Free Fire

by C. J. Box

Joe shifted uncomfortably. “Judy, did Layborn have any dealings with McCann?”

  Demming wasn’t shocked by the question. “I know what you’re asking. But no, I don’t think so.”

  “Everything’s on the table,” Joe said. “Maybe eye-for-an-eye kind of revenge, so to speak?”

  Demming nodded, uncomfortable. “I’m probably not helping my career talking to you so much,” she said. “You’re not exactly the most popular guy in the park right now.”

  “Who knows I’m here?” Joe asked, thinking of the two old men at Mammoth.

  “You’d be surprised how word gets around,” she said, taking a generous drink of wine. “This is a big park, but a really tiny community. Information and gossip are the way to get ahead, so there’s always a lot of buzzing about what’s going on, who’s talking to whom, that sort of thing. A newcomer like you raises suspicion.” She tossed her hair girlishly and continued. “There are so many factions. A lot, I mean a lot, of conflicts. Zephyr versus the Park Service. Environmentalists against resource users. Hunters outside the park versus park policy. The three states fighting with the Feds. Even in the Park Service, it’s law enforcement versus interpretation, and seasonal rangers against full-timers. It’s bureaucracy run amok, with too many small-minded department heads trying to advance. It’s cutthroat, Joe.”

  “Sounds a whole lot like government,” Joe said. “I speak from experience.”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You must have ordered truth serum instead of wine,” she said, gesturing toward her empty glass.

  “Would you like another?”

  “No!” she laughed. “I’ve done enough damage for one night. Plus, I’ve got to get home.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I hope talking with me doesn’t do you any harm.”

  She stood and held out her hand. “You never know, and frankly I don’t care anymore. I’m forty-two and Lars works for Zephyr. Up here, that means I’m in a mixed marriage, Yellowstone-style. We have two kids and live in a busted-down Park Service house, and I’m getting tired of playing the advancement game, because after eighteen years I’ve realized I’m going nowhere fast. Maybe the best thing that could happen would be for them to try and get rid of me.”

  Uh-oh, Joe thought.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, suddenly flustered. He watched her go. As she opened the front door, she shot a furtive glance into the dining room to see, he assumed, if there was anyone in there who recognized her.

  AS HE ATE, Joe skimmed through the stack of e-mails. The messages to Governor Rulon and the other politicians were on top. They were similarly vague in regard to details and the request to contact him in “the ’Stone.” Joe found it significant that the phrase “cash flow” was used only in Rulon’s e-mail. He set it aside for later and went through the printouts. They all fit roughly into three categories.

  The first was environmental activism. Saving the wolves, grizzlies, bison. Lots of back-and-forth with other activists about the upcoming buffalo hunt that would take place in Montana. Yellowdick, or Rick Hoening, was as passionate an advocate for endangered species as he was disdainful of hunters, ranchers, uninformed visitors, and certain factions of the Park Service, mainly law enforcement. His newest cause was something he called “bio-mining.”

  While learning of Hoening’s political leanings and contacts within the environmental community, Joe detected a softening in his stance in the more recent exchanges. Often, Joe had found that people’s extreme views weakened when they moved to the heart of the controversy and were exposed to the other side. It didn’t happen with everyone, but many. It was easier to stay away and keep a rigid ideology when not mugged by reality. Although Hoening was certainly an environmentalist to the end, his more recent arguments to activists suggested that perhaps some of their policies and methods could be more reasonable and less harsh.

  The second category was park gossip and news. These e-mails composed the bulk of the box. Yellowdick was a chatty guy. The messages consisted of which employees were moving up and down the corporate ladder, who was moving where (the five hubs of activity were Old Faithful, Grant Village, Roosevelt Lodge, Lake Hotel, and Mammoth), who said what to whom, who was sleeping with whom, where parties were going to be after work and on weekends, who would drive, who would bring what. Demming was accurate about the insular nature of Zephyr employees. Like college students on campus, they had their own culture, rituals, words, and phrases. Their social lives existed in a separate universe from what millions of tourists experienced at the park. Visitors encountered waiters, servers, maids, front-desk staff. There was probably little thought as to what these people who served the tourists did with their lives when not in uniform, when the Zephyr name tag was off. Joe found the secret world fascinating and made himself stop reading and move on.

  The third rough category he classified as Desperate Pleas to Women. In these, Joe found himself smiling and cringing at the same time. Men away from home in their early twenties could be shameless, and Hoening was no exception. Yellowdick was relentless, equal parts charm, desperation, and rakishness. He seemed to have tried to revive every friendship and chance meeting he had ever had with a female while growing up in Minnesota, stretching back to childhood. In each correspondence, he started out recalling the particulars of their meeting, often citing what she wore and the cute things she said. He said he missed her. If she replied, he continued the long-distance back-and-forth, writing about Yellowstone and what he and his friends were doing and seeing, extolling the clean air and healthy lifestyle or, if she liked the darker side, how great the parties were. A girl named Samantha Ellerby apparently liked parties so much she had moved from Minnesota to L.A. to find really good ones. Hoening claimed the events he staged in Yellowstone rivaled anything she had found. She doubted it, she wrote. He said he’d prove it if she came to see him, and closed with the same line that he apparently felt was the clincher: “We’ll have some cocktails and laughs, watch the sun set over Yellowstone Lake, go hot-potting and light a couple of flamers.” Another e-mail said, “I can’t wait to see you. I’ll be at the airport in Jackson.”

  From what Joe could tell, she was the only woman Yellowdick had successfully persuaded. Based on the last two e-mails between them, one to him that said “A-Hole!” and his reply, “Bitch!”, their time together had not gone well. But despite his low batting average, Yellowdick never stopped swinging for the fences. In the most recent e-mails, he had turned his sights on visitors he apparently had met and exchanged e-mail addresses with, having exhausted his list of females from Minnesota.

  Although there were still plenty of e-mails to go through, Joe admitted to himself that what Demming had told him was essentially correct. There were no references to Clay McCann or anyone like him, and nothing revealing about their plans for the annual reunion at Robinson Lake. Except one thing, Joe thought. Bob Olig had been copied in on every message. It meant, Joe thought, Hoening had no reason to assume Olig wouldn’t be there.

  A thought struck him.

  What if Olig was at Robinson Lake? What if the employee records at Old Faithful were wrong on that fact, or Olig had manipulated them to appear as if he’d been working that day?

  Joe retrieved his file from the box and reviewed the crime-scene report in detail once again, looking for something that would confirm his suspicion. Like finding five sleeping bags instead of four.

  After reading and rereading the report and going over the inventory of items found at the scene, Joe could come up with only one conclusion: either Olig or McCann had removed every single shred of evidence of Olig’s presence, or he’d never been at the camp at all, just like Layborn had said.

  JOE LOOKED UP and realized he was the last diner in the restaurant. A knot of workers, busboys and waiters, had gathered near the kitchen door, pretending they weren’t waiting for him to leave.

  Joe stood, said, “Sorry!” and left a big tip he couldn’t afford.

  Carrying the box outside, Jo
e noted how incredibly dark it was with no moon, and no ground glow from streets, homes, or traffic. The cool air had a slight taste of winter.

  HE CALLED MARYBETH from a pay phone in the lobby of the hotel, having learned in Jackson not to rely on his cell phone in remote or mountainous places. Plus, he liked the intimacy of closing the accordion doors of the old-fashioned booth and shutting everything out so he could talk with her.

  She covered the home front. Everyone was doing fine and it was too soon to really miss him. An employee in her Powell office had gotten angry and walked out for no good reason. Missy was snubbing her because, Marybeth assumed, her suspicions about Earl Alden and the arts council were correct.

  “Fine with me,” Marybeth said.

  Joe recounted his day: the drive up, the arrest of Bear, the meeting, drinks with Judy Demming.

  As he told her, he could feel her mood change, not by what she said but by the silence.

  “You’d like her,” he said. “She’s trying to help me out up here even though her bosses probably wish she wouldn’t. You’ll need to meet her when you come up.”

  She asked for a description.

  “Early forties, married, mother of two,” he said. “She and her family live in broken-down federal housing and she says she’s lost in the system. Kind of sounds familiar, huh?”

  “She sounds nice,” Marybeth said.

  Changing tack, he asked, “Have you heard anything from Nate? Any idea when he’s leaving?”

  “He’s already gone,” she said. “He left a message on our phone tonight. I meant to tell you about that earlier.”

  “Did he say when he’d get up here?”

  “No. Just to tell you he was on his way but he needed to tend to something in Cody first.”

  “So maybe tomorrow,” Joe said.

  “I’d assume.”

  She waited a beat. “How are you doing, Joe?”

  He knew what she was referring to. He described his room, the hotel, the feeling he’d had since he arrived of the presence of ghosts.

  “Does anyone know about your brother?”

  “No. It’s not important that they know.”

  They made plans for Marybeth to bring the girls to the park in a week.

  ALTHOUGH TIRED, JOE couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time. He couldn’t determine if it was the strange bed, the unfamiliar night moans of an old building, or the particularly vivid dream he’d had of sleeping on the floor at the side of the bed, knowing his parents were tossing and turning two feet away. He awoke to the foul, sour odor of his dad’s breath after a night of drinking.

  He sat up and found his duffel bag with his equipment in it and assembled his Glock and put it on the nightstand.

  When he opened the window to let in the cold night air, he thought he saw two figures down on the lawn in the shadows, hand-cupping tiny red dots of lit cigarettes. When he rubbed his eyes and looked again, they’d been replaced by a cow elk and her calf.

  part three

  YELLOWSTONE GAME PROTECTION ACT, 1894

  AN ACT TO PROTECT THE BIRDS AND

  ANIMALS IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL

  PARK, AND TO PUNISH CRIMES IN SAID PARK,

  AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES,

  Approved May 7, 1894 (28 Stat. 73)

  Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Yellowstone National Park, as its boundaries are now defined, or as they may be hereafter defined or extended, shall be under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; and that all the laws applicable to places under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States shall have force and effect in said park: Provided, however, That nothing in this act shall be construed to forbid the service in the park of any civil or criminal process of any court having jurisdiction in the States of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. All fugitives from justice taking refuge in said park shall be subject to the same laws as refugees from justice found in the State of Wyoming. (U.S.C., title 16, sec. 24.)

  SEC. 2. That said park, for all the purposes of this act, shall constitute a part of the United States judicial district of Wyoming, and the district and circuit courts of the United States in and for said district shall have jurisdiction of all offenses committed within said park.

  9

  THE NEXT MORNING, JOE WAITED ALONE IN THE HOTEL lobby for Demming to arrive. There were no other guests up and around so early and he had the entire lobby to himself. He sat in an overstuffed chair and read a day-old Billings Gazette—newspapers from the outside world didn’t arrive in the park until later in the day—sipping from a large cup of coffee. Morning sun streamed through the eastern windows, lighting dust motes suspended in the air. The old hotel seemed vastly empty, the only sounds the scratch of a pen on paper and occasional keyboard clacking from Simon behind the front desk. On the lawns outside the hotel he could see that a herd of buffalo had moved in during the night and both the elk and buffalo grazed. The presence of wildlife larger than him just outside the hotel humbled him, as it always did, reminding him that he was just another player. When an official-looking white Park Service Suburban pulled aggressively into the alcove in front of the hotel, Joe assumed it was Demming and started to gather his daypack and briefcase.

  Instead of Demming, a uniformed man of medium build pushed through the front doors. He had the aura of officialdom about him. Joe watched him stride across the lobby floor with a sense of purpose, his head tilted forward like a battering ram despite his bland, open face, his flat-brimmed ranger hat in his hand whacking against his thigh, keeping time with his steps. The ranger’s uniform had crisp pleats and shoes shined to a high gloss. He had a full head of silver-white hair, thin lips, a belt cinched too tight, as if to deny the paunch above it that strained against the fabric of his shirt. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, although the white hair made him seem older at first. Beneath a heavy brow and clown-white eyebrows, two sharp brown eyes surveyed the room like drive-by shooters. The ranger saw Joe sitting in his Cinch shirt and Wranglers, dismissed him quickly as someone of no interest to him, and approached the front desk.

  “I need to check on a guest,” the ranger said in a clipped, authoritative voice.

  “Name?” Simon asked without deference.

  “Pickett. Joe Pickett.”

  “He checked in last night.”

  “How long is he staying?”

  Tap-tap-tap. “The reservation extends through next week.”

  “A week! Okay, thank you.”

  The ranger turned on his heel and began to cross the lobby.

  “Can I help you?” Joe asked, startling the ranger. “I’m Joe Pickett.”

  The man stopped, turned, studied Joe while biting his lower lip as if trying to decide something. He held out his hand but didn’t come over to Joe. Meaning if Joe wanted to shake it, he’d need to go to him. Joe did.

  “Chief Ranger James Langston,” the man said, biting off his words. “Welcome to Yellowstone.”

  “We missed you at the meeting yesterday,” Joe said.

  “I had other matters to tend to.”

  “I thought it was your day off.”

  Langston nodded. “In my job, you never have a day off.”

  “That’s too bad,” Joe said, not knowing why he said it.

  Neither did Langston. He released Joe’s hand and stepped back, said, “I hope you got all the information you needed and everybody’s been helpful and cooperative.”

  “So far.”

  “Good, good. Nice to meet you,” Langston said, starting to head for the door.

  “Why did you want to know how long I was staying?” Joe asked pleasantly.

  “Just curious,” Langston said. “We’d like to get this whole McCann thing behind us and move on. What’s done is done. There isn’t anything you or anyone else can do about it.”

  “Ah,” Joe said.

  “I’ve got to go. My motor’s running.”

  “
It sure is,” Joe said.

  Langston looked at him curiously, clamped on his hat, and went outside. The Suburban roared off all of two blocks to the Pagoda.

  Demming came in the front door. “Was that Chief Ranger Langston?” she asked Joe.

  “Yup.”

  “What did he want?”

  Joe said, “I’m not real sure.”

  DEMMING PARKED HER cruiser and they took Joe’s Yukon to the Bechler ranger station. Because of an overnight rock slide near Obsidian Cliff that likely wouldn’t be cleared until that evening, Demming suggested they exit the park through the north entrance at Gardiner, drive to Bozeman, and double back south through West Yellowstone and on to Bechler.

  “That’s a lot of driving,” Joe said as they cleared Mammoth.

  “Get used to it,” she laughed. “This is a huge place. You learn not to be in a hurry. Four or five hours to get somewhere is pretty common. The park forces you to slow down, whether you want to or not.”

  Joe drove down the switchbacks toward Gardiner. As he did, a growing sense of dread introduced itself to his stomach.

  “Do you notice how laid back the pace is here?” Demming said, unaware of Joe’s increasing trepidation. “No one is in a hurry. Rangers, waiters, desk clerks . . . everybody moves at a slower pace than the outside world. We’re like a tropical island in the middle of the county—everything is different here. Slower, more deliberate. Nothing can’t wait until tomorrow. It drives you crazy at first but you get used to it. You know what we call it?”

  They cleared the switchbacks and the terrain flattened out. The road became a long straightaway of asphalt across a grassy meadow. In the distance he could see the stone arch that signified the north entrance to the park. At one time, when the railroads delivered tourists like Rudyard Kipling, it was the primary gateway to Yellowstone.