Back of Beyond

1

The night before Cody Hoyt shot the county coroner, he was driving without a purpose in his county Ford Expedition as he often did these days. He was agitated and restless, chain-smoking cigarettes until his throat was raw and sore. He drove right by the rural bars he used to frequent, not going in. Then the call came from dispatch on his cell phone: hikers claimed they found a burned-out cabin in the Big Belt Mountains to the northeast with maybe a dead body inside.

Even though it was the end of June the weather was unseasonably cold and it had rained in the valley for three straight days. That evening, before the clouds finally lifted and the sun died, he’d seen a dusting of snow on the tops of the Big Belts to the north and the Elkhorn Mountains to the south. Snow.

“Patrol has been sent up there,” Edna the dispatcher said. He liked Edna even though she’d decided she was his surrogate mother and gave him pies and casseroles and tried to fix him up with Helena divorcees. She said, “My list says you’re the one on call tonight.”

“Yeah,” he said. Cody was a Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department investigator. Detectives were automatically called to investigate any “unattended death,” meaning accidents, suicides, or in the rare instance, homicides.

“Because you have nothing else to do,” she said, mock joking.

“Not a damned thing,” he said, deadly serious.

“Are you at home?”

“Yeah,” he lied. “Watching the game on TV. Just a second, let me grab something to write on.” He knew if Edna wanted to she could fire up the tracking screen in the dispatch center and find the location of his vehicle out in the county because of the GPS unit mounted under the front bumper. Or she could have at one time, before he dismantled it the month before because he didn’t want anyone knowing where he’d been going or that he spent his other nights driving, driving, driving.

He pulled to the side of the road into the rough parking area in front of the Gem State Bar, the tires popping on the wet gravel. A single mercury vapor light on a pole threw dark shadows across the parking area. Pools of standing water from the recent rain reflected the light and the few stars that had appeared between night thunderheads. There were five other parked vehicles in front of the bar, all pickups. His pen was somewhere in the ashtray, which was spilling over with butts. As he pulled it out he noted the plastic barrel of the pen was rough with burn marks.

“Okay,” he said.

“The cabin is located past Vigilante Campground on Highway 280, eight miles up Trout Creek on County Road 124. The map shows it’s in the Helena National Forest, but maybe there’s a private place up there.”

He lowered the phone and sat back and closed his eyes without writing anything down. Outside his driver’s side window, two men wearing dirty jeans and hoodies and ball caps pushed their way out the door of the bar. He recognized them as sapphire miners. Sapphire mining was a small industry in the county, and there were scores of one- and two-man claims that had been worked for years and still produced. The miner in the gray hoodie was practically as wide as he was tall. The one in the yellow hoodie was gaunt and skeletal with eyes sunk deep in their sockets. They were laughing and shoving each other. Yellow Hoodie had a twelve-pack of Coors Light under his arm for the road and he’d no doubt leave a trail of empties all the way up into the Big Belts to his little one-man mine. They looked up and saw him parked but didn’t straighten up or try to act sober. He was just a guy in a muddy SUV to them because the vehicle was unmarked. Even the plates didn’t give him away because they were skip plates. If anyone ran a check on them, they’d come back to a fictitious address and company name.

“Cody?” Edna asked.

“I’m here.”

“Did you get that?”

“Yeah.”

“The complainants called from the York Bar. They agreed to stay there until they met the officer so they could guide him to where the cabin is. Officer Dougherty was dispatched to the scene and he is there with them now taking their statement. Should I ask them to stay until you get there?”

“Not necessary,” he said, “I know the cabin. Tell Dougherty to proceed-I’ll meet him there. What did they say about a body?”

“Not much really. They said they thought it was an old place by the look of it and they poked around inside a little. They said that they think there’s a body there because of the smell and what looked like a human hand, but they didn’t actually see the body. They said it was raining hard and getting dark and they just wanted to get out of there.”

“Male or female body?”

“They don’t know. They said the hand might have been a glove or the arm from a dummy because it didn’t look real.”

He nodded to himself. Fire turned human bodies into sexless grotesques. He’d been on the scene where the fire was so hot the dead muscles of the arms and legs cooked and roasted and contracted the body into a fighter’s stance: arms curled against the chest and knees bent, like a boxer in the ring. And the smell, like charred pork…

Outside in the parking lot, the two miners put the twelve-pack on the hood of a pickup and pulled out two cans and opened them. The spray from a can hit Fat Gray Hoodie in the face and he bellowed a laugh as he took the beer.

“Okay,” Cody said to Edna.

He said, “Edna, call Larry. Tell him I need him.”

Larry Olson, the only other detective in the five-man Criminal Investigations Division whom Cody thought was worth a damn. Olson was short, solid, and shaved bald; a flesh-colored fire hydrant who entered a room like a quiet exclamation point. Larry Olson was a Montana legend. He’d solved crimes by careful observation and exhaustive investigation. He wore suspects down. He wore his fellow detectives down. When an unsolved crime went on too long anywhere in the state, the call went out to “borrow” Larry Olson. The word was the only reason he stayed in Helena instead of going state or federal was that he wanted to be there for his three boys who lived with their mother in town.

Edna said, “Larry’s not on call tonight.”

She waited for him to acknowledge, but he didn’t.

Finally, she said, “Cody?”

He held the phone out away from him at arm’s length and made a gargling sound in his throat that resembled static. He said, “I’m losing the signal right now. Call Larry. I’ll call back when I get a better signal,” and closed the phone and dropped it to the seat. Overwhelmed with a wave of nausea and needing air, he pushed open the door and stepped outside, his boots splashing in a deep puddle.

“Good one,” Skinny Yellow Hoodie said, laughing. “Right in the hole.”

Cody ignored them as he bent forward, grasping his knees with his hands. He breathed in the moist mountain air, filling his lungs with it. Mixing it with the smoke. His eyes watered and he stood and wiped at them. Cold water poured in over the top of his low boots, filling his socks. He wished he’d worn his cowboy boots instead.

“You okay?” Yellow Hoodie asked.

“Fine.”

“Want another beer? You could probably use one now.”

“No,” he said. They assumed he’d been drinking. Or, he thought, they recognized him from when he haunted the bars.

“This fucking rain, eh? Day after day. My dad said never curse the rain in Montana, and I never have. But this is motherfucking crazy. El Niño or some such thing. I heard the weatherman call it ‘The summer without a summer.’”

Cody grunted.

“Want a hit?” Fat Gray Hoodie asked in a voice indicating he was holding his breath in, and Cody realized the man was holding a joint between his fingers. Cody’s face must have cracked the miner up because he coughed and expelled the marijuana smoke in a cloud.

“Jesus Christ,” the skinny miner said to Cody. “Don’t mind him.”

“Just being friendly,” the second miner said, bringing the joint back up to his mouth.

Cody Hoyt was thirty-eight years old but often mistaken for being in his late forties. He had unkempt sandy hair, a square jaw, high cheekbones, a broken nose, brown eyes flecked with either gold or red depending on the circumstances and often described as either “mean” or “dead,” and a mouth that twisted naturally into a cop smirk even when he didn’t want it to. He wore jeans, boots, and a loose long-sleeved fishing shirt. Detectives didn’t wear uniforms and dressed to blend into the community. He reached down and pulled the hem of the shirt up so they could see the seven-point gold sheriff’s department badge on his belt.

“I got a card for this,” the smoking miner said quickly, nodding to the joint.

Practically every sapphire miner in the county had a card signed by a doctor for medical marijuana use, Cody had found. And many of them grew plants in quantities and potency well beyond simple home use. It wasn’t a coincidence that the miners used most of the same instruments-scales, small tools, hundreds of small Ziploc bags-dope merchants used.

Cody raised his.40 Sig Sauer in a shooter’s grip.

“Really,” Fat Gray Hoodie said, stepping back and dropping the joint, which extinguished with a hiss between his feet in the mud, “really, I got a card. I’ll show you. Shit, I know I’m not supposed to smoke in a public place, but damn, my back started hurting…”

“Give me the rest of the beer,” Cody said.

Both miners froze, then shot glances at each other.

“You want the beer? You can have it,” Yellow Hoodie said. “Why the hell you want my beer? What kind of cop wants my fucking beer?”

“I don’t,” Cody said with a twisted smile. He holstered his weapon and climbed back into his Ford. He roared away, thinking he wanted that beer so goddamned bad right now he would have killed them both for it.

He’d heard a couple of maxims from Larry after they’d danced around each other for three months. Larry had stopped by his desk one afternoon when no one else was in the office, paused, leaned over until his mouth was an inch from Cody’s ear, and said:

“I know you were a hotshot detective in Colorado and I also know your rep as a drunk and a screwup. I’ve heard about some of the things you used to do when you grew up here, and your crazy homicidal white-trash family. I’ve personally arrested two of your uncles and I sent one to Deer Lodge prison. I was shocked as hell when you moved back here, and even more shocked when the sheriff hired you on. I can only speculate that you’ve got something on him so big and nasty he didn’t have a choice.”

Cody said nothing, but locked in Larry with his best cop deadeye and refused to blink.

Said Larry, “If so, good for you. More power to you, brother. But since we have to work together, I called a couple of your old partners in Denver. They said you were crazy, violent, and unpredictable. They said you were a loose cannon and you were all over the place like a fart on a hot skillet. But they also said you were a fucking fantastic cop and you went at every case like a bulldog on steroids who wouldn’t let go. That you nailed a child-porn king and a sitting Federal District judge in one fell swoop. But they said they didn’t really want to ever work with you again because they wanted to keep their jobs and not spend half their fucking time defending themselves and you to Internal Affairs and the mayor’s office.

“Me,” Larry said, “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But don’t ever screw me, and don’t ever put me in a position I don’t want to be in. Just do the job and show me what you’ve got, and you’ll find out you can trust me. But you need to earn my trust because you brought a lot of baggage back with you to Montana.”

Cody said nothing.

Larry continued, “There are four things you need to know about this place. One, we only get a homicide about once a year. But that’s not good, it’s bad. It’s bad because most of these jamokes around here,” he nodded toward the door to indicate the rest of the sheriff’s department as well as the municipal police department across the hall, “never get enough experience to work a murder investigation smoothly. If the homicide is hinky and not a straightforward domestic or bar brawl, it’s always the first time for most of ’em. They’ve grown up watching CSI and cop shows and they turn into actors they’ve seen on the screen instead of remembering their training.

“Second, the most important topic of every day is where to go to lunch. You’ll find yourself discussing that particular dilemma more than anything else.

“Third, bad things always happen on a Friday, almost always after you’re off duty. So if you’re off duty but on call, you better not hit the bottle like I’ve heard you do.

“Fourth, and most important, take every possible fucking opportunity you can to eat and take a shit, because this county is thirty-five hundred square miles, a third of it roadless.”

With that, Larry Olson stormed out of the room.

Cody thought of the third and fourth maxims as he drove up into the mountains. The rain had started again, and heavy-bellied drops smacked against the windshield as if they were committing suicide. The two-lane highway was dark and slick. Canyon Ferry Lake-so named because they’d built a dam to hold back the Missouri and submerge the historic river crossing-simmered like a stew on slow boil because of the rain. The dark wooded canyon wall rose to his left. He realized he was hungry because he hadn’t had dinner. His vague plan had been to go to York and have a burger, but a burger without a beer seemed an impossible mission.

And he could use a toilet as well. There were outhouses at Two Camps Vista and another at Devil’s Elbow. He hated outhouses because he could never not look down into the pit-sometimes using his flashlight-to see what was floating around down there. It reminded him of too many things.

The possible body in the cabin beyond Vigilante Campground made Cody’s heart pound and his hands go cold on the steering wheel. His mind raced and scenarios formed. He immediately assumed the worst.

He dug out his cell phone and called Edna at dispatch.

“Is Larry coming?” he asked.

“He’s not happy about it.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Quit pretending you’re losing your cell phone signal when you aren’t.”

He sighed. “Okay.”

After a beat, she said, “Should I call the Scooter?”

The county coroner, Sceeter Kerley, enjoyed his job a little too much and was considered a pain in the ass to work with ever since he found out he was the only elected official with the authority to arrest the sheriff. Plus, elections were five months away and he wanted to keep a high profile in the local press. Nothing could be done with a body until the coroner arrived. He owned all bodies in Lewis and Clark County and they couldn’t be touched or removed without his authority.

“Naw, I’ll call him if we have to,” Cody said. “I’ll confirm it’s a body first. The hikers could have seen anything. Lots of things look like hands.”

“And I should ignore the call I just got from a drunken miner saying a sheriff’s department employee tried to steal his beer outside a bar?”

“Yeah, you should ignore that,” Cody said.

He drove just under control, taking the switchbacks hard, crossing the faded double center line with each turn. There wasn’t a light bar on the Ford so he’d toggled on the switch that turned his headlights into strobes that flashed psychedelically on the wet canyon walls and pine trees. And froze two cow elk in their progress across the highway.

Cody cursed and swerved to the left, his tires dropping off the pavement into the muddy ditch, but he wasn’t fast enough. One of the elk inexplicably bounded in front of him and turned her head toward him and their eyes locked a split second before he hit her solidly in the shoulder with the right front fender of the truck. The impact made the Ford fishtail. If it weren’t for the front right tire still gripping the pavement, he would have hurtled left into the bank of trees. He jerked the wheel and the Ford bounced up out of the ditch.

He stopped in the middle of the highway, breathing hard, knowing if his brakes hadn’t bitten he would have gone straight off the edge of the mountain into Canyon Ferry Lake. Rain drummed on the roof. A single headlight pointed out into the dark, lighting only the rain that slashed through the beam. He checked his side mirrors. In the red glow of his taillights he could see the other elk bound up the canyon wall but the one he’d hit was down, its legs churning, head writhing.

“Shit!”

His boot eased off the brake and he began to roll forward again, making sure he could still go forward. The Ford went a few feet before it stopped again. He needed to assess the damage. And he couldn’t leave her suffering like that.

Chanting “Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit…” he got out and walked back along the wet asphalt in the rain and drew his Sig Sauer and shot her in the head. Her thrashing went manic until it stopped altogether. He couldn’t shed the afterimage of her eyes boring into him before he hit her, even when she closed them now. It took five minutes to pull her off the roadway. She was heavy, wet, and smelled of musk and hot blood.

He took a quick look at his bumper. His right headlight was out and thatches of elk hair were caught in the grille. There was a six-inch gap between the frame and the hood. He could smell the sharp odor of burning hair and meat on the hot surfaces of the motor. He had a couple of thousand dollars in damage and years of jokes from the county maintenance shop guys and fellow cops ahead of him. But the Ford still ran.

“Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit…”

For his next trick, he climbed into the cab of the Ford to locate a dead body in a burned-out cabin.

“Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit…”

A body that, in all probability, belonged to someone he knew and trusted and admired and who had kept him tethered to normalcy the past few months by a single fraying thread. And he could feel the thread unraveling.

2

The rain had turned to slush by the time Cody Hoyt drove through Vigilante Campground and continued up the sloppy road along Trout Creek. The patrol officer ahead of him was easy to follow because of the deep fresh troughs in the chocolate one-track. His single headlight seemed to light up and suspend the cold viscous rain in midair.

He could never enter the campground-which the U.S. Forest Service contracted with the L &C Sheriff’s Department to patrol-without remembering the keggers he used to attend there when he was growing up in junior and senior high. That’s when it started, he knew. When he learned that when he drank he could feel like a superman. His muscles and attitude swelled and his reticence and common sense stepped aside. He recalled a fight with baseball bats, remembered the hollow sickening sound his twenty-eight-inch maple bat made when it connected with Trevor McCamber’s forehead. Remembered the creamy white belly and thighs of Jenny Thompson under the blue-green glow of his dashboard lights… before that belly swelled with his son and he married Jenny in a drunken and hasty ceremony at a ranch outside of town. His best men had been Jack McGuane and Brian Winters, fellow seniors and best friends at Helena High. Brian thought the wedding was hilarious. Jack tried to pretend it wasn’t. Jack’s parents spent the ceremony shaking their heads and looking toward the road to see if Cody’s father and uncle Jeter would show. They didn’t.

After graduation from high school, Cody and Jenny moved from place to place until finally he was back in Montana without her or his boy.

Cody Hoyt drove under the towering knotty pine archway and over an ancient wooden bridge barely nosing above the foam and fury of Trout Creek filled with runoff. Around a wooded corner was the cabin, and suddenly there were lights in the pure darkness: the headlights of a patrol cruiser trained on the charred remains of the structure, and a single round Cyclopean eye of a departmental Maglite swinging his way and blinding him.

This was the crime scene, all right.

Cody pulled up next to the patrol SUV. Inside the next vehicle, illuminated by the interior lighting, were two citizens. A man in his forties and a woman who looked to be in her early twenties huddled in the backseat. They looked cold and tired, he thought. The man needed a shave. The woman needed a hot shower. He nodded at them through two sets of windows and they nodded back.

The patrol officer, Ryan Dougherty, appeared at his driver’s window, and tapped on the glass with the flashlight. In the process of doing it, he blinded Cody again.

Cody powered down the window, and said, “Would you quit shining that fucking thing into my eyes?”

“Oh, sorry.” The patrol officer, newer to the department than Cody, was blond and baby-faced with a trimmed bristly mustache that said, Here comes a cop! and eyes that had not seen enough. In fact, Cody thought, Dougherty looked flushed, despite the weather.

“What happened to your front end?” Dougherty asked.

“Hit an elk,” Cody said.

“On the way up?”

“Yeah.”

“Bull or cow?”

Cody hesitated. “Cow.”

Cody knew what Dougherty would say next. “Got a cow permit?” he said, grinning.

“Ha ha,” Cody said, deadpan.

“I bet you’ll be hearing that one a lot.”

“I bet I will,” Cody said, nodding toward the patrol vehicle. “Those two the hikers who found the cabin?”

“Yeah. I met them at the York Bar and they showed me the way up here. Here, I got their names…” Dougherty dug inside his raincoat for the notebook in his breast pocket. He was in uniform: brown shirt, tan pockets, and epaulets. The reason the dopers called them “L &C County Fascists.”

“I don’t need their names,” Cody said. “Unless you think they did it.”

“Oh, no. Not at all.”

“Did they tromp all over the crime scene?”

“Just a little,” Dougherty said. “It’s hard to tell what they touched.”

Cody said, “Why don’t you ask them?”

“I can do that.”

“Good. Put one of them in this vehicle and interview them separately. Walk them through their movements when they first saw the cabin. Find out which direction they came down, and what they did inside. Find out what they touched and if they took anything. It’s amazing how many times citizens take souvenirs from a crime scene. If something sounds wrong or their stories don’t match, come get me.”

“Yes, sir,” Dougherty said. The flush was gone from his cheeks. Cody could tell he was beating himself up for taking their story at face value.

“I’m gonna go take a look,” Cody said.

“It’s wetter than hell,” Dougherty said. “The ash from the fire makes it all… soupy.”

Cody glared at him. “Have you been in the crime scene?”

Dougherty looked away for a second, and when he turned his head back he said, “A little.”

Cody’s voice was ice. “How fucking little?”

“Enough to confirm there’s a body. A big fat one.”

Cody took a deep breath of wet air.

“You aren’t gonna write me up, are you?” Dougherty asked. “I was thinking, Jesus, what if the person is still alive?”

“Don’t lie.” He repeated a sheriff’s department bromide: “You lie, you die, Dougherty. You wanted to see a burned-up dead body. Everybody wants to see a dead body until they see one. Have you had your fill?”

“Christ, yes,” Dougherty said, shaking his head. “I’ll be seeing that thing in my dreams.”

“Step aside so I can get my rain gear,” Cody said.

It began to rain harder.

His foul weather gear was in a heavy plastic box in the back of his SUV and there was no way to reach it from the inside, so he grabbed his Colorado Rockies baseball cap, jammed it on, and opened the door. The cold rain stung when it hit his bare face and hands. He could remember only one other time when he got his rain gear out, the previous spring when he was called to a ranch because the foreman thought he saw Middle Eastern terrorists photographing a missile silo. Turned out the photographers were farmers from India on an agricultural mission sponsored by the State of Montana and their interest was wheat, not missile silos. But it rained so rarely in Montana, Cody thought, that packing rain gear was almost silly. He didn’t know a single person who owned an umbrella, for instance.

He leaned into the back of the Expedition while he wrestled with the box. It was jammed against the backseat and he had to pull it over the top of the rest of his gear-his long-gun case, large evidence box, canvas duffel packed with two armored vests, a survival crate the sheriff insisted they carry with them filled with a sleeping bag, candles, food, and water. While he threw the boxes around and got the one with his crime-scene clothing, he could feel the rain soaking through the back of his shirt and jeans. His boots were already wet from the puddle in the parking lot.

Even though it was getting more pointless by the second, he pulled on rain pants and slipped Tyvek booties over his wet boots. Instead of a raincoat he pulled on a full-length Australian oilcloth duster. Rain immediately beaded on the fabric.

His cell phone burred and he dug it out and saw the call was from his son Justin. Justin was an anomaly to Cody-miraculously, the only genuinely good person he knew. Justin was kind, selfless, and admirable. Plus he was tall and nice-looking and had a sweet temperament. Cody had no idea how he could have spawned such a child, given his own foibles and his long lineage of white-trash relatives. Every time Cody saw his son he looked for signs of his own obsessions and bad traits and had yet to see them. Justin was a fucking miracle at seventeen years old, Cody thought.

“Hey,” Cody said. “This is bad timing and my signal’s weak.”

“Hi, Dad. Sorry, but I wanted to ask you something.”

“I’m on a crime scene,” Cody said. “Can I call you back later?”

“Yeah, but do it quick. I’m gonna be gone for a while.”

“Gone where?”

“Didn’t Mom tell you?”

“I haven’t talked to her.”

“Oh.”

“Look, Justin, this is a really bad time.”

“You said that,” his son said, not masking his disappointment well. “I wanted to ask you if I could borrow-”

“You can borrow anything you want of mine,” Cody said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to go. Later.”

He snapped the phone shut and crammed it in his pocket, feeling guilty and angry at himself for cutting off Justin.

Cody grabbed his digital camera and light setup and his favorite flashlight, a Maglite with an extension that held six batteries and could be swung like a heavy lead pipe-with the same results. It was better than that twenty-eight-inch maple bat. The long flashlights had been banned from most police departments, which Cody saw as a further sign of official wimpification. He turned toward the burned-up cabin.

As Dougherty escorted the female hiker into Cody’s SUV, he said, “Look at you. You look like a gunfighter in that coat. I need to get me one of those. Cool.”

Cody sighed.

As he approached the cabin he tried to clear his mind of everything in it, including Justin’s call, to make it a fresh whiteboard. He wanted to view the scene with absolute open-minded clarity. He knew this was his only chance to investigate the scene without anyone around. If there was a body, the place would be swarming with people within the hour. Skeeter would be there with his deputy coroner and perhaps a reporter from the Helena Independent Record. Skeeter would feign innocence as to why the reporter was there, but everybody would know he called her before he rolled. There might even be a team from one of two local television stations, although he knew they operated lean going into the weekends. And Sheriff Tub Tubman, also up for reelection, would no doubt arrive in his Suburban with Undersheriff Cliff Bodean just a few steps behind him. Mike Sanders, the other detective on call, might surprise him with his presence because the sheriff was there, no doubt bitching about the fact no one had called him. The forensics unit shared by the Helena PD would be present, as would the county evidence tech. So until the scene became chaotic, this was his opportunity to see it fresh. He couldn’t do anything about the fact that the hikers had reported seeing a hand, but he tried to ignore that, also. He wanted to see the hand for himself as if he’d stumbled upon it. If there was a hand.

If there was a body.

Because if there was a body and it belonged to whom he thought and if the evidence pointed to a homicide, he’d personally go after who did it like a rabid dog until he took that person down. And he wasn’t thinking Deer Lodge, Montana, where the state penitentiary was located. He was thinking Dirt Nap, Montana. Which was just about anywhere he wanted it to be.

Cody opened the beam on his Maglite as he approached on a flagstone footpath. He moved slowly, taking in not only the cabin itself but anything of note on the path, which was the only walkway to the place from a gravel parking area. Looking for anything out of place; a wrapper, a cigarette butt, a spent cartridge. He saw nothing unusual.

The cabin was originally built in the 1920s on the edge of a meadow that sloped down to Trout Creek. The twenty acres of wooded land that went with it was surrounded on three sides by the Helena National Forest. An agreement had been granted years before to the Forest Service for a public easement for access to the trails in the Big Belts. That’s how the hikers stumbled on the scene.

The cabin was built of logs and had a deck overlooking the meadow in back and a covered porch in front. Tall spruce trees bordered it on three sides. Although it had fallen into disrepair in the 1970s, the structure had been expensively renovated and restored. At least before half of it burned down, that is.

The cabin was, quite simply, half the size it should have been. The left side was burned to the ground except for a black woodstove and chimney that leaned dangerously toward the creek. The right side was perfectly intact. He looked at the right side first, where the bedrooms and kitchen were. Rainwater coursed down bronze-colored logs, and there were lace curtains in the windows. A plaque near the front door read LEAVE YOUR TROUBLES OUTSIDE BEFORE ENTERING. He smiled bitterly at that.

He slowly circled the outside of the cabin, flashlight down, walking a perimeter he would later flag with yellow plastic CRIME SCENE tape to keep the press and public out. The ground was soaked and muddy. There was standing water in every depression. The grass was long and hadn’t been mowed for a while. Long blades of it bent down as if depressed, heavy droplets on every point. He looked for footprints wherever the grass gave way to dirt. He saw none except for two sets of fresh hiking boot impressions. He shot photos of the footprints and checked to see if they were good shots on the display screen on the back of his camera. He knew where they came from, and glanced back toward the parking area. Dougherty had moved from interviewing the male in his Ford to the department vehicle where the female hiker had been asked to stay.

Then he carefully approached the burned-out part of the cabin, and twisted the lens of his Maglite to narrow and brighten his field of view.

The floor of the burned rooms consisted of black wet tarlike sludge; ash mixed with rainwater. It looked like wet black cement. Fallen timbers and collapsed framing stuck out from the soup. As did the woodstove, a charred black metal desk with a squared-off black box on top of it, and the metal frames of an easy chair, fold-out couch, and gun safe.

It all smelled of charcoal, smoke, rain, and damp. And something else: barbecued pork.

A tangle of wooden beams and wall joints had fallen on the metal skeleton of the couch. But protruding from the tangle was a swelled and waxy-looking arm. On the end of the arm was an outstretched human hand, the fingers splayed out as if to say Stop!, the hand so bloated he could barely see the glint of a gold wedding band on the third finger. The skin of the forearm looked crispy and black, like the burn on the side of a roasted marshmallow. Cody further narrowed the beam on the flashlight to a five-inch spot to peer further inside the load of burned wood. A naked thigh, the skin burned and split to reveal neon orange fat like a pig or a goose.

Cody closed his eyes and reached up and took his cap off and let the rain hit him in the face.

Larry Olson arrived a half hour later. By then, Cody had thoroughly photographed the scene. He’d placed plastic numbered tents near the body, the stove, the desk, and the couch. He’d set up his remote flashes on mounts that lit it up like daylight. The photos he saw on his display were sharp, focused, and thorough. He tried not to think about what he was shooting or who the body had belonged to. He shut off his mind from speculation, and made sure every possible angle and object was preserved digitally. He never once walked into the burned-out rooms, but did all of his shooting from outside. As he did, he found other objects of interest: a metal briefcase swimming in the black soup, the frame of a Winchester rifle with the stock and forestock burned off, a blackened bottle shape he recognized with such intimacy and disappointment that it was as if someone had punched him in the throat.

He looked up as Larry’s flashlight bobbed along the flagstone path and eventually raised to take him in.

Larry said, “Nice raincoat. You headed to the OK Corral later tonight? You and the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday?”

“Yeah. I’ve got issues with Ike Clanton, that bastard.”

Larry actually laughed. “Suicide? Tell me it’s a suicide.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Cody said. “I’m going to go back to my truck and burn one. I’ll stay out of your way. Then I’m going to come back and listen to your initial theory. I’ve looked over the scene and I’ve got more than enough shots of it. And I’ve got a theory of my own, but I don’t want to steer you one way or the other.”

Because it was dark, Cody couldn’t tell what Larry was thinking.

“Have you been in the unburned section?” Larry asked.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Let’s do that together.”

“All right.”

“Bad fucking night for this,” Larry said. “You must really hate me to call me out on a night like this.”

“I don’t hate you, Larry. I want your opinion.”

“Have you called the coroner?”

“Not yet.”

“Jesus, Cody. You should have called him already.”

Cody shrugged.

“I’ll look things over and give you my opinion as long as you call Skeeter and the sheriff and we do this thing properly. Remember what I said. You remember, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“A deal’s a deal.”

Cody nodded. He said, “Take as much time as you need. The scene is yours. I’ve got great photos, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just look it over, tell me what you think. And I’ll make the calls I need to.”

Larry reached up and squeegeed the beads of rain off his shaved head with his hand. “I should have brought a hat.”

“You can have mine,” Cody said, handing him his cap as he passed. It was sodden and heavy with rain.

“Keep it,” Larry said. Then: “Hey, what did you do to your unit? You’ve only got one headlight.”

“Hit an elk on the way up.”

“Yeah, I saw it on the side of the road. You must have been in a hell of a hurry.”

Cody left Larry and walked toward his Ford. He looked up at the dark sky, hoping for an opening in the rain clouds. Nope.

“Hey, Cody,” Larry called.

“What?”

“You got a cow permit?”

His cell signal had faded further, so Cody shooed Dougherty and the hiker out of his Ford. As Dougherty climbed out, Cody said, “Any discrepancies in their stories?”

“No, sir.”

“Good work. Keep them here for a while in case we have more questions, then take them back to the York Bar or wherever they’re headed. Just make sure we’ve got contact details on them if we need to get in touch later.”

The patrol officer patted his notebook. “I’ve got all that.”

“Okay then,” Cody said.

Dougherty paused. “So you aren’t going to write me up?”

“Go. Just go. But remember, never shut off an area of inquiry in any situation. Never assume anything. Always assume everybody is guilty as hell but act like they’re innocent to their face. Remember that. Everybody is guilty of something, every single one of ’em. It may not be this,” he said, chinning toward the cabin. “But it’s something. No one is clean and pure and perfect.”

Dougherty didn’t say Yes, sir. He just stood there.

“What?” Cody said.

“I hope I never get like you,” Dougherty said, and went back to his truck.

Cody said to no one in particular, “I hope you don’t, either.”

It was warm and dry in his Ford. The windows steamed on the inside of the cab due to his wet clothing. He called Edna on the radio. While he talked to her he watched Larry Olson retrace his own steps around the cabin, shooting his flashlight about, moving slow.

“Edna, please alert Skeeter and Tubby-”

“You mean Sheriff Tubman.”

“Of course,” Cody said, glad she pointed that out since there were plenty of locals who monitored the police band. “Sheriff Tubman.”

“What should I tell them?” Edna asked.

“We’ve got a body,” he said, signing off.

He gave Larry plenty of time. Dougherty and the hikers sat in Dougherty’s vehicle waiting for the word to be given for clearance to leave. As Cody waited for Larry to finish up, he glanced into the backseat. The male hiker had left his daypack, the idiot. Cody thought he may need to call Dougherty, tell him to bring the guy over to get his property.

Before he reached for the radio, he slung the pack up to the front seat and unzipped it. He kept the interior light off and the pack below the window so the deputy or hikers couldn’t see what he was doing. The contents smelled of woodsmoke. He felt sorry for the hikers, having to camp night after night in the rain. How fun could that be? Plus, the female wasn’t exactly a looker with her matted hair, hairy legs and underarms (he’d noticed), and no makeup. A typical Missoula or Bozeman bark beetle type.

The pack was heavy and he rooted through the balled-up damp clothing. He found a Ziploc bag with residue of marijuana. See, he thought to himself, everybody is guilty. He wondered if they’d purchased it from a sapphire miner. He put it back, and dug further, thinking maybe he’d find matches and an accelerant and close the case like a supercop. Instead, he closed his fingers around the loving and familiar and understanding neck of a full bottle of Jim Beam.

He whispered, “Oh, no.”

Then: I’ve got to make another call.

Then: To whom? Especially now.

Then: This is not happenstance. This is fate. And Fate says, “You need to drink this. It’s why I left it for you to find. You’ll need it to get through this.”

Before he made the decision he knew he’d make, he looked up and saw Larry walking toward his Ford. And he shoved the bottle back into the daypack and pushed it aside.

“Well?” Cody asked, opening the door and sliding outside. His boots hit the mud with two squish-plops.

Larry’s shaved head beaded with rain and a rivulet ran down between his eyebrow and pooled on his upper lip. “I’m thinking accidental death with an outside chance of suicide, so I’m happy.”

Cody grunted. They’d discussed it before, how at every death scene they hoped like hell it was a natural or an accidental or a suicide, that they’d be done with it in a matter of hours after they turned it over to the coroner.

“Show me,” Cody said, “show me what led to your thinking suicide.”

“Which means you’re not so sure,” Larry said.

“Which means nothing at all.”

“Is suicide on your mind?”

“Constantly.”

“You know what I mean. So, did you call Skeeter?”

Cody sighed, “Yeah. But given the distance and the rain, I figure we’ve got an hour before he gets here.”

“Sheriff coming?”

“Don’t know.”

The two of them slogged down the flagstone path toward the scene, when Larry suddenly stopped. “Hey,” he said, “An hour for what?”

“To come to a consensus,” Cody said, widening the beam on his light to encompass the burned half of the cabin. “Okay, walk me through it.”

Larry pinched down the beam of his Mag to use as a pointer within the wide pool of light. He started with the blackened woodstove.

“First thing I noticed,” Larry said, “is the door to the stove is open. I don’t see that happening after the fire started, do you? The handle locks down from the top, so a falling beam wouldn’t hit it and knock it open. So I conclude it was open before the fire started. So what likely happened was our victim had a fire going-it’s sure as hell cold enough this summer-and left the door open for some reason. The logs inside shifted or sparks flew out or something. Thus starting the blaze.”

Cody said, “Go on.”

“It’s speculation until the arson team comes and looks things over, of course,” Larry said while he slowly moved the beam of his light from the open door of the stove to the black muck that was the former hardwood floor, “but it looks like the fire started here a few feet from the open door and spread outward. The floorboards are completely gone right here, burned completely through to ash.”

He danced his light around the edges of the structure, where the floor butted up against the concrete foundation. “See, there’s still some floor left up against the foundation. So I’m thinking the fire started in the middle of the room and took off from there in all directions. Probably caught some curtains or the walls and climbed up to the ceiling, and then spread across the inside top of the ceiling. With fire burning the floor and all four walls and the ceiling, it was like an incinerator in the room. A fire like that sucks all the oxygen out, so our vic could have died from smoke inhalation before he barbecued-but that’s for the autopsy guys in Missoula to tell us. My guess from working a few of these fire cases is he was dead before he burned, and way dead before the roof came down on him.”

“Okay,” Cody said, “why’d the victim leave the stove door open and crash on the couch?”

“The question at hand,” Larry said, playing it like a game, “the question we must answer in order to declare it a suicide and go home and climb into our dry beds with our hot mamas.”

Cody snorted. He had no hot mama at home, and neither did Larry.

Larry stepped carefully over the exposed foundation and sank ankle deep into the black muck, cursing. He shuffled toward the couch frame and the body, the beam of his flashlight bouncing all over until it settled on a black stalk jutting up from the surface a few feet from the couch.

“You got pictures of this, right?” Larry asked, hesitating before he reached out.

“Yeah.”

“Okay then,” he said, leaning forward and grasping the black stalk and pulling it free. He held the bottle by the neck. “Here’s our answer. Judging by the shape of it, I’d guess Wild Turkey. One hundred proof.”

Cody concurred. He knew the bottle, even though the fire had puckered in the sides of it.

Said Larry, “No way to tell if it was empty, half full, or full. If there was any left when the fire burned this hot it would have boiled anything inside into vapor, which is a sad loss of pretty good bourbon. But it appears there wasn’t a cap on it. Does Wild Turkey have a metal screw cap?”

“Nope,” Cody said. “It has a cork plug kind of thing.”

“Hmmm, then we’ll have to get it analyzed to see if there’s any cork or plastic residue inside the neck of the bottle. But I’d guess our victim opened this baby up and didn’t cap it. Which means serious drinking to me. I mean, when a guy doesn’t bother to put the cap back on between drinks, he’s on a good toot. Right, Cody?”

Cody grunted with recognition.

“So the way I see it,” Larry said, moving the flashlight to the blackened arm and hand sticking out from the couch and debris, “is our victim was feeding the fire and getting pounded at the same time. Except maybe toward the end of the toot he didn’t latch the handle on the stove completely. He staggered back to the couch with his bottle of Wild Turkey and had another drink and likely fell asleep. When the logs in the stove shifted they pushed open the door.

“Of course,” Larry said, raising his flashlight to illuminate his face so Cody could see Larry’s index finger posing pensively alongside his cheek, “first impressions can be wrong, especially in these conditions, and I’m never one to jump to conclusions no matter how much I want to will them to be what I want them to be. For starters, this isn’t an optimal crime scene. In fact, it’s a fucking horrible crime scene, which is why I don’t want it to be anything other than a suicide. The rain changes everything, as we know. There’s both bad and good aspects of this scene because of this goddamned weather.”

Cody could tell Larry was at his best and wanted to be prompted.

“Like what?” Cody said.

“Well, the bad aspects are legion. It’s been two or three days since the fire occurred, for one, so the scene isn’t fresh. Rainwater has contaminated it if we try and look for trace evidence of any kind. Animals have been in here.”

“They have?” Cody said, genuinely surprised he’d missed it.

Larry squatted and trained his beam so it shone from a lower angle into the tangle of debris around the body, illuminating a swatch of dark red striped with white. Bone white: ribs.

“Yeah,” Larry said. “A badger or something got in here and fed through the meat to the bone. So that’s just gross.”

He stood, and said, “Continuing, the slop of ash and water within this foundation is wet enough not to retain any prints or tracks. So we can’t tell if anyone besides us and the hikers were in here. Not that it makes that much difference, since dead is dead. But if there was someone else here with the victim we have no evidence of that. No empty glasses, or cigarette butts, or anything like that. If there were tire tracks out in the parking area or footprints in the dirt they’re gone. We’ve only got what we’ve got. And if anything was left in this part of the cabin before the place burned down it’s literally in the soup now.

“If an accelerant was used as part of a suicide I doubt there would be any trace of it left. Of course, hundred-proof whiskey might have had the same effect.”

Cody nodded.

“But there’s some good things,” Larry said.

“Which are?”

Larry shined his light on the unburned half of the cabin. “The rain put the fire out before it took the whole place down. We might find something in there. That’s where the kitchen and dining room are, and a bedroom. There’s a lot of smoke damage, but who knows? We might find something.

“And the rain and cold might work a little in our favor,” he said. “If the rain hadn’t come no doubt the body would have been subject to the wick effect, because our victim was big and had plenty of fuel.”

The wick effect was when fat smoldered-sometimes for days-and rendered the carcass a mass of black gelatinous goo.

“So because we have a great deal of the body left, the autopsy boys might be able to determine cause of death.”

Cody centered his light on the frame of a metal desk and the black melted hulk on top of it. “We might even be able to recover something from the hard drive of the computer, I just don’t know. I don’t know if data on a hard drive can survive that kind of heat and this damned rain. But we might be able to recover something, if it’s even worth trying.”

Larry said, “And there you have it, folks,” bowing and sweeping his hand toward the body like a performer done with his act, “an accidental death in a remote mountain cabin.”

Cody said nothing. The rain drummed.

“What?” Larry asked, finally. “Are you thinking something else?”

“Let’s take a look inside the rest of the cabin,” Cody said. “Let me grab my gear.”

“You’re thinking something else,” Larry said, his disappointment palpable.

All the walls were black with smoke, but the kitchen was neat and uncluttered. The table was cleared except for salt and pepper shakers designed to look like rising trout. It felt good to get out of the rain.

There were no dishes in the sink. There were unopened packages of meat and vegetables still in the plastic bags from the store in the refrigerator.

“Looks like he’d just been shopping,” Larry said. “There’s no old stuff in here at all, like maybe he’d been gone and just came back with groceries. And there’s plenty here-two big steaks, some potatoes, salad in a bag. Like he was expecting someone or maybe just eating for two. I bet these steaks are still okay, considering how cold it’s been.”

Cody opened the dishwasher, hoping there would be dirty glasses or dishes inside.

“Shit,” Cody said. “He ran the dishwasher before the place burned down, so we won’t pull any prints from the glasses or plates.”

“He was a clean drunk,” Larry said, rooting through cupboards. “I’ll leave all these doors open so you can shoot ’em if you want. It might be better in the daylight, though.”

Cody checked under the sink. Cleaning supplies, garbage bags, the usual. He shined his flashlight into the garbage can, which was lined with white plastic. Garbage cans often held good stuff, he knew.

There were a few items inside, and he took the can out and emptied it on the table. Crumpled paper Dixie drinking cups, wadded-up Kleenex, shreds of cellophane, and the missing cork cap to the Wild Turkey bottle. Cody photographed the contents.

Larry saw the cap in the flash of the camera and whistled. “So we can assume he was on a bender after all.”

Cody pushed the cellophane strips around with the tip of his pen.

“What are they?” Larry asked.

“Cigar wrappers, I think.”

“So maybe he was smoking a cigar as well,” Larry said. “But I still think it was the open stove.”

Cody bagged the cellophane and the Dixie cups and the bottle cap and marked them with evidence numbers.

“What’s with that?” Larry asked, observing.

“You never know,” Cody said. “Maybe a print can be pulled.”

Larry nodded his head but eyed Cody with suspicion.

“Got something here,” Larry called from the bedroom.

Cody entered. Because the door had been closed, there was little smoke seepage or damage. The room was pristine compared to the kitchen; i.e., white walls, made bed, a half-full closet. Larry had his flashlight trained on an open suitcase on a cedar chest. Clothes were folded neatly inside. “He just got back from somewhere and hadn’t even unpacked yet.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Either that, or he was one of those anal types who packs the night before. But that doesn’t account for the fresh food in the refrigerator. Plus, the place just doesn’t seem lived in. It seems like it was closed up for a while and he just got here and immediately decided to get hammered. That’s kind of weird.”

“Yeah,” Cody said. Cody’s beam slid off the suitcase and rested on a battered leather briefcase next to the cedar chest.

“And something else, I just realized,” Larry said. “There weren’t any other liquor bottles in the kitchen. None. So unless he kept his bar out in the den where he burned up and every trace of it melted into the mud, the only bottle here was the one he was drinking.”

“Um-hmmm.”

“Which kind of makes me think he picked it up on the way here.”

“Um-hmmm,” he said, taking several photos of the suitcase, the closet, the bed.

“Hold it,” Larry said, moving farther into the room. He illuminated a dresser with several items on top; a comb, a Delta Air Lines envelope, a paperback, a pile of coins, and a wallet. “ID,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” Cody said. “Before you pick it up let me take some shots of the layout and the stuff on the dresser. Then I want to superglue the room. Then you can check it all out.”

Larry stared at him and Cody could feel his eyes on him in the semidark.

“Cody,” Larry said, “what the hell are you doing?”

“Investigating,” Cody said. “We’re investigators, remember?”

“Fuck you. I’m saying accident and you’re not. You’re treating this as a homicide.”

“I’m crossing every t and dotting every i,” Cody said. “You know, like they teach us.”

“Bullshit,” Larry said, his voice rising. “You’re trying to show me up.”

“Not at all,” Cody said, opening his case and finding the extra-large can of superglue Fume-It. In a closed room, the aerosol glue would fog up the space and collect on any latent fingerprints on the surfaces of the walls, counters, or mirrors. Fingerprints would show on the flat surfaces like floral flocking on wallpaper.

“I’ll wait for you in the kitchen, you…,” Larry said, not coming up with the foul name he wanted that fit the bill.

“Just be a minute,” Cody said. “Close the door.”

Larry slammed it shut so hard the rest of the house shuddered.

Before releasing the spray, Cody threw the briefcase on the bed and opened it.

Ten minutes later, Cody opened the door to the dining area. “Got some shots,” he said. “The man was cleaner than hell. He must have scrubbed his walls. But I got some prints. Make sure we get the evidence tech to lift them.”

Larry stood in the dark in the kitchen and said nothing. Then he shouldered past Cody into the bedroom. The dissipating fog of Fume-It made him cough. When he emerged, he pinched the flashlight between his jaw and shoulder so he could use both hands to hold the ticket jacket up and open it.

“Used tickets and a baggage claim check,” Larry said. “Our man flew here on Delta from Salt Lake City three nights ago.” He dropped the jacket on the table and opened up the wallet.

“His name was…”

“Hank Winters,” Cody said.

“You knew him.”

“Yeah. He was my sponsor.”

3

“Sponsor?” Larry said. “Sponsor?”

As the realization dawned on Larry his face fell. “You mean, like Alcoholics Anonymous?”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “He was my guy. I’ve been up here a couple of times. That’s how I knew where it was and who he was.”

Cody shined his flashlight to where the east wall of the room would have been. “That entire wall was covered with books. Hank was a collector and he had some really valuable first editions. He bought them all over the country when he traveled. Some of those books were really old and dried out. When the fire got to them I bet they went up like cordwood and probably made the fire even more destructive because of the heat of burning paper.”

“But you didn’t say anything. You were holding out on me.”

“You mean knowing him? Or that I was in the program? Or that I think this wasn’t an accident?”

“All of ’em, you son of a bitch. We work together. We talk to each other. No secrets. This is how you got in trouble down in Denver. This is why you’re back in Montana. Damn you, remember when I told you never to put me into a position I didn’t want to be in?”

Cody didn’t shine his flashlight at Larry to see his face. He didn’t need to. Larry was angry, and hurt.

“I wasn’t holding out,” Cody said. “I wanted your honest take on the scene. I wanted you to talk me out of what I was thinking. I hoped you would. You didn’t.”

Larry threw the wallet down on the tabletop. He started to say something but caught himself. Then, mocking, he said, “My name is Cody Hoyt. I’m an alcoholic asshole.”

Cody couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

Larry looked up, surprised. “That’s funny?”

“Yeah, it is. Tonight when I got the call, I nearly double-tapped a doper outside a bar for his twelve-pack of beer.”

Larry looked at him. “How long have you been in AA?”

“Two months. Just two months. Fifty-nine days, five hours to be exact. Hardest time of my life.”

Larry chinned the direction of the body. “And he was your sponsor? I don’t know exactly how this works, but this guy Henry-”

“Hank,” Cody corrected.

“Hank was your sponsor. That means whenever you felt like taking a snort you called him and he talked you down? Like that?”

Cody said, “Like that. But there’s a lot more to it. Nobody can talk a drunk out of a drink except a fellow drunk. He was good, too. He appealed to my best nature.”

“I didn’t think you had one.”

“I don’t,” Cody said. “But I’ve got a kid. I don’t see him much, but he looks up to me because he doesn’t know any better.”

Larry’s face softened some. Not much.

Said Cody, “My dad was a drunk. My mom was a drunk. My uncle was a drunk. My kid could go down the same road. I don’t want him to. So I want to clean myself up. Not give him a role model, you know?”

Larry looked away. “I hate this kind of sharing. Men talk to each other, they don’t share. Sharing’s for assholes.”

“Yeah,” Cody said, “believe me, I hate this Oprah bullshit. But it is what it is. I’m learning to find out what it’s like to be clean and sober. I’ve been pretty much drunk for twenty years. And you know what?”

“What?”

“It sucks. I don’t know how you people do it-too much reality. But Hank was good because he understood and didn’t try to act superior. He knew where I am now. He went through it himself, and he was a tough bastard. Marine. Desert Storm, in fact. And he did it all on his own. His wife left him years ago and he had no brothers or sisters. His parents were dead. He did the Twelve Steps on his own.”

Moments went by. The rain thrummed on the roof.

“Well, good for you,” Larry said. “I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. But it seemed you were holding out, like testing me or something.”

“I told you it wasn’t like that.”

Larry took a deep breath and threw his shoulders back. “So can we get on with this now? Can we figure this stupid thing out?”

“Yeah,” Cody said, grateful.

“So what did Hank Winters do? Was he coming back here from a trip?”

“Probably. He was on the road most of the time. A pharmaceutical rep. His territory was the whole mountain west, from what he told me. He didn’t tell me the specifics, but he was gone three out of four weeks a month. He stayed sober even though he was surrounded by temptation-all those airports and hotel bars. Think about it. He once told me, ‘Even if you’re not at home you can always find a meeting.’ And he did.”

Larry nodded. “So how could he be your sponsor if he was gone all the time?”

“I thought we put that away,” Cody said. “But since you asked, I called him on his cell. He’d answer me any time of the day or night, wherever he was. I pulled him out of some big meeting once with a hospital and he took the call and talked me down for forty-five minutes. A couple of weeks later he said he got beat out of a commission for five thousand bucks. But he took my call. That’s the kind of guy he was.”

“A good guy,” Larry said.

“Yes,” Cody said, looking down at his sodden boots and feeling his chest contract. “A saint. My saint. And not the type of guy who would buy a liter of Wild Turkey and drink the whole bottle alone. He just wouldn’t do that. No way. That’s why I think this wasn’t an accident.”

“Who would kill him? Somebody local? Any ideas?” Larry asked. But it was obvious he wasn’t convinced.

“No idea in the world,” Cody said. “But AA is its own world. We share-I mean talk about-the most intimate things in the world with each other. But other than his job, I don’t really know much about him. That’s the way it works.”

Larry took a couple of steps toward Cody. His voice was low. He said, “Cody, I know you want to believe that. And you may be right. But shit, man, isn’t it ‘once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic?’ I mean, maybe something happened. Maybe he just fell off the wagon. You can’t say it doesn’t happen.”

“Not Hank,” Cody said. But a kernel of doubt had been planted.

“Maybe just this once he fucked up,” Larry said. “It happens. You know it happens.”

“NOT HANK,” Cody said.

“Okay,” Larry said, putting his free hand up, palm out. “I’m just sayin’.”

“There’s something else,” Cody said, suddenly feeling as if the floor was buckling under his feet. “I checked out his briefcase.”

Larry said, “And…?”

“His coins were gone. He always kept his coins in a plastic sleeve in his briefcase. He’d bring them out whenever we met face to face and show them to me. He was so proud of them.”

Suddenly, the kitchen flooded with light. Cars had entered the parking area. Cody could see Larry without lifting up his flashlight. In the glare of the lights through the rain-streaked windows, the surface of Larry’s face and head was patterned with shadowed rivulets that looked like channels in an ant farm.

“Skeeter,” Larry said, chinning toward the window. “Maybe the sheriff, too. At least three units. A whole shitload of ’em.”

Cody didn’t look over.

“The coins,” Larry said. “Were they gold coins or something? Valuable? So you’re saying maybe it was a robbery and a murder?”

Cody shook his head. “The coins weren’t worth shit.”

“So what are you driving at?”

“They’re AA coins,” Cody said softly. “Twelve-step program coins. One for every year from the local chapter. They’re probably worth twenty bucks each, if that. There’s a goddamned elk on the Helena Chapter ones. Hank had nine of them. I’m ten months away from getting my first one and I’ve never wanted something so bad. And they’re missing.”

Larry shrugged. “So your point is what?”

“They’re gone,” Cody said.

Outside, he could hear the sound of doors slamming and loud voices.

Larry said, “We better go out and fill them in.”

Back out in the rain, Larry said over his shoulder, “My cynical cop mind tells me Henry, I mean Hank, tossed the coins away when he decided to go on a bender. You know, like symbolic.”

“Not Hank,” Cody said.

4

Sheriff Edward “Tub” Tubman and Undersheriff Cliff Bodean arrived on the scene in identical beige GMC Yukons with LEWIS AND CLARK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT decals on the front doors. They parked side by side next to Larry’s rig. Dougherty jumped out of his car to greet them. Both hikers remained inside his vehicle. As Larry and Cody approached, Tubman was unfolding his rain suit. His new gray Stetson rancher-an affectation that appeared the day after he declared he was running for reelection-was on the wet hood of his Yukon, the top of it already darkened from the rain. Cody was annoyed the sheriff didn’t know enough to rest a good hat like that crown-down on a surface like real ranchers did.

Bodean was still in his vehicle and talking to dispatch over the radio.

The sheriff shot his arms through the sleeves of the suit but it got bunched around his head and he struggled. Cody was reminded of a turtle.

“Let me help you with that,” Dougherty said, giving the back hem of the coat a yank. When he did, Tubman’s head popped through the material and he came up sputtering.

“Damn thing anyway,” he said, reaching for his hat. “So what have we got, boys?”

Tubman was short and doughy with a gunfighter’s mustache and a tuft of hair that circled his round head like a smudge.

Larry and Cody exchanged looks, waiting for the other to start.

“A body, right?” Tubman said, annoyed. “You’ve got a body?”

“We’ve got that,” Larry said. “Likely three days old. Male. Burned up in the fire.”

Larry briefed the sheriff on the crime scene and what they’d found. He offered no opinions or speculation, just a solid accounting of the facts as they’d found them. He did it with such authority, Cody thought, that on the facts alone there was only one conclusion. He appreciated that Larry didn’t even hint at their earlier discussion.

“Accidental death then,” Tubman said with some relief. “Or what we like to call ‘death by misadventure,’ if you add in the empty bottle. Is Skeeter on the way?”

“As far as I know,” Larry said. “Cody had him called.”

“Let’s hope he shows up alone without his fan club,” Tubman said, shaking his head.

The sheriff nodded toward the hikers in Dougherty’s truck. “Those folks the people who called it in?”

“Yes, sir,” Dougherty said. “I questioned them separately.”

“Did they check out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are they county residents?”

Cody heard, Are they voters?

“No, sir,” Dougherty said. “The man’s a college professor from MSU. The woman’s his student, apparently. They really don’t want their names out, if you catch my drift.”

Tubman smiled. “Too bad. Their names will be in the report. So tell the professor he better start doing some damage control with his wife.”

Dougherty laughed.

“And get them out of here,” Tubman said. “Take them back to their car so they can go home.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cody watched Dougherty get into his vehicle and start it up. He waited for the professor to remember his backpack in Cody’s Ford, but the professor looked distraught. The woman stared out the window, as if contemplating what the rest of the semester would be like now. As they left the two of them appeared to be engaged in an angry exchange, based on the waving of hands.

Cody thought: They left the backpack.

Then he thought: Fate.

The bad blood between the sheriff and the coroner had recently come to a boil when Tubman was quoted in the Independent Record declaring that the cause of death of a twenty-five-year-old drifter found in Lincoln was due to an overdose of meth. He used the opportunity to make a case for increased drug-enforcement funding for the sheriff’s department. The next day, Skeeter held a press conference for the newspaper and the two television stations and made a point of saying they were awaiting autopsy results and, “Maybe our local sheriff should just stop by my office to learn how we actually do our job, since he seems to somehow know things that haven’t yet been determined scientifically.”

Although the victim was later declared to have died due to an overdose, the war had begun over which one of the two would be the official spokesman for law enforcement in the county when it came to dead bodies. Because both men were running again and wanted as much authoritative face time in the press as possible, it was often an ugly race to the cameras for both of them.

Bodean opened his door and leaned out. “We’ve nailed down the owner of this place,” he said. “Local man name of Henry Winters, age fifty-nine. No record.”

“We found his ID,” Larry confirmed.

“It didn’t burn up?” the sheriff asked Larry.

“The wallet was in his bedroom in the side of the cabin that’s still standing.”

“I don’t know him,” Tubman said dismissively. Meaning Winters wasn’t influential with the city council or a campaign contributor.

I did, Cody thought. He was angry with the sheriff’s gut reaction.

Tubman took his wet hat off and looked at it in his headlights. “I gotta get me one of those plastic hat condom things so the felt doesn’t get stained.”

Another set of headlights strobed through the lodgepole pine trees.

“Who smashed up the unit?” Tubman asked, turning his attention to Cody’s dented Ford.

“I hit an elk on the way up.”

“I hope you’ve got good insurance,” Tubman said, not kindly.

“I hope you’ve got a cow permit,” Bodean laughed.

Cody cleared his throat. “I think it’s a homicide.”

Even in the diffused light from the headlights, Cody could see the sheriff’s face darken.

“Larry thinks it could be accidental, but I don’t. I think somebody killed Hank and tried to cover the crime by burning the place down. If it wasn’t for the rain, he would have completely gotten away with it.”

Tubman spat between his feet. “It sounds accidental, Cody.”

“I’ll give you that. But I knew the man. It wasn’t an accident.”

The sheriff turned on Larry: “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Larry shrugged. “We’re still working it out,” he said.

“Before Skeeter gets here,” Tubman said to Cody, “tell me why you don’t think this is what it appears to be.”

Cody told him, leaving out the part about him being in AA. Leaving out the part about the missing coins. Saying he knew Hank Winters never drank alcohol.

“That’s your reasoning?”

“Yes.” Cody could feel Larry glaring at him but didn’t look over. Hearing in his head, Don’t ever screw me, and don’t ever put me in a position I don’t want to be in.

Tubman crossed his arms and shook his head. “So what do I tell the press? What do I tell that fucking Skeeter?”

“Whatever you want,” Cody said. “I’m investigating it as a homicide.”

The sheriff set his jaw. “I know you sometimes forget this, Hoyt, but you work for me. And from what I’ve heard, it’s an accidental death. Do you dispute anything Olson told me?”

“No.”

“Then keep your theories to yourself until you’ve got something a hell of a lot better than what you’ve got. The last thing I need right now is an unsolved murder leading up to the primary. Do you understand? It’s an accidental death until you can prove to me it isn’t. Like if the autopsy boys in Missoula find a bullet hole in his skull or a knife in his gut. Then we’ve got something that changes the situation. Got that?”

Cody felt a familiar rage building up in him. But he managed not to lash out.

“Got that?” Tubman said again.

“I hear you,” Cody mumbled.

Deep in the trees from the direction of the main road he could hear the sound of a vehicle approaching.

“Oh no,” Bodean said, zipping up his long yellow raincoat and turning toward the road. “Skeeter’s coming.”

“Shit,” Tubman said, turning away from Cody, dismissing him. “Skeeter’s been showing up places wearing a sidearm lately. He’s trying to hammer home the fact that he’s law enforcement. Let’s see if the joker is packing.”

Skeeter was called Skeeter, Cody’d been told, because he didn’t like his first name, which was Leslie. SKEETER was stenciled on his vehicle doors. He pulled his four-wheel-drive behind Cody’s Ford, blocking him, and jumped out quickly, already dressed for the weather. Before he zipped his rain jacket, Cody saw Skeeter was wearing a holster.

Skeeter Caldwell was tall, slim, and gaunt with deep-set eyes and a long bladelike nose and he’d recently had his teeth capped so he wouldn’t look quite so much like a ghoul. But, Cody thought, he still looked like a ghoul.

“Sheriff,” Skeeter said in greeting, nodding toward Tubman.

“Skeeter,” the sheriff said, unenthusiastic.

“Where’s the body?”

Four vehicles were lined up shoulder to shoulder with all of their headlights aimed at the burned cabin. Tubman said, “Guess.”

“Can we be professional here?” Skeeter asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Then please have your men show me the victim.”

Tubman turned to Larry. “Perhaps you could escort the county coroner to the scene.”

Larry grunted.

“So what is your first impression?” Skeeter asked.

“Accident.”

“We shall see.”

Tubman rolled his eyes.

“I hope you don’t mind if a reporter from the Independent Record comes along,” Skeeter said. “Carrie Lowry. I guess she heard the report over the radio.”

“I bet,” Tubman said sourly. “And I do mind. We haven’t even secured the scene yet.” He turned to Cody. “Put up some crime tape. Make her keep her distance. I don’t want her at the cabin taking pictures or getting in the way. Tell her we’ll talk to her when we’ve got something to say.”

Cody saluted and said, “Yes, sir!”

Before Tubman turned to follow Skeeter, Bodean, and Larry toward the cabin, he said to Cody, “That’ll be more than enough of that shit, mister.”

Another set of headlights fanned through the lodgepole pine trunks. Unlike Skeeter, the driver was going slowly, picking through the forest, as if unsure that the road was the correct one. Cody had a six-inch roll of yellow plastic tape that read DO NOT CROSS DO NOT CROSS. He’d tied one end to a tree trunk near the entrance to the parking area and was letting it unwind as he walked toward the other side. He shot glances over his shoulder at the cabin as he unwound the tape. Skeeter was bending over the body while Larry provided the light. Tubman and Bodean stood behind them in the rain looking useless.

The vehicle made the last turn and headlights blinded him. Again. He held up his free forearm to block the light and the vehicle braked to a stop with a squeal.

A woman’s voice said, “Oh, come on. You’re telling me I can’t get any closer than that?”

“Sheriff’s orders,” Cody said.

“You’ve gotta let me through.”

“Sorry.”

“Cody,” she said, “you are such an asshole.”

“Hi, Carrie,” he said. “How are you tonight?”

“I thought I was lost,” she said. “Then I finally find it and… it’s you.”

He shrugged. “Did you bring a poncho or something? It’s raining.”

“Oh, really?”

He nodded, then continued stripping the tape across the road. She killed the engine and he heard a door slam. He looked over and saw her raise the tape up over her head and start to stride toward the cabin.

“Whoa,” he said. “I don’t want to have to arrest you and/or torture you until you confess.”

She turned toward him, hands on hips. She wore a battered raincoat that bulged near her waistline and a slouch cap that looked like it had been in her trunk for ten years. Her red hair fell on the shoulders of the raincoat and stuck to the wet fabric.

“Nice look,” he said. “I hope you didn’t dress up just for me.”

“Fuck you, Cody,” she said.

“Language,” he said. “God is listening.”

“Fuck You, Cody.” Then added, “And the horse you rode in on. Skeeter told me I’d have access.”

“I’m sure you will,” he said, “once the scene is released to him. But that hasn’t happened yet. Right now, this is a crime scene under investigation by the sheriff’s department. When it gets turned over to the coroner, you’ll be the first to know, I’m sure.”

She huffed, “What am I supposed to do in the meanwhile?”

“You could help me string this crime-scene tape,” he said. “I could use a hand.”

“You are such an asshole.”

“Get back before I shoot you,” he said, shining his flashlight on her face so she flinched. But before she did, he got a glimpse of her green eyes, the constellation of freckles across her cheeks and nose, that nice mouth.

“Bastard,” she said, wheeling around and stomping back toward her fifteen-year-old Subaru. She climbed back in and slammed the door and he watched her fume until the interior light went out.

He’d met Carrie the year before, shortly after he returned to Montana from Denver. He’d been with the department less than a month, and he sidled up to her bar stool at the Windbag Bar and Grill. He’d watched her fend off rural legislators in town for the session like swatting flies and told her he admired her high opinion of herself. When she didn’t swat him away, he bought her another Jack and Coke, even though he explained that by drinking the concoction she was ruining two good drinks.

Over the next three hours he bought her four more. He kept up with her. She told him about growing up in Havre, going to J-school, marrying twice to losers, landing at the Independent Record. She covered the police beat, she said. She asked him if he’d be a source. He said sure, if she’d quit talking shop and go home with him.

Somehow, he drove her to his apartment without being picked up by the Helena police, even though he cruised through at least two red lights, maybe more. She never noticed because she was pawing at his belt, fumbling at it, pulling the wrong way on the tongue of his belt but with surprising strength. When he threw her over his shoulder and carried her into his place, she laughed and hit at him until he tossed her on his bed. She was a crazy back-scratching wildcat for ten minutes before he, or she, passed out the first time. He recalled little after that, but he had a vague memory involving him trying to connect the dots of her freckles with a felt-tipped pen, which they both found hilarious at the time.

When she came by the station a week later to interview the sheriff after a Marysville outfitter who had shot his wife twelve times (pausing twice to reload) with a.30-06, their eyes locked for a moment and she tossed her red hair, said, “It was hell getting that ink off of my face,” and turned on her heel and clicked away down the hallway.

He knew he wasn’t wanted or needed at the cabin so he returned to his Ford and climbed in. The windows steamed again, but it was good to be somewhere dry.

Through the fogged windshield he saw flashlights dancing in the dark at the cabin and figures moving slowly through the black muck. He thought about Hank and something gripped him hard inside like a talon and suddenly he was tearing up. He couldn’t believe it. Cody hadn’t cried since his dog died when he was twelve. Funerals for his father and mother had been uneventful. But Hank was different. Hank was a tough old bird who wanted to help him solely because he was a kind and good man. Hank was willing to help a fucked-up stranger and show him goodness existed. And Hank was gone.

Cody’s hand, as if on its own, crab-walked across the bench seat until it paused near the day pack of the hiker. Cody didn’t look over. His hand had a mind of its own. It was out of his control. Then it grabbed the neck of the bottle of Jim Beam.

His other hand, also thinking independently, reached across his body and unscrewed the cap. He took two big gulps, as if it were water and he was thirsty, then he jammed the bottle between his thighs. Something inside him said, Stop now, while you still can.

He shrugged the voice away. That had never been difficult, he always won that contest. At first, his belly clutched painfully, as if it were shutting down and rejecting the alcohol. He grunted and leaned forward, doubling up, his forehead on the top of the steering wheel. Then the pain stopped and, as if he were welcoming an old friend, he could feel the familiar warmth radiate through him starting with his chest and spreading out to his arms and legs and head. It was as if he was filling his tank up with rocket fuel.

He sat back and the blackened image of the arm and bloated hand flickered on the inside of the windshield like the screen of a drive-in movie, and he said, “Hank, is this what happened to you? Is this what you did? You opened a bottle again? Tell me I’m wrong because buddy, I believed in you.”

He thought about it. He had another drink.

Then: “Hank, I’m going to find whoever did this to you.”

Cody drank fast on an empty stomach. When he put the cap back on the bottle half of it was gone. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, turned on the interior light, and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He remembered that flushed face from scarred mirrors in bar restrooms and from his own bathroom when he got home after closing time.

He said, “Helloooo, handsome. And welcome back.”

And he suddenly had a plan.

Then he unwrapped and crammed three sticks of Stride Winterblue gum (every drunk’s secret gum) into his mouth and lit a cigarette. The combination would disguise his breath. He knew this from experience. And he opened the SUV door and once again was pelted by rain. If it weren’t for the furnace raging through him, he thought, it might feel cold outside.

Cody walked toward the plastic barrier and wriggled his fingers at Carrie as he pushed the crime-scene tape over his head and approached her car on the driver’s side. She didn’t respond so he leaned his butt against the front fender and drew in deep on his cigarette. He listened to the rain coursing through the pines and heavy drops plunking into surface puddles. Raindrops smacked his cigarette and he felt it important to smoke it to a nub before a lucky drop hit the cherry and drowned it out.

Finally, she rolled her window down. “Yes? Are you here to tell me I can go in?”

“Nope.”

“Then get off my car.”

He wouldn’t tell her he needed to lean against her car for a moment so he wouldn’t fall down. Instead, he laughed. “I don’t think I can make it look any worse than it does now.”

“Jesus,” she said. “You are such an-”

“Sticks and stones,” he said in a way that even charmed him. And he noted she hadn’t rolled her window back up.

“Carrie, do you remember when you asked me to be a source? Remember? It was in the Windbag.”

She was quiet. Cautious. “Yes.”

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Are you jerking me around?” Her voice was attractive, kind of husky.

“No, ma’am.”

“Are there conditions?” she asked. Her voice had become businesslike. Which for some reason made him want to take her home again, but he’d settle for another cigarette. He slapped his raincoat until he found the pack and matches.

“Those things will kill you,” she said.

“Bring it on,” he laughed. “Bring it on.”

“Cody.”

He got the cigarette lit and turned and dropped to his haunches so he was eye-level with her in the car. She didn’t draw back away from him, he noticed. He wished he could see her face better.

“Promise me what I tell you will be confidential,” he said. “My name can’t be in the story and you have to promise you won’t even hint at where this comes from.”

She hesitated, then said, “Okay. But it’s got to be of substance.”

“It’s of substance. And you can’t do one of those ‘an unnamed source in the sheriff’s department’ kinds of things. Or I’ll make your life so miserable you’ll have to leave Montana.”

That made her wince, and she sat back. “Don’t threaten me like that.”

“No threat,” he said. “Just what it is. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear.”

He looked around. Although he couldn’t see everyone at the cabin, he did see flashlight beams bouncing around.

“This isn’t an accident, whatever the sheriff or Skeeter tells you. It’s a murder.”

“Jesus.”

“And whoever did it tried to cover his tracks by burning the place down. The victim was a great man named Hank Winters, and we’re gonna find who did it.”

She shook her head. “Why would the sheriff or Skeeter want to cover that up? I don’t understand.”

He whispered conspiratorially, “Because it’s important to them not to call it a murder. It’s political, and it’s big. Bigger than hell. This could be the story that gets you on the map if you play it right.”

“Oh, Cody,” she said, reaching out of her window and touching his arm. Her eyes glistened in the reflection of the flashlights at the scene.

“Look,” he said. “The murderer left a clue to his identity. I can’t tell you what it was but we’re going to follow it to the killer once we get some outside experts up here with some special equipment. And we will get him. He’s on borrowed time until the analysis comes back.”

“What kind of analysis?”

“That I can’t tell you yet.”

With that, Cody stood and patted her hand back. “Remember,” he said, “you didn’t hear this from me.”

After a beat, she said, “Thank you, Cody. I owe you.”

“Just no scratching this time,” he said as he turned to walk away.

As he passed under the crime-scene tape he nearly ran into Larry, who stood in the dark with his flashlight off. Cody felt the familiar grip of guilt that came with secret drinking.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Larry said in an urgent whisper. “I heard what you told her, you son of a bitch.”

Cody reached out for Larry but Larry backed away. Cody said, “I’m baiting the trap.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? What was that about special equipment and analysis?”

Cody found himself grinning maniacally, and couldn’t douse it out. He held out his hand to Larry, and said, “I’m pretty sure she bought it.”

Larry stared at him, unmoving. They faced off for over a minute with no words.

Finally, Larry said, “You found a bottle, didn’t you?”

“Yup.”

“And now you’re going to self-destruct and try to take me with you.”

Cody shrugged. “You don’t have to come, Larry.”

“You asshole. You stupid jerk.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot tonight.”

Larry said, “What am I going to do with you?”

Cody suddenly felt sober. It happened at the weirdest times, he thought. He said, “Help me find the guy who killed Hank. I’ll take it from there.”

Larry moaned.

Cody stepped close to Larry and said, “Larry, I’m a drunk but I’m not a joke. You’ve never seen me unleashed before and believe me, it’s a sight to behold. I’ll go after this guy like nothing you’ve ever experienced. And when I find him I’ll kill his ass a million times over.”

Larry stepped back. “Man, are you okay?”

Cody said, “I’ve never been okay. But now I’ve got a purpose.” He spat the last word.

Larry’s eyes got wide and he shook his head slowly. “You’re out of control,” Larry whispered.

“Maybe.” Cody winked and walked back to his Ford for the bottle. The rest of the night he functioned in a blackout. And he woke up the next morning in his apartment covered with blood. Not his.

5

On the night he shot the coroner, Cody Hoyt was back at Hank Winters’s cabin, hiding in a copse of pine trees in the dark. Waiting.

The last twenty hours had been a dense, almost impenetrable fog. He’d called on his reserves to simply stay upright for most of it. As he sipped from the pint bottle of Evan Williams bourbon he’d brought with him to Vigilante Campground, certain disconnected scenes came up to the surface as if for air and he recalled them before they sunk again to be replaced by another. Whack-a-mole memories! he thought. Just like the bad old days.

He tried to put them in order.

Driving down from the mountains following Larry’s car, Larry pulling over twice to get out and curse at him, saying Cody nearly gave himself away when he was slurring his words to the evidence tech and EMTs as they bagged the body and collected all the evidence they’d tagged. Telling Cody that luckily, the sheriff and undersheriff were back in their vehicles at that point, bitching about Skeeter and not thinking about why one of their lead investigators had to lean on trees or the cabin to keep upright. Noting that Carrie Lowry was long gone, and Skeeter was annoyed about that. Not objecting when Larry pushed him away from the cabin in the dark so no one could hear him talk or see him trying to maintain his balance;

Cutting up the dead cow elk with Larry on their way down the mountain, quartering it with a bone saw Larry had in his gear box, all so Cody could take the meat to the battered women’s shelter even though he could barely stand and the huge chunks of raw, still-warm meat had covered his clothes with blood. Ignoring Larry as he bitched and moaned about it, saying those women had plenty to eat as it was and they’d think Cody was crazy;

Hauling the quarters into the walk-in freezer of the shelter after waking up the manager, winking at Larry when she cried and said how grateful she was, how the women and kids staying there would love the meat, offering to clean him up and make some coffee because there was something wrong with his eyes;

Climbing back into the Ford ten minutes after Larry dropped him off at his building, his promises to his partner that he’d go straight to bed and stay off the bottle ringing in his ears, then coming right back out the door when Larry was gone and starting the engine and driving away;

Pounding on the door of a man who ran a roadside liquor store, waking him up because it was four hours past closing, demanding a case of beer and two pints of bourbon, paying for them with a hundred-dollar bill and a pat on the grip of his.40 Sig Sauer to remind the owner to keep quiet about the intrusion;

Calling Jenny, his ex-wife, waking her and making her angry, asking to talk to his son Justin to tell him he could borrow anything he wanted to borrow and to stay away from alcohol and parties, but Justin wasn’t there. He was already gone, with Jenny’s new rich fiancé, on a goddamned male bonding adventure in the wilderness. Jenny calling him an asshole which made him laugh because he’d been called that so many times that night that it just might be true, and her slamming down the phone and refusing to pick up when he called her number three more times until he passed out in his lounge chair with the receiver stuck to his hand by congealing blood;

Waking up covered in stiff brown blood, his pants, shirt, and hands caked with it, dried flakes spackling his hand like cracks in a dry lake bed. Swirls of it in the shower, rich and red and revolting. Kicking at the pink swirls and flakes with bare feet, trying to get them to go down the drain;

Swallowing six ibuprofens to blunt the savage pounding in his head, throwing them up in the kitchen sink, taking six more, finally drinking a beer and a raw egg for breakfast which eased him back into the slipstream and stopped his hands from shaking and made it possible for him to brush his teeth and shave without mutilating himself;

Showing up for the eight thirty staff briefing with the town cops from across the hall, Undersheriff Bodean outlining the circumstances of the death of Hank Winters, sleeping through it with his eyes wide open until the sheriff stormed into the room waving the morning’s Independent Record, cursing Carrie Lowry and especially that damned Skeeter, who must have been the one who fed her full of lies about the accident being a murder and a lead left at the crime scene that would identify the killer, ordering all of his cops to boycott the local paper until they apologized and ran a front-page retraction;

Feeling Larry’s absolutely chilling glare from across the room while Tubman ranted;

Cutting out early after the briefing because he couldn’t concentrate and he needed a beer, taking his notes and camera with him;

Spending the afternoon at the Windbag and the Jester, seeing his old friends, laughing at their stories and telling some of his own, feeling like it was a family reunion of sorts for the men and women who drank in the daylight, his people!;

Taking the Ford back up the mountain as dusk came, shotgun in the rack and pistol in his holster, hoping to avoid hitting another elk, hoping against hope that whoever did this to Hank would read the paper and be puzzled as hell and return to the scene to try and retrieve whatever it was the cops found;

Knowing it was nuttier than hell but somehow made complete sense;

Parking the vehicle on a road a half mile from Hank’s place so it couldn’t be seen and hiking through the dark forest still dripping with rain from the storm that afternoon, carrying the shotgun, packing his pistol, and swinging a six-pack of beer by the plastic holder.

He didn’t know how long he’d been passed out when the sound of a motor woke him up. Cody moaned and opened his eyes. His head throbbed. He found himself sitting on the damp ground, leaning back against a tree trunk. The cold wet had soaked through his jeans and underwear, and his butt was freezing.

Since it took a few moments to figure out where he was and why he was there, the sound of the tires on gravel and the motor confused him. Then he realized his plan had worked, that the killer had returned to the scene.

He stood up and the waves of dizziness and nausea nearly buckled his knees. He kept his head down, waiting it out, trying to listen to what was going on through the roaring. He heard a man’s voice say, “Here it is,” and he thought: There’s more than one of them.

Unless the guy was talking to himself, which was doubtful.

“Here?” A woman’s voice.

“There, on that frame that was once a couch. His body was there.”

Cody took a deep breath of cold mountain air and it cleared the clouds from his mind a little. The night and his situation started to come into focus. He wished he’d been lucid when they drove up so that he could have seen them before they got out of their car. But that moment had passed.

He left the three full beers and the empty bottle of bourbon in the grass, and took a step toward the back of the cabin. His legs were rubbery, and he lurched to the side, about to fall. Luckily, the trees were close together and his shoulder thumped into a trunk and kept him upright. He inhaled and held the cold air in his lungs, hoping it would sober him up.

“So what are we looking for?” the woman asked.

“I really don’t know,” the man said. “Whatever was left. If anything.”

The unburned part of the cabin was between Cody and the visitors, so he couldn’t see them. A shaft of light sliced through the air-a flashlight being turned on-then quickly descended out of view. They were looking for something in the black muck.

He thought, I have you now, you scumbags.

“This is sick,” she said. “I wished I knew what we were looking for.”

“Probably nothing,” he said. “It might be the sheriff’s idea of a stupid trick to make him look like he’s doing something. He may drag this out past the election, is my guess.”

The back of the cabin was suddenly in front of him. Cody reached out with his left hand and touched the rounded logs. All he’d need to do was slip along the lengths of the logs until it opened up on the burned section, and they’d be there in the open.

Then he realized he’d left his shotgun back where he’d passed out. Hesitating, he considered feeling his way back to retrieve it. But he’d gotten this far in silence without slipping or stepping on a dead branch to reveal himself. Doing it twice more without making a sound was unlikely at best. He cursed himself and reached up and pinched his cheek so hard he winced. But it helped wake him up. Then he reached down and slowly unsnapped the plastic restraint on his holster and drew his Sig Sauer. As always, there was no safety to worry about and one in the chamber so there’d be no need to rack the slide.

He’d had Trijicon self-luminous sights put on his weapon back in Denver, and he raised it and fitted the front green dot between the twin dots of the back sight. Although he’d never fired at anyone at night on the job, he’d put in hours at the range. He knew if he squeezed the trigger when the three dots were horizontal he should be able to hit what he was pointing at. His only issue was whether or not he’d take out the both of them without warning, or identify himself first. Of course, however it went, in his after-action report he’d say he ordered them to freeze and they didn’t, so he had no choice.

Kill the man first, he thought. A double-tap into the thickest part of his torso as fast as he could squeeze the trigger, then swing on the woman and do the same. Then, if necessary, killshots to the head.

Could he kill a woman? The idea sickened him. “There,” the man said, his voice rising. “Right there. Look.”

Had they found it? he wondered.

He saw the pool of their flashlight before he saw them. There was a glint of gold in the muck of the floor.

“It looks like a coin,” she said.

“Yes, it does,” he said, distressed. “I don’t know how I could have missed it.”

Because, Cody thought, I put it there two hours ago. Gold-foil-wrapped chocolate coins went for $1.89 at Walgreens these days.

And he cleared the edge of the logs and barked, “FREEZE, YOU FUCKERS!”

She screamed and threw her flashlight into the air with the same motion that she covered her mouth.

He blinded Cody with his light but before he did Cody saw a hand reach down and grip a pistol and raise it and there was a star-shaped explosion of fire tinged with blue and a deafening crack. And something white-hot and angry slapped the side of his face.

And that’s when Cody shot the county coroner. Double-tap, two loud snaps and two yellow-green tongues of flame. Skeeter went down like a puppet with its strings clipped.

Cody lowered his weapon, the sharp smell of gunpowder and his own blood biting at his nose, and said, “Oh, shit.”

Carrie Lowry didn’t stop screaming until her sobs and admonitions took over.

6

Cody sat back in an uncomfortable chair across from Sheriff Tubman in his cramped little office. The door was closed, and had been for an hour. There had been no eight thirty briefing that morning. Undersheriff Bodean perched on the corner of Tubman’s desk, looking almost straight down at him. On the credenza behind the sheriff was his hat, brim-down, and the morning’s Independent Record with EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT: CORONER SHOT BY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT blaring across all four columns of the front page. Cody thought, Carrie got that big story I promised her after all.

“You really ought to put your hat crown-down when you’re not wearing it,” Cody said. “You’ll ruin the brim that way.”

Tubman closed his eyes, to keep from exploding, Cody guessed.

“How you can joke at a time like this is beyond me,” Bodean said, shaking his head.

“Really,” Cody said, “it’ll flatten the brim. Trust me on this.”

“Look at my phone,” Tubman said. “All the lights are blinking. Everybody wants a statement and they’re willing to stay on hold until they get it.”

“Sorry,” Cody said.

“Yes,” Tubman said, “you are.”

Bodean cleared his throat and stuck his chin out. “In case you don’t know the procedure, Detective Hoyt, this is an officer-involved shooting, so give me your badge and your gun.”

Cody shifted in his chair and unclipped the badge and slid it across the desk to Tubman. He pulled his Sig Sauer and handed it grip-first to Bodean. “Careful,” he said, “it’s loaded.”

Bodean walked the weapon over and put it gingerly on top of a metal filing cabinet. He said, “You are officially on administrative leave with pay. We’ve got a call in to the state to send an outside team to investigate the incident. They’re likely to be here tomorrow, so stay in touch with us at all times.”

Cody nodded.

“Don’t go anywhere for seventy-two hours. That’s when we’ll take your statement and based on what the state criminal investigation team says, you might be placed under arrest.”

Even though he knew it could happen, Cody felt a chill crawl through his scalp.

Said Bodean, “It’s my duty to advise you to keep your mouth shut until you give your official statement. At that time, you should be aware that under Garrity versus New Jersey, you may be disciplined if you refuse to answer questions about your conduct on the job. You have no Fifth Amendment rights as a cop. In the meantime, the only person you should talk to is a peer counselor we’ll assign. Do you understand what I just said?”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind talking. And if you send a social worker to my place I’ll mace him,” Cody growled. “It went down exactly like Carrie Lowry wrote in the paper. Skeeter drew first and fired after I told him to freeze. I shot him in self-defense.”

Tubman continued to shake his head, as if he were watching his career slink away.

Bodean said, “She wrote that you didn’t identify yourself.”

“I didn’t get the chance. Skeeter was fast for a ghoul.”

“You refused to take a breathalyzer test.”

“It’s my right. I don’t trust those portable things. I took one later here at the station.”

“Hours later,” Bodean said, “after the alcohol in your system had a chance to metabolize. And you still came in a.88. That’s barely sober and it was four hours after the shooting. And the officer on the scene said you smelled like a still.”

“Dougherty wouldn’t know a still if he tripped over it,” Cody said.

“You’re lucky Skeeter was wearing a vest. Your first slug hit him here,” Bodean gestured toward his heart. “The second one was above the armor and really messed up his shoulder. But he should be okay and giving press conferences any time now.”

Instinctively, Cody reached up and touched the compress taped over his right ear where Skeeter’s round had clipped him. The bullet had taken a half inch of his earlobe and the wound bled like crazy until they got it stopped.

After the emergency room docs had bandaged and released him, he’d tried to talk to the coroner, who was upstairs in the same hospital. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to yell at Skeeter or apologize or shoot him again. He didn’t get an opportunity to make the choice because a hospital security officer wouldn’t let him past his desk until visiting hours.

“Why in God’s name was Skeeter wearing a vest and carrying a weapon in the first place?” Cody asked. “He’s the coroner. And he shouldn’t have snuck a reporter into a crime scene just so she could get some photos. That’s not right. He was acting suspiciously.”

“We’d all like to know that and it’ll come out in the investigation,” Tubman said. “He might be in as much trouble as you are or more. But in this instance I’m glad he had the vest or we’d have a homicide investigation going and you’d be in our jail.”

Cody shrugged. “Speaking of homicide,” he said, “I’d still like to help on the Hank Winters murder investigation.”

“It wasn’t a homicide,” Tubman said with force.

“It was,” Cody said.

“Stay away from it,” Tubman said. “Stay away from this office. Stay away from Larry.” He leaned forward on his desk and balled his fists. “And stay the hell away from me.”

The door opened and Edna stuck her head in. “Sheriff, the governor is on the line. He wants a briefing.”

Tubman moaned and sat back. To Cody, he said, “Go away. Go straight out the door and go home. Don’t even talk to anyone. And stay by your phone.”

Before Cody left the room, he ducked behind the sheriff and turned the offending hat over.

Larry was alone in the detective room, scrolling through digital images of the crime scene Cody had shot two nights before. Although his shoulders tensed when Cody entered the room, he didn’t greet him. And when Cody shut the door behind him, Larry seemed to be studying the screen even more intently than before.

“I’ll be out of here in a minute,” Cody said.

He went to his desk and started filling an empty box he’d grabbed outside the evidence room with his papers, gear, and the nascent murder book he’d begun.

“Next time,” Larry said finally, “go for a head shot.”

“Ha.”

“Man, when you dive in you go deep. I’ll give that to you.”

Cody grunted.

“A gold-wrapped chocolate coin?” Larry laughed.

“It worked, sort of,” Cody said. “If the killer thought he’d left one behind…”

“You know what’s going to happen,” Larry said. “Skeeter knows he’s in trouble, too. So he’s going to try and get out ahead of it with the press and the voters. He’s going to start yapping and paint you in the worst light possible and try to taint the investigation.”

Cody shrugged.

“So, what happened with the sheriff?”

“I’m suspended until they clear me.”

“You are so fucking lucky, Cody. You could have killed the coroner or gotten killed yourself. And I don’t doubt for a second that you were hammered at the time.”

“I was blitzed,” Cody said. “But when I pulled the trigger I felt completely sober. Strange how that happens. Adrenaline trumps alcohol: remember that.”

“Are you over it? The binge, I mean?”

Cody said, “I think so. I’m not promising anything, though.”

“Yeah,” Larry said, finally swiveling around in his chair to face him, “I found out how solid your promises are.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” Cody said, looking out the window at the lawn in front of the Law Enforcement Center. “And I want to thank you again for covering for me.”

“The last time,” Larry said. “Ever.”

“That’s reasonable.”

Larry let a beat pass. Then, “I’m rethinking the Winters death.”

“You are?” For the first time in forty-eight hours, he felt a little nudge of hope.

“Yeah. While you were partying with your old pals yesterday, I was doing police work.”

“And?”

“The preliminary autopsy shows blunt head trauma. Of course, they don’t know yet whether is was pre- or postmortem. I mean, the guy was covered with the beams from his roof that fell on his noggin. But there wasn’t any smoke in his lungs. Meaning he was likely dead before the fire got out of hand. As you know, it’s never the fire that kills ’em. It’s the smoke.”

“Interesting there was no inhalation.”

“And there’s another thing good about all that rain and cold weather,” Larry said. “According to the lab, there had been too much time between the death and the discovery of the body to find out if there was any alcohol in his bloodstream. Plus, the heat of the fire could have literally burned it out. But because the body was kept fairly cool, they’re going to cut his eyes out and test ’em.”

Cody winced. “His eyes?”

Larry read from his notes. “The vitreous humor can be tested. This is the jellylike substance within the eyeball. Alcohol can be detected there and it lags behind the blood level. That is, it reflects the blood level about two hours prior to death. If it is elevated, the ME can say that the victim was likely intoxicated. They can’t get a blood alcohol level, but they can possibly say it was there at the time of death.”

“When will they call you back?”

Larry shrugged. “Soon, I hope. It’s not definitive, but if there’s no smoke in the lungs and no sign of alcohol consumption, it will pretty much kill my accident or suicide theory. Because that means somebody opened a bottle and left it to be found with the body, and somebody opened the door of the stove.”

Nodding, Cody said, “So our killer bashed him in the head, drank or poured out the bottle, and set the place on fire.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Larry said.

“Well,” Cody said, “here’s another jump. Whoever did it knew Hank once had problems with alcohol. Since Hank hadn’t had a drop in five years, they’d have to know Hank’s history. A stranger wouldn’t likely know that, would he?”

Larry started to argue but the edges of his mouth turned down and he nodded. “I see where you’re going. But who would know, besides you?”

Cody didn’t answer. He let Larry figure it out.

“Every other person in your AA group,” Larry said. “You people confess everything to each other. They would know.”

Cody said, “Exactly.”

Larry said, “So we need to establish the whereabouts of all of the Helena AA members between the hours of eight and midnight three nights ago.”

Cody paused. “How’d you determine the time of death? The ME?”

“Naw. The receipt from when Winters bought the steaks had the exact time on it: 6:03 P.M. It takes almost an hour to drive from the store to his cabin, so let’s say he was there by seven. Montana Power and Light said the cabin had a power outage at midnight, which I attribute to the fire. So there’s our window.”

Cody was impressed. Larry was good.

“Back to the alcoholics,” Larry said. “Do you know them all?”

Cody nodded.

“Do you have a list?”

“At home,” Cody said. “There’s thirteen in our little group. Of course, there are groups all over and a hell of a lot more alcoholics in Helena than you’d imagine. But our group is small because of when and where we meet. I can e-mail it to you. I can’t officially work on the case, but I can feed you.”

“Cool,” Larry said. Cody could see a light behind his eyes. They were getting somewhere.

“I hate this, though,” Cody said. “I’m betraying their trust. This is really a shitty thing to do to them. I mean, you’ll be surprised. We’re talking doctors, lawyers, a couple politicians. Even somebody in our office.”

Larry was surprised.

“Edna,” Cody said. “But you don’t need to question her. She was working dispatch here every night this week.”

“Don’t worry,” Larry said. “I won’t even hint at how I got their names. I’ll say we’re simply following up on everyone we could find who might have known him. I might even fudge it a little and say we recovered an address book and we’re just calling all the names in it. I won’t mention AA and I won’t bring up your name.”

“Thank you, Larry. Really.”

“But you’ve got to understand something, you asshole,” Larry said. “I’m not being your pal here. I want you to go back. You need to go back to AA, or I’ll never work with you again. And I’m not blowing smoke.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Oh,” Larry said, slapping the tops of his thighs, “I forgot to tell you something else. I sent the hard drive of that fried computer down to some IT guys at MSU. They think they may be able to retrieve the data off it. That surprised the hell out of me because I thought data would, you know, melt.”

“No shit.”

“They’re looking at it now. I’ll let you know what they come up with.”

Cody stroked his chin. “See if they can find any letters or documents he had stored away. That and e-mails, of course. There might be an e-mail exchange with whomever he invited to dinner that night. That would be a hell of a stroke of luck. And the history on his Web browser. Maybe we’ll know what he’s been looking at lately.”

Larry rolled his eyes. “Gee, I hadn’t thought of any of that before, Cody. Good thing you’re here to straighten me out.”

Cody grinned.

The office door opened without a knock. Bodean filled the doorframe, hands on hips. His face was dark.

“I thought I heard your voice,” he said to Cody. “Why in the hell are you still here?”

“Larry got all emotional when he heard I’d been suspended,” Cody said. “I came in to comfort him and talk him off the ledge.”

Larry snorted.

“Get the hell out of here or I’ll have you arrested,” Bodean said. “You have no authorization to be here. And give me your key card so you can’t come back.”

Cody handed it over and picked up his box to leave.

“And the keys to your Ford. It’s a county vehicle.”

Cody said, “I’ll leave ’em at the shop when I turn the Ford over to the maintenance guys. Remember-it’s kind of wrecked.”

Bodean considered that a moment, and nodded. “Sort of like you,” he said.

“Wow,” Cody said, “that was a good one, Bodean. Clever.”

Cody picked up his box to leave.

“It stays,” Bodean said. “That’s county property, too.”

Cody shrugged. Larry simply watched, and raised his eyebrows.

“Go home and stay by your phone,” Bodean said.

“Bye, Larry.”

“Cody.”

“Try not to weep.”

“I’ll try,” Larry said.

The morning was warm and sunny and the sky was achingly blue. Cody shuffled across the lawn toward his vehicle in the parking lot. As he reached it he turned back and looked at the buildings he’d left and wondered when and if he’d be back.

The county courthouse next to the modern brick and glass Law Enforcement Center was a regal old Victorian building built of stone blocks. He saw the DA and his assistant come out holding files. When they saw him they stopped and the DA pointed. He could read his lips even though he couldn’t hear him at that distance. The DA said, “There he is.”

“Here I am,” Cody mumbled.

He patted the keys in his pocket. He was glad Bodean let him keep the vehicle for the time being. His personal pickup hadn’t run for months; he needed the Ford to get around.

As he pulled out of the lot onto the corner of Breckenridge and Ewing, he noted faded lettering on the side of an old brick building he’d never even noticed before. BOARDING STABLES was still legible in paint.

He hesitated on the corner. If he turned left he would drive by the Jester Bar. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He could use an ice-cold beer. Just one, though. To calm his nerves and maybe take the edge off the nasty jagged edges in his brain. He would leave after just one.

His cell phone burred. Larry.

“The ME called. They sliced his eyeballs open. Winters had no alcohol they could detect in his system. You were right.”

“We’re just getting started,” Cody said.

“Wait until I walk down the hall and tell Tubman we might have a homicide after all. With the day he’s having, this won’t exactly brighten it up much.”

“Keep me in the loop,” Cody said, turning right toward his place. “I’ve got a lot to think about. I’ll keep feeding you.”

7

Even though he was exhausted and stabs of pain pulsed through his ear, Cody refused to take the medication they’d given him because he knew, he just knew, that if he let his defenses down even a little he’d start drinking. He knew himself. He’d find a justification to start off on another bender.

His ear hurt;

He was suspended;

Precious hours for finding the killer had been wasted and he’d never get them back;

His dog had died (granted, it was twenty years before, but it was still dead);

He missed his son;

His 401(k) wasn’t worth crap anymore.

And that was just off the top of his head. He had to stay as sharp and determined as possible, despite the pain and bone-weariness, so he drank strong coffee and chain-smoked cigarettes and paced and thought.

He lived in a rented duplex with a decent view of Mount Helena from the backyard deck. But the structure was getting tired-old carpets, scarred molding, torn screens, windows that didn’t shut tight. It had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which was too many of each. One bedroom sat completely empty, the other was full of junk and empty moving boxes from a year before, and he had a bed he rarely used except for sex because he always fell asleep on the couch. Books were stacked from floor to ceiling in the living room but he’d never bought a bookcase since his divorce. He kept the downstairs bathroom door closed because it stank of duck. Bringing that wounded mallard drake home and letting it paddle around in the bathtub for weeks had left a stench that wouldn’t go away. Stupid duck, he thought. He was glad when it finally flew away.

He went into his basement office and fired up his computer and sent the list of names to Larry. Within seconds, Larry thanked him in a terse e-mail. Then Cody started pacing.

Every time he passed one of his two phones he stared at it, willing it to ring. On the hour, he checked for messages from the sheriff or Larry or anyone. His hands shook and his skin felt twitchy.

He ran through the scenario that best fit the facts and his own speculation. Hank flew back from Salt Lake City and stopped at the supermarket on the way from the airport, buying food for two. He rushed home to cook it.

Cody stopped and smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. Maybe it was a woman. Maybe Hank had a date. He hadn’t even considered a woman before, but now it made even more sense than a man. But big steaks? That was man food. He shook his head and started pacing again.

So the guest arrived not long after Hank. They hadn’t even started the grill yet, so they must have been catching up (man) or who-knows-what (woman). Then, for some reason, the visitor clocked Hank in the head. He didn’t even eat first, which said to Cody the attack was likely quick and premeditated and not a crime of passion that arose from whatever transpired in the cabin that night. When Hank was incapacitated, he (she?) took Hank’s AA coins and maybe something else-cash? Drug samples? Gold? A treasure map?-opened a bottle of alcohol, and left it close to the body. The visitor opened the door to the woodstove, filled it with lengths of pine until it was roaring, and then started the curtains or rug, and left the scene. And it all could have been just about perfect if it hadn’t started raining and not stopped for three days.

God, how he hated coming down. It hurt. If he could just have one beer…

As the sultry afternoon melded into dusk he went out on the deck with his handset and began his round of telephone calls. This was one of the things he hated most about coming off a bender: apologizing to everyone he’d offended. Sometimes, it went on for hours. Sometimes, he found out friends and relatives never wanted to talk to him again, and he prepared to lose a couple more.

He started with Carrie Lowry, who listened with impatient silence until she interrupted and said she was busy. That her boyfriend Jim didn’t like getting awakened like that and blamed it on her. Then Skeeter, who refused to take his call. Then Skeeter’s wife Mayjean, who was cold and distant and irritatingly formal. The guy from the liquor store, who said, “No problem, come again any old time and throw hundred-dollar bills at me.” Finally, Jenny.

“You were drunk, weren’t you?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember denying it? You always deny it and act like you’re offended I even asked. That’s how I know.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cody lit a cigarette off the one he’d been smoking so he wouldn’t miss a second of nicotine. He pictured her: long dark hair, blue eyes, pug nose, lush mouth, nice curves. She had a good sense of humor, too, once, before he separated her from it. He’d always love her, always want her, and she knew it. She just couldn’t live with him the way he was then, and the way he was the last two nights. He didn’t hold it against her.

“So this is the apology tour,” she said. “Am I the first stop?”

“No, I saved the most important one for last.”

“Ahhh,” she said, mocking.

He told her about what had happened. She broke in when he mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous.

“I’m so proud of you for going,” she said, her voice softening. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because if I fell off the wagon I didn’t want you to think I was a failure at that, too. Which, by the way, I did. Fall, I mean.”

“Then climb back on,” she said. “There’s no rule against that, is there?”

He thought about the group, how supportive they were. How he was rewarding them for their confidentiality and support by having his partner interview them one by one to determine if any of them might be guilty of murder. Man…

“My sponsor was murdered,” he said. “That kind of triggered things.”

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“I wish I was.” Then: “Oh-did I tell you I shot the county coroner last night?”

Silence.

“He’s not dead. And he shot at me first. I’m suspended but it’s just procedure. What’s killing me is I want to go after the bad guy and take him down-”

“Cody,” she interrupted. “You shot the coroner?”

He laughed. It sounded funny coming from her. Then he had to tell her how it happened.

It took a while for her to be able to change the subject. He glanced at the sun sliding behind Mount Helena and realized this was the longest conversation they’d had in two and a half years. Then he remembered something from two nights before about her new rich fiancé being gone.

“Where did you say they went? His Richness and Justin?”

“Stop calling him that. I told you all this the other night but you don’t remember. He took Justin on a week-long wilderness pack trip. They don’t even have cell service, so it’s driving me crazy. It’s Walt’s idea because he wants to get closer to Justin if he can. He feels sort of distant, and…”

Cody tuned out. The thought of His Richness and his son spending that much time together made him instantly morose. He sort of listened. Something about horses, fly-fishing, all in Wyoming. What a fortune that must cost, he thought.

“Justin called me the other night,” Cody said. “He needed to borrow something. I barely talked to him. In fact, I cut him off. I feel bad about that.”

His phone clicked-another call coming in.

“I have to go now,” he said.

“Call again,” she said, surprising him. “Just don’t make it part of your next tour.”

Larry said, “Dry hole with your fellow alcoholics. Everybody has a decent alibi. That doesn’t mean none of them are lying, but three of them were out of town and the other eight gave me names of people who’d vouch for them. Everybody heard about Winters, but since they didn’t put any of the info about that bottle we found in the paper, no one connected the dots as to why I was calling.”

“That’s only eleven,” Cody said. “Who couldn’t you find?”

“Duh. Hank Winters and Cody Hoyt.”

“Oh.”

“You need to get some sleep.”

“I don’t know whether I’m relieved or pissed,” Cody said. “Because our best angle just got shut down.”

“Yeah, it sucks. My cop radar never went off once talking with any of them. They all were helpful and they sounded sincere.”

“Maybe it was Edna,” Cody said, his voice dropping into his conspiratorial rhythm. “Maybe she was banging Hank and something went wrong.”

“Or maybe it was you,” Larry said. “Can you account for your whereabouts that night?”

This is what they did, Cody thought. Cop-talk. But maybe there was a hint of curiosity in Larry’s question. In fact, he thought, he had no alibi. He’d been out driving, driving, driving. There was no one to confirm where he’d been.

“Tying flies,” Cody said, thinking of what his son was doing.

“You’re lying. You need steady hands for that.”

“Come and get me, flatfoot,” Cody said. Actually, he did tie flies. He’d tied two hundred-caddis, hoppers, Adams, stimulators, tricos, nymphs-in the last two months when he wasn’t driving aimlessly around the county. “Did you hear anything from your IT folks?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. They were able to access part of the hard drive but not all of it. The bad news is no e-mails were found. None. So we’re screwed on that front. But remember you asked me about the history in his browser? Which Web sites he’d been on?”

Cody said yes. He was starting to feel a tingle just by the way Larry was setting it up.

“They’re faxing me printouts and I don’t have them yet, but they said most of the sites he visited were from a week before, apparently before he went on his trip to Salt Lake. News, weather, Drudge, ESPN, no porno or weird shit. But the most recent site he visited was at nine on the night he died.”

Cody waited. Finally: “Was your guy an outdoorsman?”

“Not really,” Cody said. “I remember him talking about hunting, but my impression was it was way back. He didn’t fish because I offered to tie him some flies and he didn’t want any. Why are you asking?”

“Because the last site he visited was for an outfitter.”

Cody heard Larry shuffling papers. “Okay, got it. It was for something called Jed McCarthy’s Wilderness Adventures. I don’t know what the hell they do, but I’d guess hunting trips. I’m in the cruiser right now going back to the office after dinner so I haven’t been able to look it up.”

Cody scribbled down the name. “Thanks, man. I’ll check ’em out, too.”

“Hey, did you hear Skeeter held a press conference from his bed in the hospital?”

“No.”

“Called you a ‘rogue cop.’” Larry laughed. “The spin has already begun.”

“Great.”

“In his version, a shadowy creep jumped around the side of the crime scene brandishing a weapon and he fired instinctively to protect himself and the reporter. He said he wants you fired.”

Cody said, “You’re right. I should have gone for a head shot.”

“Next time,” Larry said.

The Google search took two seconds and Cody brought the site up: Jed McCarthy’s Wilderness Adventures. “Wilderness Adventures” was in a bold frontier font and the name of the owner/outfitter was in script across the top at an angle, indicating to Cody the name of the company was a well-established brand if Jed himself was not.

The site was clean and well organized, unlike many of the local productions he’d seen where a fishing guide, dude ranch, or lodge owner hired his granddaughter to throw something up on the Web. The Wilderness Adventures site had a menu including Day Rides, Pack Trips, Multi-Day Adventures, Photos, Fly-Fishing, Rates, Booking, Maps, Virtual Tour, on and on. Even an online booking form. He clicked on “Pack Trips” and read through pages of text accompanied by stunning photos of Yellowstone Park. It turned out Jed McCarthy was one of the few outfitters licensed by the National Park Service to provide long excursions into Yellowstone, and McCarthy took every available opportunity to point it out.

He accessed the calendar page. There were a dozen or so different trips, leaving on different dates. He wished Larry would have told him if the IT guys had isolated Hank’s browsing history to a specific trip, or whether Hank was simply looking at the home page.

But it just didn’t seem right.

Cody recalled the hours he had spent talking with Hank. They had discussed their failures and their dreams together. He couldn’t recall Hank ever saying he wanted to ride a horse into the backcountry, or go on a long wilderness trip, or anything similar. Although Hank obviously liked the mountains-that’s why he bought his cabin there-he recalled Hank once saying he’d already spent more than enough time roughing it when he was a marine.

Which led to a new possibility in the murder scenario Cody had put together earlier.

Maybe it wasn’t Hank who was going on the trip, he thought. Maybe it was his guest. Maybe the guest was showing Hank where he was headed next after leaving Helena. And as Hank read the screen, the visitor slipped behind him and hit him in the head with something…

“Shit,” Cody said, his mind swimming. Thinking, which trip? There were so many of them…

He flashed through them. Snake River. Geysers and Explorers. Slough Creek. Hoodoo Basin Progressive Pack Trip. Lower Falls Adventure. Lamar River. Electric Peak and Beyond.

Then he brought up the calendar again.

“Ah,” he said, and it all became clear. Cody had assumed Jed McCarthy had an army of guides and employees and trips going everywhere at once. But the calendar showed only June, July, August, and September. Within those months, three-, four-, five-, and seven-day blocks were marked out and color-coded by which trip was scheduled then. The trips didn’t overlap. So what appeared to be the deal was McCarthy and his people took a group out for three or four days and returned to the base camp. A few days later, he led another trip. One after the other from the last week of May through mid-September, the trips bookended by melting snow on one end and flying snow on the other.

He clicked on the link that said “Meet Our Guides.” There were two of them. Jed McCarthy wore a big cowboy hat and a silk scarf and in the photo he was striking a manly pose. There was also a nice-looking woman named Dakota Hill, who was pictured with a horse. She looked young enough to be Jed McCarthy’s daughter.

His phone rang and he snatched it up. Larry.

“I’m looking at that Web site…”

“So am I,” Cody said. “I’ve got a question-did the IT folks fax you the specific page he was looking at? I mean, was it a specific trip?”

“It was the home page,” Larry said. “But Hank had been looking at a bunch of the pages previous to that in the last ten minutes before. ‘What to Bring,’ ‘Menus,’ ‘Interactive Maps.’ He was really scoping out this Web site. Which makes me think Hank was either doing some research or planning to go on a trip.”

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” Cody said. “It could be a side of Hank I never saw, but it doesn’t ring true. If this was the kind of thing he was into we should have found camping gear, saddles, a sleeping bag, that sort of thing. I don’t remember any outdoor gear at all, do you?”

“It could have burned up in the fire,” Larry said, but not with much conviction. “And besides, how do we know he wasn’t just checking out the site? Maybe thinking about it for some other year? There’s nothing we’ve got that suggests he was planning a trip this summer.”

Cody shook his head. “I’m not buying. Think about it. He buys dinner to cook, rushes home to greet his guest. He’s been gone for days. But instead of unpacking completely or getting dinner ready, he sits in his den and bounces around on the Internet? Does that make sense to you?”

“No.”

“But what if it was his guest?” Cody said. “What if the killer was showing Hank where he was going next?”

Silence. “I hadn’t thought about that,” Larry said.

“Just a second,” Cody said, clicking again on the calendar. “What is it, the thirtieth of June today?”

Larry chuckled. “Yes.”

“Well, according to the calendar, the biggest and longest trip of the year is this one called ‘Back of Beyond: The Ultimate Yellowstone Backcountry Adventure.’ A whole bunch of nights in the middle of nowhere.” Cody paused. “It leaves tomorrow, July 1.”

Said Larry, “So if our man was headed south to Yellowstone to go on a trip with Jed McCarthy, even five nights ago, this would be the only one he could go on now.”

“Yeah,” Cody said, “because according to this calendar, Jed was finishing up the Hoodoo Basin Trip then. He couldn’t have been on that.”

“Boy,” Larry said, “we’re taking a mighty leap here. Just because Hank was looking at a Web site on the night he died, we’re saying the killer was headed to Yellowstone. I’m not sure I can buy that one without some kind of corroboration.”

Cody groaned his assent. Then: “I wish that damned trip didn’t leave tomorrow morning. I wonder if it’s possible to get ahold of Jed and find out who’s on it? See if Hank’s name is on his guest list? Jed probably has a pretty complete manifest or whatever you call it. We can run all the names and see if any of them came from this direction, or if anyone has a record, or if we can link him up with Hank in any way.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Larry asked.

“Police work,” Cody said.

“Ha ha.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Cody said, “I’ll call you right back.”

He punched in the telephone number for Wilderness Adventures. They were based in Bozeman, meaning their headquarters was well outside the northern border of the park. If Jed was leading the trip the next morning, it was unlikely he’d be in Bozeman, but…

Cody got a voice mail. An erudite man’s voice with a touch of country twang: “You’ve reached the voice mail of Jed McCarthy’s Wilderness Adventures, the home of the only licensed multinight outfitter in Yellowstone National Park. We’re on a pack trip right now so we’re unable to take your call. And because of the nature of the trip, I won’t be able to check messages for a week. Please go to our Web site and-”

He hung up and called Larry back.

“No one is there,” Cody said.

“It’s ten at night, Cody. What did you expect? I’m sure there’ll be an office manager or somebody there tomorrow.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Cody said. “These outfitter types are generally mom-and-pop operations. Believe me, I know. I grew up with them. My uncle Jeter used to manage his whole outfitting operation from scraps of paper he carried around in his shirt pocket. Jed is probably more sophisticated than that, but what if there isn’t anyone to check the files tomorrow and see who is on the trip? We can’t wait a week to find out who went. What if our killer is on this backcountry trip?”

“Then he’ll still be there when they come back,” Larry said. “If any of this pans out we can be waiting for them wherever Jed’s base camp is located. That’ll give us time to run this all down, see if any of it makes sense. Then we’ll need to bring in the state boys and the Park Service rangers. We can’t just go charging down there.”

“Hmmpf.”

“You know we need more time and a hell of a lot more corroboration,” Larry said. “We start in Bozeman, at his office. He’s got to have someone there answering phones and keeping the business running while he’s out on a trip. Probably a receptionist or bookkeeper. We can call down and ask the sheriff or PD in Bozeman to be there when they open tomorrow morning.”

Cody moaned. Tomorrow morning…

Larry said, “This is quite a leap, Cody. Just because that page was on his computer doesn’t mean the killer is on the trip.”

“I know that,” Cody said. “But it’s the only thing we’ve got that might indicate where he’s going. We have to rule it out first.”

Larry said, “If somebody, say Dougherty, brought to you what we’ve got so far I can hear you laughing your head off.”

Cody snorted. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“I know.”

Cody suddenly wanted a tall triple bourbon and water. He said, “If this killer is on the trip, though, how do we know he won’t be a danger to everyone else on it? This Web site says the trip is full. So we’re talking maybe a dozen people. It would be horrible if this guy is some kind of psycho-like the kind of person who would kill the most gentle man in the world and burn his place down around him. If we don’t go at this angle hard we may be putting innocent people in harm’s way.”

“There’s that,” Larry said. “But still… I mean, I can’t spend all night on this and you got yourself suspended.”

“I know,” Cody said gruffly. “Jeez, I hate being in my house now. Can I ask you a favor?”

Larry sighed. “Man, I’m doing overtime now. Bodean put out that memo about no more overtime without his authorization. I mean-”

“We need to play catch-up,” Cody said, ignoring him. “Call RMIN and ViCAP, see if there are any other crimes similar to the Winters murder.”

RMIN (pronounced “Rimin”) was the Rocky Mountain Information Network, a regional clearinghouse of incidents recorded in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico. ViCAP was the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program of the FBI. Both organizations had analysts on staff who could research similar crimes. ViCAP had profilers available as well as a password-protected Web site that could be accessed by law enforcement agencies after hours.

“You’re grasping at straws,” Larry said. “We can’t do much more until tomorrow, Cody. Once we talk to the receptionist and hear back from RMIN and ViCAP, then maybe we’ll have something to go on.”

“I know. But that trip leaves tomorrow morning. Call those guys, Larry. Get things going.”

“You owe me so many dinners,” Larry said, and slammed down his phone.

While he waited, he did another Google search on the outfitting company, hoping he could find another contact, maybe an after-hours number. He assumed Jed and his people and horses were already in Yellowstone at their base camp, likely out of cell phone range. But surely he would have a way to communicate with his office, Cody thought. Like to check on clients who were late or didn’t show up? Although he couldn’t find any way to make contact other than the office number, e-mail address, and Web site, he did find an old online article from the Bozeman Chronicle: SALE OF PARK OUTFITTING BUSINESS PENDING NPS APPROVAL.

Even though he couldn’t see how it would be of much help, Cody read it. It was from February, five years before.

Bozeman newcomer Jedediah McCarthy announced on Wednesday that he was awaiting National Park Service approval to acquire the assets of Wilderness Adventures, the longtime outfitting operation specializing in Yellowstone Park pack trips. McCarthy said he intended to continue the legacy established by Frank “Bull” Mitchell, who ran the company for the past 32 years.

McCarthy stated he planned to maintain the quality of the company and perhaps-with NPS approval-expand the available multiday excursions into the most remote reaches of Yellowstone Park.

“It’s time,” Mitchell told the Chronicle, “Somebody else can put up with all that Park Service BS…”

McCarthy aims to emphasize low-impact camping with a greater emphasis on the unique properties of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, he said…

Cody read the rest of the article but found it boring: Jed McCarthy extolling the virtues of his trip and the excellent and professional methodology of the National Park Service. Stroking bureaucrats in the paper while they considered your application, Cody thought. No wonder he got the concession.

He smiled and jotted down the name “Frank ‘Bull’ Mitchell.”

Then it hit him and he called Jenny again as panic rose inside.

She sounded groggy. “When I said call again, I didn’t mean midnight.”

“I’m sorry, but I just thought of something. It’s nuts, but I have to make sure I’m wrong.”

“About what?”

“Justin and His Richness. Where did you say they went?”

“Wyoming. I told you-”

“I know. But where specifically did they go? And did they go on their own? Is His Richness driving them around, or what?”

“Well, he drove them there. But they’re going on some kind of long wilderness trip in Yellowstone Park. With some outfitter on horses-”

“Jesus,” Cody said.

“What? You’re scaring me, Cody.”

“Don’t be scared,” he said to her as well as to himself. “Just find the name of the outfit they’re using.”

“I think I have a brochure,” she said. “But I can’t call them. Justin said they’d be out of cell phone range…”

“Jenny,” he said, “we might have a big problem.”

Cody had the Ford backed up to his open garage door and was throwing gear into it-sleeping bag, tent, pad, cooking set, Uncle Jeter’s old saddle-when Larry pulled his SUV into the driveway and blocked him.

Larry kept his motor running and his headlights on and swung out. “You didn’t answer your phone.”

“I was out here,” Cody said.

“You can’t leave. You know that. You’ll give the sheriff a damned good reason to fire you.”

Cody said, “Let him.”

Larry spun Cody around so they were face to face. “Have you been drinking?” Larry asked.

“Not yet.”

Larry leaned forward on the balls of his feet and stared into Cody’s eyes. Cody didn’t flinch, and said, “Get any closer and I’ll clock you.”

Larry relaxed a little, apparently content that Cody was sober. “You need to slow down. It’s two thirty in the morning. You can’t just run away in the middle of the night.”

“I’m not running,” Cody said. “I’m pursuing a lead.”

“You’re not a cop right now.”

Cody shrugged. “I’m always a fucking cop.”

“I was afraid you were going to do this,” Larry said. “All I can say is it’s stupid, and useless, and you’re doing more harm than good.”

“Sounds like me,” Cody said. “Hey, why don’t you give me a hand. I was looking for an old pack saddle of my uncle’s in that mess of a garage. Maybe you can find it.”

“To hell with that,” Larry said, squinting past Cody toward the garage. It was piled with junk Cody had never bothered to unpack or organize. His disabled pickup truck took up most of the space.

“Look,” Larry said. “I left messages at RMIN and ViCAP, but nobody is working tonight. We should hear back from them first thing in the morning. There’s no reason for you to leave tonight and risk your job. And risk my job, because if you take off now they’ll ask me if I knew you went.”

Said Cody, “Tell them the truth, Larry. Tell them you tried to talk me out of it but you couldn’t.”

Larry shook his head, and his eyes flashed with anger. “Cody, damn you, I can’t risk this job. I’ve got child support payments and no one is hiring. I have to stay in this town to be near my kids. You can’t put me in this position. You’re such an asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cody said, flicking a cigarette butt into the street where it exploded in a shower of little sparks. He lit another. “I know,” he said, drawing deep, “but-”

“I found something,” Larry cut in. “On the ViCAP Web site.”

Cody went silent, squinting at Larry’s face through the smoke.

“We won’t know for sure if we’ve got anything until I can talk to an analyst or profiler tomorrow. But since they’re on eastern time, I should hear back from them early tomorrow.”

“What did you find?” Cody asked.

“I used the national crime database they’ve got,” Larry said, dragging it out like he always did. “I used the keywords murder, arson, single victim, head injury, I don’t remember what else. Just trying to find out if there were any hits. It isn’t an exact science…”

Cody felt something red and hot pop behind his eyes and reached out as if he were going to grab Larry’s throat. Larry anticipated the move and ducked to the side.

“What did you find, goddamn you?” Cody hissed.

“Four of ’em,” Larry said.

Cody’s mouth dropped. “Four?”

“One in Virginia a month ago. One in Minnesota two weeks ago. Hank Winters. And another one in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, two nights ago. Three men, one woman. All professional, middle-aged. Alone at the time. No suspects in any of them, and as far as I could tell no one has linked them up yet. They’re all classified as still under investigation, although they read like accidents. Just like ours.”

“Four?”

Larry nodded. “Of course, we won’t know until-”

Cody said, “Justin is on that trip.”

Larry rubbed his eyes. “Oh no, man.”

“You need to move your rig,” Cody said. “I need to get the hell out of here to Bozeman.”

Larry sighed and his shoulders slumped.

“Larry, move your truck.”

Cody roared down down U.S. 287 toward Townsend, the flat south end of Canyon Ferry Lake shimmering with moonlight. The night was warm and he kept his windows open so the rush of air would keep him awake. Synapses in his brain seemed to be firing with the crackling machine-gun rhythm of a spark plug. He shot by the sleeping ranch houses and barns, past the faded wooden archway to the ranch his friend Jack McGuane’s parents still ran.

The sight of the ranch brought back a flood of memories both painful and euphoric. A year and a half before, he’d laid it all out there for his friends Jack and Melissa McGuane. In the end he’d lost his boyhood friend Brian Eastman, gutted his own reputation, and lost his stripes in the Denver PD, but it all still felt right to him. Even with the high body count of scumbags, he’d gleefully do it all over again.

That was the thing, he thought. Throughout his life his friends, lovers, and colleagues wondered aloud what made him tick. As if he were like Churchill’s description of Russia, a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” when really it was so damned simple. So damned simple. Cody was born damaged. His Maker had flinched when soldering his hard wires together, and they would always short out or overheat at the wrong time. He could probably blame his white-trash family for his criminal tendencies and penchant for self-delusion and self-medication, but he didn’t believe in justifying bad behavior with that kind of touchy-feely crap. Cody was not good and he was incapable of being good, but that didn’t mean he didn’t recognize and revere goodness, and he’d do anything-anything-to protect those blessed with clean, unimpeded wiring. Like his friends the McGuanes, whom he’d helped. Like Hank Winters, whom he’d failed. Like Justin, his miracle son, whom he had to save.

He slowed through Townsend, glancing over his shoulder at a yelp that came from two drunks stumbling out of the Commercial Bar into the street. Thought maybe he might even know them, and smiled bitterly.

Two miles south of Townsend, the inside of the Ford exploded with red and blue light. He glanced into his rearview mirror and squinted at the intensity of the wig-wags on the light bar of the Highway Patrol car.

“Shit,” he hissed, noting he was only five miles over the speed limit.

Fuming, he pulled over. He reached for his badge which was no longer there and sat back and closed his eyes. He hoped like hell he knew the trooper and could manage to talk his way out of a ticket so he could get back on the highway as soon as possible. For a second he considered flooring the Ford once the trooper got out of his vehicle, but he knew that wouldn’t work for long. No doubt, his plates had already been called in, and there wouldn’t be a record of them.

He was caught, unless he could talk his way out of it and get the plate search canceled.

A flashlight blinded him through the driver’s window and he looked away.

The trooper, an unfamiliar beefy youngster who looked six months out of the training center, said, “You were aware you only have one operating headlight, mister?”

Cody said, “I’m an investigator for the sheriff’s department. I’m in a hurry.”

The trooper grinned, his teeth glinting in the secondary light of his flashlight’s reflection.

“Well, you’ll just have to show me a badge and get the sheriff on the horn,” the trooper said. “And in the meanwhile you can follow me back to town until we can get that headlight fixed. What happened, anyway? It looks like you hit something.”

“A fucking elk,” Cody said, not able to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Yeah,” the trooper said, shining his beam on the damage. “I can see some hair and blood. Male or female?”

Cody sighed and covered his face with his hands. “Female,” he said.

“Got your cow permit?” The trooper chuckled.