Back of Beyond

by C. J. Box

  Cody said, “You did?”

  “I had faith in you,” Justin said.

  Stunned, Cody said, “Hell, I didn’t.”

  “I did,” Justin said, squeezing harder. “I can’t believe you. I just can’t frigging believe you.”

  Cody grunted but hugged him back for a moment.

  * * *

  Gracie ran to her dad, Danielle behind her. He was crying with joy, tears on his face. She helped him walk up over the lip of rock, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “Careful,” he said, sobbing, “I think I broke my tailbone.”

  “Jeez, Dad,” Danielle said, and Gracie could almost feel her sister rolling her eyes in the dark.

  * * *

  Cody said to Justin, “Can you build a fire?”

  Justin stepped away. His face was still lit with wonder, and he shook his head as if trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened. Cody felt the same way as his adrenaline crash started to take hold. He noticed his hands were trembling.

  “Yeah, I can make a fire. We’ve had a lot of practice the last couple of days.”

  Cody nodded. “Then please gather some wood. Maybe you can get your girlfriend to help you.”

  “Her name’s Danielle,” Justin said. “I don’t know if she’s my girlfriend.”

  “Can she help gather wood?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good enough,” Cody said. “I’m going to make a couple of calls and get us out of here.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Cody peered down the crevice. The beam of his Maglite wouldn’t reach the bottom where Jed’s body had ended up. He could see bits of clothing and blood on the walls where Jed’s body had pinballed his way down.

  From what he could discern, Jed had been telling the truth. The fuselage of the airplane had been ripped open by the trees and peeled back like the lid of a soup can. One wing had come off and likely fallen to the bottom and the other was mangled and parallel to the crack in the opening.

  Two partially clothed skeletons hung from the cockpit by seat restraints. Inside the plane, Cody could see mounds of shredded money as well as a few skittering field mice. It was possible, he thought, there could be some intact bundles of cash buried deep or even down on the floor of the crevice. That would be for the investigators to determine.

  He heard a bass thumping in the night sky and turned around. Justin and Danielle had built a massive bonfire that crackled and lit up the rock walls and the trees and threw off so much light the stars had retreated into urban mode. Ted Sullivan lay across two downed logs, suspending his injured tailbone.

  Cody said, “Helicopters coming.”

  In the distance he could see approaching lights in the sky. Two sets of them. He hoped the pilot of one of them would see the fire from Camp Two and swoop down for the others, as he’d instructed the dispatcher.

  He hadn’t noticed Gracie approach him until he looked down. She was a slip of a girl.

  “I want to thank you,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Justin’s really proud.”

  “That means a lot. Your dad should be proud of you.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged.

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Cody said. “He came up here even though he couldn’t ride. He obviously cares about you and your sister.”

  Gracie nodded, looking over at her father on the downed trees. “He does, in his way,” she said. “I feel bad that Danielle and I thought he’d run. Rachel pretty much convinced us. You see, he told us why he showed up late at the airport to get us. It turns out he was late because he was booking a weekend at a spa for us in Billings when we were done with this trip. He’d arrived the day before to meet Rachel and he wanted us to feel all girly again when we went back home. And the reason he wasn’t in the camp was because he was feeling sick and resting in his tent. He had no idea Rachel told us that story.”

  Cody had nothing to say.

  “Rachel had me completely fooled,” Gracie said.

  “She fooled a lot of people.”

  “Even though she’s dead and I wanted her to be, I feel kind of bad. Jed, too.”

  Cody squeezed her on the shoulder. “You should feel that way,” he said. “It’s the difference between you and them.”

  She nodded, not sure.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I smoke,” he said, digging the last of D’Amato’s cigarettes out of his breast pocket.

  She looked up, said, “Justin said you’d quit.”

  “Nope,” he said, lighting and inhaling as deeply as he could without falling back into the crevice.

  Three days later, Cody Hoyt slumped in the uncomfortable chair across from Sheriff Tub Tubman’s desk, but Tubman wasn’t there yet. Undersheriff Cliff Bodean perched as he usually did on the corner of Tubman’s desk, looking down at him. Cody had brought a small briefcase with him filled with statements and his files and another object and had placed it near his feet.

  “He said be here at eleven to discuss my situation,” Cody said. “So I’m here.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Bodean said, shooting a cuff to look at his watch. He gestured toward the credenza in back of the sheriff’s chair. “His hat is here.”

  “Goddamn it,” Cody said, standing with difficulty and walking around the desk to turn the hat crown-down, “the man doesn’t listen.”

  Cody sat back down in the chair and moaned. It seemed like every inch of his body still hurt. The gash on his face across his nose was stitched closed and there was a fresh bandage on his ear. His body was a mass of bruises. His knees still hurt from riding the horses.

  “Frankly,” Bodean said, “I’m surprised he’s taking you back.”

  Cody snorted in response.

  “The coroner is likely to use it as a campaign issue against him,” Bodean said, shaking his head. “You’re coming out pretty damned good on this. I don’t know how you do it. Larry used to joke about you having illicit photos of him. Is that the case?”

  Cody looked up and grimaced. “I’ll never tell.”

  Bodean looked at his watch again. Then: “I hear there have never been as many Feds in Yellowstone for an investigation before. They’re practically tripping over each other. They’ve got FBI, DEA, Park Service, Homeland Security, not to mention detectives from Minnesota, Utah, California, Wyoming, and our state guys. You must have given a lot of statements.”

  Cody grunted.

  Bodean said, “I read your initial one. I noticed you didn’t say anything about being suspended while you were there.”

  “It wasn’t relevant.”

  Bodean raised his eyebrows. “Oh really?”

  Cody said, “I could have told them, I guess. But then I’d have to tell them the reason I was there was because I was freelancing on a murder investigation prohibited by my superiors. How do you think that would play in the press?”

  Bodean didn’t respond.

  Cody said, “I’ve got requests from USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AP, and five cable news shows. I haven’t called any of them back. Would you like me to amend my statement before I call them so they know why I was in the park on my own?”

  “You can be such an asshole,” Bodean said.

  Cody shrugged.

  “Following up on your statement,” Bodean said, “are the other survivors back home?”

  “Far as I know. Bull Mitchell is back with his daughter and his wife in Bozeman. I guess he’s quite the local celebrity. I owe him a lot of money but he’s graciously set up a long-term payment plan. Knox is doing a lot of interviews for the New York press. I’ve seen a couple of them. As you can imagine, it’s quite a story there. Donna Glode isn’t talking. Walt went home with his tail between his legs.”

  “What about the Sullivan family?”

  Cody nodded. “They’re okay. My son Justin is constantly texting the older daughter. They’re scheming something but I don’t know what. I plan to keep in touch with
the younger one, Gracie. She’s a smart little lady.” When he said her name he smiled. He couldn’t help it.

  Cody said, “They found Gannon where we hung him up. He’s singing like a bird, from what I understand. Telling the Feds everything he knows. Pieces are falling into place.”

  “Speaking of,” Bodean said, “I understand he’s accusing you of torturing him. Of shooting him in the ear and the knee to get him to talk.”

  Cody shook his head. “That guy. I shot in self-defense. You can check it out with Bull Mitchell. He’ll corroborate my story.”

  Bodean smiled bitterly. “I don’t know how you keep getting away with it.”

  “I chalk it up to clean living,” Cody said. “Mind if I smoke?”

  Bodean looked at the ceiling tile and took a deep breath.

  Cody withdrew a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and tapped one out and lit it. He tossed the spent match on the little placard on Tubman’s desk that said NO SMOKING.

  Bodean said, “So you say the Feds are putting it all together, connecting the dots. I assume you mean they’re getting evidence linking up Mina, Gannon, Jed, and maybe an outside accomplice working with Mina.”

  Cody studied Bodean’s face, letting him go on, but saying nothing.

  “That Rachel Mina or Chavez, or whatever,” Bodean whistled, “she must have been something. I read all of Larry’s files, the stuff he got from the San Diego PD and DEA. He traced her all over the country, to every one of those murders. She operated completely under the radar. I saw photos of her. She was a looker, but not a knockout. She must have been something,” he repeated. “A stone-cold killer who looks like the cute girl next door.”

  “She knew she had to get to Yellowstone,” Cody said. “When she met that poor schmuck Ted Sullivan she planted the seed. Of course, he accommodated her. She knew a single woman on a trip like that would draw suspicion, so Ted was her cover.”

  Bodean nodded. “So as far as you’re concerned, she was working with Wilson—I mean Gannon—and no one else?”

  He seemed to be prying, Cody thought. He refused to play.

  “When’s the funeral?” Cody asked.

  “Larry?”

  “Who the hell else?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m surprised you didn’t get the e-mail. Wear your Class A’s.” That was department-speak for dress blues.

  “I didn’t get the e-mail because I was giving statement after statement in the park,” Cody said, annoyed, “and I was still officially suspended, remember? I didn’t have fucking access to my e-mails.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Cody felt like standing up and decking him, but he fought back his rage.

  “As soon as we’ve buried Larry,” Bodean said, “we’re ramping up our effort on going after his killer. Everything gets shoved aside. Finding the bastard who did it is Job One.”

  “It’s about time,” Cody said, gripping the arm of the chair so hard he was surprised he didn’t leave dents in the wood.

  “Jesus,” Bodean said, looking at his watch again. “Where the hell is the sheriff?”

  Cody shrugged. Then he changed the subject. “Larry always used to lay things out for me in the most methodical way. It used to drive me crazy, but he wouldn’t let me rush him. He told me things his way, which was deliberate as all hell and very linear. I used to beg him to get to the bottom line but he’d never get there until he was good and ready after he had the storyline laid out.”

  Bodean looked puzzled. “So?”

  “So pretend I’m Larry,” Cody said, “and listen. You might want to sit down until the sheriff gets here. This won’t be as good as if Larry were telling it, but I’ll do my best.”

  Bodean started to object, but bit his lip. His eyes showed concern. But he moved around the desk and sat in Tubman’s chair and leaned forward holding his hands together, fingers loosely laced.

  “The assumption here with the Feds,” Cody said, “is it’s all connected, as you said. Mina, Gannon, Jed, maybe even Dakota Hill. And given that assumption, there’s the assumption Mina’s net spread farther out, that she had an accomplice on the outside. Whoever it was tried to burn me alive at Gallatin Gateway and was more successful with Larry. And that suspect is still out there.”

  Bodean broke in: “I’m confident the Feds will find him with all the cooperation they’ve got. They can do a nationwide investigation. We’re limited to the county—”

  “I know all that, Bodean,” Cody said impatiently. “Now please shut up and listen. We’re doing this Larry’s way.”

  Bodean took a deep breath and held it, then leaned forward. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Okay. Things started to go bad for me in Townsend when I left here. I got pulled over by the local cop and spent the night there, putting me a day behind I’ll never get back. Who knows how many lives might have been saved if I’d been able to get into Yellowstone and break up the pack trip before they left? I will always be haunted by that.

  “It seemed odd to be picked up like I was,” he said. “I thought at the time the local cop might have received a tip of some kind, likely anonymous, to watch for my car. That’s when I first got the inkling maybe Larry was playing a double game with me. That for some reason—maybe for my own damned good—Larry wanted to slow me down. Save me from doing something stupid.”

  Bodean nodded for him to continue.

  “After that fire in my room in the hotel, I was even more sure it was Larry. It could have been the perfect death. Whoever did it knew me pretty well. Out of control, suspended, drunk alcoholic, disabled smoke alarm, smoking in bed. It would have been a slam-dunk accidental death. But for some reason I saw the fire and got out in time. No one saw who did it, and I never really thought it was Larry but maybe someone he sent.”

  Cody noted the small beads of perspiration forming on Bodean’s upper lip. It wasn’t warm in the office.

  “I realized in Bozeman someone was tracking my cell, so I smashed it. Of course, not just anybody can get the phone company to track a cell phone. Only law enforcement can do that, so again, it pointed to Larry—the only guy who knew where the hell I was or why I was going. I’ve since confirmed that the phone company had a request to track my cell phone and the request came from this office.”

  Bodean’s voice cracked when he said, “That son of a bitch.”

  Cody raised his eyebrows this time. “Yeah, that Larry,” he said with sarcasm. Then: “Later, in the park, I turned on my phone. There were five messages from Larry on it. I listened to them. They’re still on the phone, by the way. I could tell from what he was saying and his tone he was working on something big, that he’d found something huge. Now, if his intent was to steer me away from the pack trip, why would he keep investigating? Unless, of course, he was trying to completely mislead me. But that didn’t jibe with his tone. He was excited, and angry with me. He wanted to help me. Larry was my partner. I believed him.

  “So I called back,” Cody said. “Someone picked up his cell phone from the briefcase sitting next to his desk. Larry said it wasn’t him because he was getting reamed out by the sheriff at the time right here in this chair. But you know what? He didn’t mention anyone else being in the room. And knowing Larry, he wouldn’t have left a detail like that out, because Larry didn’t leave out details.

  “So someone heard my voice and knew I was alive and probably in the park. Any idea who that might have been?”

  Bodean’s gaze was hard and steady. “It could have been anyone who picked up that phone. You’re on thin ice, Hoyt.”

  Cody conceded that. “But it wasn’t just anyone, I don’t think, because what would just anyone have learned from my call? Only that I was calling Larry. Nothing else. Supposedly at that time no one knew about my trip south, or the fire.”

  “I’m confused,” Bodean said.

  “Sure you are,” Cody said. “So whoever picked up Larry’s phone knew that I was trying to reach him. And they knew if I was trying to reach him Larry would tell me wh
at he’d discovered. That he’d spoken to the San Diego PD and so on. If someone was involved in the whole mess in Yellowstone, that wouldn’t be a good thing.

  “I’m guessing Sheriff Tubman didn’t decide to suspend Larry on his own. I’m guessing maybe his undersheriff convinced him Larry was going rogue and withholding information about me, as well as what he was learning in his unauthorized investigation. It went right by me when Larry told me you became unhinged when you found out our investigation was pointing toward Yellowstone Park and Jed McCarthy’s outfit.”

  Cody noticed Bodean’s hands were now two fists on the desk.

  “When I gave my statement to the Park Service, I met Larry’s buddy Rick Doerring. Rick confirmed that Jed McCarthy had been around doing some kind of concession business when the interagency team assembled in Mammoth about that report of the disabled plane. Rick said the rumor mill was really cranking along, as usual. Then I remembered something Larry said to me in passing, and I’d almost completely forgotten about it.”

  “What?” Bodean said.

  “The sheriff sent two members of the department down to Yellowstone. Larry and you.”

  Bodean swallowed hard but said nothing.

  Cody said, “That’s where you met Jed McCarthy for the first time and learned about his pack trips. I’m sure Jed told you all about them because he was a yapper. I’m sure he told you all about his big Back of Beyond itinerary, since that was his pride and joy, not to mention his cash cow.

  “But that isn’t the only task force Undersheriff Cliff Bodean belongs to, is it?” Cody asked. “You’re also our official liaison to the DEA. So later, after you got back from the park and everyone forgot about the airplane since no one reported it missing, you heard the rumors and read the reports about the Chavez cartel and the kidnapping. You put the dates of the kidnapping and the plane disappearance together and found they were days apart. There was a rumor the exchange was to have taken place in Jackson Hole, but it never did. So you got out a map and drew a line between Bozeman, where the plane was last seen, and Jackson, where the plane was supposed to land. I did it myself last night. That line goes straight through the Thorofare country of Yellowstone. Practically on top of Jed’s route.”