by C. J. Box
“The story’s so bizarre that it might just be true. And even if the guy knew about the Zone of Death, so what? He committed the perfect crime.”
Joe mulled that over.
“Those guys up there,” Portenson said, nodding toward the law enforcement building, “they don’t know you very well, do they?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
The FBI agent grinned wolfishly. “They don’t know you’ve got a knack for getting yourself in the middle of trouble. I wouldn’t really call it a talent, exactly; it’s more like a curse, like I’m cursed to never get out of this fucking state.” He laughed. “It might be just their bad luck that you’ll bumble onto something we missed. Poor fucking them.”
Joe shook his head and thought Portenson had more confidence in him than he had in himself, especially after having his head handed to him in the conference room.
“Are you going to be needing any help up here?”
Joe misunderstood. “Are you offering?”
“Fuck no. I’m through with this case. What I was wondering about was whether you might ask your old buddy Nate Romanowski to show up with his big gun and his bad attitude.”
Joe looked away, hoping his face didn’t reveal anything.
Portenson read him. “So he might show, eh?”
Joe said nothing.
“I still want to talk to him, you know.”
“I know.”
“I may never get out of this state,” Portenson said, “but it’ll make my sentence more pleasant if I know Romanowski is in a federal pen.”
“Don’t you have real terrorists to chase?” Joe asked.
Portenson snorted and opened his arms to embrace all of Mammoth Hot Springs, all of Yellowstone, all of Wyoming, and shouted, “I fucking wish!”
With that, Portenson turned on his heel and stomped across the small parking lot to his Crown Vic with U.S. Government plates. The FBI agent roared away with a spray of gravel.
Joe sighed, looked around. Cumulus clouds became incendiary as the setting sun lit them. The quiet was extraordinary, the only sound the burble of a truck leaving Mammoth Village and descending the switchbacks toward Gardiner.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t made arrangements for where he would stay that night. His choice was to drive down the switchback roads from Mammoth out the North Gate and find a motel in Gardiner, Montana, or cross the street, the lawns where the elk grazed, to the rambling old Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel.
8
JOE’S BOOTS ECHOED ON THE HARDWOOD FLOOR OF the lobby of the Mammoth Hotel. The lobby had high ceilings, a cavernous sitting area overlooked by a massive mural, dozens of empty overstuffed chairs. Two check-in clerks huddled around a computer monitor behind the front desk and looked up at him as he approached.
“Can I get a room?”
The clerk said, “Sorry, sold out,” then smiled to show he was kidding.
“Very funny, Simon,” the other clerk said in a British accent, then to Joe: “Don’t worry, we’re at the end of our season. There are plenty of rooms available. We get a little punchy when the end is near.”
“When the end is near,” Simon mimicked with an intonation of false doom while he tapped on a keyboard.
“You know what I mean,” the other clerk said.
Joe drew his wallet out and fished for a credit card. Although the state had sent him his credentials, a state credit card wasn’t in the package. He’d need to ask about that, and soon. The family credit card had a low maximum, and Joe didn’t know the limit.
The two clerks worked together with a jokey, easy rapport that came from familiarity. Joe noted that both wore Zephyr Corp. name badges with their first names and residences. While both were undoubtedly British, their name tags said “Simon” and “James” from Montana.
“You aren’t really from Montana,” Joe said, while Simon noted the name on his credit card.
“How did you guess that?” James asked slyly.
“Actually, when you work for Zephyr long enough and get hired on in the winter, you can claim Montana or Wyoming for your residence,” Simon said. “Better than Brighton, I suppose.”
“Definitely better than Brighton,” James said.
“Or Blackpool, James.” To Joe: “You’ve got a reservation,” Simon said, looking up from the screen.
“I do?”
Simon nodded. “And it’s covered. By a Mr. Chuck Ward from the State of Wyoming.”
Joe liked that and appreciated Ward for taking care of details. Simon handed over the keys to room 231.
“Are you familiar with the hotel?” Simon asked.
Joe was, although it had been a long time. Despite the years, the layout of the building was burned into his memory.
ROOM 231, ALONG with the rest of the rooms and the hallway, had been renovated since Joe was there last. The lighting wasn’t as glaring and the walls not as stark as he remembered, he thought, musing how years distorted memory and perception. It was still a long hallway, though, and he struggled down it with too many bags. A sprinkler system now ran the length of the ceiling, and the muted yellow paint of the ceiling and hallway walls was restful. Still, it gave him a feeling of melancholy that was almost overwhelming. While they could change the carpeting and the fixtures, they couldn’t change what had happened there more than twenty-five years ago, or stop the memories from flooding back to him.
His room was small, clean, redone. A soft bed with a brass headboard and a lush quilt, a pine desk and chair, tiled floor in the bathroom, little bear-shaped soap on the sink. There was no television. A phone on the desk was the only nod toward the present. Otherwise, the room could have been something out of the 1920s, when the hotel was built. He looked out the window and was pleased it overlooked the huge stretch of lawn known as the parade ground.
He sat on the bed, his head awash with overlapping thoughts. He tried to convince himself the meeting had not gone badly, that he hadn’t embarrassed himself, that he’d learned a few things to help him carry out his assignment. That was true, but he couldn’t get over the moment when Portenson said, “Cut the charade, Joe,” and he realized they had all been waiting for him to fess up.
Joe stood and surveyed his room. There was a two-foot space between the bed and the curtained window. He stared at the space, thinking it must have been larger once, since that was where he’d spent his time when he was here last. His parents had put down blankets and he slept there on the floor. But it had seemed so much bigger at the time, just like the room had seemed bigger, the hallways longer, the ceilings higher, the lightbulbs brighter. He could recall the musty smell of the carpet and the detergent odor of the bedspread. He remembered pretending to sleep while his father drank and raged and his mother sobbed. It was the first time in his life he’d been without his brother, and his brother was the reason they were in Yellowstone then. But most of all, he could remember the feeling of loss in the room, and what he thought at the time was the dawning of his own doom, as if his life as he knew it was over after only eighteen years. And not so great years either.
Long after his family had stayed at the Mammoth Hotel, Joe saw the movie The Shining. In one scene the camera lingers on an impossibly long, impossibly still hallway when a wave of blood crashes down from a stairwell and floods the length of it. At the time he had thought of the hallway of the Mammoth Hotel. He thought of it now. He needed a drink.
Joe dug through one of his duffel bags for a plastic bottle—a “traveler”—of Jim Beam and poured some into a thin plastic cup. He remembered the hum of an ice machine in the hall and grabbed the bucket.
He opened the door cautiously, half expecting the wave of blood he’d imagined to slosh across the floor. It didn’t, and he felt foolish for letting his mind wander. As he stepped out there was a bustle of clothing and a sharp cry from the end of the hallway where the stairs were. He turned in time to see two men scrambling out of sight from the landing down the stairs. He glimpsed them for only a second; th
ey were older, bundled in heavy clothes, not graceful in their sudden retreat. He hadn’t seen their faces, only their backs.
Puzzled, he considered following them but decided against it. Their heavy footsteps on the stairs pounded into silence and they were no doubt crossing the lobby. Had he frightened them? He wondered. What had they been doing that they felt it necessary to flee like that when he emerged into the hallway?
Joe filled his bucket and went back to his room. Although he generally liked solitude, it was the quiet of being outside, where he could see, hear, and feel the landscape around him, that drew him. It was different in a huge, virtually unoccupied hotel, where he longed for the hum of conversation behind doors he passed, and the assurance that he wasn’t totally alone on his floor. He paused at his door and shot a suspicious glance back where he’d seen the men. There was no one there now, although the empty hotel seemed clogged with ghosts.
THE MAMMOTH DINING room was the only restaurant still open in the village and it was a short walk from the hotel. Although Joe disliked eating alone, he had no choice so he grabbed his jacket and the Zone of Death file to read over, yet again, while he ate. Simon and James were still at the desk when he descended the stairs.
Joe asked Simon, “About a half hour ago, did two old men come running across the lobby from the stairs?”
Simon and James exchanged glances. Simon said, “I remember that, yes. But they weren’t running when I saw them. They were walking briskly toward the front doors.”
“Do you know them?”
Simon shook his head.
“Were they Zephyr employees?”
James laughed. “Who knows? It’s the time of year when the nutters really come out, you know? We don’t pay any attention to them unless they bother the guests. Were they bothering you?”
“Not really,” Joe said.
AS JOE CROSSED the street to the restaurant he noticed a park ranger cruiser at the curb. The door opened and Judy Demming got out.
“Del Ashby asked me to give you something,” she said, popping open the trunk with a remote on her key chain.
Demming was out of uniform, in jeans, a turtleneck, and a sweater. She looked smaller and more scholarly in street clothes, Joe thought, her eyes softer behind her glasses.
“Were you waiting for me?” Joe asked.
“I just pulled in.”
He followed her around her car as she lifted a cardboard box out of the trunk.
“All of those e-mails printed out,” she said, holding the box out to him. “The ones you said you wanted to look at.”
Joe tossed the Zone file into the box and took it from her. It was heavier than he would have guessed.
“That was pretty efficient,” he said. “I hope you didn’t have to do this on your time off.”
“No bother,” she said. “My husband’s home with the kids. I called him and told him I’d be late. He’s a saint.”
“I’ve got one of those at home too.”
She didn’t rush to jump back into her cruiser, but seemed to be waiting for Joe to say something.
“Can I buy you dinner?” Joe asked. “I’ve got lots more questions.”
She looked at her watch and shook her head. “Lars is cooking something, so I don’t have time for dinner,” she said. “But maybe we could have a glass of wine in the bar.”
“Sounds good,” he said, wishing he hadn’t had the bourbon already. He wanted to be sharp.
Less than a quarter of the tables were occupied in the dining room, Joe noticed, as they entered and turned right toward a small lounge. Several men sat at the bar drinking draws and watching SportsCenter on a fuzzy television, the first set Joe had seen in the park. The men looked like they’d been there awhile, and Joe discounted them as being the strangers in the hallway. Demming chose a small dark table in the corner farthest from the bar and sat with her back to the wall. He guessed she didn’t want to be seen but didn’t ask why. Since it was a slow night they waited for the bartender to top the glasses of the viewers before coming to take their orders himself. Joe ordered another bourbon and water and Demming a red wine.
“Thanks for the e-mails,” Joe said. The box was near his feet.
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t think you’ll find anything very useful in them. I read them myself, hoping against hope that there would be some kind of reference to Clay McCann, but there isn’t. You’ll learn all kinds of things about environmental activism and how horny those poor guys got being out here all alone, but I don’t think you’ll find anything valuable. There are some messages planning their trip to Robinson Lake, mainly who is to bring what alcohol and food. I’m afraid the e-mails are another dead end.”
“If nothing else,” Joe said, “maybe I’ll get a better feel for Hoening and the other victims.”
She agreed. “They weren’t bad people, just young and misguided. You’ll find that the five of them had a yearly reunion at the end of the season.”
Joe was interested. “Was it always at Robinson Lake?”
“No, but all of the reunions were in that little corner of the park,” she said, her tone low but amused. “It’s kind of a funny story, really. When the five of them left Minnesota to come out here together to try and get jobs in Yellowstone, they didn’t have a road map with them, I guess. They entered the park for the first time at the Bechler entrance, coming from Idaho. They had no idea they couldn’t go any farther into the park from there, so they camped out their first night in that area. Apparently, a ranger told them they’d need to go back out of the park and drive up to West or down to Jackson to get on the right road to Mammoth to apply for jobs. So, because of that inauspicious beginning, they held a reunion of the Gopher State Five every year down there where they first showed up, even though it was the wrong place to enter the park.”
“So,” Joe said, as the bartender arrived with their drinks, “it’s possible that McCann knew where they’d be and when.”
“It’s possible,” she said, sipping, “but we can’t prove it. He denied knowing them, you know. He said they just happened to be there at the time.”
“Which brings us back to the guest register,” Joe said.
She nodded. “That’s why I’m here now,” she said. “I’d like to go down to Bechler with you tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
Joe said, “I’d be honored.”
“Of course, Ashby wants me to keep an eye on you as well.”
“I figured that.”
Now that it was out, a heavy silence hung between them.
“Why does Layborn hate Zephyr employees so much?”
Demming rolled her eyes. “I wish he wasn’t so strident about it, but he is. Layborn used to be a SWAT assault team captain for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and he brings too much of that gung-ho training to his job. He’s like a lot of real-world cops I’ve met. Day after day, he only sees the worst side of human nature, you know? He never gets calls to watch thousands of them serving food, or doing laundry, or giving tours. He only encounters the employees who get into trouble, so he assumes they’re all like that. And some of them really are. The Gopher Staters used to drive him crazy. They made it personal.”
“How so?” Joe asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers.
“They were like frat boys. He caught them hot-potting more than once and he gave them tickets for it.”
“Hot-potting?”
“Sorry, we have so much lingo up here. Hot-potting is soaking in thermal pools. It’s illegal, but lots of people do it at night. It’s relaxing and a way to wind down—a natural hot tub. Because there aren’t any movie theaters or nightclubs or anything like that up here, some of the Zephyr employees go hot-potting for date night. Alcohol is usually involved, of course. Most of us look the other way because it’s basically harmless. There’s even a spot called Ranger Pool, if you catch my meaning. But we leave them alone unless they’re being particularly loud or blatant about it
. Not Eric Layborn, though. He busted the Gopher State Five a few times and they got to know him, and to know him is to dislike him, as you learned today. It escalated from there.”
Joe encouraged her to go on.
She said, “Once they found out Layborn suspected them of dealing, they declared all-out war on him. They’d let the air out of his tires when he was at lunch, or they’d put a potato in his exhaust. Stink bombs, stuff like that. Once they acted like a big drug deal was going down in employee housing at Old Faithful—they put the word out to people Layborn used as informants—so Layborn put a huge squad together to raid it. It turned out to be a birthday party for a seventy-year-old waitress who’d worked in the park for forty-some years. Layborn was reprimanded, and it made the local papers. They set him up. And I’m sure you noticed his eye?”
Joe said he had.
“One time, they did that trick from American Graffiti, the movie? Layborn was hiding in the trees watching for speeders near Biscuit Basin. Somebody snuck up behind his car and put a chain around his axle and attached the chain to the trunk of a tree. Another guy raced by on the road. Layborn took off after the speeder and the chain ripped the axle off. Poor Layborn lost an eye on the steering column when that happened.”
“That explains it,” Joe said.
“It’s glass,” she said. “Rumor has it Eric had the National Park Service logo engraved and painted on the inside of his glass eye, so it points at his brain in his socket. But that’s just a rumor—I’ve never seen it.”
Joe was taken aback. “You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was.”
Demming was so deadpan when she said it they both burst out laughing.
She covered her mouth with her fingers. “We shouldn’t laugh.”
“No, we shouldn’t.”
“So,” Joe said, recovering, “no one was ever caught?”
“No. Nobody would fess up. We all knew it was the Gopher Staters, but we couldn’t prove it.”