by C. J. Box
Torkleson whistled, and said, “For the love of Pete.”
“Now you’re thinking like a Moreland, Jack,” Cody said. “Ten steps ahead.”
CODY KNEW THE LAYOUT and geography of the canyon because he had planned the raid on Coates months before, but he complained that it looked different in the dark and covered by snow. There was plenty of bitching when he said the only way to move in on the trailer was from behind it on foot because there was only one road into the campground, and we didn’t want Coates to see us coming. So we parked on the shoulder of a gravel road on the other side of the mountain from the campground and plunged into the forest to climb. The snow was fluffy and knee deep. There was no wind at all, so the pine boughs sported three or four inches of snow looking like foam on the top of a beer mug. It was impossible to climb through the thick trees without hitting boughs and dumping snow down our necks. We all wore high-topped winter boots. The beams from our headlamps flew around in the trees as we climbed, and it was hallucinogenic, so I tried to keep my head down and concentrate on the trail in front of me. The SWAT guys carried automatic weapons with scopes, and Morales and Sanders had brought their hunting rifles. The .45 was in my parka pocket.
I was sweating hard by the time we reached the top, but my thoughts of Angelina and Melissa and Coates and Moreland propelled me. I finally stopped throwing up when there was nothing left in my stomach.
As we grunted and cursed our way down the other side of the mountain toward Desolation Canyon Campground, the eastern sky started to lighten into a dull, creamy gray. I doubted we would see the sun itself.
CODY GATHERED EVERYONE when it got light enough to see without headlamps. From where I stood, I could see a big opening below me and ahead of me: the empty campground. There were picnic tables stacked high with snow, and steel cooking grates mounted on metal posts. The roads to and from the individual campsites were untracked except from mule deer, as was the access road from the highway. Sheer canyon walls rose on either side, which made it darker than it should be at seven in the morning.
We all stood in the trees breathing hard, flushed from the climb and the descent. Billows of condensation rose from our labored breathing. One good thing about the falling snow was it muffled sounds.
Cody bent over and pointed out Coates’s trailer. We could barely see the top of it through the trees a quarter of a mile away. As I’d heard about in the courtroom that day, the aluminum roof bristled with antennae and both satellite television and Internet-access dishes.
Cody and Torkleson debated the approach, and they decided to flank the park with two SWAT officers on each side of the trailer. Torkleson told his men to stay in the trees with clear shooting lanes. Cody reminded them the trailer had a back door as well.
Sanders and Morales agreed to split up, each going with two SWAT officers. Torkleson, Cody, the tech guy with his video camera, and I would move straight down the middle of the trees toward the back of the trailer, where Torkleson would establish a command post to direct traffic.
“Turn your radios down and put your earpieces in,” Torkleson told his men. “Communicate. Report what you see so we all know. This exchange is supposed to happen at nine, so we have an hour and a half to wait.”
“To freeze to death,” one of the officers said sourly.
“To save a little girl and put three monsters away,” Cody said.
As the men checked their weapons and equipment before splitting off into teams, I thanked each one of them for coming and I shook their hands. I hugged Morales and Sanders, and they hugged me back.
“We’re glad we could make it,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to square this thing.”
“We’ll get her back,” Morales said, fire in his eyes.
WE FOUND a small clearing 150 yards from Coates’s trailer and stamped the snow down with our boots. It gave us something to do, and the work kept me warm. We were on a steep hillside and could see out over the top of the trailer and the park and the access road. There was a thick U of four-foot-high juniper between us and the trailer to hide behind. Every few minutes Cody would raise his binoculars and study the trailer, watching for movement.
To me, Cody whispered, “I wish we could just go down there and cap the guy, believe me. But we have to do it this way, Jack.” He looked up to make sure Torkleson was far enough away that he couldn’t hear, and said, “You and I are dirty. We’ve got to get all these guys involved and let them make the arrest and the case. My name’s got to be out of it, and so does yours. Henkel will make the case for them when he testifies. I wish you hadn’t have shot him.”
“Me too,” I whispered back. “Something snapped inside.”
“It happens.” Cody grinned. I noted the frost on his eyebrows and three-day length of beard.
AT 8:45 we saw headlights coming down the access road into the park.
I couldn’t hear what the SWAT team was saying to Torkleson through his earpiece, but Torkleson said, “Yes, we see it. Can anyone get the make?”
He listened, nodded, and turned to us. “A yellow H3 Hummer.”
“Garrett’s car,” I said.
“Showtime,” said Cody.
THE H3 WAS MOVING very slowly. It wasn’t the snow that was holding it up but caution by the driver. I borrowed Cody’s binoculars and tried to see who was inside. The smoked glass made it difficult, but I thought I saw the silhouettes of two heads.
“I still don’t get Garrett,” I whispered to Cody. “What is it with him? I can’t figure him out.”
“Psychopath,” Cody said. “We may never understand. The kid crushed his mother’s head in with a rock while his dad looked on. This is one gene pool that needs to be drained for good.”
Realizing the implication of that statement, he said, “Jack, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean Angelina, for Christ’s sake.”
I shook my head. “She’s our daughter, Cody. She has nothing to do with Garrett.”
But I can’t lie and say what Cody suggested didn’t shake me to my core.
GARRETT’S SUV SLOWED to a stop in front of the trailer. It was close enough I could hear the ratcheting sound of the emergency brake being pulled. I still couldn’t see who was inside. They kept it running, and the headlights were still on. If Coates was inside he would have to know they had arrived.
The passenger door opened, and the dome light inside the H3 went on. I raised the binoculars. Garrett driving, the judge in the passenger seat. And between them, covered in blankets in the backseat in a car seat, was Angelina.
My heart filled my mouth. “Screw this! We’ve got to go get her.”
Cody reached out and put a gloved hand on my arm. “Not yet, Jack. At this point they might be able to come up with some kind of lie that explains why they’re here. Remember who we’re dealing with, Jack. We’ve got a judge with connections and a known pedophile who has never been to prison. They both know how to work the system. We’ve got to let this play out so we can get them cold.”
The crime-scene tech had set up a tripod and leaned into his camera eyepiece.
“Got ’em?” Torkleson asked.
“Perfect,” the tech said.
Torkleson bent his head to the side, listening to his earpiece.
“Coates just opened the front door,” he whispered.
The judge climbed out of the vehicle.
“He’s having a stare-down with the judge,” Torkleson reported. We couldn’t see Coates yet because his trailer blocked our view, but I could follow his movements by watching the judge’s eyes through my binoculars. Finally, the judge motioned toward the trailer and pointed at his car.
We couldn’t see Coates until he approached the H3. He was lightly dressed in some kind of dark one-piece overall suit, and he wore a fur cap. When he bent over to look into the backseat, I could see him rub his hands together and hear him squeal with delight—an inhuman sound that made a shiver rocket up my spine and lodge at the base of my skull. He started to move closer to the car when Moreland blocked hi
m.
“Kill them,” I said.
“Wait,” Cody cautioned again. “They still haven’t done anything yet.”
“Cody,” my voice rose, “that’s my daughter down there.”
Torkleson looked away, concentrating on what he was hearing through his earpiece. “They’re arguing about terms,” he said. “The judge doesn’t want to hand over the baby before he gets the photos and the negatives.”
I could see the judge gesturing at Coates, and Coates crossing his arms and shaking his head. The words got heated, and I could hear shouting but couldn’t make out what was being said.
At last, the judge nodded and turned to the car and barked something at Garrett, who was still behind the wheel. Garrett’s door flew open, and the boy jumped out into the snow. He walked around the back of the H3 and opened the rear door and leaned in to unbuckle the car seat.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” I said.
“I can’t believe he brought her,” Cody mumbled.
Garrett freed the seat and swung the carry handle up. With one hand, he carried the seat away from the car and placed it in the snow between the judge and Coates. I raised the binoculars to my eyes so hard the eyepieces hit me in the forehead. I focused in on the car seat. She was covered in the same blanket the deputy had brought with her to our house. I couldn’t see her face. I imagined that her dark eyes glistened and her mouth was screwed up and she would begin to cry, not knowing where she was.
“Behold, the exchange,” Cody said, as Coates reached into his clothing and withdrew an envelope. He squatted and stuck it into the snow near the car seat.
“Hold it,” I said, my panic rising. “There’s something screwy here. It’s the wrong kind of seat,” I said, and felt Cody and Torkleson look at me, puzzled. “I’ve helped her in and out of car seats so many times I know for a fact that Angelina outgrew an infant seat like that months ago.”
I swung the binoculars over to Garrett. He had walked back to his car and was leaning against the grille, watching both men, smiling at how childish they looked negotiating terms.
The judge grabbed the envelope and tore it open. He rifled through what was inside several times. When Coates made a move to reach for the car seat, the judge warned him off until he was through. Apparently satisfied after a few moments, he nodded to Coates, who took a step forward to pick her up. I saw the judge mouth “no” and lift it himself to hand it over.
Then the judge raised the seat with one hand, using the other to tuck the blankets around Angelina. As Coates reached for the seat with a leer on his face, the judge seemed to shove it at him, one hand on the handle and the other in the blankets. Suddenly, the back of the seat blew open and there was a sharp pop and the snow from a thousand pine boughs across the face of the mountain dropped to the earth in a smoky white cascade.
Coates fell back, his arms outstretched.
Ripping out his earpiece, Torkleson screamed into his handheld, “Who the fuck did that?”
“Not me,” Morales shouted. “It wasn’t one of us, I don’t think.”
Cody and I flew through the brush we’d been hiding behind toward the trailer. A pine branch slapped me in the face and took my hat, and we were scrambling down the hillside in the deep snow. I could see two officers emerging from the trees on the right side of the trailer, hollering to Garrett and the judge to freeze.
Running, falling, a mouthful of snow and pine needles, back on my feet, Cody in front of me with his gun drawn.
Shouting from everywhere.
We ran around from the back of the trailer to where the judge and Garrett stood. The cops from both sides of the canyon were out of the trees now; so were Sanders and Morales, with their hunting rifles. The H3 and the father and son were surrounded.
Judge Moreland saw cops on both sides of him and raised the car seat in front of him so if anyone took a shot at him it would need to pass through it to hit him. His expression wasn’t scared, or angry, but calculating.
“Thank God you got here, Officers,” the judge said in the tone he used from the bench. “My son and I have a permit and we were up here trying to find a good Christmas tree, but we got lost. I realized we’d stumbled on Aubrey Coates …” And then he noticed Cody and me and he lost his train of thought and his ridiculous words tailed off.
I drew the .45, cocked it, and said, “Hand over that car seat and the gun in it or I’ll kill you a thousand times.”
I could see in his face that he was considering keeping it, using the seat as a shield.
“Drop the seat and the gun and hand over the negatives, Judge,” Cody said, his weapon down along his thigh. “We’ve got Wyatt Henkel singing like a bird, and we’ve got the exchange on tape. You’re fucked, so cooperate or die.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” the judge said, glaring at Cody and me with the righ teousness of a true liar, “my son and I were going to cut down a Christmas tree …”
Cody laughed at him. “You don’t understand, Judge. The camera’s off. What happens now is your word against eight officers of the law and the father of the child you took.”
That’s when Coates moaned and thrashed in the snow.
“Son of a bitch,” Cody said, wheeling. “I thought he was dead.” And he raised the Glock and fired four times point-blank into Coates, who went still. That froze everyone. Cody dug into his parka and pulled out a nondescript revolver and flipped it at the body.
“This is why I always carry a throw-down,” he said to Moreland.
The judge looked to Torkleson, who huffed and puffed his way from around the back of the trailer. “Aren’t you going to arrest him? Didn’t you all just see what he did?”
No one said a word. The judge lowered the smoking car seat into the snow. The blankets fell away to reveal a lifesize baby doll. The large-caliber revolver lay across the doll’s thighs.
Cody squared off, facing the judge. “Who’s next? You,” he said, then nodding toward Garrett, “or the fruit of your loins?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Garrett bolt for his father’s gun. Before any of the cops could tackle him, I raised the .45 and shot him. I tried for his chest, but I hit him in the stomach, and he doubled over and sat back in the snow, holding his belly.
“Freeze,” I said.
“You’re supposed to do that the other way around,” Cody said.
“I’m not a cop.”
Garrett burned two holes in me with hate-filled eyes. “Aw, you don’t really want her,” he said. “She comes from me and him, don’t forget. She’s missing the same part I am. You’ll see.”
I shot him in the head, and he flopped back, his blood steaming and stinking and staining the snow. In my mind I severed the connection between Garrett Moreland and Angelina. Forever.
Torkleson stepped between the judge and me, and said, “That’ll be enough, gentlemen.” He gently took the gun out of my hand and slipped it into his jacket pocket. From the other pocket he drew a nickel-plated semiauto and tossed it at Garrett’s body. To the judge, Torkleson said, “Too bad. He had such promise. He could have been a great gangster.”
To his men and Deputies Sanders and Morales, he said, “We all saw the same thing, right, Officers? Both Coates and the boy here pulled weapons and were killed. And we’ll all testify to that, my brothers?”
One by one everyone agreed. Morales wept with joy and dropped to his knees. Sanders stepped over and put a gloved hand on his partner’s shoulder.
“But that’s not true,” Moreland cried. “I killed a known pedophile in self-defense! You all saw that, right?”
“Ha,” Cody said, picking up the revolver from the car seat and sticking it into his belt. “I was wondering where my lost piece was. Now I’ve found it.”
Canon City, Colorado
Tuesday, November 18
A Year After
TWENTY-SIX
I WAS CONVICTED OF AGGRAVATED Assault with a Deadly Weapon for shooting Wyatt Henkel and was sentenced to one to three ye
ars in the Colorado State Penitentiary in, of all places, Canon City. The original charge had been for a class two felony, which could have been eight to twenty-four years, but the DA was sympathetic and knocked it down to a class five. The judge, also sympathetic, had no problem with that. When he sentenced me I said, “Thank you, Your Honor,” but not because of the reduction. I said thank you because I deserved to go to prison, and I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself for the things I’d done unless I did. I was also thankful that the worst of my actions were never discovered by the DA.
The judge said he’d write a letter to the parole board urging early release, but he said I should be prepared to serve a year. How does one prepare for that?
SO NOW I WEAR an orange jumpsuit and laceless boat shoes and every article of clothing I have is stenciled with CDOC— COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.
The food is tolerable, but the scenery outside—when I can see it—is pretty nice. My Rocky Mountains are still there, although they’re the southern Colorado version, and they aren’t snowcapped. But they’re with me, always, to the west, framing my days and nights and stretching all the way to Montana.
I’m in the general population. The guards protect me because they, like the judge and DA, are sympathetic. I’ve never asked them for favors, but they give them. I have my own cell with a bed, a washstand and a toilet, books, and this laptop computer. There are books in the library and decent medical care. I’m pleasant but not friendly with all the rest of the population. The only time I see the truly dangerous inmates is across the room at mealtimes.