by C. J. Box
“You sure you want to do this?” Cross asked Luthi in a way that was more challenge than concern. “I grew up playing mumbley-peg.”
“We called it ‘mumblety-peg,’” Luthi said. “With a t. Mumble-tee peg. That’s the correct way to say it.”
“That’s a bullshit hillbilly way of saying it.”
“Whatever.”
“Either way, I’m going to win.”
“You’ve got an advantage,” Luthi said sourly to Cross. “Your legs are longer.”
“That don’t make no difference. It ain’t an advantage at all. Now, who wants to throw first?”
“You’ve got the knife.”
“Then I’ll start.”
They faced each other with their boots spread out as far as each could muster. Cross had shrunk a full two feet of height.
“First guy to chicken out loses,” Cross said. “And you lose if you cut the other guy.”
He grasped the point of the knife, cocked it over his right shoulder, and threw it down between Luthi’s feet. The blade flashed with sunlight and it stuck about thirteen inches from Luthi’s left boot.
Luthi sighed and moved his left foot in until it touched the knife and kept his right foot set, thus making the target area more narrow for Cross’s next throw. Then he bent over and pulled the knife out of the soil by the handle.
“Don’t hit me in the nuts,” Cross said. “If you hit me in the nuts, I can’t do her properly. Not to mention, I’ll have to crush your head like a melon.”
“Ha ha,” Luthi said. He liked to throw by grasping the butt of the knife handle instead of the point. His hand flashed and the blade stuck in the grass squarely between Cross’s boots.
“Damn, that was a good shot,” Cross grumbled. He slid his right foot across the grass until it was next to the knife.
“Do we have to use such a heavy knife?” Luthi asked. “I mean, we used to play this with a pocketknife. If I get stuck with this thing, it might take off a couple of toes.”
“You can’t change blades once the game starts,” Cross said. “Those are the rules.”
“You’re making up the rules as you go along,” Luthi complained.
Cross waggled his eyebrows and grinned. He had a cruel grin. Luthi noticed how Cross’s eyes lit up when he was hurting someone or doing something dangerous.
Cross flipped the knife and it turned over in the air and stuck six inches from Luthi’s right boot.
“You don’t have to throw it that hard, you know.”
“You throw it your way and I’ll throw it mine,” Cross said.
Luthi bent over to pull out the blade. His fingers felt stiff and his breathing was getting short.
—
THE OLD HUNTING CABIN had been exactly where Dallas had told them it would be: through a narrow slot of a vertical striated granite upthrust three-quarters up the face of a mountain. They’d cleared the slot of brush and branches in the dark and there was barely enough space to roll the ATV through it.
Past the slot was a natural bowl surrounded by rock walls. The ancient log hunting cabin was backed into the north wall and built around its variations. In fact, once they got inside, they saw that the back of the cabin literally was the rock wall. Someone—Dallas’s dad, grandfather, or great-uncle—had custom-cut each log so it fit tight when butted against the granite.
The location was remote and not near any road either of them could see. There was barely a cell phone signal and it faded in and out.
Cross was a decent mechanic and got the old gasoline-powered generator going the morning after they arrived. The machine belched blue smoke and banged away like rocks in a tumble dryer, so they used it sparingly and mainly to charge the phone.
That was one thing Dallas had been adamant about: keep the phone charged and handy for an incoming call with further instructions. And don’t use it to call anyone except for the single number programmed into the favorites list.
The Cates clan kept the cabin well-stocked. There was plenty of canned and freeze-dried food, gasoline, lantern fuel, liquor, and ammunition. The old four-wheel-drive Willys Jeep that Dallas had told them about was where it should be: hidden under a tarp within a covered alcove of spruce. The battery was dead, but they charged it up at the cabin and the Jeep started.
To Luthi, the whole setup recalled the methods of backcountry moonshiners from his youth. They also had remote hideouts, caches of supplies, and hidden getaway cars. Big-game poachers like the Cateses and the moonshiners back in Texas had a lot in common, he guessed.
Rural outlaws apparently thought alike.
—
CROSS DREW THE KNIFE BACK and flipped it down. The blade penetrated half its length into the ground two inches from Luthi’s right instep.
“Shit,” Cross said. “That was a bad throw.”
Luthi nodded. “It was.”
He shinnied his right foot over until it touched the hunting knife. There was still about twenty-two inches of space remaining between his boots—a big target. There was only ten inches between Cross’s feet.
Luthi knew he had the advantage. But he was concerned about how erratically Cross threw the knife. The big man threw it with force and didn’t seem to know where it would land.
Was he doing it on purpose? Luthi wondered. Was the idea to make two bad sticks in a row—which he had—to put enough doubt in Luthi’s mind so that he’d quit the game before he got cut?
Luthi bent over and pulled the knife out of the ground. He glanced over his shoulder at the cabin, which was now bathed in shadow.
She was in there. She had no idea what was going on outside: that she was the prize.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been with a woman,” Luthi said.
“What do you mean?” Cross asked.
“What in the hell do you think I mean?”
Then Cross got it, and a slow smile spread across his face. He said, “When I said we’d play mumbley-peg to see who got to do her, you thought I meant do her.”
Luthi shook his head, confused. Then he got it.
“Shit, really?”
“Those were the instructions.”
“Man, that really sucks.”
“Yeah,” Cross said, but his eyes didn’t mean it. “That was the word from on high.”
“I thought when you said do her . . .”
“Yeah, I know what you thought now. Maybe we could and just not tell anyone.”
“I like that idea.”
“Me too,” Cross said. “So now we’re playing for real stakes. The winner gets to nail her first and the loser gets to pull the trigger.”
“Deal,” Luthi said. He didn’t want to lose. He’d never killed a woman before, although he’d come close a couple of times.
Luthi drew back and buried the knife to the hilt squarely between Cross’s feet. Once again, he’d halved the target area. Cross sighed and looked skyward, then slid his left boot in until it rested against the knife.
Now it was Cross’s turn to get nervous and maybe quit.
He paused and squinted. Luthi looked down. Cross would no doubt want to make his stick in the center of the distance between his feet, if he could, in order to prolong the game.
“Ready?” Cross asked.
Luthi took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and looked away.
—
EARLY THAT MORNING, they’d waited in the alley behind the Stockman’s Bar for Wanda Stacy to finish her shift. Cross had parked the Willys Jeep a half block away behind a souvenir shop, where they could clearly see Wanda’s rusty 1999 Toyota Land Cruiser in an EMPLOYEES ONLY—ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOWED space directly behind the building. There was room for her Toyota and Buck Timberman’s ancient GMC pickup right next to her car.
They assumed she’d close the place down prior to the official 2:00 a.m. c
urfew, so they had to stay awake and ready from midnight on. When the back door opened at 12:15, Luthi reached for his door handle, only to realize that the face peering out belonged not to Wanda but to an old drunk with a long silver beard.
The drunk stumbled out the door, threw up on his shoes, and staggered away down the alley.
“False alarm,” Cross said. “Just some old guy stepping out on his bar tab.” Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep, leaving Luthi to keep watch.
Buck Timberman came out the door fifteen minutes later. He stood in the threshold and stretched his arms straight up, then yawned. It took him a long time to shuffle to his pickup and drive away.
She came out at 1:20, and Luthi almost missed her. She’d shut out all the lights before she opened the door, so he didn’t see her profile in the doorway. She was just suddenly outside.
As she turned to lock the door with a key, Luthi nudged Cross awake.
“There she is,” he whispered.
The Jeep was so old that it had no interior dome light to come on when they simultaneously opened their doors. Cross unsheathed his hunting knife and held it in his right hand. Luthi had the 9mm Hi-Point pistol he’d found stashed in a drawer in the hunting cabin. It was a cheap semiauto, but it was serviceable.
Their boots thumped across the gravel and Wanda saw them coming just as she turned toward her car after locking the bar’s door.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” she hissed as her right hand plunged into the side of the heavy purse that hung from her left shoulder.
“Gun,” Luthi called out.
They swarmed her and tackled her before she could pull her weapon out of the secret pocket of her concealed-carry purse.
On the ground, she took a deep breath to scream, and Cross hit her hard enough in the jaw to knock her out. Luthi felt her go limp in his arms.
“Stay here,” Cross said, untangling himself from her limbs. “I’ll go get the Jeep.”
They trussed her wrists and ankles with silver duct tape, and Cross did three rotations of the tape over her mouth and around her neck. He did it with glee, and afterward Luthi had to pull the edge of the tape down and tuck it under her nostrils so she could get air.
He found the keys to the Land Cruiser in her purse along with a Taurus .380 pocket pistol that he stuffed in his back pocket.
In Stacy’s Land Cruiser, he followed Cross to her apartment building just three blocks away. They left her unconscious on the floor of the Jeep while they mounted the stairs to 2B. Inside, they quietly filled a big duffel bag with clothes from her closet and drawers, plus items from her bathroom like tampons and hair products—things she would likely take with her if she hit the road in a hurry.
En route to the mountains, they stopped long enough near the dam of a reservoir for Luthi to roll the Toyota down the embankment into the water, where it vanished in a hiss of steam and bubbles.
Then he climbed into the Jeep and they went off-road with Cross behind the wheel. Finding the old hunting cabin again was much harder than the first night, and they spent hours lost and cursing before they finally located it at dawn.
They dragged Wanda into the cabin and dumped her on the floor in the corner before collapsing fully clothed into separate iron-framed single beds.
Kidnapping, Luthi thought, was exhausting.
—
IN THE FIRST FEW SECONDS after the knife went through his left foot and pinned it to the ground, Luthi felt nothing but icy cold. But when he opened his eyes and looked down and saw the shaft of the knife sticking out of the top of his boot, there was a lightning strike of searing pain that shot up his leg into his groin.
“You stuck me right through the top of my foot,” Luthi said through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Cross said in a faux little-boy voice.
“Jesus, it hurts.”
“I’ll pull it out,” Cross said, stepping forward and starting to bend over.
“No! Don’t fucking touch it!”
“Okay, okay,” Cross said, raising his hands palms out and backing away. “I said I was sorry.”
“You did it on purpose,” Luthi said. He blinked back tears as he lowered down to his right knee.
“Why would I do that?” Cross asked.
“Because you’re an evil fucking bastard and you wanted to!” Luthi bellowed.
“Just calm down.”
“There’s a knife in my foot.”
“I can see that,” Cross said. Luthi caught something in his tone, and when he looked up, he could see that Cross was fighting back a laugh.
“I’ll pull this out and cut your fucking throat with it.”
“You’d have to chase me down to do that. Running might be hard at first,” Cross said. He ended it with a chuckle.
Luthi gripped the handle of the knife with both hands, looked away, pulled it out, and bellowed. It had hurt worse coming out than going in and had likely cut more of his foot.
His boot was now black with blood, which burbled out of the knife slit on the top of the leather.
“I guess you win, though,” Cross said. “There’s that.”
Luthi raised his face to the sky and yelled again. It helped.
“I saw a first-aid kit in the cabin,” Cross said. “Do you want me to help you get in there, or do you want me to go bring it out here?”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t help me,” Luthi hissed as he pointed the bloody knife blade at Cross.
“Fine. Be that way.”
Luthi grunted as he got to his feet. The pain now pulsed with every heartbeat.
“Look at it this way,” Cross said, “you can do her first.”
“I hurt too bad. I can hardly walk.”
“That wouldn’t stop a true stickman,” Cross said with a laugh.
Luthi wished he had the 9mm in his waistband so he could pull it and shoot Cross in the face, but he’d left it in the Jeep.
The only way he could walk to the cabin was with an exaggerated limp, because he could put almost no weight on his left foot. Tears still brimmed in his eyes.
He lurched through the front door and saw the shards of silver duct tape on the dirt floor. The window on the other side of the cabin had been pushed out.
“Goddamn it,” he cried out to Cross. “She’s gone!”
10
Twenty-eight miles away, in a small house on Bighorn Road, Dulcie Schalk and Marybeth Pickett recounted the day and drank wine on the couch in the living room. April and Lucy sat at the kitchen table and looked on. Two pizza boxes yawned open on the counter, and Joe removed a slice of pepperoni and chewed a bite while he poured bourbon over ice in a glass. It was his second drink in less than an hour.
April looked over. “Can I have one of those?”
“No.”
Lucy rolled her eyes and said, “Is this how it works once you become an adult? You try to solve all your problems with alcohol?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” April said with a shrug.
Joe smiled to himself and poured her a light one.
“My God,” Lucy said in mock horror when he placed it in front of her sister.
“I prefer mine with Coke,” April said.
“That ruins two good drinks,” Joe said, which actually made April grin. He looked over to see Marybeth giving him a Just that one look and he nodded back.
“I’d like one, too,” Lucy said.
“No way.”
Dulcie’s voice from the living room began to rise in volume as she described the scene in the courtroom that afternoon to Marybeth.
—
JOE HAD STILL BEEN STUNNED by the figure behind the wheel of the Hummer as he followed Marcus Hand through the lobby and into the tiny courtroom. So stunned that he’d walked through the metal detector without handing over his cell phone and gun belt and hadn�
�t realized what he’d done until he was through it.
When no alarm sounded, he stopped, turned, and looked quizzically at Stovepipe.
“Crap,” Stovepipe said. “I forgot to turn it on again.” Then he shooed Joe on. “I’ll catch you next time. Just don’t shoot nobody.”
Joe nodded and went in and reclaimed the folding chair next to Sheriff Reed. Spivak was already on the witness stand. If he were to shoot someone, he thought, he wasn’t sure whether it should be Dallas or his mother-in-law.
“You okay?” Reed whispered when he saw Joe’s face.
“Nope.”
Before he could explain, Hand strode through the doors, placed a fatherly hand on Dallas’s shoulder, and faced Justice of the Peace Mouton.
“Your Honor, my name is Marcus Hand.”
His voice boomed through the small room.
“I know who you are,” Mouton said sourly.
“My client sits shackled before you both literally and figuratively. His hands and feet are shackled to a steel chair, and his freedom has been shackled by inept and disinterested counsel up until now. Your Honor, my client faces the very real and tragic possibility of his liberty being taken away from him, and we’ve not yet consulted.”
Dallas turned his head and beamed up at his lawyer.
So this is what he’d had up his sleeve all along, Joe concluded.
To Duane Patterson, whom he’d just insulted, Hand said, “Your services are no longer needed here, sir. Scat. Beat it. Scram.”
Joe had never actually heard someone outside a cartoon say the word “scram” out loud. The word seemed to hang there as Patterson dropped his legal pad into his briefcase and rose. As he exited the room shaking his head, he didn’t acknowledge either Dallas or Hand.
Mouton said, “Since you’re in my courtroom and not on television, I can’t change the channel, I guess.”
Hand laughed with feigned appreciation at the remark. “Your Honor, given the fact that I’ve just walked into your”—he hesitated and looked around, as if he’d just found himself in an outdoor privy—“courtroom after a long and desperate journey from Jackson Hole and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to enter these august chambers, I would respectfully ask that a delay be granted so I can meet with my client and provide him with the very best possible legal representation that a country lawyer like myself can provide.”