Back of Beyond ch-1

by C. J. Box

  * * *

  He slowed through Townsend, glancing over his shoulder at a yelp that came from two drunks stumbling out of the Commercial Bar into the street. Thought maybe he might even know them, and smiled bitterly.

  Two miles south of Townsend, the inside of the Ford exploded with red and blue light. He glanced into his rearview mirror and squinted at the intensity of the wig-wags on the light bar of the Highway Patrol car.

  “Shit,” he hissed, noting he was only five miles over the speed limit.

  Fuming, he pulled over. He reached for his badge which was no longer there and sat back and closed his eyes. He hoped like hell he knew the trooper and could manage to talk his way out of a ticket so he could get back on the highway as soon as possible. For a second he considered flooring the Ford once the trooper got out of his vehicle, but he knew that wouldn’t work for long. No doubt, his plates had already been called in, and there wouldn’t be a record of them.

  He was caught, unless he could talk his way out of it and get the plate search canceled.

  A flashlight blinded him through the driver’s window and he looked away.

  The trooper, an unfamiliar beefy youngster who looked six months out of the training center, said, “You were aware you only have one operating headlight, mister?”

  Cody said, “I’m an investigator for the sheriff’s department. I’m in a hurry.”

  The trooper grinned, his teeth glinting in the secondary light of his flashlight’s reflection.

  “Well, you’ll just have to show me a badge and get the sheriff on the horn,” the trooper said. “And in the meanwhile you can follow me back to town until we can get that headlight fixed. What happened, anyway? It looks like you hit something.”

  “A fucking elk,” Cody said, not able to keep the anger out of his voice.

  “Yeah,” the trooper said, shining his beam on the damage. “I can see some hair and blood. Male or female?”

  Cody sighed and covered his face with his hands. “Female,” he said.

  “Got your cow permit?” The trooper chuckled.

  Part Two

  Yellowstone National Park

  8

  Sixteen-year-old Danielle Sullivan was furiously texting her on-again off-again boyfriend Riley as fourteen-year-old Gracie Sullivan looked on. Their father drove the rental car and pointed out bison far below in the valley and two distant elk crossing a river in the early morning sun. Danielle and Gracie were in the backseat.

  “I’m surprised he’s even up this early,” Gracie said to Danielle. She marveled at her sister and the desperate fire in her eyes as she tapped out messages with a blur of her thumbs.

  “He’s got to get up early for work,” Danielle said, not looking over. “Remember-he’s got that stupid job with the grounds crew with the schools. They make him show up every morning at eight. They’re evil.” Gracie nodded and snapped her phone open. She didn’t expect any messages although she’d be ridiculously thrilled if there were any. There weren’t, so as she often did in the presence of her beautiful, popular, constantly in-demand sister, she tapped out a message to her own phone via her e-mail account:

  How are you this morning?

  When it came through, she wrote:

  Crappy start, but thanks for asking.

  I’m sorry.

  Don’t be. Things are looking up. WE’RE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK.

  Even though Danielle thought Gracie pathetic for spelling out all the words in her texts rather than using text-speak or shorthand, Gracie thought there was no harm done since she was, in effect, talking to herself. It was a scheme she’d come up with to make Danielle think she had admirers in constant contact as well.

  You’re up early.

  I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking I forgot something.

  Like what?

  Toothbrush. Glasses. I got up at 2:30 to make sure I packed underwear. I had a nightmare I didn’t bring underwear and I had to borrow a f**king thong from Danielle.

  She lowered the phone to her lap with the screen facing away from her sister and looked through the window. There were no buildings, no roads, no power lines. To the south was a vast river valley with tall grass that rippled in the cold morning breeze. A ribbon of river that looked like sheet metal serpentined through the valley floor. To the north the terrain seemed to swell and rise to meet tendrils of pine trees, and above them a dark wall of forest.

  “Oh my God,” her dad said as the car slowed suddenly. “Look, girls: wolves.”

  Gracie snapped her phone shut and hurled herself forward. All her life she’d wanted to see a wolf.

  Her dad pulled over to the side of the two-lane blacktop and rolled down his window. The small of pine, sage, and cool fresh air wafted in. He pointed toward the river.

  “See them, at that bend? Near those big rocks the sun is starting to hit?”

  Gracie threw her arms over the front seat and squinted where her father was pointing. Far below, she saw movement.

  “They look like dots,” she said. “Two little dots.”

  “They’re wolves,” her dad said. “Aren’t they magnificent?”

  Magnificent dots, she thought. She wished she could see them closer or figure out what they were doing to make them seem magnificent to her father, who tended toward hyperbole.

  “Here,” her father said, handing her a pair of binoculars that still had the price tag on them. “You focus using that little wheel in the middle.”

  While Gracie tried to manipulate the binoculars and frantically rolled the wheel all the way to the left and then to the right and finally realized she was bringing the hood ornament into sharp relief, she heard her dad say to Danielle, “Don’t you want to see these fantastic animals, Danny?”

  “Maybe in a minute,” Danielle said, still texting.

  “They may be gone in a minute,” he said, trying to disguise the disappointment in his voice.

  Gracie finally figured out where to point, and started bringing the animals into focus.

  “Dad, it’s not like we won’t have a chance to see wolves,” Danielle said, not looking up from her phone. “Aren’t we going to be in the middle of nowhere for five friggin’ days? We’ll be sleeping with wolves. Like that movie.”

  Gracie mumbled, “Dancing with wolves, not sleeping with them,” as she brought the animals into sharp detail.

  “Whatever,” Danielle said sharply.

  “I think there’s a difference,” Gracie whispered, and not too loudly, wishing she’d never said anything at all. To confirm her thought, Danielle drove a sharp fingernail into her ribs that made her jump and lose the animals. She recovered and refocused.

  Then she sighed, sat back, and handed the binoculars to her father. “Those are coyotes, not wolves.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, taking the glasses back.

  She waited. She could tell he wanted to turn them into wolves.

  Finally, he said, “I’ll be damned. I thought they were wolves.” He was disappointed they were coyotes and seemed disappointed in Gracie for pointing it out.

  Gracie said, “Dad, I read those books you sent us. You know, The Wildlife of Yellowstone, Yellowstone Flora and Fauna, Death in Yellowstone, The Geysers of Yellowstone. I read them. I studied them,” she said, hoping for a grunt of appreciation. “You know,” she said, “so Danny wouldn’t have to.”

  That got a smile out of him.

  “You suck,” Danielle mumbled. “Some of us have lives.”

  “You read those books?” her dad asked, nodding.

  “Some of them more than once,” Gracie confessed, and wished she hadn’t. She sounded so … without a life. But the fact was she was captivated with the books about a place on earth that could hold so many fascinating things that weren’t made or constructed by man. It had never occurred to her before she read those books that there was an amazing natural location not designed or driven by people. It made her think about how small she was. How small everybody was.

  “Don�
�t drive off, Dad,” Danielle said.

  “Do you want to take a look, then?” her dad asked eagerly, handing the binoculars over his shoulder so Danielle could grab them.

  “Naw. I’ve got a good signal here,” she said, deadpan.

  “It’s gonna get worse,” Gracie said. “In fact, we’ll lose it for good in a minute.”

  Danielle looked up, horrified. “Shut up,” she said to Gracie. There was terror in her eyes. Then: “Dad, tell me that’s not true.”

  When he realized Danielle didn’t want the glasses he lowered them to his seat as if he’d not held them out to her in the first place. Like he was embarrassed, Gracie thought. He said, “I thought I told you, Danny. There’s no cell service where we’re going. It’s the wilderness. It’s the most remote part of the whole country. At least the lower forty-eight states, to be exact. That’s the whole point.”

  Gracie watched Danielle do a slow burn with a whiff of absolute panic.

  “Are you telling me I can’t use my phone?” she said.

  “Honey,” her dad said, turning around, making his face soft and sympathetic, “it’ll be great. You’ll forget you even have it. I know I told you all this about how remote it would be.”

  Danielle’s tone was icy. “You didn’t say I couldn’t use my phone.”

  “I think I did.”

  Gracie nodded. “I think he did.”

  Danielle turned on her. “I don’t know why you’d even care, Gracie. Nobody even knows your number.”

  Gracie looked away, instant tears stinging in her eyes. She should be used to how quickly and ruthlessly Danielle could humiliate her and learn not to tear up. She hated when she let her sister get to her.

  “This isn’t Yellowstone,” Danielle said to her dad, “It’s friggin’ hell.”

  “Honey…,” her Dad said, turning in his seat so he could plead with her.

  “My friends go to Europe, or Disneyland, or Hawaii, or Mexico for summer vacation,” Danielle said. “But no, my dad takes me to friggin’ hell.”

  “Darling…,” her dad said.

  “I should have stayed home,” Danielle said, twisting the knife. “I should have stayed with Mom. At least there was civilization and broadband. And my friends. And friggin’ cell service.”

  Her dad turned back around in silence and engaged the transmission and the car eased forward into the lane.

  Gracie said, “We can call it Hell-o-stone!”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Danielle spat.

  “Don’t say that,” Gracie said. “It’s against the law to say fuck in a national park.”

  Danielle looked at her suspiciously. “It is?”

  Her dad sighed, “Girls, please…”

  * * *

  It had been their dad’s idea, this trip to Yellowstone National Park. He’d come up with it the previous summer-they stayed with him summers-and he’d announced it suddenly when the sisters returned from an afternoon at the swimming pool at his condo village on the outskirts of St. Paul. Danielle, who’d just broken up with her then-local boyfriend at the pool an hour before and never wanted to see him-or Minnesota-again, said she was all over it.

  Anything to get away from Alex and his stupid friends, she’d said, wiping her hands on her pool towel as if rubbing off his disgusting germs.

  Gracie, who could never get used to the heat or humidity of the long green summer months compared to where they lived the rest of the year in dry, high-altitude Denver, was thrilled with the idea. Gracie loved animals, hiking, nature, and the idea of a great adventure. But most of all, she wanted to make her dad happy.

  It had been obvious for the ten years since the divorce that her dad wasn’t really comfortable with them, maybe because they were girls. He’d never outright said he wanted boys instead, but it was clear that at least he’d know what to do with them: take them to baseball games or something. He really wasn’t an outdoorsman of any kind even though he’d grown up in Colorado, but Gracie guessed he’d take quicker to learning to hike, fish, or hunt for the sake of his sons than he did ferrying his daughters to movies, the Mall of America, restaurants, or waiting for them to return from the pool. He was dutiful, but there was always something sad about him, she thought. Like he liked the idea of having his daughters for the summer more than he actually liked having them there taking over the bathroom or hanging their wet bathing suits from the shower rod to dry.

  But this trip really did seem to excite him in a way she’d never seen before. Once he cleared it with their mother-who thought he, and they, were crazy as ticks but acquiesced in the end-he could talk of nothing else for the rest of the year. His eyes sparkled, and his movements seemed more rapid. He fired off e-mails and links about Yellowstone and horses and camping and wildlife. For Christmas he sent them both sleeping bags, flashlights, headlamps, travel fishing rods and reels, new digital cameras, rain ponchos, and National Geographic maps of the park.

  Gracie read everything he sent, and obsessed over the “What to Bring” list forwarded from the outfitter. Danielle rolled her eyes and said, “What-does he think we’re his boys, now?”

  Gracie suspected there was an ulterior motive to his enthusiasm, but she didn’t know yet what it was. She suspected through comments her mother had made over the years that her dad wasn’t very happy growing up, that his intensity (he was a software engineer who traveled a lot all over the country and the world) prevented him from ever being loose or carefree. He thought in terms of circuit boards and digital switches, and when the level of drama was high-which it often was with Danielle and sometimes Gracie-that he was “better at hardware than software,” as if that explained everything. She thought maybe he was hoping he could go on this wilderness cowboy pack trip and … be a boy again. She wasn’t sure that was something she really wanted to see.

  * * *

  The trip the day before had begun on a jarring note, Gracie thought. It was taking her a while to process what had happened and why it bothered her, other than her natural and annoying propensity to simply worry too much about everything.

  They’d kissed their mother good-bye at Denver International Airport in the morning and boarded the United/Frontier flight to Bozeman. Although they’d planned to carry on their luggage-which was ridiculously slight given the weight restrictions Jed McCarthy imposed-but because of all the metal and equipment in their duffel bags, they’d had to check the bags through. Gracie thought her mom looked forlorn and vulnerable, as if she wondered if she’d ever see her daughters again. That wasn’t a good way to start the trip.

  Their arrival was slightly delayed-the airplane had to circle Bozeman while early summer thundershowers lashed the airport. Gracie had the window seat and looked out at the mountains in all directions and the black thunderheads on the northern horizon.

  “Which way is Yellowstone?” she’d asked her sister.

  “Like I would know?” Danielle said in a way that was both incredulous and offended.

  “That’s right,” Gracie had said, “how dare I assume you know anything.”

  Which was met with a hard twist on her ear.

  She’d looked out expectantly for their dad in the luggage area because he was scheduled to arrive an hour before from Minneapolis, but he wasn’t there.

  “His plane must be late,” Danielle told her. “I’ll check in a minute.”

  When their bags arrived and the rest of the passengers cleared out, Gracie waited near the outside doors. She knew there was a problem by Danielle’s worried face as she came back from the Northwest counter.

  “The plane arrived on time but he wasn’t on it, they said.”

  Gracie fought panic. She looked up at the mounted animal heads and stuffed trout on the walls and out at the cold blue mountains to the south. She thought of how miserable it would be to be stuck in Bozeman, Montana, with her sister until they could figure out a way to get back home. And she was worried about what might have happened to their dad. Was he sick? Did he get in a car crash on the way to th
e airport? She flipped open her phone and powered it up, hoping there would be a message.

  “I’m calling Mom,” Danielle said, having already opened her cell phone.

  That’s when their dad bounded into the airport. Not from the area where the planes landed, but from outside on the street.

  “Girls!” he shouted. His grin and his open arms made Gracie’s black dread melt away as if he had touched a flame to a spider’s web. He seemed almost too exuberant, she thought. As if he was happy but with a bit of desperation thrown in.

  “Come on, the car’s out front,” he’d said. “Let me help you with your stuff.”

  Danielle told him they were starting to worry, and what the people at the airline counter had said.

  He waved it off, saying, “That’s ridiculous. Obviously, I was on the plane. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  * * *

  They turned onto a dirt road by a brown National Park Service sign indicating the campsite and trailhead. Her father once again closed his window to prevent the roll of dust from filling the car. Gracie turned off her phone and put it in a side pocket of the door and made a mental note not to forget it when they returned. She watched as Danielle seethed-no signal at all-and finally snapped her phone shut.

  “Great,” her sister said, “I’m completely alone in the world.”

  “Except for your sister and your father,” her dad said with caution.

  “Alone in Hell-o-stone,” Gracie mocked gently, “Hell-o-stone alone…”

  Danielle mouthed Shut the fuck up, Gracie.

  “That’s your second offense,” Gracie said, deadpan. “We may need to turn you in to the rangers.”

  “We’re here,” her dad said with an epic flourish.

  Gracie once again bounded forward and hung her arms over the front seat. They’d rounded a corner and could now see that at the end of the road was a very long horse trailer in a parking lot. People stood around the trailer in the sun; a couple were already on horseback. Gracie counted ten or eleven milling about. When she saw the horses her heart seemed to swell to twice its size.