End Game

by David Baldacci

  “Is that so unusual?”

  “It is if we don’t know who’s driving it. Know every Yukon round here. Hell, there’s only five. And none of ’em are black. Or new, like yours. With Florida plates. Rental, most likely,” he added knowledgably.

  He pulled up a chair, sat down next to Robie, and put out a big, weathered hand.

  “Deputy Sheriff Derrick Bender. Pleased to meet you. We don’t get many Feds out here.”

  Robie shook his hand. “Will Robie. My partner here is Jessica Reel.”

  Bender offered his hand to her. After they shook he glanced at Malloy.

  “We were just going to go over the file on Mr. Walton,” said Malloy.

  Bender grunted and sat up a little straighter, his holstered gun smacking lightly against the wood of the chair. “Damnedest thing. Man comes into town and then disappears.”

  “He came out here every year,” said Reel. “So I suppose you’ve run into him before?”

  “I haven’t,” said Malloy. “Because I’ve only been here about a year. In my official capacity. Before that I would come and visit my sister, Holly, who lives here. But I never ran into your Mr. Walton.”

  Bender rubbed his face and then tossed his Stetson across the room, where it neatly settled on a hook on the wall.

  “I met him before. Lots of times. Like you said, he came out here most every year. Fishing up in the rivers, lakes, and streams. Watched him a few times. Man knew what he was doing. People think fly-fishing is easy. Well, it ain’t. Takes skill. And patience.”

  “Did you ever speak to him?” asked Robie.

  “Oh yeah. Nothing in particular. Just chitchat.”

  “He was from this area,” said Reel.

  Bender nodded. “My momma knew Mr. Walton pretty well. They went to high school here together. Long before I was born, he’d gone. Headed east. Guess he wanted to get the hell out of here.”

  “He ever do anything besides fish?” asked Reel. “Did he mingle? Catch up with old friends?”

  “Sometimes. There’s the Walleye Bar. He’d go there. Most visits he’d have dinner with my momma at her house. I was there for a few of them. Once he brought some fancy French wine.” Bender shook his head. “Just give me a good old American beer.”

  “Did he visit your mother this time?” asked Reel.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “We’ll have to confirm that,” said Reel.

  “Did you see him this trip?” asked Robie.

  Bender nodded. “He was staying at the same place he usually did. Little cabin up on the north face of Kiowa Butte. One road up and down. About a half mile from the cabin is the river he’d fish in. A trib runs off the North Platte. It’s tailwater fishing.”

  When they looked at him quizzically he said, “Meaning downriver from a dam. In this case the Jedediah Smith Dam. Water releases from the bottom of the dam so it keeps the temperature stable. Good for fishing. You can catch brown and rainbow trout, some perch, walleye, smallmouth. Now, the South Platte over near Denver is better fishing. Lots of tourists go there to fish. But we get some here, too.” He paused. “The Platte’s where we get most of our water. We don’t get too much rain here. Only way we can farm is to irrigate the crops. The North and South Platte Rivers hook up to form the Platte River in Nebraska. Then it connects with the Missouri and the Missouri to the Mississippi, and that sucker flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Quite something when you think about it.”

  Reel and Robie exchanged a puzzled glance at this long tangent, then Reel said, “Did you talk to Walton this time?”

  Bender waggled his head. “No, I sure didn’t.”

  “When was the last time anyone actually saw him?” asked Robie.

  Malloy opened her file. “Three days ago. He came into town to get some more fishing line. He ate at the restaurant across the street. I’ve spoken to the waitress and she said he seemed perfectly normal. Same for the fishing gear shop. Then he drove back up to his cabin and that’s the last anyone saw of him.”

  Robie said, “Any signs of something unusual at the cabin? Our notes say his rental car was still there.”

  “No signs of a break-in or a struggle, if that’s what you mean,” replied Malloy. She closed the file. “Now maybe we should head up there and look around. Might find something that strikes you. After all, I assume you knew the man.”

  Did we? thought Robie as they headed out.

  Chapter

  9

  THE DIRT ROAD to Blue Man’s cabin snaked upward, with switchbacks and narrow straightaways intersected with hairpin curves making up most of the journey. Though the elevation wasn’t that great, the sun seemed more intense and the air thin enough to be noticeable to your lungs.

  They finally pulled to a stop in front of a rustic cabin about nine hundred square feet in total. It had weathered cedar siding, a planked front porch with an overhang, a shingled roof, a stone chimney, one front door, one rear door, and four windows all on one floor.

  A dark blue Chevy Colorado pickup truck was parked in front.

  Robie and Reel had followed Malloy’s Mustang. Bender had ridden shotgun with his superior.

  They all got out and congregated in front of the cabin.

  Reel and Robie took in the surroundings, each gazing at angles and flanks from where trouble could have come. There weren’t many of them. As Malloy had said, this was the only road up here.

  “Any other people living around here?” asked Robie.

  Malloy shook her head. “Just this cabin.”

  “Who owns it?” asked Reel.

  “Roark Lambert. He lives in Denver. He owns about a dozen cabins and houses around here. Rents ’em out to tourists.”

  “All fishing?” asked Reel.

  Bender answered. “No. Some are here to photograph wildlife. Others to hunt wildlife. Some come to just get away. Go hiking, camping. Smoke pot without being hassled.”

  “I take it the house and truck have been searched?” said Robie.

  Malloy nodded. “Didn’t find much of anything. But we can take another look. You might notice something we missed.”

  Reel looked at the truck. “Colorado? Seems appropriate.”

  “Nice set of wheels,” said Bender. “You got rear seats plus the truck bed. Pretty popular here. Can handle the terrain real well.”

  Malloy pulled out the truck keys. “We found these in the cabin.” She popped the locks and opened the driver’s-side door. “We swept it for prints and other forensic residue. Came up empty. State police did, too.”

  It didn’t take long to search the truck. It was pretty much empty of anything.

  There was a Georgetown Hoyas ball cap on the rear seat.

  Bender said, “I thought he went off to Stanford. That’s what my mom told me.”

  “He had multiple degrees,” said Reel, picking up the cap. “Georgetown was where he got his master’s.”

  “Good school,” said Malloy. “In Washington, DC. You never did mention what Mr. Walton did for a living.”

  Bender stared at his boss for a second before looking at Robie.

  “No, I never did,” said Robie. “Ready to hit the house?”

  Malloy lifted the yellow police tape stretched across the front door and unlocked a police padlock that had been installed there.

  “We don’t have the manpower to station someone here twenty-four seven,” explained Malloy. “We do the best we can.”

  “Who reported him missing?” asked Reel.

  “He’d hired JC Parry, a local guide,” said Malloy. “JC said they were supposed to meet here at six in the morning. JC drove here to pick up Walton. The Colorado was here but no Walton. The front door was unlocked. JC went in, and when there was no sign of Walton, he called us in.”

  “I thought you had to wait for a certain period of time before someone could call in a missing persons report,” said Robie.

  “That’s true under normal circumstances. But the man’s truck was still here. He coul
dn’t walk down to town. The truck started up just fine, so there were no problems with it. The cabin was empty, and Walton wasn’t here for his appointment with JC. We searched all around the cabin and even went down to the stream where he fished, even though his pole and tackle and the rest of his fishing gear were in the cabin. We found zip. We looked at all the places he might have fallen or gotten into trouble. There aren’t too many of them. Nothing.”

  “Any animals up here that could be the cause?” asked Reel. “Bear, mountain lions?”

  Bender said, “Mountain lions very rarely go after an adult. Same for coyotes, lynx, and bobcats. Now, we got bears. Black bears. But unless you get between a momma and its cubs or surprise it, you ain’t going to have problems with them. Now some people claim we still got grizzlies in Colorado, but I ain’t never seen one. And I don’t know anybody who has.”

  Malloy added, “And an animal attack would have left traces. There were none.”

  Reel pointed to the cabin. “Then let’s see what we can find inside here.”

  The cabin had only three rooms. An open front space that held the kitchen and a sitting area in front of the stone fireplace, a bathroom, and a single bedroom. They found Blue Man’s luggage, clothes on hangers in the bedroom closet, a toiletry bag in the bathroom, and some food and drinks in the fridge. His fishing gear was neatly stacked on a side table in the front room.

  “Bed was slept in,” said Malloy, pointing to the covers in disarray. “Don’t know if he went off in his pajamas or some other clothes. We did find a gun. Glock ten-mil. It hadn’t been fired. It was in the nightstand next to the bed. We bagged and tagged it as evidence. It’s back at the station.” She looked at both Robie and Reel to see if they wanted to comment on this news.

  Robie said, “How about his phone? Laptop?”

  “We didn’t find either. And we couldn’t find his phone number, so we couldn’t check to see if the phone is on. We can trace it that way, unless someone’s taken out the chip.”

  “It’s not on,” answered Reel.

  “So you already checked on that?” said Malloy. Her voice held a bit of an accusatory tone.

  “Yes,” said Reel, as she glanced around the room. “So the state police were called in?”

  “And then the FBI, in case it was a kidnapping. Funny, when the Feds were called in, that’s when we heard from some folks in DC. Maybe your folks.”

  “Nothing funny about it,” replied Robie, though he didn’t elaborate. “No sightings? No other strangers around here?”

  “Not that we could connect to Mr. Walton,” said Malloy.

  “So he just vanished,” said Reel. “From a place this isolated. Unless he went somewhere on his own, we have to assume that someone came and took him away.” She looked at Malloy. “Any ideas on that? You have any criminal elements around here?”

  “Every place in America has criminal elements.”

  “You have any that are unique or obvious?”

  She glanced at Bender before answering. “This place is isolated. Some folks like that isolation for good reasons, you know, get off the beaten path, off the grid.”

  “And other folks?” asked Robie.

  Bender said, “They come here because they can more or less do what they want. I don’t mean break the law necessarily, you know, but live their lives how they want.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” asked Reel.

  Malloy said, “That means they can build communities with like-minded people.”

  “And what sort of communities would those be?” asked Reel.

  “Most are innocuous. Some not so much.”

  Robie said, “Care to elaborate?”

  “I’m talking about people who don’t want to live in the mainstream. They have their own rules, don’t get in trouble, and they keep to themselves,” said Malloy.

  “I’m more interested in the ones that don’t keep to themselves, that get in trouble and maybe kidnap people,” said Reel.

  Bender shot a glance at Malloy.

  She said quietly, “I can’t say we don’t have any of those.”

  Chapter

  10

  “I DON’T LIKE getting played,” said Reel.

  Robie sat across from Reel in the front seat of their Yukon. She had pulled off the road after they had left Malloy and Bender.

  He looked at her. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Malloy was being less than forthcoming about bad elements being here. She gave no specifics.”

  “It was clear she was fudging her answer.”

  “So why’d you ask what I meant?” she barked, staring at him.

  “Because I like things to be absolutely precise, so there’s no misunderstanding,” he shot back.

  She put the truck in gear and drove on into town.

  They had reservations at the only hotel in Grand. It was at the end of the main street, a surprisingly modern-looking structure with clean lines and an inviting entrance.

  As they hauled their bags in Robie commented on this incongruity in the poor, isolated town.

  Reel said, “Tourism. It’s all about dollars. I can’t imagine they have much more to live on.”

  The young woman at the front desk kept giving them curious glances.

  “I see that you don’t have a departure date,” the woman said.

  “When we know, you’ll know,” said Reel.

  “Will you need help with your bags?” she asked.

  “No,” said Reel curtly.

  “And just to confirm, it’s two rooms?”

  “Absolutely,” said Reel, just as curtly.

  They went to their rooms on the second floor, which were next to each other, with one interconnecting door. The rooms were nicely if a bit fussily furnished, like the designer wanted to see how much stuff could be crammed into each. Robie and Reel unpacked and met back down in the lobby.

  “What now?” asked Reel.

  “You hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe we look around and find people to ask questions about Blue Man.”

  She looked uncomfortable with this suggestion.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Robie.

  “I work much better behind a scope than a badge.”

  “Well, now we work behind both, apparently. Actually I hope it’s more badge than scope.”

  They walked outside. Reel noticed the group of people staring at them from down the street.

  Four men and one woman. They all looked as rugged as the Eastern Plains.

  And they each carried guns in holsters. One of the men also had a long gun on a strap over his shoulder. It was a Remington 700 with a scope on the Picatinny rail.

  “Forgot Colorado was an open-carry state,” said Reel.

  Robie said, “Legal pot and lots of guns. Like chocolate and peanut butter.”

  “You mean oil and water.”

  “You think they might know anything?”

  “We won’t know until we ask.”

  They moved in that direction and both watched as the group stiffened on their approach. Hands flicked closer to weapons.

  Robie’s and Reel’s pistols were concealed under their jackets. They kept their hands at their sides. Yet if the time came, their gun pulls still would be faster than the opposition’s. Practicing the motion thousands of times tended to give one the edge on deploying and firing one’s weapons.