Free Fire

by C. J. Box

  “Good idea,” the man said, visibly relieved.

  As he opened the door, McCann shot a glance over his shoulder at Les Davis and his crowd of burghers and fought the impulse to say, “Losers.”

  ON THE WAY to his office two blocks away on Madison, McCann bought two six-packs of local Moose Drool beer from the dingy convenience store and carried them to his office. He fished the gun from his pocket and placed it on his desk, then sat in his chair and waited for his dinner to arrive. His nerves were still tingling.

  The Journal reporter had made fun of his office location too, that his practice was on Madison Avenue, but not that Madison Avenue. This Madison Avenue, in West Yellowstone, Montana, saw more wandering elk on the sidewalks than it did men in three-piece suits.

  There was a huge pile of unopened mail on his desk and he rifled through it. Hate mail, mostly, he assumed. He swept the pile into the garbage can. He’d done the same with letters sent to him while he was in jail.

  The only letters McCann took seriously were from other lawyers threatening civil actions against him on behalf of the murdered campers. McCann knew they’d have a good case. Luckily, he thought, it could take years to get to trial, and he didn’t plan to be available when and if it did.

  While he waited, he imagined hearing the sounds of a mob building outside on the street. Pitchforks and torches being raised. Guttural shouts morphing into a chant: “Justice . . . Justice . . . Justice . . .” Then the door would burst open and dozens of dirty hands would reach for him across his desk. . . .

  So when there was a knock on his door he gripped the .38 with one hand before reaching for the handle with the other. Sheila D’Amato stood in the threshold with a large foam container and a tray with two tap beers in mugs covered by plastic.

  “Why you?” McCann asked.

  “I offered.”

  “I don’t remember ordering two beers.”

  “I thought maybe I’d drink one with you.”

  He nodded, let her in after checking the street to confirm there was no mob, and shut the door behind them. He gestured to the sack with the six-packs. “I’ve got more.”

  “What you did to those people in Yellowstone,” she said, “it was just so baaaaad.” Her eyes glistened as she drew out the word. “And the way those people reacted in Rocky’s—wow.”

  Wow, he knew, was probably the best she could do.

  She drank beer after beer and watched him eat. He was grateful for her company, he admitted to himself, which was proof of his desperation.

  He’d represented Sheila after she was arrested for shoplifting $200 worth of makeup from the drugstore. That was when she’d been around town for a few months, long enough that merchants had learned to watch her closely. He employed a “high-altitude” defense, claiming to the judge that Sheila’s brain was out of whack because she came from New Jersey and her brain had yet to adapt to the altitude and lack of oxygen. It made her forgetful, he said, and she had simply forgotten to pay the clerk. The judge was amused with the argument but still would have convicted her if the drugstore owner hadn’t forgotten to show up and testify. Sheila credited McCann for her acquittal.

  Sheila D’Amato admitted to McCann after the trial that she was getting old and her clothes were too tight. All she wanted was her old life back, before she’d been dumped. She was pathetic, he thought, but he enjoyed her stories of being a kept woman in Atlantic City, being passed from mobster to mobster for fifteen years. She claimed she hated Montana and all the tight-assed people who lived here. She’d left town with men a few times since her arrival, but had drifted back after they cut her loose. She said she didn’t know why she kept ending up here.

  “Do you plan to stay around?” she asked him. Sheila had an annoying little-girl-lost voice, he thought.

  “Why are you asking?” But he knew why.

  She shrugged and attempted to look coy. “Well, everybody hates your guts.”

  “Not everybody,” he said, saluting her with his beer bottle.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, letting a little hard-edged Jersey into her voice, but cocking her head to make sure he knew she was teasing.

  “I won’t be here long,” he said. He knew not to tell her too much. But she could be of use to him, even if he couldn’t trust her. She probably didn’t trust him either. They had that in common.

  “Where will you go?” she asked, trying not to be obvious.

  “Someplace warm.”

  “What’s keeping you?”

  That, he couldn’t tell her. “I’ll leave when the time is right.” She nodded as if she understood. He drank another beer and she started to look better.

  “What was it like?” she asked, her eyes glistening. She wanted him to tell her killing was a rush, a high. He wondered what the mobsters used to tell her it was like.

  “It solved the problem,” he said, measuring his words, letting her interpret them however she wished. How could he tell her it meant nothing to him? That, in fact, it was hard work and unpleasant but simply a means to an end?

  He waited her out until she finally asked if he would take her with him when he left.

  Of course not, he said to himself, not in a million fucking years. To Sheila, he said, “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On you.”

  She had paid her legal bill to him for the shoplifting charge in blow jobs. They’d haggled and determined $50 per. She was pretty good. He’d been in jail for three months. He’d make her keep those too-tight clothes on.

  EARLY THE NEXT morning, after shaving in his office and deciding that maybe he would look into some sort of hair coloring that would drown out the gray, McCann dropped the .38 into his coat pocket and went outside into the chill. Sheila had been gone for hours, but not before they’d made a date for later that night. At least she was someone to talk to, he thought, although he preferred her with her mouth full. Maybe she wasn’t so pathetic after all. She’d do until he left, at least.

  West Yellowstone was called a gateway community; it existed almost solely as a staging area or overnight stop for tourists en route to the park. With a permanent population of less than two thousand people, the little town swelled to seven or eight thousand on summer nights and about half that with the snowmobile crowd in the winter. The place was unique in that they didn’t plow the roads so snowmobiles could be used legally on the streets.

  West, as it was called, was rough-hewn and blue collar, consisting of motels, fly-fishing shops, and souvenir stores. Winters were severe and the people who lived there were rugged. Of the five places McCann had practiced law—Chicago, Minot, Missoula, Helena, and now West Yellowstone, West was by far the bottom of the barrel for a lawyer. Not that he’d had any choice, of course, after the trouble he’d had. For McCann, West was the place he ended up, like something washed up on the shore of the Madison River. Sheila’s story was similar. He could go no farther. He liked to tell people that when they brought him their problems.

  A sheen of frost covered the windshields of parked cars and stiffened the dying grass between the cracks in the sidewalk. His breath billowed as he walked down Madison. There were no cars on the streets except those parked haphazardly around Bear Trap Pancake House. Locals, most of them. He bought a newspaper from the stand and went in.

  He sat alone in a booth with his back to the front door and surveyed the crowd. Men wore cowboy hats or caps proclaiming their allegiance to fly shops or heavy equipment. They were sullen, waking up, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. In contrast were the four bustling waitresses who seemed unnaturally cheery. McCann figured it out: the staff was happy because today would be their last day for the season. Like most businesses in West, the Bear Trap would close until December when there was several feet of snow and the snowmobilers would be back.

  A middle-aged waitress with a name tag that read “Marge” practically skipped across the restaurant toward him with a pot of coffee. McCann pushed his empty mug across the table
toward her.

  As she began to pour, she looked up and her eyes locked on his, and she froze.

  “Yes, please,” he said, gesturing toward his cup.

  Her face hardened and she righted the pot without pouring a drop. Then she turned on her heel and strode into the kitchen.

  A few moments later, McCann saw the face of the cook above the bat wing doors, then the face of the owner of the Bear Trap. The lawyer nodded toward the owner, who acknowledged him cautiously, then returned quickly to the kitchen.

  A young waitress (nameplate: Tina) had apparently not wit nessed Marge’s reaction and came over with a pot.

  “No,” Marge said out the side of her mouth from two tables away.

  Tina stopped, unsure of what to do.

  “No,” Marge said again.

  Tina shrugged apologetically at McCann and retreated to the far end of the restaurant to take care of other tables.

  McCann sat quietly for twenty minutes as customers came in and placed their orders. Nothing was said to him. He was simply being frozen out, as if he didn’t exist. His coffee cup remained empty.

  As Marge passed with another fresh pot, McCann reached out and tugged on her apron and she jumped back as if he’d goosed her.

  “I’d like breakfast,” he said.

  “In hell,” she answered, swinging her large hips away from him.

  McCann stood up angrily and reached for his coat. The .38 thumped against his side and for a second he considered reaching for it. Several patrons watched him furtively between fork- fuls of pancakes. Most didn’t even look up.

  He slammed the door so hard that the bells on it swung and hit the glass, punctuating his exit. He stormed halfway across the street before stopping and turning around. Marge glared back at him from behind the window, her face distorted by condensation on the glass. His eyes slipped from Marge to the rust-tinged FOR SALE sign on the door of the building. Every place in West, it seemed, was always for sale. That went with the transient nature of the town.

  But it gave him an idea.

  Maybe he could buy the goddamned place and fire Marge. He could buy Rocky’s too. He could own the whole fucking town; then they’d have to respect him.

  McCANN COULDN’T FEEL his feet as he walked back toward his office to make a call. His insides boiled, and he kept his mouth clamped shut so tightly that his jaw ached. His brief revenge fantasy of buying the town faded quickly. Despite his hunger for reprisal, the last thing he wanted was to stay a minute longer in this place than he had to.

  He looked at his wristwatch, calculating the time difference. He needed to make a call. As he began to open the door to his office, he changed his mind. Who knew who might be listening on his line?

  At a pay phone outside the supermarket he dropped in coins and dialed. It was answered on the third ring and he gave his account number from memory. The receptionist transferred him to his banker.

  The banker asked him to repeat the account number and asked for a password. McCann gave both and waited a moment, listening to a keyboard being tapped.

  “Yes,” the banker said in a clipped Islands/English accent.

  “Has the transfer been made?”

  Hesitation. “There’s been a problem.”

  The words cut through him like a sword. He swooned, and the sky seemed to tilt to the right, causing him to reach out to steady himself on the frame of the phone booth. “What do you mean, There’s been a problem?”

  “The bulk of the funds didn’t arrive when you said they would. We don’t know when the remainder will arrive.”

  He tried to stay calm. “How much?”

  More tapping. “Approximately five percent of what you told us to expect.”

  “Five percent?” He did the math. Five percent was nothing. Five percent would barely cover his current debts.

  Fighting panic, he asked the banker to check it again. While he waited, he backed away from the booth as far as the cord would let him. He looked down the empty street. Walls of dark pine closed in. Even the crooked sky seemed to push down on him.

  “I’m sorry,” the banker said. “It is correct.”

  “How fucking long do I have to stay here in this shithole and wait?” he said, his voice rising to a choked shout.

  “It is not the fault of our institution, sir,” the banker said defensively. “The problem is with the sender. You should talk to him and find out what is the cause of the delay.”

  McCann wanted to plead to the banker, This was not the plan.

  “Your issue is not with us,” the banker said.

  “I’ll check back with you,” he said, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood and slamming down the receiver.

  Stunned, he turned to walk away. But to where? How could this be happening?

  And to think, three months ago he’d been famous.

  part two

  YELLOWSTONE ACT, 1872

  AN ACT TO SET APART A CERTAIN TRACT OF

  LAND LYING NEAR THE HEADWATERS OF THE

  YELLOWSTONE RIVER AS A PUBLIC PARK,

  Approved March 1, 1872 (17 Stat. 32)

  SEC 2. That said public park shall be under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, whose duty it shall be, as soon as practicable, to make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the care and management of the same. Such regulations shall provide for the preservation, from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural condition. The Secretary may in his discretion, grant leases for building purposes for terms not exceeding ten years, of small parcels of ground, at such places in said park as shall require the erection of buildings for the accommodation of visitors; all of the proceeds of said leases, and all other revenues that may be derived from any source connected with said park, to be expended under his direction in the management of the same, and the construction of roads and bridle-paths therein. He shall provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said park, and against their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit. He shall also cause all persons trespassing upon the same after the passage of this act to be removed therefrom, and generally shall be authorized to take all such measures as shall be necessary or proper to fully carry out the objects and purposes of this act. (U.S.C., title 16, sec. 22.)

  6

  ON THE MORNING JOE WAS TO LEAVE FOR YELLOWSTONE he took the girls to school in the white Yukon the state had assigned him. It was the same one that had delivered Chuck Ward to the ranch. There was a brief flare-up between Sheridan and Lucy regarding who would get the front seat and who would have to cram into the backseat along with his duffel bags of clothes and outdoor gear. Sheridan won the battle with the oldest trick in the book—pointing toward the horizon and saying, “Look!”—thereby distracting Lucy and Joe while she scrambled into the front.

  It was a brilliant crisp fall day, no wind, colors in the river bottoms igniting as the sun lit them like lantern mantles. Although it wasn’t a green pickup with the pronghorn antelope Game and Fish logo on the door and a light bar on top, Joe acquainted himself with his new vehicle. The Yukon was un abashedly big, tall, roomy, heavy, and powerful. He felt only slightly guilty about liking it so much. Joe prayed he could return it in one piece.

  From the backseat, Lucy asked, “Does this car waste a lot of gasoline?”

  Like sailors on shore leave “waste” beer, Joe thought. But he simply said, “Yes.”

  “Why can’t you have something that’s better for the environment?”

  “Because I’m taking it into some pretty rough country and it’s nearly winter, so I might need four-wheel drive.”

  “Hmmpf.”

  Sheridan ignored the exchange and picked up a FedEx box near her feet. “Can I look inside?”

  “Sure,” he said. The box had arrived the previous afternoon from headquarters in Cheyenne. As he had anticipated, there was no
“Welcome Back, Joe!” note inside from Randy Pope.

  But there was a badge, and credentials.

  Sheridan looked through the embroidered shoulder patches, a new name tag, newly issued statute booklets, recent memos paper-clipped together, a handheld radio. She opened the plastic box with the small gold shield inside.

  “Number fifty-four,” she said. “Didn’t you used to have a lower badge number?”

  Joe smiled ruefully, surprised she had paid attention. “I used to have number twenty-one.”

  There were only fifty-four game wardens in the state, and the higher the seniority, the lower the number. Even though Pope had been ordered to restore his salary and pension, the governor probably hadn’t thought of asking to reassign his number. The high badge number was usually given to trainees fresh out of college, and it sent an obvious message.

  “That’s so unfair.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, thinking, Yes, it was a slap in the face. But not unexpected.

  “I used to look at your badge every morning at breakfast,” she said. “That’s how I remembered.”

  Joe felt a sentimental pang. He had no idea.

  “We’re going to visit you in Yellowstone Park, right?” Lucy asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Mom told me we almost went there once,” she said. “Mrs. Hanson says it’s a great place but people are ruining it.”

  “You were a baby,” Joe said, choosing not to comment on what her teacher had said.

  “You’re still a baby,” Sheridan said, getting in a dig when the opportunity presented itself, which was in the job description of being an older sister.

  “Dad!” Lucy protested.

  He admonished, “Sheridan . . .”

  As they neared Saddlestring, Joe said, “Be good for your mom while I’m gone. Help her out.”

  “We will,” they mumbled.