Free Fire jp-7

by C. J. Box

  Keaton paused to sip his beer, but he was so wound up that most of it dribbled out of his mouth onto his chin whiskers, which didn’t seem to bother him.

  “It has happened every six hundred thousand years through geologic history, at least four times we can determine. Each supervolcanic eruption changes the world. The last time it erupted was six hundred forty thousands years ago.” Keaton’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We’re forty thousand years overdue.”

  “Then maybe it won’t happen,” Joe said.

  Keaton showed his teeth. “Typical,” he spat. “Just ignore it, wish it away. That’s what people do best. But the signs are all around us that it will come sooner instead of later. You have to wake up and look at them!”

  Joe now knew that he wouldn’t be going back to the inn and tumbling into a restful sleep.

  “In the past decade,” Keaton said, “the ground has risen fourteen centimeters in the Yellowstone caldera. That’s right, the dirt beneath your feet is five inches higher in elevation than it was ten years ago. That’s because the magma has forced it up, putting tremendous pressure on the thin crust. It’s just like fillinga tire with more and more air until it finally ruptures. And do you know, Joe, what is likely to cause the ground to rupture and release all that pressure, to turn the world inside out?”

  “No.”

  “Earthquakes,” Keaton said. “A tremor that will weaken and part the tectonic plates beneath us. That’s all it will take. . a crack, an opening. And do you know how many earthquakes there were in Yellowstone this past year?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Three thousand. Think about it: three thousand. Over five hundred just in the Old Faithful area alone!”

  To demonstrate, Keaton made himself tremble and his eyes blinked rapidly: “We’re starting to shake apart.”

  With that, Keaton calmed himself, sighed, and settled back on his stool. “So drink up, Joe, for tomorrow we die.”

  Joe looked at Nate. Nate shrugged.

  “So it doesn’t matter about the tiny little things you’re concernedabout,” Keaton said, his voice moderating so he sounded almost reasonable, “your murders and your laws. Your jurisdiction.Once I realized that, the snowmobile emissions in YellowstonePark seemed so. . trivial. So stupid. So pointless. Nothing matters. We’re trivial pissants in the big scheme of things, fleas, fly shit in the pepper.”

  Joe sipped his beer but it tasted bitter. He stanched a wild impulse to call Marybeth and tell her to grab the girls and flee to the root cellar.

  “So I don’t concern myself with laws or causes anymore,” Keaton said. “I don’t get worked up about what used to be my passions-emissions, or recycling, or the trashing of the environment.We humans have such a high opinion of ourselves- especially my old brethren in the movement. We think we’re gods on earth, that by merely changing our behavior or, more important, changing the behavior of the heathen industrialists and capitalists, that we can actually affect the outcome of the planet. We’re so unbelievably arrogant and elite, so blind, so stupid.We think we can control the world. It’s so tremendously silly I laugh when I think about it. It would be similar to if all the germs on our bartender’s head decided to get together to prevent him from farting. It makes no difference what they decide or what they think-he’ll still fart like a heifer.”

  The bartender, who’d been listening, looked offended.

  Doomsayer continued, “Such efforts are beyond quixotic- they’re comically hopeless. So we take infinitesimal little actionslike preventing oil exploration, or recycling our beer cans, or driving hybrid cars that cost twenty-five times what a Third World worker makes in a year, or shaming other people for their desire to live well and prosper. .”

  Keaton paused, let the word trail off, then shouted: “Ha! I say ha! Because once this baby goes,” he yelled, pointing at the floor between his dirty shoes, “once this baby goes, none of those things matter. Nothing matters. We’re stir-fry.”

  The bar was absolutely silent. Even the Zephyr employees at the tables looked wide-eyed at Keaton. Only the old drunk next to him slept through the reverie.

  “So,” Joe said, “if you really believe all that, why are you here? Why aren’t you on some island in the Pacific?”

  “Because, Joe,” he said in a singsong, as if explaining fundamentaltruths to a child, “when it goes I want to go with it. Instantly,in a flash of light with a drink in my hand. I don’t want to huddle, shivering, in my apartment in Brooklyn or Boston while ash and snow blankets the city until I freeze slowly in the dark. I don’t want to be on an island watching the ocean turn slowly milk-colored with ash and dead fish. I want to be here, ground zero, where I can watch and monitor the thermal activityso I can be right here ordering that drink with my so-called friends around me.”

  “You mean there are others who think like you do?”

  “Dozens,” he said. “We’re known as the Geyser Gazers. We serve a true purpose for the Park Service-charting eruptions and thermal activity. It used to be an easy job-sedentary- sitting on a bench waiting for a geyser to erupt and noting it in a little book. But that was in the old days, before the ground started to rise. Now, it’s crazy. Geysers that used to go like clockwork have stopped entirely. Meanwhile, long-dormant geysers-monsters, some of them-are shooting off all over the park like fifteen-year-old boys on vacation. It’s like the earth’s guts are churning, ready to vomit! The signs of the apocalypse are all around, but only a few of us-my compatriots in the Geyser Gazers-have the knowledge and foresight to realize what is happening right in front of our eyes.”

  As he spoke he turned toward the bar, in profile, and Joe suddenlyknew where he’d seen Keaton before.

  “So you try to keep up with what’s going on in the park, huh?” Joe asked.

  Keaton hesitated a moment. “Yes. .”

  “So you probably knew Rick Hoening and his buddies?”

  “Savages! Nonbelievers!”

  “And you like to check out visitors,” Joe said. “Is that why you and your buddy there were in the Mammoth Hotel last night? Trying to see what I was doing here?”

  That stopped Keaton. His eyes narrowed until they were nearly shut. “We were there,” he admitted, “but not why you think.”

  “Then why?”

  “In a moment,” Keaton said. “I have to urinate. Which,” he said, sliding unsteadily off his stool, “if you take my philosophy to its logical conclusion so it applies to absolutely everything- like pissing your pants instead of going to the restroom after you’ve drunk too much beer-one would go mad while being stinky as well. But there is still something to be said for simple human dignity, despite all that.” And he staggered to the men’s room in the back.

  After a few beats, Nate turned to Joe. “I thought he might have been one of them. I heard him mention he came from the north this morning.”

  “I wonder what he wants,” Joe said.

  “My guess is it’ll surprise you.”

  “Meaning what?” Joe said, his mind still reeling.

  “If we want to understand motivation,” Nate said, “we might want to step outside convention and procedure. We might need to consider that some things happen up here because it truly is different.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Nate shook his head. “I’m not sure. But since dozens of peoplehave studied this crime and come up with nothing, maybe we need to try and think about it differently. Maybe we need to consider that what happened was absolutely unique to this place, and for a reason we never even thought of before.”

  Joe nodded. “Maybe.”

  Nate drained his beer. The bartender pointed at the clock behindthe bar, signaling it was time to close.

  “I didn’t like that bit about germs and me farting,” the bartendersaid. “Didn’t like it one bit.”

  As if on cue, the bartender reached out both hands to grip the bar and Joe felt suddenly unsteady but didn’t know why. Then he heard the tinkling of liquor bottles on the she
lf behind the bar, and he saw ringlets form in the water in the sink. Just as quickly as it happened, it was still again.

  “Just an earthquake,” the bartender said. “Little one.”

  “My God,” Joe whispered, turning to Nate. “So that’s who you wanted me to meet, Doomsayer.”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then why did you bring me here?”

  Nate took a deep breath and his eyes flitted away for a second.Joe was confused.

  Nate walked over to Keaton’s companion, who was still sleeping on the bar.

  “You said you saw two men in the hallway up in Mammoth,” Nate said. “Two old guys. Doomsayer was one of them, I think we know now. Is this the other one?”

  He grabbed a fistful of thin hair on the head of the companionand pulled his face up. Joe felt as if a lightning bolt of bile surged up into his throat. His boots seemed spot-welded to the floor.

  Oh, how he recognized that face.

  “Dad. .” Joe said, but the word croaked out.

  Two bloodshot, rheumy eyes cracked open, wobbled, focused.

  “Son,” George Pickett said thickly.

  “This is why I wanted you to leave your gun,” Nate said.

  14

  Joe awoke to the sound of old faithful eruptingoutside his window, which for an instant he thought was his stomach. Assured that it wasn’t, he threw back the sheets, padded barefoot to the window, and parted the curtains to watch the geyser once again, wondering if it would ever be possible to get tired of seeing it. He didn’t think so. He marveled at the furiouschurning of steam and water, the angry noise that accompaniedthe eruption, and was struck how some gouts of water punched through the billows into thin, cold air and paused at their apex, breaking apart into fat droplets that caught the sun, and plunged back down to earth.

  As he dressed he recalled the events of the night before and was still numbed from them. It was as if his world had tilted slightly to the left into unreality.

  His father had been too drunk to maintain a conversation and could barely stand. With Keating on one side and Joe on the other, they walked George Pickett home. Nate followed silently.

  “I see you haven’t changed much,” Joe said to his father as they cleared the dormitories and steered him toward a crooked line of rickety shacks hidden even farther in the trees.

  “I’m happy you’re here,” his father slurred, taking three tries to get it out. “I’d like to get to know you, Son.”

  “You had eighteen years for that,” Joe mumbled, knowing the conversation would likely be forgotten by George when he woke up the next morning.

  After they’d lowered George into a disheveled single bed in a coffin-shaped cabin strewn with papers and garbage, Keaton said something to Joe about organizing a get-together for the Picketts very soon, so they could talk.

  “Nothing to talk about,” Joe had said, turning for the door.

  “And it should be sooner rather than later,” Doomsayer intonedas Joe stepped outside. “We’re on borrowed time as it is, you know. .”

  Demming was in the dining room waiting for him at breakfast.He could feel her eyes on his face, trying to discern what was wrong. He ordered eggs from a waiter with the name badge “Vladimir-Czech Republic” and told her about meeting his fatherthe night before in the Zephyr bar.

  “He’s one of the Geyser Gazers,” Joe said, trying to sound casual. “He lives in a hovel and drinks like a fish, waiting for the Yellowstone caldera to blow up.”

  After Vladimir brought breakfast and talked to them about how beautiful it was outside this morning-“a vision of a dream of nature”-in broken but charming English, Demming said, “So where is your friend Nate?”

  “Oh, he’s around,” Joe said, not wanting to tell her that Nate was staying somewhere inside the inn, likely in one of the sectionsthat were officially off-limits to visitors. Nate had mentionedsomething about a tree house far up in the rafters, and Joe fought the urge to look up and see if he was there.

  Before separating the night before, Nate had told Joe he intendedto spend the day talking to old Zephyr friends to see if he could learn anything about the Gopher State Five.

  “Around, huh?” she said, put off. “I’m beginning to think he doesn’t exist. Like he’s your special secret friend. My son has one of those too, Joe. He calls him Buddy.”

  Joe reviewed his notes and scribbled questions in his notebook while Demming went to find Mark Cutler, the area manager of Old Faithful. She returned with a cherubic and avuncular man about Joe’s age with a pillow of dark curly hair, red cheeks, and an air of cheery competence about him. He wore wire-framed glasses, a tie and a blazer, but looked as if he spent as much time outdoors as indoors, judging by his sunburnedskin and the scratches on the back of his hands.

  “Mark Cutler,” he said. “I manage this joint.”

  “Joe Pickett. Nice to meet you.”

  “Judy said you have some questions, follow-up on Hoening and McCaleb.”

  “Yup,” Joe said. “Bob Olig too.”

  “Ah, Olig,” Cutler said, smiling at the name. “Quite the characters, those three.”

  “Do you have a few minutes?”

  Cutler looked at his watch. “If you want to sit down and talk, I really don’t, but if you’re willing to tag along with me as I do my work today, I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Joe looked at Demming and she nodded.

  “We’ll tag along,” Joe said.

  “Good, good. You’ll see some really cool stuff,” Cutler said, turning on his heel and gesturing in a “follow me” wave.

  Joe instantly liked him for his affability and enthusiasm for his job. He guessed Cutler was a pretty good manager.

  “I’ve got a couple of things to wrap up in my office,” Cutler said, leading them outside on a wooden walkway that led, eventually,to some low-slung administration buildings painted Park Service brown and tucked into a stand of lodgepole pine. “We’re winding down the season, as you can see. It’s quite an operation. That means shutting down all the facilities and winterizingthem, dealing with the reassignment of employees, year-end reports, too many things to count. It would almost be easier if we just stayed open all year, but we don’t.”

  “So you knew the victims pretty well?” Joe asked.

  Cutler shrugged. “Pretty well. I mean, I was their boss, not their buddy. But I got along well with them. They were good guys, despite what you might have heard.” He nodded toward Demming when he said it, indicating the tiff they had had with particular rangers like Layborn. “They worked hard and they played hard. Hoening had a bit of an agenda, as you probably know, but a lot of new hires do. They come here to save the place, but the day-to-day work starts to make them forget that.”

  Cutler’s office was small and nondescript, nothing on the walls or his desk of a personal nature except for a photo of him smiling with Old Faithful erupting in the background.

  While Cutler fired off responses to e-mails, Joe turned to Demming.

  “The Pagoda is a palace compared to this,” Joe said. “Cutler manages hundreds of people, but his office. .”

  “I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That’s how it is. Governmentemployees are the royalty and the contractors are our serfs. Discussion over, Joe.”

  “Sorry.”

  She smiled to show she wasn’t angry. Then: “I talked to Ashby for an hour last night. He’s not happy. The news about Darren Rudloff is getting out, and he’s gotten some calls already.Apparently, some reporters are asking him questions about the Zone of Death, like are there a bunch of armed outlawsin it, why isn’t the Park Service patrolling the area, those kinds of things. He doesn’t like it one bit and he’s meeting with Chief Ranger Langston this morning to discuss the situation. I may get called back to Mammoth to help out.”

  “How can you go back and keep an eye on me at the same time?” Joe asked slyly.

  She shook her head. “I’d rather stay here. I don’t know where we’re going, b
ut it seems like we’re headed somewhere.”

  “Story of my life,” Joe said.

  “If I get called back, you may be asked to leave.”

  “Oh.”

  “They don’t trust you,” she said, lowering her voice. “They think you’ll do something to bring the whole Clay McCann/Zone of Death thing back into the headlines. In fact, it’s already happening, isn’t it?”

  “I hope so.”

  Cutler tapped the keys on his keyboard with efficient violenceand fired off the last e-mail, saying, “There! Chew on that, Park Service weenies!” As he did so, he glanced at Demmingand said, “Sorry, ma’am. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Demming said coolly.

  Cutler leaned back. “I’m going off my shift here now and putting on a different hat. Follow me.”

  Cutler launched himself out of his chair and was out the door in a shot, Joe and Demming struggling to keep up. Cutler explainedthat his primary interest in life was geology, specifically geothermal activity. It was the reason he came to Yellowstone in the first place, twenty years before. Although he was area manager,his degree and background were in science, and he’d publishedscientific papers in international journals and kept a regular and ongoing correspondence with geologists around the world, wherever there were geysers. He had personally mapped more than two thousand geothermal sites within the park, and served as the secretary for the loosely organized Geyser Gazers, the volunteers who watched and recorded eruptions and hot-spotactivities.

  “So that’s what brought you out here,” Joe asked, “the geysers?”

  Cutler nodded. “I originally wanted to join for the Park Service,but that didn’t work out.”