Mammoth

by Douglas Perry

  “All-points on the Johnsons?”

  “Yes,” Lloyd said. “The sheriff’s doing that. Armed and dangerous.”

  Hicks opened the passenger-side door, put his foot up on the runner. So he had about an hour left of being in charge. He’d sure like to catch Melvin and Gordon before the cavalry showed up. He felt confident his heart could take a little more excitement. “What’s Marco doing now?”

  Lloyd smirked. “He’s at Benny’s. He didn’t know where to go or what to do.”

  Hicks chose not to comment with Winnie present. He flipped open the glove box and pulled out a map. He asked Winnie to get up, and he spread the map out on the floor of the trunk. “You know where old Homer’s hunting cabin is? By Meyers Lake?”

  “Never been there,” Lloyd said. “You think that’s where they’ve gone?”

  “As good a guess as any. That’s where Gordon went after the incident with the teen girl, the skier. I’m willing to bet they’re going into the mountains. They’re not dumb. Not Melvin, anyway. He’ll know they’ll stick out like a sore thumb on the roads or any of the towns around here.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “So I’m thinking I’ll take you and Winnie into town and then head out there. There’s more than a few hours of light left. You’ll coordinate with the sheriff.”

  Lloyd looked at him, confused. “You want to go up there alone?”

  Hicks put a finger on the map to hold his place. He tried to crinkle his forehead in a father-knows-best kind of way. “Winifred has been through an ordeal. You should take her to get checked out. Be with her.”

  Winnie seemed startled that her name had come up. “I’m fine,” she said. She tried to open her eyes all the way to prove it. The right one, limp and browned like a fast-food burger, refused to cooperate. It fluttered at half-mast. She soldiered on anyway: “Drop me at home. I just need a bath.”

  Hicks started to speak, stopped himself. He grimaced at Winnie.

  “Really,” she said. “I need some rest is all. I’m okay.”

  “We need a statement from you.”

  “She can do that later, Chief,” Lloyd said. “I can’t let you go up there alone. Those boys are going to be armed. Marco can call the doctor for her.”

  “Marco has done enough.”

  Lloyd shifted his weight and glared, as if he were considering holding his breath and stamping his feet. “It’s not safe for you to go after them on your own,” he said.

  Safe? It wasn’t safe for the two of them to go, either. Hicks folded up the map. It infuriated him that his lieutenant’s desire for action trumped his concern for his pregnant wife. It saddened him that Winnie was trying to play tough for her man. He walked around to the driver’s side and wrenched the door open. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  ______

  They left Winnie at the office with Marco. Hicks said as few words to the young officer as possible to show his disapproval of his performance; just told him what to do and that was it. On the way out of downtown they spotted four cars in quick succession, all coming from the direction of the highway—the exodus, it seemed, was starting to reverse itself. By the hardware store on Main, they saw Terrence Galloway stepping out of his pickup. Terrence waved at them to stop. Lloyd flicked the siren light as he drove past so Terrence understood they weren’t ignoring him.

  Hicks noticed the bank in the rear-view mirror. “Shit. See if you can get Marco on that thing,” he said, pointing at the radio. “He needs to secure the bank. We can’t have looky-loos poking around in there before the sheriff arrives.”

  “Right. The bodies are still in there.” Lloyd reached for the radio.

  Hicks couldn’t believe he’d left the bank like that. That was one more screw-up he could add to the ledger. He should have told Frank to hammer a board over the door. James Towson and Alice Krendel’s blank faces rolled through his brain, and he tried to push the images away. Thirty years as a cop, and he’d seen only a handful or so of dead bodies, and most of those had been homeless men who’d frozen to death. TV shows made it seem like cops were looking over murder victims every day, but it wasn’t as normal as people thought. Maybe in New York City but not in Visalia and Fresno, Hicks’s ports of call during his career. He had never before seen a man’s face half blown off. He’d never before seen a caved-in eye socket, and a flap of fried forehead skin tossed backward, shifting the hairline like an askew wig. He’d never before seen a young woman in a demure blouse-and-skirt combo flat on her back on the floor, her big, plaintive eyes filled with blood. Hicks wondered if he was going to be sick.

  “It isn’t working,” Lloyd said, dropping the microphone back into its cradle.

  “It’s a block and a half away!” Hicks barked. “Pull over. Pull over right there.”

  Hicks jumped out of the car and walked into the liquor shop, which was empty and a goddamn mess. He picked up the phone behind the counter: no dial tone. He looked down and saw that someone had yanked the cord out of the wall. Jesus Christ, can you believe this? He slammed the phone down and stormed out of the store. He waved at Lloyd in the truck and jogged down the street to Terrence Galloway, who stood by his pickup, watching. Without letting Terrence say a word, he quickly explained what had happened and that he needed Terrence to hustle over to the police department and tell Officer Barea to secure the bank’s door.

  “My God, Chief, how can this be?” Terrence said.

  “I know, Terrence, I know,” he said. “And we’re going to catch the men who did it. We’re on our way right now.” Lloyd had backed up the Bronco and opened the passenger-side door. Hicks climbed in and Lloyd stepped on the gas. The chief kept his eye on the rear-view mirror until he saw Terrence Galloway running toward Second Avenue.

  Chapter Twenty

  Melvin got out of the car and began to walk. This was it, he told himself. It had to be.

  The drive out here had left him confused and frustrated. Everything had changed since the resort had been built in the Sixties. Roads had been added; others had been altered or abandoned. Vacation homes had taken chunks out of the forest. He’d missed the turnoff because of the bait shop. The shop was gone and the lot had been cleared. It probably would be replaced by a fancy luggage store. The junction was different as well. Dirt had been good enough for years—for Melvin’s whole life—but now it was blacktop. Tourists wanted to know that their nature land was safe, that it was part of the regular world. Melvin stopped in his tracks, looked to the north and then back at the mesa in front of him. The access road should be right here, but there was nothing.

  “This it?”

  The voice startled Melvin. Taking a breath, he waved dismissively at Gordon. He’d told his brother to stay in the car. He couldn’t concentrate if Gordon was yabbing at him. He marched on, farther from the car and Gordon. The lake should be over there, but when he reached the ridge, there was only a roll of shrubs below. He remembered the flannelbush and spreading gooseberry, but the stand of white fir where they’d always left the car had disappeared. Aspen surrounded them.

  He couldn’t blame this on development. No, this just wasn’t the place. But they were close. He could feel it. He returned to the car and pulled himself behind the wheel. “We’re almost there,” he said.

  “Okay.” Gordon knew not to question Melvin about such things.

  Melvin started the car and maneuvered it back onto the blacktop. He tried to remember when he’d last been to the hunting cabin. It’d been a long time. Back when he was still talking to Homer. Back when Homer was alive. He looked over at his brother, who was staring blandly out the windshield. He never thought to ask Gordon for help, and for good reason. Gordon’s shirt—white, unadorned—probably hadn’t been laundered in a month. His jeans, rolled up to the top of the ankle, looked even worse.

  Melvin flicked his eyes to the dashboard. He put his left hand on the inside of the door, felt i
t quiver under the spell of the engine’s power. This Eldorado was a monster. It could roll all night and all day, through the California desert, through Arizona’s scrubland, right on into the teeming hordes across the border in Mexico. He thought of the Speedy Gonzales cartoons that always got Gordon cackling: Andale! Arriba! Arriba! Epa! Epa! He looked out the windshield and up at the black sky. Ol’ Homer was up there somewhere, smoking his hand-rolled and snickering. Another fine mess. That’s what the old man liked to say whenever Melvin had screwed something up, and now Melvin said it to himself.

  “What’s that there?” Gordon said.

  Melvin tapped the brake. He followed Gordon’s finger to a small dirt road that jutted out of the forest and linked up with the blacktop. He was amazed his brother had spotted it. He would have blown right past it without an inkling. Bringing the Eldorado to a lifeless roll, he peered at the hole in the landscape. He had to admit it looked familiar. He turned into the road. The car jounced, and he had to hold tight to the steering wheel to stay in his seat. Gordon grabbed onto the dashboard. The headlights poked and flickered at nothing: dirt and gravel, flashes of greenery as the road meandered. Cottonwoods hung low overhead. Their branches banged the roof and scraped at the windows, like strikers warning off a carload of scabs. Melvin remembered the cottonwoods from his childhood. They made him think the woods were haunted, that when people died they left the town and settled in the forest. Homer had laughed at his son’s fear. “I got to toughen you up, boy,” he’d said.

  Melvin thought about how easily he could have killed Homer out here. He could have shot him in the back so easily. No one would have thought he did it on purpose. He was just a kid. A kid who needed toughening up.

  Melvin pulled the Eldorado into the tall grass, shut the engine down, and climbed out. This time Gordon also stepped out of the car. Melvin squinted in a vain search for the opening with the white fir trees. Seeing nothing, he tried to picture the cabin. It was small and rudimentary, he remembered that much, but it did a pretty good job of keeping the elements out. He and Gordon didn’t have any supplies with them. They’d left in too much of a hurry. No food. No clothes. Nothing. That’s why Melvin had thought of the shack. Not only did no one know about it, but Homer always kept it stocked. The canned food would be ancient but edible. There were sleeping bags. A couple of blankets. The lake water tasted fine. It would do for a couple of days until the sheriff assumed they were long gone and they could hightail it out of the area.

  Melvin froze in his tracks. A dog was yowling. No, not a dog, not way out here. A coyote. Gordon, walking with his head down like morons did everywhere, bumped into him from behind. The yowling stopped, replaced by a whooshing through the trees above them. Melvin crept forward. He could smell rancid water and so he slowed, worried that he would fall into a gulley. Where the hell were those goddamn fir trees? He picked up his pace again, feeling desperation begin to gnaw away at his stomach.

  “It’s starting to get dark,” Gordon said.

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Leave it to Gordon to state the fucking obvious. Melvin looked up. The sky had faded to a heavy, steely gray, like a gargantuan UFO was blotting out the real sky. Pretty soon they weren’t going to be able to see anything. They could walk right past the lake, right past the cabin, and not even know it. They could end up out in the badlands.

  Melvin pushed through a tangle of tall grass, stumbled, and his foot splashed. He pulled it back to dry land, felt water squelch inside his shoe. Jesus! He dropped into a squat, and Gordon eased up next to him. They’d found a stream. Melvin couldn’t remember ever seeing it before, but it had to mean they were close. It had to be a tributary to the lake, and the cabin was right at the edge of the lake. Melvin stood, shook his foot, and starting walking again. They followed the line of the stream, swiping at the grass with their hands. Melvin felt like they were walking in a circle. The trees grew thicker; the low branches seemed to move with them, like a herd of dumb animals.

  “I’m hungry,” Gordon said.

  “We’ll eat when we get to the cabin.”

  “We’re not going to find it. This isn’t the way.”

  “Shut up, will you? We’re close.”

  “Let’s go back home.”

  Melvin wheeled on him, furious. “We can’t, you moron.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you had to go and snatch that girl,” he yelled. He felt the spittle fly from his mouth. It had to have hit Gordon right in the face. Melvin hoped so. “The sheriff’s after us. They’re going to blame everything on us.”

  “We can explain.”

  “Go ahead. Good luck with that.” He turned away. “I’m going to find the cabin.”

  Gordon didn’t have anything more to say, which was good because Melvin was ready to kill him if he did. Melvin thought about how good it had felt to kick the crap out of that boy today, and now he wanted to do it again. He imagined driving back into Mammoth View, finding the kid right where they left him, picking him up, and crunching him right in the gut. Melvin felt himself smile. What else could he do but daydream? He couldn’t thump his brother, that wasn’t right. And there was no one else around.

  He walked on without comment for—what? Twenty minutes? An hour? Melvin had no idea. At this point the treeline felt like a wall. He and Gordon were prisoners out here, prisoners walking in the yard. The moon had popped into view, the watchtower’s spotlight. Melvin realized he hadn’t heard a bird or anything for ages. The wildlife had gone silent, watching them. He was supposed to be following a stream, but he’d lost track of it. He wasn’t following anything but his intuition, which was shot. He wasn’t no Indian. He couldn’t put his ear to the ground and tell you which way was San Francisco. He was a modern man.

  Melvin stopped. “This isn’t it,” he said. “We should go back.”

  “I know this isn’t it.”

  “How do you know?

  “I just know.”

  “So you think we should go back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Fuck it. We’re going back.”

  Melvin turned and started back the way they had come. It shouldn’t be hard to backtrack, he reasoned. They’d been plowing through tall grass most of the way; they’d just follow their own path out. They’d been wasting their time out here wandering around, but it didn’t really matter. It just meant they’d be even more tired when they finally found the cabin and they’d sleep even better. He found a clutch of bent stalks, patted them, and plunged forward. He heard Gordon breathing heavily behind him. He thought he caught a whiff of the water, the smell of decay, of algae and dead fish. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom; he spotted more squashed grass and moved toward it. He had a good sense of direction; he felt confident he was heading in the right direction. He would find the car, he was sure of that much. But the cabin—that was probably a lost cause. Maybe they should just make a run for it in the car, he thought. There were some old logging roads back in the mountains—he was certain he could find them. He didn’t know where they led, but as long as he was more or less headed south, it didn’t matter. Once they were outside of the area, they could find the highway. Then they’d be fine.

  He jumped at the sound of branches snapping. Was someone out there? He stopped and put his hand out to Gordon. He listened. All of a sudden, he heard nature again. Noises pinged from every direction: birds calling from treetops, the rustle of animals moving through dead leaves. For the first time, Melvin felt disoriented, like he truly was lost. Was that a voice? He crouched so he could focus his hearing. Words skittered along the night air, distant and undecipherable. A moment later, more followed, answering the first wave.

  “Did you hear that?” Melvin whispered.

  “What?”

  “A voice.”

  “That was you.”

  Melvin stayed in the crouch until he was sure the silence had returned. The voices—w
hatever they were—had been swept away by the night. He had nightmares like this. He would be lost in the dark, beset by monsters, with no one to save him. It was always deathly dark in these dreams, and he was always flailing about blindly, the darkness turning in on itself like a black hole. He jumped to his feet, pushed forward. He was moving faster now just thinking about it, pushing through the underbrush, jogging through an opening in the woods. He recognized the clearing—they’d skirted it right before they came across the stream. By this point, the car had been his destination all along. The hunting cabin was forgotten. The warmth and solidity of the car would be their salvation. No one could get them as long as they were hurtling along at sixty miles an hour.

  They found the road. The dirt road had a checkerboard of tracks crisscrossing it: deer tracks, tire tracks, footprints.

  “What do you think of that?” Melvin said, pointing at the unmistakable imprint of a boot.

  “I don’t know.”

  Melvin kneeled down, ran his hand over it. It was hard and crusty. He couldn’t tell if it was fresh or not. He still wasn’t an Indian.

  They continued down the road, ducking under low branches and pushing through wayward grass stalks that stuck out into the road. Finally, they came up on the back of the Eldorado. For a moment, Melvin thought he was going to cry. He hadn’t let himself believe they were lost, but they had been and he knew it. They’d made it out because he was smart and had a good sense of direction. Of course, there was luck involved, too. He had to admit it.

  He wanted to admit it. They needed luck right now. The night was just beginning. They still had to get out of town unseen and find someplace to hole up for a while. He climbed into the driver’s seat. Leaning back against the leather, enjoying modern comfort again, he felt the sweat and dirt on him. He wiped at his forehead with a hand, adjusted himself so that his underwear mopped at the line of sweat above the waistband. Once Gordon dropped down into the passenger seat, Melvin started the car. He turned the vehicle around and eased slowly down the road—on and on, it went—until at last he found the blacktop. He paused to take a breath, then slammed down on the accelerator.