Free Fire

by C. J. Box

  “I’m a little curious about that myself,” Portenson agreed.

  Joe felt his neck get hot. He had been expecting the question and couldn’t lie or mislead them. Not that he was any good at lying anyway. He felt it was his assignment to tell them the truth but leave a couple of things out. The specter of Governor Rulon stood in the corner, it seemed, listening closely to what Joe said.

  “Spencer Rulon was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Wyoming before he ran for governor, as you know,” Joe said. “So if he still had his old job, he would have been the one trying to prosecute this case. He’s got a vested interest in it. He’d like to see Clay McCann thrown in prison because he doesn’t like the idea of a man getting away with murder in his state, despite the weird legal circumstances of this one. So he asked me to come up here and talk to you all and write a report summarizing the case. If he reads something that interests him, he may go to the new U.S. Attorney, or have the Wyoming AG take a look at it. He wants to help, not interfere. That’s what he told me. He asked me to come up here and poke around, see if I can figure anything out from a fresh perspective.”

  Layborn snorted, sat back, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you expect to find that we haven’t already gone over?”

  Joe shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “This is pointless,” Layborn said. “You’re wasting my time and everybody’s time in this room.”

  “Maybe,” Joe agreed.

  Ashby said, “I suppose it can’t hurt. Sometimes the best thing to do is start fresh.”

  Joe could tell by the way Ashby said it that he really didn’t believe what he was saying. He was playing peacemaker and he wanted to move the meeting along so he could get out of there.

  “Doubtful,” Layborn said.

  Ashby sighed and looked squarely at Joe. “The particulars of this case have been reviewed ad nauseum. We’ve never had a case with a higher profile, and frankly, we don’t appreciate the publicity that’s come from it. We saw more national press up here last summer than we’ve seen since we reintroduced the wolves, and it wasn’t very good press.”

  “Is that why the chief ranger isn’t here?” Joe asked.

  Ashby tried not to react to Joe’s question, but there was a flicker behind his glare.

  “The National Park Service is funded by federal appropriation,” Ashby said flatly. “Congressmen want to feel good about the parks. We want to be the agency everybody feels all warm and fuzzy about. They don’t like this kind of controversy, and neither do we.”

  Layborn shot his arm out and looked at his wristwatch. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “I have some questions,” Joe said quickly.

  “This is stupid,” Layborn said, looking to Ashby for a nod so he could have permission to leave. “He has the files. He should read ’em.”

  Ashby wouldn’t meet Layborn’s eye to dismiss him.

  “I read over the file more than once,” Joe said, forging ahead. “I read everything in it, but I’m not sure all of the information was in there. Not that anything was withheld deliberately, but there are things I’m just unclear on. So I thought I’d start with those so I have a better picture of what happened.”

  The room was suddenly silent except for a loud sigh from Layborn.

  “The sooner we do this the sooner I’ll get out of your hair,” Joe said quickly. Ashby acquiesced and sat back in his chair. With his fingers, he signaled, Go on.

  “It looks to me like everybody involved did everything exactly right,” Joe started, hoping to relieve some of the doubt they might have. “By the book, down the line. From the initial call to throwing McCann into the Yellowstone jail. I have no questions about the procedure at all. In fact, given the crime, I was damned impressed with how restrained and professional you all were.”

  He looked up to see Layborn nodding as if to say, What did you expect?

  “The things I don’t get have nothing to do with how you handled the arrest. They have to do with other aspects of the case.”

  Joe didn’t like talking so much. He had already used more words in this room than he had in the past month. But he had no choice but to continue. Self-doubt began to creep into his consciousness, like a black storm cloud easing over the top of the mountains. He wasn’t sure this was a job he could do well, a role he could play competently. Joe liked working the margins, keeping his mouth shut, observing from the sidelines. He did his best to block out the image of the thunderhead rolling over.

  He asked Demming, “You were the first to respond, correct?”

  For the first time, Demming sat up. Her expression changed from embarrassed to interested.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “I was actually off-duty at the time. I was coming back from Idaho Falls with my daughter, who had to see the orthodontist. I was out of uniform, but I had the cruiser and my weapon. I heard the call from dispatch and realized I was just ten to fifteen minutes away from the Bechler ranger station, so I responded.”

  Ashby cut in. “That corner of the park is by far the least visited,” he said, his voice monotone, as if he’d explained it countless times, which he likely had. “You can’t even get there from the park itself. In order to get to Bechler, you’ve got to drive into Idaho or Montana and come back in. The road down there doesn’t connect with any of our internal park roads. That’s why we didn’t—and don’t—have a constant law enforcement presence there.”

  Joe said, “I’ve read the file, Mr. Ashby. I know where Bechler is located. What I’m asking about are things that aren’t in the incident report.”

  Ashby sat back slightly chastened.

  Demming continued, “When I got to the station, McCann had turned over his weapons and was sitting on the bench waiting. He didn’t put up any kind of struggle, and he admitted to what he’d done. I took him outside, cuffed him, and waited for backup.”

  “Which was me,” Layborn said. “I was there within the hour.”

  “How did McCann act?” Joe asked Demming.

  Demming shook her head, as if trying to find the right words. “He was easy to get along with, I guess. He didn’t say all that much. He wasn’t ranting or raving, and didn’t act like he was crazy or anything. In fact, he seemed sort of stunned, like he couldn’t really believe it was happening.”

  “So he didn’t deny the murders?”

  “Not at all. He described what happened down at Robinson Lake. That he’d been hiking and the campers harassed him, so he defended himself. That’s how he put it, that he was defending himself.”

  “Asshole,” Layborn whispered. Joe ignored him.

  “So at the time you arrived, he didn’t indicate to you he knew anything about the Zone of Death?”

  “No.”

  Ashby looked pained. “We don’t like that term and we don’t use it.”

  Joe acknowledged Ashby but pressed Demming. “So he found out about it later? After he was in jail?”

  Demming shook her head. “I had the feeling he knew about it at the time,” she said. “It’s just an impression, and I can’t really prove it. He was just so cooperative. I got the impression he knew that he was going to walk eventually. He acted like he had a secret.”

  Joe nodded.

  “You never told me that,” Layborn said to Demming, his voice threatening.

  “I did so,” she said, looking back at him. “I told you when you arrived. But it didn’t fit with anything then, so you probably just forgot about it.”

  Layborn rolled his eyes and turned to Joe. “What difference does it make?” he asked.

  “Maybe none,” Joe said. “I’m just trying to figure out if he went trolling for targets or if there was more to it.”

  Joe asked Demming, “Did McCann check in at the ranger station before he went on his hike that morning? Did anyone see him?”

  Demming hesitated, trying to recall. “Yes,” she said, “he even signed the register, listing his destination as Robinson Lake.”

  “I didn�
�t see a copy of the registration page in my file,” Joe said. “That’s why I asked.”

  “Why does it matter?” Layborn cut in.

  Joe said, “Because if McCann checked in that morning he could have looked on the register to see who was already in the park before him. I assume the victims registered the day before. McCann could have seen their names on the sheet and known who was at Robinson Lake. If he knew their names and where they were camping, that might suggest some familiarity with them after all—that he didn’t just bump into complete strangers like he claimed.”

  Layborn, Ashby, and Portenson exchanged looks. Joe had hit on something. He felt a little trill in his chest.

  “What about that?” Ashby asked Layborn.

  The chief investigator started to answer but stopped. His face reddened as he looked back at Joe.

  “I’m sure the sign-in sheets are still at the station,” Demming said, unsure where Joe was headed.

  “It would be interesting to take a look at them,” Joe said.

  Portenson reacted by furiously rubbing his face with his hands. “We’ve been down this road for months, Joe,” he said. “The FBI has been working on the Gopher State angle. We interviewed everyone the victims knew in Minnesota, their parents, teachers, friends, fellow environmental activists. Environmental terrorism is high priority with us and we pursued that angle. What we found is a bunch of granola eaters who hate George Bush. No surprises there. But we couldn’t find a single thing that connected the victims with Clay McCann. Not a damned thing. We’ve gone over it a thousand times. Nada.”

  Joe said, “So none of them had ever been to West Yellowstone?”

  “Not that we could find,” Portenson said with impatient finality. “And we couldn’t find any record of McCann in the park either. Like maybe he stayed at Old Faithful and one of them spit in his food or something so he wanted revenge. Believe me, we’ve been all over this.”

  “We think they were involved in drugs,” Layborn cut in.

  Joe looked up at him. That wasn’t in the file.

  “Meth, dope,” Layborn said. “There’s a goddamned pipeline from somewhere into the park. We think half the Zephyr people are users, and we don’t think they travel to Jackson or Bozeman to get it. We think they buy it locally.”

  Ashby cleared his throat. “Half is too much, Eric.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than half,” Layborn said, ignoring his boss. “I’m convinced if we ever find out why those four people were murdered, if there was even a reason other than Clay McCann having target practice, it’ll have something to do with the drug ring.”

  Joe looked to Ashby and Portenson for clarification. Portenson rolled his eyes. Ashby looked away, said, “We don’t have any evidence that the crime had to do with drugs.”

  Layborn smirked. “Drugs and environmental terrorism,” he said. “I’ll bet the house they’ll have something to do with this. We’ll just never fucking know, I’m afraid.”

  Layborn’s conspiracy had silenced the room.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” he said, leaning across the table toward Joe. Ashby saw what was happening and was too late to intervene. Layborn growled, “Getting rid of those four assholes was not the worst thing to ever happen to Yellowstone National Park.”

  “Eric!” Ashby said. Then quickly, to Joe: “That is not our policy.”

  “But I bet you wish it could be.” Portenson grinned.

  “No, we don’t,” Ashby said heatedly.

  Demming had shrunk back into her chair as if trying to become one with the fabric.

  Joe didn’t know what to say. He looked back down at the list he had made several days before and continued as if nothing had happened.

  “There are several references to the Gopher State Five,” he said. “Four are dead. Who survived?”

  “His name is Bob Olig,” Demming said quietly. “We haven’t been able to find him.”

  “There’s a nationwide BOLO for him,” Portenson said, meaning Be On The Lookout. “No solid hits yet.”

  “He worked here also?” Joe asked.

  Layborn said, “Another Zephyr scumbag.”

  “He was employed at the Old Faithful Inn,” Ashby said wearily, having lost all control of Layborn and given up trying. “He vanished the day after the murders were reported.”

  “Where was he the day of the murders?” Joe asked.

  “Giving tours of the Old Faithful Inn,” Ashby said. “That’s been verified by the site director, Mark Cutler. Olig was a tour guide, and a pretty good one.”

  Joe sat back, thinking. “So three of the five—Rick Hoening, Jim McCaleb, and Bob Olig—all worked together at Old Faithful?”

  Ashby nodded. “In the area, anyway. But it’s a big complex with hundreds of employees, nearly a thousand in the summer. It wasn’t like they did the same job.”

  “But I assume they lived in employee housing together?”

  “Correct.”

  “And it’s been searched?”

  “Torn apart,” Layborn said. “We found some meth, some dope, like I said. A bunch of books about environmental sabotage, monkey-wrenching, that sort of crap. And e-mails from their fellow loons around the world. But nothing about Clay McCann, or anything we could use.”

  “Can I look at them?” Joe wondered how many of the e-mails were to and from Yellowdick, and what they were about.

  When he asked the question, he saw Layborn, Portenson, and Ashby all smile paternalistically. Portenson leaned forward on the table. “You can quit the charade, Joe.”

  Joe didn’t respond but he knew his face was flushing because it was suddenly hot. The thunderhead of doubt rolled across the sky, blacking it out.

  “We know about the e-mail to your governor,” Portenson said. “It was sent by Hoening. He was Yellowdick. He sent messages to the governors of Montana and Idaho too.” He paused, letting that sink in before continuing. “And the president, and the secretary of the interior, and the head of the EPA. None of them make any sense. All of the e-mails have references to resources and cash flow. The best we can determine is the guy objected to some aspects of management up here and liked to be a scaremonger. The Park Service is an easy target, you know. Everyone’s a critic. Hoening liked to stir things up, is all.”

  Joe was embarrassed. They had known all along why the governor sent him and had been waiting for him to come clean. His duplicity shamed him.

  “We know all about his e-mail traffic; we know everything there is to know about the victims,” Portenson said. “We didn’t just fall off the fucking turnip truck. But what we can’t figure out is if there is anything more to this case than what is staring us right in the face: that Clay McCann walked into Yellowstone Park and shot four people in cold blood and got off. That’s bad enough, but I’m afraid that’s all there is.”

  Joe swallowed.

  Portenson said, “This is the strangest case any of us have ever been involved in because everything’s transparent.” The FBI agent raised his fist and ticked off his points by raising his fingers one by one: “We know what happened. We know who did it—the son of a bitch admits it. We think we know the motivation. And we know there isn’t a goddamned thing any of us can do about it.”

  Joe said, “Unless we can prove McCann went there specifically to kill those four people as some kind of bigger scheme, then we can get him on conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Portenson sighed. “You think we haven’t tried?”

  “You’re welcome to follow up with me and my staff with any questions you might have,” Ashby said, taking back control of the meeting as Joe gave it up. “But we resent the idea that your governor thinks we’re a bunch of incompetents up here and he needs to send a game warden to figure things out. We resent the hell out of it.”

  Joe’s ears burned, and he needed a drink of water because his mouth was suddenly dry.

  Ashby said, “Everything that could be investigated has been investigated. We’re sick to
death of reporters, and questions, and second-guesses. We didn’t write the law that created this loophole and there’s nothing we can do about it now. The chief ranger wants this whole episode to go away.”

  “Meaning,” Layborn said, “do what you have to do and then get the hell out. We don’t need your help and we don’t need your governor to check up on us.”

  Ashby looked at his wristwatch again. For all intents and purposes, the meeting was now over.

  “Thank you,” Joe said, and his voice sounded hollow even to him.

  Layborn was up and out of the room before Joe could gather his papers and put them back into his file. Demming gave Joe a sympathetic nod and was gone.

  “My daughter has a volleyball game in Gardiner,” Ashby said. “It started at five.” He held out his hand and Joe shook it.

  “I’ve got daughters too,” Joe said. “I know how that goes.”

  Ashby stood aside so Joe and Portenson could leave, then locked the room after them.

  Joe and Portenson went down the stairs. The receptionist, who had to stay five minutes beyond quitting time because of the meeting, glared at Joe as he passed her desk.

  The evening was cool and still. Joe didn’t realize Portenson was following him until he reached the Yukon.

  “You ought to just go home, Joe,” Portenson said. “Save yourself the aggravation. This case has beaten me to death.”

  Joe turned around and leaned against his vehicle. “You really think we know all there is to know?”

  Portenson shook his head. “Sometimes, it’s all there right in front of you. We all want to find something else, figure it out, be heroes. But in this case, there’s nothing to figure. It is what it is.”

  Joe wasn’t sure he agreed. “So where’s Bob Olig?”

  “Who the fuck knows? Or cares? He probably just felt guilty because his friends died and he didn’t so he went to Belize or someplace like that.”

  “Shouldn’t the FBI be able to find him?”

  Portenson snorted. “Man, haven’t you been reading the paper?”

  Joe didn’t want to go there. “The other thing I can’t wrap my mind around is this Clay McCann. The story just doesn’t ring true. He just happened to go on a hike armed like that? Come on.”