Scott Free

by John Gilstrap

  Noon tomorrow. Nineteen hours, half of them in the freezing night—the hours when sanity and survival were their most fragile.

  And the sun was falling fast. He had maybe an hour to get his signal fires set up, before he needed to be inside the shelter.

  Only an hour.

  • • •

  BY THE TIME BRANDON RETURNED to Eagle Feather around five, patches of blue had begun to invade the matte gray sky.

  Road crews had been busy. Plows had created great mountains of filthy snow on both sides of Main Street, all but obliterating the view of or from any of the storefronts. All the way down the mountain, he’d tried to get through to the chief’s office on his cell phone, but with all the switchbacks, his phone couldn’t hold a signal.

  The slick street made him walk like an old man as he approached the elevated sidewalk, but once under the cover of the overhang, things got easier. He reached for the glass door, then deferred to a young man on his way out, clearly a local, just from the way he was dressed. “Thank you,” the man said as he sidestepped quickly to free the door up for Brandon.

  Brandon nodded and smiled.

  “Are you Mr. O’Toole?” the stranger asked. “Scott O’Toole’s father?”

  Curiosity formed an uneasy mix with dread in Brandon’s gut. “I am.”

  The man stripped the glove off his right hand and reached out. “Tommy Paul,” he said. “I worked with Cody Jamieson up at SkyTop. Him and Scott hung around a lot together this past week and I got to know him. I’m really sorry to hear about all this.”

  Brandon shook Tommy’s hand gratefully. “Thank you very much.”

  “He really was a good kid. Both of them were. I’ll miss them.”

  “They’re still alive,” Brandon said. He tried to keep his tone easy, confident.

  “Oh, yeah. Right. Well, they’ve certainly still got a chance, don’t they?”

  “A good chance. So, when did you last see Scott?”

  Something changed in Tommy’s demeanor—nothing huge, but Brandon suddenly had the feeling that the conversation was stretching longer than the stranger had expected. “Um, let’s see. Night before last, maybe? The night before the crash.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  A switch flipped somewhere, and right away, Tommy looked uneasy as hell. “It was just, you know. Some of us were hanging around the patrol shack. Nothing big.” He made a show of checking his watch. “Look, I really should be running…”

  Brandon stepped closer and purposely softened his stance, his expression. “Tommy, relax, okay? I’m not looking for trouble—not for you or anybody else. I know that Scott likes to down a few beers when he gets a chance, and I know that he’s always on the prowl for a good time. I don’t approve, exactly, but I’m a realist. What we say stays between us, I promise. I’m just grateful to have some insight into his trip here.”

  Tommy relaxed and in time he smiled. “Then you know what we did. No drugs, I promise you that, but we did down a few brews.” He started to laugh. “Cody was one crazy dude, and Scott just seemed to make him crazier. When they got jammin’ on the guitars, man, it was something.”

  Brandon beamed.

  “Knew his way around the slopes, too. Scott, I mean.”

  “I’m on the patrol back home,” Brandon explained. “Nothing like the stuff you do up here, I’m sure, but Scott spent just about every cold weekend of his life on the slopes somewhere.”

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah, he mentioned something about that. Talked about you a lot, in fact. We have a tradition here called midnight snowmobiles. It’s a race up Widow Maker. After he damn near ran me off the trail, he told me that you taught him that every race has only one winner. Despite the fact he nearly killed me, I had to admire the spirit.”

  “So he won?”

  Tommy scoffed, “Hell no, he didn’t win, but he didn’t get hurt, either, when I rammed him into the hay bales.” Brandon must have looked shocked, because Tommy quickly added, “It was all in good fun. But like he said, there’s only one winner.”

  Brandon understood perfectly, and again, his emotions felt frazzled. He needed to break this off before he lost it. He forced a smile and shook Tommy’s hand again. “Thank you very much for sharing that,” he said. “It means a lot to me.”

  The sadness made Tommy uncomfortable. “My pleasure. Listen, if you’re still in town tomorrow, we’re having a little prayer service in the chapel for Cody. And Scott, too. If you want to stop by…”

  Brandon considered that. “Let’s see how the day plays itself out, okay?”

  Tommy nodded. “Sure, it’s your call. I just wanted you to know. Five-thirty tomorrow afternoon, after the slopes close.” He tossed off a wave and was on his way.

  Brandon stepped inside the station and pressed the buzzer. Jesse Tingle let him in. “Welcome back, sir. No news yet, I’m afraid.”

  “The place looks busy.”

  “Yes, sir. Now that the weather’s calmed down a bit, we’re beginning to get the flood of calls. Burst pipes, medical assistance, auto damage, that sort of thing. The nonemergency stuff that I guess people thought could wait for a while. All that and the president of the United States. I voted for him and now I can’t wait for him to leave.” He stopped, suddenly aware of how little Brandon cared about any of this. “I’m sure the chief can give you better details on your son than I can.”

  “Is he in?”

  “Not just now. He had to run out for a few minutes, but I expect him right back. Just make yourself at home.”

  “Think the boss would mind if I helped myself to his coffee pot?”

  Jesse winced. “I suppose it’s okay if you’re current on all your vaccinations.”

  Brandon smiled and headed for Whitestone’s office. The squad room had taken on the feel of a beehive. Staffing appeared to have doubled from the morning’s skeleton crew, and all of them seemed sharply focused on whatever they were doing.

  In the chief’s office now, he navigated his way to Mr. Coffee, found himself a clean-looking cup and helped himself to the dregs in the pot. It looked more like the tail end of an oil change than coffee, and loading it with creamer and sugar only made it taste like creamier, sweeter waste oil. He chugged the whole thing and stepped back into the squad room. All around him, deputies wandered in and out, phones rang without pause, and through it all, the air vibrated with the staccato scratching sounds of radio transmissions, most of which, to Brandon’s ear, were just so much garbled static.

  With all battle stations manned, Brandon found himself with nowhere to sit, until one of the friendlier faces from the morning—Charlotte Eberly, he remembered—offered him a chair in front of her desk.

  “I took the last of the chief’s coffee,” he said. “I’ll make more if you point me in the right direction.”

  Charlotte gave a disapproving wave. “I don’t have anything to do with his sinful ways. I do my best not to pay attention.”

  Okaay. “Might I ask where the chief went?” Brandon asked, anxious to change the subject.

  Officer Eberly had returned to whatever document she had up on her computer screen and spoke without looking. “He’s on a tour of the square with the mayor.”

  Brandon scowled. “A tour?”

  Charlotte looked up. “The Founder’s Day speech,” she said, but it clearly meant nothing to Brandon. “You know that the president grew up in this county, right? Well, he’s the keynote at the hundredth anniversary of Founder’s Day. I understand there’ll be a big announce—Oh, here he is!”

  Brandon turned to see Barry Whitestone striding down the center aisle between desks and he rose to intercept. “Nice tour?”

  Whitestone didn’t know how to interpret the question. “Let’s talk in my office.”

  Twenty seconds later, they were in their same spots as this morning. Brandon barely waited for Whitestone’s butt to hit the chair. “A tour, Chief? My son is out there somewhere, and the best use of your time is touring a photo op?”


  Whitestone was on the feather edge of losing his temper. “Tell you what, Mr. O’Toole, why don’t I find a place out back where you can rant, and then when you’re done, you can come back here and we’ll talk all this through.”

  Anger boiled in Brandon’s gut. In about ten seconds, this was going to get ugly.

  Whitestone leaned forward, his arms folded on the desk. “There’s something you need to understand, Brandon. From the very beginning, I’ve promised you blunt honesty, and here’s a big dose of it. Are you ready?”

  Brandon glared for a moment, then nodded.

  “Finding those two boys is our very top priority, but not our only priority. On a different day, with different weather, the air would be black with civilian and military aircraft scouring that mountain. Once they found some indication of where they were, there’d be nobody in this building but the roaches as we all headed out to save them. But this is this day, not a different one, and on this day, it’s been snowing like a son of a bitch. Runways have to be plowed, and flight crews have to make it in from home. It’s just not a simple task. We’ve got thousands of citizens in this town, tens of thousands of tourists and the leader of the free world who loves to keep a high profile.”

  “So, I’m supposed to just wait?”

  Someone rapped lightly on the door before opening it. It was Jesse Tingle, and Whitestone held him off with a raised forefinger. “No, you’re supposed to worry like hell. You’re a father, it’s your job. It just happens that life would be a lot easier for all of us if you would take a shot at trusting me. Yes, Jesse?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but there’s a phone call for Mr. O’Toole. A Nadine Yodell?”

  Brandon inhaled, as if to make a speech, but found himself short of words. To Jesse, he said, “Okay. Yeah, I’ll take it.”

  Whitestone rose with Brandon, but stayed behind his desk as the deputy led his guest to a tiny cubicle that Brandon had never even noticed.

  “She’s on line four,” Tingle said. “The one that’s blinking.”

  Nadine was Brandon’s administrative assistant back at Federal Research. She was his gatekeeper, his watchdog and one of his closest confidants. As Brandon settled into the seat and punched the extension, Jesse stayed around just long enough to make sure that he got it right.

  The voice on the other end was the first thing that felt normal all day. “Hi, Mr. O’Toole, it’s me. Have they found him yet?”

  Hearing the question asked so directly, by such a familiar voice, brought a fresh rush of emotion. He quickly cleared his throat. “Uh, no, not yet. They’re about to go out there looking for him, though. I’ve got a really good feeling about it.”

  “I’m so sorry. We all are. Everybody I’ve talked to today wants me to make sure I tell you that you’re in their prayers.”

  Brandon nodded and turned away from the others in the squad room. “That’s sweet of all of you. Please thank them all for me.”

  “It’s all over the news here today, too. At Scott’s high school—Robinson, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, at Robinson, they apparently had a big assembly, where every student tied a yellow ribbon for him. I saw a picture of it on television. There’s four thousand students there, and every surface has a yellow ribbon somewhere. It made me cry just to look at it.”

  Brandon clamped his jaw and shut his eyes tightly. He saw the picture in his head: thousands of students, most of them weeping with the depth of emotion that only adolescents could muster, ceremoniously tying their ribbons, and holding each other while they cried for his son.

  “Anyway, it was a beautiful thing to see,” Nadine continued. She seemed a little unnerved by his silence.

  “I’m sure it was,” Brandon whispered. He cleared his throat again, and then one more time before he felt in control. “Listen, how’s the place running without me?”

  “You shouldn’t worry about us,” she said. “Worry about you.”

  Mother Nadine. “Easier said than done. I feel like everybody in the world has something to do but me. I’m going nuts here. Humor me and make me feel important again.”

  Nadine laughed too hard. Humor in the face of disaster is tough to pull off. In five minutes, she ran down the hit list of important issues. He listened, made a few comments, and then they were done.

  He hung up just in time to see the chief’s door open. Whitestone beckoned with a finger.

  Brandon tried to read Whitestone’s expression, only to decide that the chief would have made one hell of a poker player.

  Chief Whitestone stepped aside to usher Brandon into the inner sanctum. “Help yourself to a seat,” he said.

  “What’s up?”

  Whitestone gestured again to the wooden chairs, while he walked behind his desk to take a seat in his own. “Please.”

  Brandon sat.

  “Take a look here,” the chief said, spilling a topographical map across his desk. “We’ve had a plane in the air for about three hours today, scouring the length of this route between SkyTop and Salt Lake City.” He traced an invisible line on the map with his forefinger. “Now, I’ll grant you that with the time available, we were only able to do the most basic, and frankly unscientific kind of search, but I’m sorry to say that it turned up nothing.”

  Brandon nodded, trying his best to show no emotion. “You say you searched the line. What about the area around the line, to either side?”

  Whitestone nodded, appreciating the question. “Here’s how we did things: The pilots traveled this line countless times today, starting in a tight oval, and then expanding it on each pass. They were looking for any signs of a crash—wreckage, footprints, fires, signals, anything.”

  “Can they actually see anything from up there?”

  Whitestone shrugged. “Some places yes, many places no. That’s the problem we’re facing here.”

  “So you’re telling me they saw nothing at all.”

  Whitestone paused, looking as if he wanted to find a better way to phrase it. “Yes, I suppose that’s what I’m telling you. If you take this straight line on the map, the search today covered twenty-five miles to either side of it.”

  A fist in Brandon’s chest was using his heart as a punching bag. “But you’re not finished, though, right? The search will continue through the night?”

  Whitestone looked away. “No, it won’t. There’s more weather coming. A squall line’s moving in from the west that’ll be getting here right around dark, and will play havoc for the better part of the night. The good news is, tomorrow should be pretty clear, and we’ve received commitments from the Air Force for some help.”

  “Meanwhile, those kids spend a second night in the mountains.”

  Whitestone acknowledged the point with an imperceptible nod.

  Brandon continued, “And tomorrow, when the search resumes—if the search resumes, because God knows we can’t get people to drive through the snow—all the signs you’re looking for will be just that much more buried. Did you know that Cody Jamieson’s friends are already planning his memorial service?” Brandon asked.

  “I heard it was a prayer service.”

  “Same thing. It means that the participants have lost faith in everything but divine intervention. They’re writing the kids off, Chief. And so are you.”

  Whitestone made no response.

  “It’s too early to give up,” Brandon pressed. “They’ve still got time. I know my way around cold weather survival, and I’m telling you, they’ve still got time.”

  Whitestone conceded the point. “Yes, they do. There are a lot of variables, of course. It got down to fifteen below last night, and we’re expecting more of the same tonight.”

  “But the snow and its cloud cover will moderate the temperature,” Brandon countered.

  The chief nodded again. “It’s still damned cold. We had a high of twenty-three down here today. Up on the mountain, who knows? But yes, assuming they dressed for the weather, and given their training, I
suppose there’s still time.”

  “As long as a week, I’d say,” Brandon pressed.

  For the first time, Whitestone showed real skepticism. “Not hardly. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that’s possible.”

  “How long, then?”

  Whitestone sighed. “Assuming they’ve made it this long, that means they’ve already sheltered up somewhere, so I guess it’s not out of the question that they can make it through tonight as well. But we’d better find them tomorrow.”

  “Do you believe they’re still alive?”

  The chief squirmed in his chair. “Come on, Mr. O’Toole, I don’t have a crystal ball. I have no way of knowing—”

  “Please, Chief. It’s important to me to know. Do you believe in your heart that my son is still alive?”

  For a long moment, the two men just stared at each other, their gazes locked. Twice, Whitestone opened his mouth to say something, and both times he aborted the effort without making a sound. Finally, he closed his eyes. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  12

  SOMEWHERE AMONG THE THOUSANDS of tiny parts scattered in the snow, you’d think there’d be a decent-size container, but the best Scott had been able to come up with was a thermos cup. Hey, any port in a storm, right?

  Now he just needed to find the gas cap. Okay, so that wasn’t exactly difficult. The stenciled label, Fuel, helped a lot, as did the arrow pointing to a rectangular panel that looked remarkably like the one on his dad’s car, only this one was on the wing root on the left-hand side. With the wreckage twisted the way it was, the panel faced down, such that once Scott loosened the cap, gravity should take care of the rest, posing the far greater worry that maybe he wouldn’t be able to stop the flow once he’d started it. The last thing he needed was a flood of gasoline in his front yard.

  So, he decided to take it slow. Working bare-handed to keep spilled fuel from soaking his gloves, he straddled the wing as if it were a horse, poised the cup under the spout and reached for the fuel cap. The fuel started to flow after a half-turn, splashing out from behind the cap like water from a shower head. The combined effect of cold and wet on his skin was like folding his hand into a nail sandwich.