Free Fire

21

Two point two million acres, Joe thought. Yellowstone was that big. And while he now had a plan, he didn’t have a car.

There was a layer of light snow suspended on the grass and melting on the pavement in front of the Mammoth Hotel. He could see his breath as he walked to the restaurant for breakfast. The morning was achingly silent. Rising columns of steam from the hot spring terraces on the hill muted the sun, making it seem overcast despite the cloudless blue sky. Although it could, and did, snow any month of the year in the park, it definitely felt like summer was spent and had stepped aside in utter exhaustionto yield to fall and winter.

His mind was on something else, though.

Flamers, they called them.

Like the snowflakes that hung in the air, turning into floating sparks by the morning sun, thoughts and facts seemed suspendedtoo. While it might be folly to try to connect them, Joe felt the need to try. It was more of a hunch than a theory, and he’d made mistakes going with his hunches before. But somehowit felt right. It was the new knowledge of the flamers that did it.

Flamers. The Gopher State Five. Clay McCann. Sunburst Hot Springs. Bob Olig. The black SUV. What Mark Cutler figuredout but never got a chance to explain. And now Clay McCannagain, with more blood on his hands. Somehow, they were all connected.

Samantha Ellerby had described flamers as streams of gas coming from tiny quarter-sized holes in the ground that could be lit with a match. She said the flame reached at least six feet into the air, sometimes higher, and provided both heat and light for hot-potting. She said there were at least seven of them near Sunburst Hot Springs, and when they were all lit up at night surroundingthe hot pool the atmosphere was “way cool.” She said when it was time to leave, Hoening smothered the flames by covering the holes with a thick wet blanket.

The Zone of Death was a diversion, he thought. This wasn’t about the Zone of Death at all. The murders were a means to an end, a way of dealing with those facts that hung in the air and were somehow, some way, connected.

He hoped that a revelation would come to him while he ate breakfast, that the indiscriminate facts would somehow connect and cling to one another, form a pattern, create a story line.

They didn’t.

When simon said there were no messages for him at the front desk, Joe used the pay phone in the lobby to call Chuck Ward. He needed to know what the governor thought of his reportsthus far and how he could get a new vehicle, and he wanted to advise them of the new information about Cutler, flamers, and Clay McCann’s latest crime.

Ward wasn’t in.

“Can you tell me how to get ahold of him?” Joe asked the secretary in the governor’s office.

“No. He took a few days’ personal leave.”

“Personal leave? Now?”

“Yes.”

Joe was annoyed. This meant Ward hadn’t received his reportsand had no idea what was happening.

“When will he be back?”

“Monday.”

“That’s three more days!”

“Correct.” She sounded bored.

Joe tried to think. There was no way Ward would be out of touch completely. He was the governor’s chief of staff, he couldn’t just vanish. It didn’t work that way. He knew the secretaryprobably couldn’t give out Ward’s number, wherever he was. But he knew who could.

“I need to talk to the governor, then. It’s important.”

“What did you say your name was?” she asked before puttinghim on hold.

Joe waited. The hold music was Johnny Cash singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Joe assumed the governor had had somethingto do with the choice.

Finally, she came back on the line. “The governor says he’s never heard of anyone named Joe Pickett.”

Joe clenched his jaw, closed his eyes, said, “It’s so good to be back in the system. Please have Chuck Ward call me immediatelyif he happens to check in. And please tell the governor things are happening. Three more people are dead. I’m sure he’s heard about them-two murdered by Clay McCann, the other a Zephyr employee who we made contact with. That one might be an accident but I doubt it.”

“I’ll pass that along,” she said in a tone suggesting she had no intention of doing so.

“He’ll be interested,” Joe said. “Trust me on that.”

“Hmmmppf.”

Joe walked to the Pagoda, stepping through a television news crew from Billings that was setting up in the parking lot at the side of the building. A pretty blond correspondent who looked all of twenty-four was applying makeup to her sharp cheekbones, ready to do a stand-up report on the fact that Clay McCann was back in the Yellowstone jail.

The receptionist looked up as Joe entered. Layborn sat in a chair behind her, and he shook his head with clear disgust when he saw Joe.

“Thanks to you,” Layborn said, “I get to spend the morning fending off the press instead of doing my job.”

Joe ignored him. “Did you find anything out about the black SUV?”

“You mean the one you didn’t get a plate number on? No. It was probably out of the park by the time we put out the APB at all the gates.”

“But you’ve alerted the cops in all of the gateways, right? Jackson, Cody, West Yellowstone, Bozeman, Cooke City?”

“Gee,” Layborn said, curling his lip, “we never even thought of that. Good thing you’re here to advise us.” He snorted, “Of course we did that. Christ. But we’ve got nothing so far. Do you know how many SUVs there are in this area? Everybody has ’em.”

Joe nodded. True. “So McCann is here again, huh? Are charges being filed?”

Layborn looked quickly away. Joe could see that the ranger’s face and neck were turning red. “We’re holding him while the prosecutors try to come up with something,” he said through clenched teeth. “This time, we can’t even get him on a gun charge, since he claims the victims had the gun and he took it away from them in self-defense. That son of a bitch is going to get away with it. Again!” he spat the word out.

“So he’ll be released?” Joe asked, incredulous.

Layborn shifted in his chair, finally looked back at Joe. “We had to tell him this morning he could go.”

“He’s gone?”

Layborn shook his head. “That’s the thing,” he said. “He refusesto leave. He says he’s staying in custody until we either bring a case against him or not. In the meantime, he’s demandingto be moved to another federal facility. He says he doesn’t care where-Boise, Billings, Casper-anywhere but here. Claims he fears for his life in Yellowstone, which really pisses off the brass. They don’t want that getting out, as you can imagine.”

“I can imagine,” Joe said. He wondered whom McCann was scared of, who he thought could get to him in the Yellowstone jail.

“That’s not all,” Layborn said. “He says if we don’t press charges, he’s not leaving until the secretary of the interior issuesa public apology to him for arresting him in the first place and talking about him to the press. He claims his house was vandalized and he can no longer earn a living because his reputation’s been ruined. He says he’ll sue us if the apology isn’t made.”

“You’re kidding,” Joe said.

“Jesus,” Layborn said, “I wish I was. I also wish I could just take the weasel out in the woods and put a bullet in his head and end this.”

Joe thought, I know a guy who would be happy to do that.

“Can I see him?” Joe asked.

“No visitors. Orders of the chief ranger.”

“I’ve got some questions for him.”

“Too bad. The chief thinks if he has no public contact he’ll get bored and leave. McCann likes attention. So no press, no visitors at all. Direct orders. That’s why I’m here this morning-to keep everybody away from him.”

“I’m on your side,” Joe said.

Layborn grinned viciously. “Somehow, I have trouble believingthat.”

“Can I at least look at him?”

Joe could see Layborn thinking about it, wanting to come up with a reason why he couldn’t. Finally, he gestured to the door. “We’ve got cameras in all the cells. The monitors are down the hall. You can look at him there, but nothing else. Then you need to leave, and I mean it.”

As Joe passed him, Layborn said, “I don’t know what you think you’ll see.”

Joe wasn’t sure either. Nevertheless, he went down the hallwayinto a small room with a bank of four black-and-white video monitors on the wall. Two showed empty cells. One revealedtwo disheveled men sleeping on cots. A Post-it note read “Zephyr, DUI.” On the fourth monitor, a pale, pudgy man sat motionless on a cot with his hands on his knees, staring intently at a blank wall. McCann.

There was nothing threatening about him, Joe thought. He looked like an overripe accountant, or the lawyer that he was. He looked lonely, pathetic. Not the murderer or schemer he obviouslywas. He looked almost like. . a victim. Joe had been around several evil men in his life, and had felt a darkness insidehimself when he was near them. Not this time. Strangely, it bothered him more than if McCann exuded menace. Here sat a man who assassinated six people in cold blood, who wanted an apology from the government for being arrested. This man, Joe thought, was beyond understanding. In a way, he was probably the most dangerous man he had ever encountered. Joe wanted desperately to bring him down.

Demming was opening the door of a Crown Victoria when Joe came out of the Pagoda, ruining the taped stand-up for the Billings television station.

“Cut!” the producer growled to the reporter. “Jenny, you’ll need to do it again.”

“Sorry,” Joe said, stepping out of the shot.

“Damn it,” Jenny said, “I was on a roll.”

“I’ve been assigned to traffic,” Demming said, as Joe climbed into the cruiser with her. “Suspension is still pending, though. I’ll know by Monday if I still have a job. I’ve never seen Langston so angry. Ashby actually defended me, though. A little,at least. Enough to keep me employed through the weekend.”

Joe didn’t know what to say.

“It may all be for the best,” she said, looking out the windshieldat Jenny the reporter starting her stand-up again. “Lars will be out of town at a road engineering conference in Billings. I’ll be around for the kids, which is good.”

“I could use your help,” Joe said. “You’re a good partner.”

She smiled. “It makes me happy to hear you say that, Joe.”

“I mean it.”

Joe told her about the flamers. She was interested, and he could see her thinking.

“She says they lit them with a match,” Joe continued. “It sounded like she was describing a propane torch or something. Does this make any sense to you?”

“None. I’ve never heard of anything like that in the park.”

Joe nodded. “There’s no oil or gas here, is there?”

“No. And if there was, nobody could drill for it anyway. Are you sure this connects anything?”

Joe shook his head. “I’m not sure about anything. But when I think about oil and gas, I think of Wyoming. That’s how the whole state is funded. Hoening made a reference to ‘something going on here with the resources that may deeply impact the State of Wyoming, especially your cash flow situation.’ Remember that? This new information could sort of go to that, and it might be what Cutler figured out and never got a chance to tell us.”

Demming nodded. “Let’s not forget, Joe, that we have no evidenceCutler was murdered. We’re assuming it but have nothingto go on. The forensic guys on the scene are describing it as an accident, that Cutler lost his footing checking on the thermal and fell in.”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I saw how careful he was out there.”

“I agree. But we’ve got nothing. We’ve asked the FBI to take a look at what’s left of his body and. . the pieces they could find. They’re FedExing it all to Virginia. Maybe we’ll find out he got hit in the head or shot or something. Until then, we can’t jump to conclusions.”

“I’ve already jumped.”

“So have I,” she sighed.

“What about Herve and the message?” Joe asked.

“He checks out,” she said. “The message was left in his in-boxand he simply delivered it. There’s nothing to suggest he told anyone about the meeting, and he claims he never even looked at it. The investigator who interviewed him said he was clean.”

He told her what Layborn had said about the black SUV.

“I’m not surprised.”

“If we could find that car and who was driving it, we might get somewhere.”

“How do we do that now?” she asked.

“The surveillance tapes,” he said. “Doesn’t the Park Service get a shot of every vehicle and plate that enters at the gates? I’ve seen the cameras. We could look at the tapes for yesterday and see where the SUV came from. If we can’t find it, we can go back two days and find out where it came in. We might even get a picture of who was driving it.”

Her eyes widened with excitement. “That’s right.”

“So we need access to the tapes. Are they in the Pagoda?”

She frowned. “It’s not as simple as that, Joe. The tapes are on site at each entrance gate. They’re not compiled and sent to headquarters, and you can’t watch them at any central place. To see them, you’ve literally got to go to each entrance and downloadthe tapes from the day before and watch them there or bring it back. And if I remember correctly, we only keep a three-day record before the cameras record over the old tape.”

“Which means we’ve got to move on this,” Joe said.

Demming hesitated, and Joe felt suddenly guilty.

“You don’t have to do it,” he said. “You’ve been reassigned. You could really lose your job if you’re seen hanging out with the likes of me.”

“I’ll take the North and West entrances,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there as part of my patrol anyway. That gives you the South, Northeast, and East entrances. I think if you flash your badge and sweet-talk them, you’ll be able to download the tapes. But if they call in for permission, you’re sunk. We’re sunk.”

“I’m willing to try if you are.”

“I am,” she said.

What wasn’t said between them was the implication of them working independently, out of view of Layborn, Ashby, or Langston. Because, Joe thought, one or all of them knew more than they were letting on. Then something clicked into place: maybe McCann thought the exact same thing.

Joe wondered which one frightened McCann enough to make him request a transfer. It made sense now, Joe thought. McCann wanted to stay in very public protective custody so no one could silence him. His request for a transfer suggested that someone with access to the jail-someone on the inside-could get to him. He decided not to share this with Demming so as not to implicate her any further with her superiors.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said. “All I can say is that I appreciate it very much.”

She nodded but didn’t want to talk about it.

“I’ve been where you are,” Joe said. “You’re doing the right thing. But I have to confess that it usually gets me into trouble.”

She laughed. “Like I could get into any more trouble.”

As he opened the car door, she reached out and gripped his arm.

“Here,” she said, handing him a set of keys.

“What’s this?”

“Keys to Lars’s pickup. You’ll need a vehicle. How do you expect to get around?”

“I can’t take these,” Joe said, remembering Lars’s obvious pride in his tricked-up 4x4.

“Take them,” she insisted. “He likes you.”

“I’m hard on cars,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” she said, dismissing him. “I’m kind of worried about that, I admit.”

It was easier than Joe thought it would be, despite the suspiciouslooks the gate rangers gave him when he pulled up in the jacked-up pickup with the loud glasspack mufflers and got out. He found they were lonely in the last days of the season and didn’t mind taking the time to show him how to plug into the video units in their gatehouses and download three days’ worth of taped entrances and exits. Only at the Northeast gate did he have to show his badge.

He hoped Demming would have the same good fortune.

On the way back to Mammoth, Joe turned off at Biscuit Basin. Although yellow crime-scene tape was stretched from tree trunk to tree trunk across the pathway to Sunburst, no rangers had been left to guard it. He looked around to make sure no one was watching and ducked under the tape.

The trail had been trampled into muddy goo by dozens of rangers and investigators from the day before. The runoff stream ran clear. As he approached Sunburst and felt an almost imperceptible increase in temperature and humidity from the pool, he noted the pink microbes waving in the water and the driftwood where the thermister was still hidden.

Now that he thought about it, he recalled the tickle of air on his ankle the first time he came to the pool with Cutler. Moving step-by-step, he backed around the thermal until he felt it again.

It came from a mouth-sized hole in the ground. He knelt down and put his palm out. The gas emitting from it was odorlessand made no sound. But he could feel it licking his hand.

He stepped back and lit a match, held it out.

With a muffled whump, flame raced up the stream of gas and danced on the tip as if waving. He felt heat on his face and hands. It burned cleanly and nearly six feet into the air before dissipating.

He found another mouth and lit it too. And another. The three flamers undulated slightly as they burned. He imagined how they’d look at night, illuminating the trees surrounding the thermal. “Way cool” was how Samantha had described them.

He agreed.

He found four more holes that marched in a line toward the timber but stopped short of the loam and lit them all. There was now a wall of flame, each spout of fire licking silently in the air. It looked strangely tropical, Joe thought. And there was something else. The holes ran parallel to the dark line in the ground that Cutlerhad said was one of the few exposed coal seams in the park.

After watching them for a half-hour, he soaked his fleece vest in the hot pot and extinguished them.

“Way cool,” he said aloud.

Joe returned to the Mammoth Hotel to wait for Demmingand to make arrangements at the front desk for a cabin for Marybeth and the girls the next night. He didn’t want to subject them to rooms in the empty hotel that even he found lonely. He used his credit card, knowing the state would likely not reimbursethe cost, and wondered as Simon ran it when exactly his first new paycheck would arrive.

When Simon returned his card and said he could pick up the keys in the morning, he said, “There have been a couple of older gentlemen asking for you. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked them to wait outside the lobby for you to return.”

“Wait outside? Why?”

Simon looked apologetic.

Joe got it. “They were stinking drunk, right?” he said with despair.

“Beyond stinking,” Simon said. “They reeked. And one of them had a little accident on the couch. He dropped his bottle of cheap whiskey.”

Joe turned to see that the cushions on the overstuffed couch near the fireplace had been removed.

“Son!” George Pickett shouted as he staggered into the lobby from outside. “Son! My boy! Fruit of my loins!”

Doomsayer remained outside so he could throw up on the sidewalk.

Joe angrily intercepted his father. “What do you want?”

“To see my boy. Do you know how good it makes me feel to say I’m going to visit my son? Is there something wrong with that?”

His father hadn’t shaved or changed clothes since he’d seen him at Old Faithful, as if their meeting had been the catalyst for the bender he was on. He stunk of whiskey and something rottenhe’d eaten. His eyes shone with a giddy brand of happiness that bordered on the manic. His smile was forced, and as he stumbled, Joe reached out to hold him up.

“We have nothing to talk about,” Joe said.

“But you’re my son!” George said loudly. “The only one I have left.”

Joe glanced over his shoulder to see Simon look away discreetly.

“You can’t just stand here and yell,” Joe said. “You’re sure as hell not driving anywhere. Don’t you have someplace to stay?”

“With you!” George slurred. “We can bunk with you! We can stay up late and tell stories and catch up. That meeting we had, that was no good. We need a new start.”

Joe felt like smacking him, and instantly felt guilty for even thinking it. He was his father, wasn’t he? But he was so much less than that, even though he’d come to Mammoth to see him.

Joe handed George the keys to room 231.

“Don’t wreck it,” Joe said, getting both men into the room.

“You aren’t staying with us?” Doomsayer asked.

“Never,” Joe said. “And get out tomorrow when you two can walk.”

“Ah, tomorrow,” Doomsayer said, watching George stagger toward the bed and collapse into the middle of it. “We don’t speak of tomorrow up here. It may never come.”

In the cabin he had rented, Joe sat at a small table and surveyedthe accommodations. It would do, although it was dark and close. He’d hoped there would be a private bedroom for him and Marybeth. He missed his wife, and recalled their last moments together by the fireplace. Instead, there was a double bed and two singles in a long room. Maybe they could send Sheridan and Lucy out for some ice or something, he thought.

He hoped George Pickett would do as he was told and be out of the area by morning, when his family was due to arrive.

Tossing his bags into the small closet, he wondered when Demming would get back. He’d need to leave a note at the hotelabout his new location.

And speaking of location, Joe thought, where in the hell was Nate?