyes and her mouth was twisted.

  Ron raised his pistol and pointed it at her head. The muzzle was several inches away from her temple. She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip.

  Kyle said, “Ron, no, don’t hurt her—”

  There was a sharp loud crack and Tiffany’s arms gave out. She flopped forward and her face thumped the log wall of the cabin. Her hands dropped limply and hair streamed straight down. Blood pattered on the broken glass.

  Kyle could smell the sharp smell of gunpowder as it drifted to him in the breeze.

  Ron shook his head from side to side as he holstered the pistol.

  “Stupid cunt,” he muttered to himself. Ron roughly unlocked the training collar from her neck. Tiffany’s body swayed as he did it. When the collar was free he rammed it into his jacket pocket.

  Then he turned angrily to Kyle and started to mock how he’d said Ron, no, don’t hurt her—Kyle could tell because it had happened so many times before in his life—when Ron seemed to catch himself.

  Kyle blinked tears out of his eyes. Ron seemed to be ashamed of what he’d almost done.

  “Help me get her out of here, Kyle,” Ron said in a soft voice. He turned his back on Kyle and grasped one of Tiffany’s arms. Before he pulled, he put the sole of his boot against the cabin for leverage.

  Kyle stood up. His feet felt like they were encased in concrete as he trudged slowly to the cabin.

  “Come on.”

  Kyle reluctantly grasped Tiffany’s left arm with both hands. Her body was still warm and supple, but there was no resistance.

  “Grab it tight,” Ron said. “Now on the count of three. One, two, three…”

  Kyle put his thighs into it. Tiffany’s body came out of the window frame much easier than he thought it would. So fast, in fact, that he lost his balance and fell backwards. Tiffany crumpled heavily next to him.

  He looked up to see Amanda’s horrified face filling the open hole. Her mouth made a perfect O.

  “Ron, I told her not to do it. I tried to make her stay.”

  Even Kyle could tell she was trying to lie but wasn’t good at it.

  Ron narrowed his eyes and thrust his face toward the open window. “Amanda, don’t think you’re gonna lie your way out of this.”

  Amanda filled the O with the heel of her hand and retreated.

  * * *

  “WELL, THIS WASN’T how I thought this day would go,” Ron said after nearly a minute. His breath had returned to normal. Kyle could hear Amanda crying to herself inside and it wrenched at his heart. He wasn’t used to grown women crying around him.

  Ron bent down and touched the tips of his fingers to Tiffany’s neck.

  “Dead.”

  Kyle stepped back.

  “Where are you going?”

  Kyle shrugged.

  “Go in the shed and grab one of those blue plastic tarps. We’ll wrap her up in it, then I’ll show you where the bodies are buried.”

  * * *

  WHEN KYLE WENT into the cabin for his coat Amanda looked up at him with red eyes. She was seated in a chair facing the corner where Ron had ordered her to sit until he came back.

  She said, “I don’t want what happened to Tiffany to happen to you, either,” she whispered. “Or me.”

  PART FIVE

  YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  WITH THE BUNDLE of topo maps on the passenger seat of her car and her outdoor gear piled in the hatchback, Cassie swung around the corner of Rachel Mitchell’s street to see a three-quarter-ton pickup—it looked like something out of a World War II museum—with a four-horse stock trailer parked out front.

  The juxtaposition of the battered four-wheel drive and peeling trailer in front of Rachel Mitchell’s magnificent brick house, as well as the other million-dollar homes in the subdivision, was striking. It was like seeing a hitching post in front of an Apple Store, she thought.

  Bull Mitchell, wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and lace-up outfitter boots, was struggling under the weight of a pack saddle he carried across the lawn from the house toward the trailer. Two piles of horse manure steamed on the clean black asphalt of the street.

  It was a crisp and sunny fall morning. The sky was cloudless and the mountains on the southern horizon were so clear that it almost hurt her eyes to look at them.

  Because it was dark the night before, Cassie hadn’t realized the big brick home backed up to a pasture. Or that Bull—and possibly Rachel—had horses as well as a barn within walking distance of their back door.

  She parked parallel to the street and climbed out. Bull acknowledged her with a curt nod of his head. It was obvious there were animals in the trailer by the way it rocked from side to side.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked.

  Bull grunted as he hoisted the pack saddle into the bed of the pickup. He was breathing hard, but to Cassie the man appeared twenty years younger than he had the night before. He had a full barrel chest on top of his big belly and he looked stout and strong.

  “I’ve loaded up my best three horses,” Bull said. “Gipper, Rummy, and Dickie. Gipper and Rummy to ride and Dickie as our pack horse if we need him. I think I’ll start you up on Gipper. That’s the horse Cody Hoyt rode. There’s no way you’re a worse rider than him.”

  Cassie was taken aback. “Gipper?”

  Bull winked. “Named after the greatest president of the twentieth century. Rummy’s full name is Rumsfeld and Dickie is named for Dick Cheney. They’re all damn fine horses.”

  “This is exactly what Rachel didn’t want to happen.”

  Bull grinned before turning back to the open garage for more gear.

  “Bull? I thought you were going to take me up there and point the way. That was the deal I had with Rachel.”

  Mitchell gathered up saddle pads between his arms and walked toward his truck and trailer. His heavy boots made loud clunks on the pavement.

  “Do you want to honor your deal with my nanny,” he said after swinging the pads over the bed wall into the back, “or do you want to find that boy?”

  Cassie took a long time to find the right words to respond.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I left her a note. She’ll get over it.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Cassie said.

  He paused and grinned. It was almost boyish. There was no doubt, Cassie thought, that he was back in his element.

  “There’s plenty of room in the back of the truck for your gear. Maybe instead of just standing there you can start loading.”

  * * *

  BULL’S PICKUP AND TRAILER rumbled through the outskirts of Bozeman onto Interstate 90 with all of the subtlety of a slow-motion train wreck. The exhaust belched black smoke and the inside of the cab shook as if trembling. Cassie held on to a worn leather strap that hung from above the passenger door. She cranked down her window a few inches for fresh air because the carbon monoxide fumes inside were making her nauseous.

  She’d noted the faint hand-painted BULL MITCHELL’S WILDERNESS ADVENTURES logo on the door as she climbed in.

  “When is the last time you drove this thing?” she asked. Bull ignored her as he built up speed on the interstate after shifting through all four gears. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw someone work a clutch. Cars and trucks shot past them and Bull kept the vehicle and trailer on the right shoulder of the road as they approached the canyon out of town.

  “I said,” Cassie shouted, “when was the last time you drove this thing?”

  Bull grinned but didn’t look over. He reached out and patted the metal dashboard and answered a question she hadn’t asked.

  “She’s a classic 1948 Dodge Power Wagon, the greatest ranch or mountain vehicle ever made. It’s a three-quarter-ton fo
ur-by-four perfected in World War Two. After the war all the rural ex-GIs wanted one here like they’d used over there and pretty soon they were on every ranch in Wyoming and Montana. I bought this baby when I opened my company and I never found a reason to get anything else. The original ninety-four horse, 230 cubic-inch flathead six won’t win any races but it can grind through the snow and mud, over logs, through the brush and willows. It’s as tough as a damn rock. A damn rock! With the big tires and high clearance we could load a ton of cargo on this son of a bitch and still drive around other pickups stuck in a bog.”

  She nodded.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “And if we do get stuck—which we might—I’ve got that direct-drive eight-ton winch on the front to pull us through or over anything.”

  “Can you hear a single thing I say?”

  “We’ll need to gas up in Livingston or Gardiner and fill the two five-gallon cans I brought along, just in case we need them. And we probably better grab some food to take along. I’ve got a couple of bottles of whiskey but I didn’t want to run Rachel out of grub. Plus, she eats all healthy and that’s not the kind of food we need in the wilderness. We want steaks!”

  So, she thought, they were going to take the interstate to Bozeman and turn south at Livingston on US-89 to Gardiner.

  “You took your hearing aids out, didn’t you?” she asked. “I hope you put them back in at some point.”

  Bull looked over at her and frowned. He said, “If you’re talking to me I can’t hear a damn word you’re saying. I took my hearing aids out.”

  “Where are they?”

  “We’re gonna take a couple of old back roads out of Livingston straight up the mountain,” he said, taking one hand off the steering wheel and waggling it from low to high to indicate the turns on the road. “Those were bad roads twenty years ago so I doubt they’re any better now. But once we get on top we’ll be close to the area where Frank Pergram used to hunt. It’s about two hours from town and in really rough country.

  “See, Cassie, it used to be that the Park Service wasn’t the neo-Nazi organization it is now. Now it’s full of true-believer bureaucrats who think their job is to keep people out of the park so the wildlife can frolic on their own. But somebody forgot to tell the wildlife because wildlife doesn’t frolic—they eat each other.