Free Fire jp-7

by C. J. Box

  He’d spent hours waiting by the pay phone on the side of the supermarket for the callback that never came, his frustration and anger building by the minute. He debated with himself whether to go back and try again.

  “Fuck it,” he said to himself as he reached out and picked up his desk phone and dialed.

  "EnerDyne, Mr. Barron’s office,” the receptionist answered.

  “This is McCann, again. I need to speak to Layton Barron immediately. Tell him.”

  “Mr. McCann, I told you earlier. Mr. Barron is in a meeting and he can’t be disturbed. I’ll give him your message when-”

  “Tell him now,” McCann said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  My life, McCann thought. His death, if there wasn’t some cooperation.

  The receptionist hesitated, then put him on hold.

  Okay, McCann thought. Either Barron came on the phone and explained himself, which meant the deal was still in play, or he sent the receptionist back with another delay or refusal. If that happened, there would be hell to pay.

  Minutes ticked by. The lawyer began to wonder if the receptionisthad chosen to place him on permanent hold.

  Finally, Barron came on the line, angry, and said, “You agreed never to call me here. Is this a secure line?”

  McCann was relieved. “No. I’m calling from my office.”

  “Goddamn it, we agreed-”

  “I’ll go to a secure location, but I’m not going to stand around in the cold all day again. Call me in ten minutes.” McCannread off the number of the supermarket pay phone. Barronrepeated the number back.

  At last, he thought, gathering his coat and hat. Finally, he would find out why the funds hadn’t been deposited into his account,as promised. He’d done his part, certainly. Now it was time for them to do theirs.

  “Going again?” Sheila asked, sighing heavily.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said. “Keep-”

  “Your goddamned door shut!” Sheila finished for him in a screech.

  Mccann thought about Sheila as he walked down the sidewalk to the supermarket. His feelings were mixed, which surprised him.

  Even though she was a piss-poor receptionist, he liked to look at her. She was more than a cartoon after all, he’d decided. She brought experience, sexual knowledge, and unabashed dutifulnessto his needs and desires. Her reputation as a former mafioso kept woman excited him. He liked being seen with her because it was scandalous and only added to his infamy in town. Her features were severe: very black hair, very white skin, fire-engine red, pillow-soft lips. She was a combination of sharp, soft, ethnic, sensual, and in-your-face. Even if she was on the summit of over-the-hill.

  He’d always thought her exotic and amusing, but he was beginningto wonder if there was more going on with him. Was he falling for her? How could that be? He knew he couldn’t trust her.

  She was a puzzle, though. How she went on and on about getting out of there but never seemed to pull it off. It made no sense. Leaving wasn’t that hard. An hour to Bozeman and the airport, that’s all the time it would take. And it couldn’t be just lack of money. What did a Bozeman-to-Newark plane ticket cost? Five hundred bucks? Surely she could afford that. So why did she keep leaving just to end up back in West Yellowstone?

  The only thing he could figure out was that, despite her constantcomplaints, she liked it. She liked being the wildest vamp in town, the fish with the biggest, reddest lips in the small pond. He started to admire her a little and feel sorry for her at the same time.

  Maybe, just maybe, he would take her with him after all.

  First things first, though. He needed his money.

  As he turned the corner he saw the pay phone blocked by a dirty white pickup. A big woman with a loud voice was on the phone. His heart sank. McCann approached the vehicle slightly panicked and checked his wristwatch. In two minutes, Barron had agreed to call.

  She had curlers in her hair and was wearing an oversized parka. There was a cigarette in the stubby fingers of her free hand, and she waved it around her head as she talked. Her pickup was twenty years old, the bed filled with junk, the cab windows smeared opaque by the three big dogs inside, all of them with their paws on the glass and their tongues hanging out. He was vaguely familiar with her and had seen her death trap of a pickup rattling through town before. She collected and sold junk and hides. She had a sign on a muddy two-track west of town that offered $10 apiece for elk hides, $7.50 for deer. Her name, he thought, was Marge.

  When she saw McCann standing there, obviously waiting for her and checking his wristwatch, she flicked her fingers at him. “It’ll be a while,” she said. “There’s a phone down the street outside the gas station.”

  “No, I need this phone.”

  Marge looked at him like he was crazy. “I told you it’ll be a while, mister. The phone service is out at my place. I got a bunch of business calls to make.”

  She turned away from him. “I’m on hold.”

  In a minute, Barron would call.

  “Look,” McCann said to her back, “I’m expecting a really important call on this number. Right here, right now. You can call whoever it is you’re waiting for right back. Hell, I’ll give you the money. In fact, if you want to sit in my office and use the phone there, you can make calls all day.”

  She turned slightly and peered over her massive shoulder with one eye closed. “If you’ve got a phone in your office, mister,why don’t you use it?”

  He couldn’t believe this was happening.

  “Lady. . Marge. .”

  She ignored him.

  Furious, he reached out to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention when the dogs went off furiously, barking and snarling, gobs of saliva spattering the inside of the cab window inches from his arm. He recoiled in panic, and she yelled for her dogs to shut the hell up.

  Then she turned on him. “What the hell is wrong with you, mister? I’m on the phone.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” he said, his heart racing in his chest from the shock of the barking and the flash of teeth. “I’m expecting an important call. It’s a matter of life and death. I need that phone.”

  She assessed him coolly. “I know who you are, Clay McCann.I don’t think much of you. And you’re not getting it.”

  He shot a glance at his watch. Past time. He prayed Barron would be a few minutes late. Or call back if it was busy the first time. But what if he didn’t?

  The.38 was out before she could say another word. McCann tapped the muzzle against the glass of the passenger window in the drooling face of a dog. “Hang up now,” he said.

  “You’re threatening my dogs,” she said, eyes wide. “Nobody threatens my dogs.”

  Then she stepped back and jerked the telephone cord from the wall with a mighty tug.

  “There!” she yelled at him. “Now nobody can use it!”

  “Jesus! What did you do?”

  “I just got started,” she said, swinging the phone through the air at him by holding the severed metal cord. The receiver hit him hard on the crown of his head.

  McCann staggered back, tears in his eyes, his vision blurred. But not blurred enough that he couldn’t see her whipping the phone back and swinging it around her head like a lariat, lookingfor another opening.

  He turned and ran across the street, hoping she wouldn’t follow.On the other sidewalk, he wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, stunned. Marge glared at him, as if contemplating whether or not to give chase.

  “Don’t ever threaten my dogs!” she hollered.

  Then she jammed the useless receiver back on the cradle, lumbered into her pickup, which sagged as she climbed in, and drove down the street, leaving a cloud of acrid blue smoke.

  Before reaching up and touching the lump forming beneath his scalp, McCann put the gun back in his pocket so no one would see it. He hoped she wasn’t headed for the sheriff’s department.

  On the wall of the supermarket, the telephone box rang.

  He closed his eyes, le
aned back against the front of a motel that was closed for the season, and slowly sank until he was sittingon the concrete.

  The street was empty and Clay McCann listened to his future,for the time being, go unanswered.

  He was still sitting on the sidewalk, eyes closed, his new headache pounding between the walls of his skull like a jungle drum, when Butch Toomer, the ex-sheriff, kicked him on the sole of his shoe. “You all right?”

  McCann opened one eye and looked up. “Not really.”

  “You can’t just sit there on the sidewalk.”

  “I know.”

  Toomer squatted so they could talk eye-to-eye. McCann could smell smoke, liquor, and cologne emanating from the collarof the ex-sheriff’s heavy Carhartt jacket. Toomer had dark, deep-set eyes. His mouth was hidden under a drooping gun-fighter’s mustache.

  “You owe me some money, Clay, and I sure could use it.”

  McCann nodded weakly. Now this, he thought.

  “Tactics and firearms training don’t come cheap. And it looks like it paid off for you pretty damned well. Four thousand dollars, that’s what we agreed to back in June, remember?”

  “Was it that much?” McCann said, knowing it was. He had never even contemplated, at the time, that money would be a problem. He did a quick calculation. Unless he sold his home or office or suddenly got a big retainer or the money he was owed came through, well, he was shit out of luck.

  Then he thought of the business cards in his pocket. And his so-called business partners who had hung him out to dry. They could use some shaking up.

  He said, “How would you like to turn that four thousand into more?”

  Toomer coughed, looked both ways down the street. “Say again?”

  McCann repeated it.

  “Let’s talk,” Toomer said.

  12

  The iowan’s name was darren rudloff, he told Joe and Demming over the roar of helicopter rotors, and he was from Washington, Iowa, which he pronounced “Warsh-ington.” He’d lost his job at a feed store, his girlfriend took up with his best bud, and his landlord insisted on payment in full of back rent. He felt trapped, so he figured what the hell and headed west armed to the teeth to live out his fantasy: to be an outlaw, to live off the land. He liked Robinson Lake. There had been dozens of hikers on the trail over the summer, but he’d avoided them. None were brazen or stupid enough to walk right into his camp, as Joe and Demming had done. When asked about the murders or the murder scene, he said he knew nothing other than what he’d read before he came out. All this he told Joe and Demming while the IV drips pumped glucose and drugs into his wrists to deaden the pain and keep him alive, while EMTs scrambled around his gurneyreplacing strips of Joe’s shirt with fresh bandages until they could land in Idaho Falls and get him into surgery.

  Joe found himself feeling sorry for Rudloff, despite what had happened. Rudloff seemed less than dangerous now. In fact, he seemed confused, childlike, and a little wistful. Joe had a soft spot for men who desired the simplicity of the frontier that no longer existed, because he’d once had those yearnings himself. And, like Rudloff, he’d thought that Yellowstone was the place to seek them out. They’d both been wrong.

  Demming confessed to Rudloff that she’d lied to him about Congress passing a law.

  “I figured that out,” Rudloff said through bandages on his face that muffled his voice. “That’s the only good thing about today, I reckon. We don’t need no more laws. I’ll head back up there when I’m patched up.”

  “I’d advise against it,” Demming said.

  “You gonna press charges?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where you gonna have the trial?” Rudloff chided.

  Demming had no answer to that, and she ignored him for the rest of the trip.

  Joe asked the helicopter pilot to take them back to the Bechlerstation to get his vehicle after they’d admitted Rudloff. The pilot agreed.

  They landed on the only clear, flat surface at the Bechler ranger station-the horse pasture-at dusk. Joe and Demming thanked the pilot and scrambled out. Joe was happy to be out of the air and back on the ground. Stevens was there to meet them and handed Demming a message.

  In the Yukon, Demming unfolded the piece of paper. “I need to call the Pagoda,” she said. “Ashby wants a full report on what happened.”

  “Do we need to get back to Mammoth, then?” Joe asked, contemplating the five-hour drive.

  Demming seemed lost in thought. He wondered if the shock of what happened at the camp had been held at bay in her mind and was just now releasing. He’d seen that kind of delayed reactionto violence before, and had experienced it himself.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I guess so. That was a new one for me, I must say. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared as when I was looking into the muzzle of that rifle. His eyes-Jesus. They looked crazy and scared at the same time, which is never a good combination. And I feel ashamed that my first reaction when he got shot was pure joy-followed by nausea.”

  "I understand.”

  "I hate to feel so happy to see a man shot-up.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Joe said.

  “I know. But to see that kind of violence up close like that. . I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”

  “You were magnificent,” Joe said. “You saved our lives when you told Rudloff about that law because it delayed him long enough for Nate to aim. You nearly had me believing it. That was quick thinking.”

  “If only it were true,” she said. “Joe, do you think there are many more like him? I mean, more crazy survivalists in the Zone of Death?”

  “Probably.”

  “Whoever saved us, is he one of them?”

  Joe smiled. “Nate? Yes, he is. But he’s been that way since I met him. He doesn’t live in Yellowstone, though. He lives in Saddlestring, where I come from. He once told me he values what he considers justice over the rule of the law.”

  “That scares me.”

  Joe nodded. “Me too. Luckily, he’s on our side.”

  Rather than drive all the way to Mammoth in the dark, they decided to go halfway, to the Old Faithful area instead, into the heart of the park. Since the next item on Joe’s list was to question employees about the Gopher State Five, the diversionworked out. Demming used her radio to notify her husband that she wouldn’t be home and said she’d call him when they got to Old Faithful.

  “That probably won’t go over very well,” she said, as much to herself as to Joe.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “I told him last night you were a nice guy, a family man.”

  He flushed. “I said the same about you to Marybeth.”

  “Now is the time for an uncomfortable silence,” she said.

  He agreed, silently.

  They backtracked north and entered the park proper through the gate at West Yellowstone, following the Madison River. The absence of any kind of streetlights made the moon and stars seem brighter and made Joe concentrate on driving, since bison or elk could appear on the road at any time. Demminghad been trying to nap but couldn’t get comfortable. She gave up trying with a sigh.

  “When this is over,” she said softly, “I think I’m going to quit. I don’t ever want to be that scared again, and I’ve got a husband at home and two great kids.”

  “What would you do?”

  She shrugged. “Well, maybe I won’t quit outright. I probably can’t. I’m the primary breadwinner in the family, you know.”

  “Believe me,” Joe said, “I know what that’s like. My wife is in the same boat, unfortunately.”

  “Maybe I’ll transfer out of law enforcement into interpretation,” she said. “I’d like a life of pointing out wildflowers and bison dung to tourists from Florida and Frankfurt. That sounds a lot less stressful than what I’m doing.”

  “Same bureaucracy, though.”

  “Yeah, I know. And as an added bonus, less money.”

  The old faithful
area was the largest complex in the park, consisting of hundreds of cabins, the Snow Lodge, retail stores, souvenir shops and snack bars, a rambling Park Service visitor center, and the showpiece structure of the entire park: the hundred-plus-year-old Old Faithful Inn that stood in sharp, gabled, epic relief against the star-washed sky.

  Since Old Faithful was the most heavily visited area, there were a few dozen vehicles in the parking lot despite the lateness of the season. Joe drove under the covered alcove of the hotel, which framed the famous geyser, which puffed exhausted steam breaths. The sides of the cone were moist with water, and steaming rivulets snaked downhill to pour into the river.

  “Postcoital geyser,” Demming said, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “It just went off. We missed it.”

  Joe smiled in the dark but chose not to respond.

  They unloaded their gear and pulled open the heavy iron-studdedseven-foot wooden doors and entered the most magnificentand bizarre lobby Joe had ever seen. He froze, like hundreds of thousands of visitors had before him, as he did when he first encountered the place two decades before, and tilted his head back and looked up.

  "Wow,” Joe said.

  "Gets you every time, doesn’t it?” Demming said.

  “I’d forgotten.”

  “Does it seem smaller, now that you’re older?”

  Joe shook his head. “It seems bigger.”

  His memories came flooding back, the sense of awe he’d felt then and felt now just as strongly, as if he’d been gone only minutes. At the time he first entered the inn and looked up, he’d never seen anything like it-it was the biggest log room he’d ever been in and it seemed to rise vertically forever. At least three levels of balconies lined the sides, bordered by intricate knotty pine railings and lit by low-wattage bulbs in candlestick fixtures, culminating high above in obscure catwalks and a fancifulwooden crow’s nest nearly obscured by shadow. Fires crackled from hearths in the massive four-sided fireplace that rose in a volcanic stone column from the central lobby into darkness. Then, as now, Joe felt he was looking into the vision-come-true of a genius architect with a fevered and whimsical mind, and it took his breath away.