Breaking Point

34

Savage run canyon pushed in on the narrow river, which pinched the flow of water and speeded it up. Joe looked frantically right and left, looking for a place they could lay up so he could detach from the craft and scout ahead, but there were no banks-only slick vertical walls.

Ahead, the river narrowed in even more, and Joe couldn’t see beyond a sharp V of rock a hundred yards ahead of them. Beyond the V there was no sign of the river in the distance. Which meant it dropped sharply in elevation.

“Oh, man,” Butch said.

Joe tried to climb up the side of the log to get a glimpse of what was in front of them, but when he did he nearly tipped Farkus into the water.

“Have you ever heard of Middle Fork Falls?” Joe shouted above the growing roar.

Butch looked over with fear in his eyes. “No.”

“I haven’t, either,” Joe said. “So maybe it’s just a drop or rapid ahead and not a waterfall.”

“What should we do?” Butch shouted.

The river seemed to rise and bunch up with coiled power, as if it were gathering to propel them through the V. The walls on both sides shot by. Joe tentatively dropped his left boot to gauge the depth of the river, but he couldn’t touch bottom.

“Keep us in the middle and hold on tight,” Joe said. “Shout if it looks like we’re going to hit something.”

Butch nodded frantically, then turned to face the V as they powered into it.

Joe shouted into Farkus’s ear: “Wake up, Dave, and hold on.”

Farkus raised his head, looked ahead, and screamed.

The first sensation as they plummeted through the V was of exploding sunshine and weightlessness. The bow of the log was suspended in the air for a moment, and when Joe glanced up the length of it, he saw not river but treetops. Then it tipped and plunged.

There was a Middle Fork Falls after all, and the log rode it almost straight down in a twenty-foot drop. Joe could do nothing other than wrap his arms around the trunk and press his face into the slick wood. The momentum of the plunge knocked his legs back until they were parallel with the log itself, and they knifed into a deep pool below-immense silence, again-before floating back to the surface.

Joe did a quick inventory. Butch Roberson was sputtering and choking on water, but had held on. Farkus was moaning and had slipped over to Joe’s side, so Joe shoved the man back up on top and in balance.

While he did, Joe almost didn’t notice that the log was once again picking up speed.

“Jesus-look what’s ahead,” Butch yelled.

Farkus shouted, “I’m holding on!”

Joe swung around and could see the river. It was a terrible sight. From where they were until the river finally made a sharp bend to the left a quarter-mile below, it was angry white foam punctuated by rocks. The pitch of the river dropped steadily toward the bend below. Joe could detect no theme to the river, no central current or deeper passage where they could safely avoid the hazards. It was as if the river itself was being fed down a rocky chute.

Joe swung himself around back into position and got his feet out ahead of him. He craned his head up to look for deeper water-the darker, the deeper-and he judged by the speed they were going they’d be literally on top of navigable water before they could see it. Running the rapids would demand split-second adjustments.

“I’ll call it out if I can,” Joe said. “If you get thrown off, just lean back in the current and keep your feet out in front of you.”

“Gotcha,” Butch hollered. “Take us through it, Captain!”

Joe almost smiled.

They flew down the rapids like a pinball bouncing from post to post, bumper to bumper. Joe called out, “Left, left, right, left, right-right-right! Left, left, right. .”

All senses on high, Joe didn’t think; he saw and reacted and yelled. The nose of the log swung from side to side to avoid rocks, sometimes riding up the side of a boulder for a moment before settling back down in the current. The chutes between the rocks were so narrow he banged his knees and thighs on them as they caromed down, and Joe’s left knee hit a boulder so hard he felt the impact all the way into his hip socket. His left leg was so numb he actually glanced down immediately after the impact to see if it was still attached. It was.

Halfway down the rapids, Farkus regained consciousness and raised his head. When he saw what they were in the middle of, he shrieked and clung even harder to the log.

Which was good. Joe had almost forgotten about Farkus.

They banked hard right around a huge boulder with Joe on the outside pushing and scrambling and Butch on the inside at pivot. When the front of the log nosed around the rock, Joe glanced up to see a hollow-eyed Kyle McLanahan, propped up as if sitting in a pile of driftwood, staring back at him. McLanahan’s torso was out of the water, and his arms were propped up on lengths of debris as if he were leaning back in his easy chair watching a football game. His head was cocked slightly to the side. His face was bone-white and slack, his mouth slightly open.

In reaction, Joe nearly lost his grip on the log, but he realized McLanahan was still dead and his body had washed all the way downriver from his fall until it caught in the pileup.

Several thoughts came to Joe at once before the current built up again and swept them away:

It still hadn’t sunk in yet, the fact that ex-sheriff Kyle McLanahan was dead.

McLanahan had been in the valley just slightly longer than Joe. They’d known each other for twelve miserable years. Although he’d schemed and plotted against Joe and had made decisions that cost good men their lives and mobility, McLanahan was a worthy adversary.

Sheriffs didn’t seem to do very well in Twelve Sleep County.

And. .

Dead bodies in cold mountain rivers took on unique characteristics of their own-the skin remained well preserved, predation was rare, they didn’t bloat. Dead bodies in cold rivers became mountain mummies, at least for a while.

They got through the worst of the rock garden with bruises, abrasions, and no broken bones. They were able to lay up in an eddy with a hundred yards still to go, and fortunately the eddy was shallow enough they could stand again on the riverbed.

Joe and Butch panted until they got their breath back and once again Joe was grateful the water was so cold. If it wasn’t, he knew, he’d be able to feel the injuries he’d sustained. When he looked down into the water, he could see several small spirals of blood coming from gashes on his left leg. The pant leg of his Wranglers was tattered, ribbons of it floating in the current. He was surprised he hadn’t lost his boot.

“I can’t believe we got through that,” Farkus said in a croak, looking back up at the rapids above them.

“We?” Butch said.

“I’m hallucinating, I think,” Farkus said. “I had this dream I saw Sheriff McLanahan sitting on some wood, watching us go by.”

With Butch holding the log in place, Joe splashed to the foot of the eddy and scouted ahead. The last hundred yards wasn’t as rocky, but it was a steep narrow flume that ended in a wide slow run before it went around a bend. After what they’d been through, it looked like a picnic.

He realized, as he gazed downstream, that there was warm sun on his shoulders. He turned. The mouth of the canyon was behind them now. The terrain surrounding them was still mountainous but softer, flatter, tamer, with folds rather than cliffs. And although the sky was thick with smoke that gave every vista a sepia-toned look, the fire hadn’t advanced this far downriver yet.

Joe felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. They’d gone through the worst. He’d never heard of anyone running the Middle Fork in August when the water was so low-probably because no one in his right mind would try, he thought. He stanched back a feeling of guilty pride.

When he returned to the log, he saw that Farkus had passed out again. Butch stood waist-deep in the water, keeping the log in place. His expression was pained but stoic, and Joe wondered if the reason was because of the many injuries he’d sustained or because he knew, like Joe did, that the campground would be less than an hour away.

Although the flume wasn’t marred by rocks, it was steep and fast. Joe felt exhilarated by the descent, which was fueled by a combination of momentum and adrenaline. He felt intense sun on his face and his hat wanted to lift off his head in the wind. They shot the pitch like seasoned professionals, Joe thought. He’d grown attached to the floating log, and thought that he’d like to load it on a trailer and take it home. Then he remembered it was only a tree trunk, although a special and much-loved tree trunk, and that Marybeth would rightly wonder why it was in the garage.

When they hit the pool at the bottom and slowed down, he secretly wanted to do it again.

Ten minutes later, Joe and Butch tugged the log along behind them through the warm shallows. It was no longer a boat, Joe thought, but a kind of floating stretcher for Dave Farkus.

The riverbed was soft and sandy, and the water was warm. His cuts and bruises came to life as he warmed up and slogged along, and he noticed Butch grimacing as well. Now that they were out of the rapids and falls, the price they’d paid to run them was coming due.

Joe looked downriver. The water was knee-deep and still. Behind them, the fire raged out of control, but the wind wasn’t blowing north yet. When it did, and it was a matter of time, everything he could see on both banks would go up in flames. He felt small and powerless. It was a feeling he appreciated for the pure truth of it in a situation like that.

Joe thought this was the time to talk with Butch. Soon he wouldn’t have the chance. As he took a long breath and began to speak, Butch interjected: “Joe, thank you for getting me through this. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

Joe grunted.

“I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains. I know my way around, and I’ve put myself in situations I had to think and work myself out of. But I’ve never run a river, and I never could have done what we just did.”

Joe said, “Thanks.”

“I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,” Butch said. “I’ll remember what you did. This could have gone a bunch of different directions, I know that. But you saved my life. And the idiot Dave Farkus-you saved him, too.”

Joe didn’t respond to that. Instead, he said, “Butch, I know you had opportunities to make this go another way. You could have shoved Farkus off the log, or knocked me on the head, or just let go of the log and let me try to do this on my own. You could have escaped, is what I’m saying. It would have been easy. But you hung in there, and I appreciate that.”

Joe glanced back to see if Farkus was awake. He was glad he wasn’t.

“He’s out again,” Joe said. “I don’t know how long he’ll be under. So while we’re just walking along here. .”

Butch grinned in response, as if he’d been anticipating the questions.

“You know we’re going to be at the campground pretty soon,” Joe said. “Who knows who will be there, or what will happen. So since it’s just you and me, and before we show up. .”

“What?”

“There are decisions that need to be made.”

“Yeah, I know,” Butch said, resigned. “When you agreed to make sure that helicopter was coming, were you lying to me?”

Joe said, “Yes. It was out of my hands.”

Butch nodded to himself, as if checking off a box in his mind.

“Were you setting me up?”

“No,” Joe said. “I was hoping I could be there to intervene. That’s the only reason I stayed with the EPA agent team. I wanted to be there when they found you so I could arrest you and keep you alive. Batista wanted blood.”

Butch glanced over sharply, as if he hadn’t considered that.

“The guy really wants to kill me, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Do you know why?”

“Not yet. But you’ll be the first to know when I find out. And I will find out.”

A half-hour later, Butch nodded in the general direction of Saddlestring. “Are the people down there with me or against me?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all happened so fast and the facts aren’t out yet. You haven’t had the opportunity to tell your side. But when you do, you’ll have some support, I think. Not when it comes to killing those agents, though. But no one in their right mind will think what Batista did to you is the right thing.”

Butch nodded to himself and didn’t turn his head to look at Joe. He seemed to be in turmoil, Joe thought.

Joe said, “Like I said, let’s handle this locally. Turn yourself in to Sheriff Reed and Dulcie Schalk. You won’t walk, but they’ll be fair.”

“And you’ll make sure of that?” Butch asked with skepticism.

“I’ll do my best,” Joe said, and bit his tongue. He didn’t want to say more.

“Okay, then,” Butch said. “Let’s do this right.”

“Thank you, Butch.”

Butch snorted, as if he really didn’t have a choice. Although he did.

Joe came right out with it: “Butch, did you kill those two EPA agents?”

Butch feigned shock at the question, then said, “Of course I did.”

“Were you alone at the time it happened?”

“Damn right.”

“They just showed up and got out of their car and you happened to have your.223 and you just blew them away?”

“That’s right.”

“Did either one of them threaten you, or draw a gun?”

Butch paused, as if recalling the moment. He said, “The first one, the younger one, never should have pulled his gun. He didn’t have a chance. I shot him first and he went down. The older one went for his weapon, and I got him before he could clear it. Hell, until that second, I didn’t know those bastards were armed.”

Joe felt his stomach clench. He wasn’t sure if it was the aftereffect of the morning, the lack of food, or what Butch had just confessed. Or all three.

Joe said, “So you’re saying you killed them without even knowing who they were?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Joe.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Butch hesitated, then said, “Just fine.”

“You know one of them had a family, like you and me?”

“How would I know that?”

“You wouldn’t, I guess,” Joe said. “But you should care.”

The bend of the river leading into the campground was in sight. For the first time that morning, he could hear the sounds of other people: motors racing, gravel crunching under tires, snatches of voices.

He didn’t have much time left.

Joe said, “So after it was done, after those two agents were down, then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you do next?”

“I fired up my tractor and buried them.”

Joe nodded. “Why right there on your lot? I mean, it seems so obvious.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Butch said. “It isn’t every day I kill two guys. I just wanted them out of my sight, you know? I couldn’t just leave them on the ground with holes in them.”

“Right. So then what? You took their car?”

“Yeah,” Butch said. “They left the keys in it when they got out. I drove it up Hazelton Road to a place where I knew I could dump it. I aimed it at the edge of the road and jumped out of the car and watched it go over. I was hacked off it didn’t go all the way down the canyon to the bottom, but it got hung up in some trees instead.”

“So that was you?”

“Of course,” Butch said.

Joe trudged along, his legs on fire from cuts and bruises, his burned hand, his head wounds from the fight with Pendergast, and his muscles aching.

“So clear this up for me,” Joe said. “You drove the EPA car off the road, but how did you get back to your lot?”

Butch started to answer, then set his mouth.

“I can’t figure that one out,” Joe said.

Butch shrugged but wouldn’t meet Joe’s eyes.

“And when you came out here, to Big Stream Ranch,” Joe said, “you had to have had a ride or I would have seen your truck on the side of the road. How else would you get here?”

Butch shrugged.

Joe pressed, “When we first saw each other a couple of days ago, you know what we talked about.”

“Yes.”

“So I’m starting to get it, I think,” Joe said. “You could have just shot me at that point and no one would know. I didn’t know what had happened, or that anyone was looking for you. But you let me ride away.”

Butch looked over and squinted as if he couldn’t believe Joe even contemplated the fact that he could have hurt him.

Joe said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about it, the things you said and what we talked about. So I want to run something by you. This isn’t an official interrogation, Butch. This is just you and me. But I need to know.”

Butch took a deep breath and trudged ahead. Joe looked hard at the man, and saw himself.

And that’s what it was.

Simple as that.

He almost didn’t need to float his darkest theory out loud. But he did, anyway.

“You know,” Butch said softly after confirming it, “when you think about all of this, it’s hard not to want to just throw up your hands and give up.”

Joe looked over, still partially stunned by what they’d discussed.

“These guys,” Butch said, “the EPA. They’re supposed to protect the environment, right? That’s why they exist.”

Joe didn’t respond.

Butch said, “They burned down the whole fucking mountain.”

Joe said gently, “I know.”

Butch barked a bitter laugh.

Joe said, “We’re close to the campground, Butch.”

They trudged around the bend of the river in the shallows and Joe noted the current had picked up slightly. The log bumped up against the back of his legs, as if it were a Labrador wanting to run again.

“We can float right through them,” Joe offered. “They may not even know we’re there. But that isn’t our deal.”

“A deal is a deal,” Butch said.

Since he’d confirmed Joe’s theory, Butch Roberson seemed to have deflated in height, power, and confidence. He seemed to Joe like a shell of his former self.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Joe said. “This was just between us.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to stick with your story?”

“Absolutely. And I trust you to keep it between us.”

Joe nodded.

“You’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you, Joe?” Butch asked.

Joe hesitated before saying, “Don’t ask me that.”

“You would. You’re a good man.”

Joe changed the subject.

“So do you want to float right through or pull over and give yourself up?”

Butch seemed overwhelmed that Joe had suddenly given him a choice. He said, “The second.”

Then, with resignation: “I can’t outrun them. There are too many of those guys.”

Joe hesitated a moment and said, “You might find allies who will help keep you out of their hands. I have a friend who has operated off the grid for years. I’m sure he’d give you some help.”

Butch nodded. “Yeah, I know there are people out there who could help me, like Frank Zeller. But why get other folks in trouble? This is my problem, not theirs.”

“They may not think of it like that,” Joe said.

“My mind is made up. Don’t give me any more chances to change it.”

“Okay, then,” Joe said. “You’ll need to give me that pistol. You won’t be needing it anymore.”

Butch reached back and handed it over. Joe tossed it toward the bank.

The campground was bustling, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. Joe recognized vehicles, tents, communications vans, and personnel from the forward operating base on the Big Stream Ranch. They were establishing a new FOB, he reasoned, since the old one was being consumed by the fire. He assumed Batista had ordered the campground evacuated, and was establishing a new beachhead. Joe was impressed they’d been able to assemble and move so quickly. But he dreaded the fact that he was delivering Butch Roberson into the Lion’s Den.

As they nosed the front of the log into the muddy bank of the campground, the cacophony of voices and activity went silent. Dozens of federal men and women turned their faces toward Joe and Butch, and there were gasps and open mouths.

Someone said, “Jesus, there he is.”

Joe searched the crowd for Governor Rulon, but didn’t see him. His new director, Lisa Greene-Dempsey, was there, however. She looked shocked to see him, and her eyes blinked quickly behind her designer glasses. Joe thought he must look like quite a sight: wet and torn clothing, disheveled appearance, streams of blood pouring down his legs into his boots.

Heinz Underwood shouldered through the crowd. To Joe, he grinned and said, “You made it, you crazy bastard.” He pointed at Butch and said, “Arrest that man.”

Several agents Joe didn’t recognize started to advance. Beside him, Joe could feel Butch stiffen.

“No,” Joe said, stepping in front of Butch and placing his right hand on the grip of his Glock.

The agents halted and looked back at Underwood for further instructions.

“Where’s Batista?” Joe asked.

“He said he was called back to HQ,” Underwood said, with a twinkle in his eye. “He’s been gone an hour. He left in a hurry.”

Joe acknowledged the news with a curt nod. It fit.

Lisa Greene-Dempsey said, “Warden Pickett, you need to stand aside. You need to cooperate.”

“I’m through cooperating,” Joe said, his tone flat.

To Greene-Dempsey, Joe said, “Call Sheriff Reed and get him down here now. This man will surrender to him and him only. He’ll be in county lockup if you need to see him.”

Underwood said to Greene-Dempsey, “This is a federal matter. You’ll have to order your employee to turn over that man.”

“Warden Pickett-” she said without enthusiasm, but Joe cut her off.

He said, “I made Butch a deal. He agreed to turn himself in to the sheriff.”

Silence.

Joe meant it. His insides roiled, and he didn’t want to draw his weapon.

Greene-Dempsey stepped forward, and Joe said softly, “That includes you, too, I’m afraid. Just make the call.”

She stopped there and gasped for air. Then she raised her iPhone.

Before Joe climbed into the sheriff’s department handicap van behind Butch Roberson in handcuffs, he plucked his badge off his uniform shirt and placed it in Lisa Greene-Dempsey’s outstretched palm. She closed her fingers around it and shook her head sadly.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

“Yeah, I do,” Joe said. “This has all put such a bad taste in my mouth, I don’t think I’ll ever shake it.”

“You’re in bad shape,” she said. “You might feel different when this is all behind us.”

“Is the governor still around?” Joe asked.

“He’s somewhere in town,” she said.

“Did my horse survive?”

“Your horse?”

“I let him go.”

The director shrugged and shook her head. She didn’t know anything about Toby.

Joe grunted and climbed into the van and slid the door shut behind him.

“Mike,” Joe said to the sheriff, “can I borrow your phone? I need to call my wife.”

Sheriff Reed handed his phone over.

As the van cleared the campground, spewing a roll of dust, Joe looked through the back window. Lisa Greene-Dempsey was saying something to Underwood, shaking her head while she did, and still clutching his badge.

Behind them, massive columns of yellow smoke rolled into the sky from the mountains.

“Thank you for what you did back there,” Butch Roberson said.

Joe nodded.

“Ask Marybeth to tell Pam and Hannah I’m all right, okay?”

Joe and Roberson exchanged a long look of understanding.

“I will,” Joe said.

After he’d told Marybeth he was safe but injured and he might be in the hospital for a few days, and she expressed relief, she said, “Something really odd happened this morning. Did you get my message?”

“No, what happened?”

“Pam asked to use the computer so she could check her email, and I pointed her to it. I’d left it on from last night when I called you. But when she sat down at it, her face turned white as a sheet. The EPA site was still up on the screen with Batista’s photo and bio. .”

Joe felt something flutter in his stomach.

“. . and Pam pointed to the photo of him and said, ‘What is this asshole doing here? And why are they calling him Juan Julio Batista?’”

“Let me guess,” Joe said. “She knew him as John Pate.”

“And that’s where things start to connect.”

Joe noticed that as he spoke the name, Butch’s head had snapped up sharply.