Trial by Ice and Fire

by Clinton McKinzie

  Roberto follows me in and helps himself to a Snake River Ale from the refrigerator. He sits down at the table. “Now did you get the guy?” He's staring, sensing that something's very wrong with me but not understanding what.

  “I didn't. But the fire did.” I tell him what had happened, everything up until the end—that part, Wokowski's death, I'm not ready to talk about. My words dry up when I reach the point where the flames are all around us and we're diving for the supposed safety of the hole.

  Roberto tries to fill the silence that follows by shaking his head some more and saying, “I wish I'd been there for you, bro.” Then he tries in a lighter tone, “Besides, I would've liked to have seen it.”

  “I'm glad you weren't. I almost got cooked. Two men did, and one of them was a friend of mine.” My throat constricts so tight when I think of Wokowski that it threatens to pitch my voice high. I try to shrug it off. “Right now you ought to be worried about missing your hookup with the Feds. And getting me arrested and fired for harboring a fugitive.”

  “Thought you'd already gotten yourself fired, che.”

  “Just warned off the Morrow case. Now that Laughlin's burned up, I guess I'm in the clear. Everything's going to be cool with the office.” But it's not the office I'm worried about. “Listen, 'Berto, I can't talk about this anymore. Not right now. Tell me, have you seen Rebecca?”

  He takes a long pull from the beer, half draining it. Then he lets his grin come back onto his face even though his eyes are still probing me. “If she saw me, she wouldn't stick around very long.”

  “You scare her, 'Berto. It's nothing personal. It's got more to do with me than with you.”

  I walk out on the porch and dial Rebecca's cell phone but she doesn't answer. No service, an automated voice tells me.

  Mungo, who's followed me outside, cocks her head at me. The sly, shit-eating grin displays the tips of her teeth before she looks away.

  Information gives me the number for the Spring Creek Ranch. The front desk there tells me that no, Mr. Hersh and his daughter have not checked out yet—they've asked for a late departure at noon. I realize it's been more than twelve hours since I shouldered my pack and walked out on Rebecca.

  When I'm connected to the room, it's Rebecca's father who answers. “Anton,” he says stiffly. “What do you want?”

  “Please put Rebecca on, David.”

  He doesn't say anything for a moment, and then his voice is angry. “Why do you think my daughter would be interested in talking to you after you left her again last night, when she came to you?”

  “Please. Get her.” I want to explain about the fire and the kidnapped prosecutor but none of it will come out.

  There's another long silence on the other end. Mr. Hersh sighs. “None of this was my idea, you know. She wanted to go about it her own way. Feel you out, I guess, before putting it to you directly. And from what I understand, the feeling-out process didn't go too well.”

  “I know. I fucked it up. Please, just put her on.”

  “I can't. Her paper called early this morning. They wanted her to cover the fire until they could get another reporter and a photographer up here. Then, at breakfast, one of those movie people she recognized but I didn't was introduced to her. In the ensuing conversation, an interview was agreed to. She thought it might make for an interesting story, to view the fire with a movie star. That's where she is this morning.”

  “Was it Alana Reese?” I'd just seen her at the ranger station. Why hadn't Rebecca been there, too?

  “No. Even I know who she is. It was a young man. Gordon, or something like that.”

  Danny Gorgon. What had Angela said, about how he was too chickenshit to come at me directly, but watch out, that he'd try to do something nasty behind my back? My legs feel weak. I feel as if I've been socked in the stomach. I have to brace myself against the porch railing.

  “Where are they?”

  “They must have taken a hike together. Rebecca came back to the room to change and get her hiking boots. She said something about how they were going to go and view the fire from a place this Gordon knew about. A place that hadn't burned. A thermal spring, I believe.”

  I hit the END button without saying good-bye then sag even farther against the rail. Roberto comes out and sits on the steps. Even before he went to prison he was like that, hardly being able to stand a few minutes indoors. He strokes Mungo's head with one hand, cooing in Spanish to her. When I pull the car keys from my pocket, Mungo's ears catapult forward.

  “You look seriously freaked, che. Where you going?”

  “To get Rebecca.”

  “She in some kind of trouble?”

  I shake my head. “Don't worry about me. You leaving for Salt Lake?”

  His blue eyes burn right through me. “Yeah. I guess,” he answers slowly. “Trap or not, I'm gonna walk into it. That's what you think I ought to do, right?”

  I'm finally learning not to worry about him. If it is a trap, he'll go to prison for a long, long time. And if he runs, he'll keep soloing and using until one or the other finally kills him. He lives how he wants.

  “Shit, 'Berto. It's your choice. Either roll the dice or get out of here, go back home.”

  His strange blue eyes never leave my face. He doesn't even blink. “How about I come with you for now? You're looking seriously wigged, che. Like you might need your big bro around.”

  I walk down the steps into the lane and open the truck's door. “No. This isn't anything dangerous. Not physically. Not for me, anyway. Besides, if I'm seen with you we're both going down. I'll see you around, 'Berto. Good luck.”

  Only later do I realize that I forgot to hug him good-bye.

  FORTY-TWO

  THE TRAILHEAD LEADING TO THE SPRING is not far from both my cabin and the hospital. It's on the Elk Refuge, up an unmarked offshoot of the dirt road that cuts through it. I guess it will take me no more than twenty minutes to be on the trail. But when I pull onto the refuge road from Broadway, I find that it's clogged with traffic.

  A long line of cars stand idling on the prairie. Brake lights are lit up all the way to where the road rises up into some low hills. They've come to view the fire's devastation, like it's some gruesome accident that just demands active rubbernecking. There are some breaks in the traffic where a few humped buffalo have set up an unofficial roadblock. Tourists are getting out to snap pictures of the surly beasts and further stalling traffic. Making things worse, other cars are returning from the hills and the road is too narrow in many places for passing.

  I beat both fists on the steering wheel. Mungo pulls her head back inside the window and stares at me in concern.

  “Hang on, girl.”

  Pressing down on the gas pedal, I nose up onto the grass on one side of the road and start bouncing over the prairie. When thin groups of trees block my path I swerve back down onto the road, cut through the line of cars, and climb back up on the other side. I can't drive as fast as I'd like because of all the buffalo. But I still leave a big cloud of dust and a symphony of blaring horns. I hope they all get gored. I'm too busy steering to look back at the chaos I'm leaving behind me. I don't bother checking the rearview mirror to see all the middle fingers that are surely upraised in my wake.

  I almost blow by the turnoff for the trailhead. It's barely visible around one bend in the road, nothing more than a pair of faint tracks half covered by grass and brush. The Pig's big tires spit dirt against the undercarriage as I accelerate onto it.

  For two miles it climbs east into the Gros Ventre Range. The woods grow thicker on both sides as I gain elevation. At some turns I have a view of the raw, blackened landscape to the north. I shiver, unable to forget hours earlier having been in the middle of what had caused that. I've never known nature to show her power so nakedly.

  The double-track dead-ends in a small turnout surrounded by a buck fence. A break in the fence and a Forest Service backboard mark where the hiking trail begins. Two cars are parked here. One is a red
Range Rover with a rental sticker on the back bumper. The other is Rebecca's green Saab. Barely taking the time to shut off the engine, I'm out of the Pig and running with Mungo loping behind me.

  The trail is well maintained and obvious. It zigzags up a well-maintained forested hillside to where it then follows a rocky ridge even higher.

  The ridge itself starts out broad and tree covered but soon narrows to only twenty or thirty feet across. At times it narrows even further, becoming little more than a knife edge of vertical stone. There is a steel cable bolted to the rock to form a handrail at one such place. I scurry across it without needing to touch the metal, but behind me Mungo lets out a small cry of concern. I turn around and see her hesitating.

  I could probably coax her across but I can't spare the time. Instead I yell for her to stay there—that I'll be back soon. Then I turn and keep running.

  The fire hadn't reached the top of the ridge because of two hundred feet of blank, unvegetated stone below. The cliff served as a firebreak, containing the fire to the north and funneling it beyond the low hills toward Elation Peak. A fast-flowing river tumbles at the cliff's base, undercutting it and further protecting it. Beyond the river the earth is still smoking. Only five miles to the north is the box-shaped outline of Elation Peak. It causes me to shiver again.

  In the distance, farther up the ridge, I can see where it bisects a hanging valley that droops between two large peaks. The dale on the left has what looks like a small lake in it. It glistens in the sunlight where it's not surrounded by trees. A waterfall spills down toward the river far below. It looks like some kind of magical Shangri-la, especially with all the devastation around it.

  With worry and rage pounding in my blood, I race over the ridge, careless of the drop on both sides. It doglegs at one broad spot and the trail switches to the other side. As I clamber over some boulders, reaching a flat area the size of a small room, I notice that a man is sitting on top of some rocks on the other side. Looking as if he's meditating, he faces to the north and Elation Peak. The sun is in my face so I can't get a good look at him but I'm sure it's not Gorgon. His posture isn't right for the arrogant prick, and he doesn't have the same muscular outline.

  One of my boots kicks loose some rocks. The man's form jumps at the sound and he turns to face me. My skin crawls on my bones as I make him out.

  FORTY-THREE

  I STOP DEAD IN MY TRACKS. Only my right hand moves to snatch the gun from where it's clipped to one side of my hip. I jerk it out and point it at his chest as my thumb automatically flicks off the safety.

  “Hey, Bill.”

  Bill Laughlin is naked from the waist up except for blood and ash and huge raw blisters. A pair of what might have been jeans covering his legs are in charred tatters. The fireproof suit he'd had on last night is nowhere to be seen. It appears that it hadn't done him all that much good anyway—nearly every inch of his body has been terribly burned, from his scorched scalp to the soles of his bare feet. His face is lumpy and swollen. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth have stretched out beneath the bloating skin to resemble old knife cuts. Both his pupils have ballooned to fill the irises, and the whites of his eyes are crimson with blood. He looks like something that has crawled out of hell.

  The pain he's feeling must be truly incredible—there's not supposed to be anything as agonizing as a third-degree burn. Especially a full-body burn. He would have been far better off if he'd died up on the butte. But rather than pain, I see only a chilling animosity in his gaze. A coiled, violent madness as evident here in the sunlight as it had been last night.

  My hand tightens around the pistol's beveled grip as I consider my choices. I can take him in. Where? To the hospital? He'll probably die there from the burns within a few hours. If not soon, then soon enough from the inoperable aneurysm that's leaking in his head. But a soft bed and painkilling drugs are better than he deserves. For all the trouble he's caused, twenty-five years ago and then again within the past two weeks, he deserves a far less pleasant death.

  “Thinking about jumping?” I ask him.

  “It crossed my mind,” he says. “But you've given me a better idea, Burns.”

  His voice is little more than a rasp. I have no doubt that his lungs have been seared. There's a wet rumble behind the words indicating that they're filling with fluid. He shakes his head, as if trying to clear his thoughts, then winces from the movement.

  “You're not going to shoot,” he tells me. “Put the gun down. I'm no threat to you now.”

  He limps down from his rock and onto the broad, flat shelf where I'm standing. Behind him he leaves a wet footprint of blood, skin, and pus. His face is twitching slightly beneath the swelling and the sores.

  “How'd you get off the butte?” I keep the H&K fixed on his breastbone.

  He chuckles wetly, clears his throat with effort, and says, “Guys like you and me, we're resourceful. I fought forest fires for twenty summers and fought gravity the rest of the year. There were plenty of little hidey-holes up there. Not as good as the one you took, but I found one.”

  “By the looks of you, it wasn't good enough.”

  He chuckles again and coughs. This time he spits out phlegm. Or maybe it's lung tissue. “I figured that while I'm still breathing, I might as well take a last look at that spring where the three of us used to swim naked. My God, even then, that woman was a goddamn tease. Thought it might be a good place to croak. Send her a last message. But I don't think I can make it on my own. So the hospital will be even better. They're there, aren't they? Cali and the bitch? Maybe she'll want to spit in my face. I can still spit right back.”

  I stand immobile, frozen by the vehemence of his words, with my gun aimed steadily at his chest. What am I going to do? I ask myself. Laughlin must sense my ambivalence, and also must be aware of my desire to put a bullet through him, because he asks in an even quieter voice, “Is Cali okay?”

  “She survived.”

  He shakes his head, slower this time, while keeping his gaze on me. “I didn't want to hurt her, you know. But in the end, it was the only way.”

  “To get back at Alana? For rejecting you?”

  “It was never my plan to hurt Cali. Just to use her. Scare her to scare the bitch. Make her think someone was going to take away the thing she loved the most. Make her suffer a little, you know? Feel fear and loss. But I wasn't going to hurt Cali if I didn't have to. It was supposed to be the bitch up there last night for the finale. When she got away, I had to improvise. I'm resourceful, like I said.”

  “Cali loved you like an uncle.”

  He shrugs. “I loved her mom like a woman. You know what that's like?”

  “Your brain is leaking, Bill.”

  He laughs. And as soon as he does he begins coughing even harder—wet hacking that shakes through his body. When he finishes retching and sputtering, he stands up straight and looks at me again.

  “Thought I'd buried you.” His Adam's apple bobs in his throat, as if he's holding back another laugh. “Under the snow. I figured that would be another good way to scare the shit out of that woman, the way she was always surrounded by bodyguards. Kill her daughter's bodyguard. Show her she's not as safe as she thinks. That she's not immune.”

  The feeling of being under that mountain of snow comes over me again. The silence and the pressure and the panic. The gun is starting to shake a little in my hand.

  He lurches a step closer and leaves another footprint on the rock. We're about six feet apart now. I can smell the barbecue-like scent of charred flesh rising off him. The sky behind him seems to become a sharper, brighter shade of blue. A breeze rushes up from beneath the cliff and is cold on my sweat-soaked skin.

  His voice goes very soft again, becomes almost pleading. “All I wanted was a little affection, you know? My best friend gets fried after stealing the bitch from me and what does she do? She treats me like I'm the one who died. Avoids the sight of me. Like I was the corpse, not him.” Then his tone grows harsher. “For t
wenty-five years the only way I could get close to the cunt was by hanging around with her daughter. Then I get this thing in my head, and I've run out of time. I'd wasted my life for nothing. All that was left to do was make her pay for those goddamn wasted years.”

  “Did you kill Patrick?”

  “'Course I did,” he snaps, his tone growing harder still. It's almost a growl. “What do you think? He takes my woman and acts like we're still pals. So I pushed his ass into the fire. Right off that butte. The dumb fuck went down screaming. Cali would have gone the same way. I can almost hear Alana screaming, too. Music to my ears.”

  My arms are starting to ache—both with the weight of the gun and the need to put a bullet through what remains of this man. A man I'd once admired.

  His blood-filled eyes jerk to one side of me. “What's this? A wolf? Am I seeing things now?”

  Mungo has finally caught up. She's walking slowly toward us with tentative steps. Her black lips are pulled high and her fangs are bared—looking nothing close to a nervous smile now. The fur around her neck and shoulders stands straight up, causing her to look huge and fierce. A low rumble vibrates from her chest.

  “That's right,” I tell him. “She's a hellhound. Come to guide you to your new home.” This is a new Mungo—I've never seen her snarl before and the sight of it is almost as alarming as what I'm thinking of doing. She's watching Laughlin intently, as if frightened by the menace in our postures but intrigued by the smell of roasted flesh.

  Shoot him, I tell myself. Just shoot the asshole and get on with it.

  “Arrest me, Officer,” Laughlin says, looking at me again with what might be a swollen leer. He holds his hands out to me, the insides of his wrists touching. “Cuff me and take me in. Let's go see the bitch at the hospital.”

  “Under other circumstances it would be my pleasure, old man. But now, why don't you just jump?” I gesture with my free hand toward the cliff edge behind him.

  “Because there's opportunity in terminal illness, Burns. Doesn't a dying man get a last request? Her bill is still outstanding. She hasn't paid enough.”