Free Fire

3

Joe,Marybeth, and their daughters trekked across the hay meadow for dinner in the main ranch house with Bud and Missy Longbrake and two sullen Mexican ranch hands. As they walked across the shorn meadow the dried hay and fallen leaves crunched under their feet, the sounds sharp. The brief but intense light of the dying sun slipped behind the mountains and lit up the yellow/gold leaves of the river bottom cottonwoods, igniting the meadow with color. Despite the fact that there wasn’t a high-rise building within two hundredmiles and Sheridan had never been to New York, she referredto this magical moment each evening as “walking down Broadway.”

The light doused just as they approached the main house. The evening was still and cold, the air thin, the sky close. A milky parenthesis framing the slice of moon signaled that snow could come at any time. Joe had brought a flashlight for the walk back to their house after dinner.

Because Marybeth had arrived home later than usual, Joe had not yet had a chance to talk to her about his meeting with the governor.

Lucy told her mother about Sheridan’s detention. Marybeth nodded and squinted at her oldest daughter, who glared at Lucy for telling.

“No talk about Sheridan or the detention during dinner,” Marybeth told Lucy.

“You mean not to tell Grandmother Missy?” Lucy said.

“That’s what I mean.”

Joe agreed. He preferred internal family discussions to remaininternal, without Missy’s opinion on anything. It pleased him that Marybeth felt the same way. In fact, Joe thought he detecteda growing tension between Marybeth and her mother lately. He stifled the urge to fan the flames. Joe and Marybeth had talked about buying a house of their own in town and had met with a Realtor. In the Realtor’s office, Joe was ashamed to admit he had never owned a home before-they had always lived in state housing-and therefore had no equity. The meetingconcluded quickly after that. He had no idea how expensive it was to buy a house with no track record, and they knew they needed to save more money in order to build up a deposit and get good financing. To relieve his guilt on the drive back to the ranch, Marybeth had pointed out the comfort of the situation they were in-a home, meals, the undeniable beauty of the ranch itself. But Joe found himself too stubborn to concede all her points, although she certainly was practical. Looming over the argument, though, was the specter of Missy, Marybeth’s mother.

“I wish that stove would get here,” Sheridan said as they approachedthe ranch house. “It would be nice to eat dinner in our own house for once.”

It had been only a week since the ancient stove in the log home quit working. But Marybeth didn’t point it out because she was getting smarter about choosing her battles with Sheridan, Joe thought. In fact, it seemed as if the two were starting to come to a new understanding in regard to each other. Mysterious.

Joe opened the door for everyone.

As Marybeth passed him she raised her eyebrows, said, “I heard the governor’s plane was at the airport today.”

“We can talk about that after dinner too,” Joe said.

That stopped Marybeth for a moment and she studied his face. He stifled a grin, but she could read him like a book.

Even with the other employees and the whole Pickett familyin the dining room, the table still had plenty of empty chairs since it had once been where a dozen ranch hands ate breakfast and dinner, back when the Longbrake Ranch was in its heyday. Maria, the ranch cook and housekeeper, served steaming plattersof the simple ranch fare Bud Sr. liked best, inch-and-a-half-thick steaks, baked potatoes, green salad (lettuce and tomatoes only), white bread, apple cobbler. Bud Sr. called it “real food,” as opposed to anything that didn’t include beef. Joe tended to agree with Bud Sr. on that one. There was a time when real food was served five nights a week. Since Missy had arrived, it had been cut down to once during the week and on Sunday.

They sat down at the table in the seating arrangement that had come about since they moved to the ranch. Bud no longer sat at the head of the table. His old chair was now occupied by Missy. The only explanation for the change was a single throw-awayline by Missy earlier in the summer, saying, “I need to be closer to the kitchen door so I can help Maria serve.” But, as far as Joe could tell, Missy had never helped Maria do anything exceptprovide tips on her makeup. Not that Bud Sr. seemed to care about the power shift. That was one thing about Bud, Joe thought. He was so in love with his bride of one year that he was blind to everything else. He had conceded authority with almost giddy enthusiasm.

“Where’s Bud Jr.?” Joe asked.

“In his room,” Bud Sr. said, spearing a thick steak with his fork and sliding it onto his plate. “His back’s hurting. He says he may never walk again.”

Lucy looked up in alarm.

“Not really, darling,” Bud Sr. said. “That’s just how Bud Jr. is. Everything’s a big deal.”

“It’s called creativity,” Missy said softly.

Eduardo, Maria’s husband and one of the ranch hands at the table, described driving out to the fence line that afternoon to retrieve Bud Jr. He found him lying on his back in the cheater grass, moaning. He brought him home.

“Shamazz, eet look like he was dead,” Eduardo said in a heavy accent. Pascal, the other hand, tried to disguise a sudden bout of laughter by coughing into his hand. Pascal made no secretof his contempt for Bud Jr.

Missy seemed distracted, and had hardly looked up. Joe had to admit how attractive she was for her age, and she looked especiallygood tonight as she sat there and picked at the tiniest portions possible of everything on her plate. She wore a charcoalcashmere sweater and a thin rope of pearls, dark lipstick. Her hair was perfect, not a strand of gray. When she caught Joe watching her, she glared back for a second before breaking the gaze.

Joe wondered what he had caught her thinking about.

“You’re dressed up,” Marybeth said to her mother. “Are you going out?”

“I’ve got a meeting in town tonight,” Missy said dismissively.“Just the county arts council thing.”

“My little artiste.” Bud Sr. grinned and reached over and stroked Missy’s shoulder. “Don’t you want some more steak?”

“No, thank you. You know how I feel about red meat.”

Bud shook his head. “She’s as tiny as a bird, my little artiste.”

Now Sheridan coughed in her hand. Marybeth shot her daughter a look.

“Good steak,” Joe said.

“Damned good steak.” Bud Sr. nodded. “Real food.”

“Ees good,” Eduardo said, and Pascal agreed.

Marybeth looked at Joe, her eyes saying, Get me out of here.

On the way back to their house, Joe shone his flashlight on the path and everyone followed him holding hands in a line: Joe, Marybeth, Sheridan, Lucy.

“Come along, my little ducklings,” he said.

“Come along, my little artistes,” Sheridan said. “My tiny littlebirds.”

Joe laughed.

“Sheridan,” Marybeth said sternly. “Don’t mock.” Then: “Joe, you’re not helping the situation.”

“Sorry.”

The stiff grass had a sheath of beaded moisture. It would frost tonight, Joe thought.

“Look,” Sheridan said after a moment, “you don’t have to say anything about what happened today at school. I know I screwed up. I never should’ve taken the bait from that ass Jason Kiner. I’ll never do that again, not because he doesn’t deserve a good ass kicking, but because it embarrassed me and it embarrassedyou. I’m better than that. Okay? Can we drop it now?”

Joe waited for Marybeth to answer. This was her department.

“Okay,” Marybeth said in a way that made it clear the discussionwas over.

“She said ‘ass’ twice,” Lucy whispered, and Joe laughed again. Luckily, so did Marybeth and Sheridan, both relieved that a confrontation had been averted.

As they approached their house, Joe squeezed his wife’s hand in the dark and she squeezed back.

“I know that look in her eye,” Marybeth said later, once the girls were in their rooms, Sheridan doing biology homeworkand Lucy working on another project for Mrs. Hanson.

“What look?” Joe asked from the couch. The file the governorhad given him was in his lap. The woodstove was lit and ticking as it warmed, the television was off. He’d been waiting for his wife to change clothes after they returned from dinner. She hadn’t had time earlier. Even in her worn baggy sweats, Joe felt a zing when he saw her come down the hallway. He liked how she walked across the floor to him. His wife was blond, trim, attractive. Although she was the same age as Joe, when he looked at her he saw the image of the girl he had seen for the first time on the campus of the University of Wyoming, the girl he knew, that instant, he wanted to marry. It was the best decisionhe ever made, and he still felt that he could be exposed at any time as not being worthy of her. She brought a purpose to his life. And he was as crazy in love with her as Bud was with Missy.

“That determined look in her eye,” she said, “combined with the sweater and the pearls.”

Joe finally got it that Marybeth was talking about her mother.

She said, “It’s like a knight putting on his armor or an Indian painting his face. She’s getting ready to take action.”

“What action?” Joe asked, patiently waiting for Marybeth to finish with her theory so he could tell her about the offer.

“I don’t know for sure, but I’m suspicious. I think we’re looking at the opening phase of another round of trading up.”

Joe nodded. Bud Longbrake was Missy’s fourth husband. The first, Marybeth’s father, was a small-time defense attorney in Denver. The second was the owner of a real estate company. The third was a developer and state senator in Arizona who was eventually convicted of fraud. Each man had more social status than the last and a bigger bank account. Missy had each new potential husband lined up, thoroughly smitten, and locked-in before announcing her intention to divorce. As a game warden, Joe had observed predators like coyotes, eagles, and wolves for years. None of them held a candle to his mother-in-law.

“Who do you suppose is the target?” Joe asked as Marybeth joined him on the couch. The log home was sturdy, dark, and comfortable, despite its age. Generations of ranch foremen and their families had lived there before Joe and Marybeth, and they’d taken good care of it and, like so many old ranch structures, added on. There were three bedrooms. The kitchen was bright and sunny and looked out over the Twelve Sleep River, and the living room where Joe sat-the original room of the home-had elk and deer antlers on the walls and cattle brands burned into the logs. A rarely used stone fireplace dominatedthe north wall. A family photo covered a section of the wall where, for a reason never explained, someone had fired six bullets into a log from inside. Walking through the house in the dark was an adventure. Corners of rooms were out of square and floors weren’t level from room to room. The house had character and was filled with the benevolent legacy of past cowboysand their families. Joe loved the place, despite the circumstancesof how they had come to live there.

Marybeth said, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can come up with one man. Earl Alden.”

“Ah,” Joe said. They called him the Earl of Lexington. Alden was a Southern multibillionaire media mogul who had recently bought the former Scarlett Ranch. He divided his time between the ranch and three other residences in Lexington, New York City, and Chamonix. The rumor was that Mrs. Alden didn’t like their ranch, and she rarely came with him. The fact that there was a Mrs. Alden had never posed much of a hurdle to Missy before.

“The Earl just gave a couple hundred thousand to the Twelve Sleep County Arts Council,” Marybeth said. “So it’s possible he’ll be at the meeting tonight.”

“Where Missy can begin her charm offensive,” Joe said.

“Exactly.”

Joe said, “How did you turn out so well?”

Marybeth smiled. “My mother wouldn’t agree. She wonders where she went wrong.” Missy made no secret of how she had hoped Marybeth-the smartest of her children-would become a corporate attorney or a U.S. senator, or at least follow her exampleand marry one.

Joe patted himself on the chest. “I was your downfall.”

Marybeth sat back and facetiously looked him over, nodding.“Yes. Marrying you doomed me. Then you made me have our children. Now I’m trapped.”

Joe thought, She’s kidding but her mother is not.

Joe told her about the offer from the governor. He gauged her reaction carefully as he laid it out. He noticed that while he spoke, she glanced several times at the file folder in his lap.

When he was through, she hesitated for a beat and said, “Can we trust him?”

“The governor?”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t sure how to answer. He said, “If we can’t trust our governor, who can we trust?”

She rolled her eyes. “I need a glass of wine.”

Joe thought about her question while she was gone. He dug deep. Did he trust Spencer Rulon?

When she came back with two glasses, he said, “No, not completely.”

“The deal as you describe it makes me uncomfortable,” she said. “They either hire you back or they don’t. From what you tell me, you’ll be operating on your own with no backup and no support. If you get into trouble, you’re on your own. We’re on our own. What is that phrase politicians like to use?”

“Plausible deniability.”

“Right. And how do we know Randy Pope won’t do everythinghe can to undermine you at every turn?”

“I expect him to do that,” Joe said.

She sighed, sipped her wine. “Remember how frustrated you were with the bureaucracy, with fighting against the system? Do you think you could live within it again-do you think it’s changed at all?”

Joe shook his head. “Not a bit.”

“Do we move back to our house?”

“I don’t think so. He never mentioned it. Would you want that?”

“No, although I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery if that meant we could get our lives back.”

Me too, he thought.

“The last time you had to leave us it wasn’t very good,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

When he was assigned temporarily to Jackson, Joe thought. No, it wasn’t very good for them. In fact, his absence and the things that happened with both of them had damaged their marriage.It was only now healing. Time and their joint determinationto right the ship had created scar tissue. But the wound was still there, and would always be there, he supposed.

“I’d want you to come this time,” Joe said. “Bring Sheridan and Lucy every chance you get. It’ll be tough with school and activities, but let’s make sure we stay close and in contact.”

She nodded, thinking it over. “I’ve always wanted to go to Yellowstone, as you know.”

“I know.”

“But we’ve never gone.”

Joe sighed, and found himself staring at the woodstove.

“Are you going to be able to do this?” she asked.

He looked back. “I have to.”

Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world’s first national park-a set-aside of 2.2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife-so no man or corporationcould ever own it. As a boy, Joe had been to Yellowstonedozens of times. Many of his earliest memories were of geysers, mud pots, bears, and tourists. He had once loved the park unlike anywhere else, and announced to his parents he wanted to live there, to fish, hike, and camp for the rest of his life. It was a magical place and he had preferred it to heaven becauseat that age Joe didn’t think there could be trout streams in the clouds.

His father shared his love for the park, which was the reason they vacationed there year after year. Their mutual love for it was one of the few things they ever agreed on, other than the movie Shane. It was the one place, Joe recalled, where his fathercame alive, stopped drinking, and played at being an amateurgeologist-explaining to his two young sons that there were three kinds of thermal features in the world: geysers, mud pots, and fumaroles (steam vents), and Yellowstone featuredthem all. He remembered his father running down a boardwalk in the Upper Geyser Basin-actually running! — and shouting over his shoulder to his boys to follow him becauseOld Faithful itself was about to erupt. It was a place where one could look into the cruel molten heart of the earth itself, and Joe had once done exactly that. Or thought he had. It was in a huge lung-shaped hot pool, the water vivid aquamarine,steam hovering above the calm surface. A shaft of sunlight plunged deep into the pool, which looked so inviting but was nearly two hundred degrees, illuminating bleached-whitebison bones resting on rock shelves as far down as he could see. Bones! And no bottom to the pool; it simply descendedfar past where the sun could reach. For years, he had nightmares about those bones, about falling into the pool, about sinking slowly as the water got hotter and hotter, his bones coming to rest on an outcropping.

His brother loved it too, but in a different way.

But he couldn’t remember Yellowstone without what came next: the darkest period of his young life.

He’d never been back.

He’d attempted to defeat the demons eight years before, when Sheridan was six and Lucy a baby. Joe had borrowed a tent, and their plan was to spend a week camping in Yellowstone,just as he had done when he was a child. He would cook meals over a campfire, and they’d see the sights: Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Lower and Upper Falls. Everythinghad been ahead of them then and nothing seemed daunting.He’d actually looked forward to going back to the park and putting all the bad memories about it behind him for good. But the week before they went, Marybeth discovered she was pregnant,and the early weeks would mean morning sickness and misery. Although she was willing to gut it out, they postponed the trip for later. It was the year they had been assigned the SaddlestringDistrict, a year before violence entered their lives. And never went very far away.

Marybeth was the most practical woman Joe had ever known. She ran the finances for the family, her business, her clients. She could see things clearly. Yet she had not even mentionedthat if he went back to the state-with a raise-their situationwould dramatically improve. That a house in town away from Missy would be within reach.

She looked up and studied his face. He tried not to give his thoughts away. He didn’t succeed.

“You really want to do this, don’t you?”

Joe said nothing.

“You want to get back into it. You want to carry a badge and a gun again, don’t you?”

“I don’t like to be a failure,” he said.

“Stop it. You’re not a failure.”

He let that lie. The last thing he wanted was to make her tell him why he wasn’t a failure. He could counter every argument.

“Joe, what do you want to do?”

There were so many reasons not to accept the offer. Pope. Bureaucracy. The chance, once again, that the evil he encounteredwould affect his family.

But. .

“Yes, I want to do it.”

“Then it’s settled,” Marybeth said. “Call the governor.”

“I love you,” he said.

She reached out and squeezed his arm. “I love you too, Joe.”

“I don’t know why.”

She laughed, said, “Because you want to do good, even when you should know better.”

When the knock came at her door, Sheridan quickly typed “Gotta Go” on her computer screen, ending the stupid IM conversationshe was having with Jarrod Haynes, and turned back to her biology book as if deep in thought. Jarrod, she thought, liked to talk about Jarrod. Too bad she wasn’t as interested in the subject as he was.

“Yes?”

“Can I come in for a minute?”

“Sure, Dad.”

Her father entered and shut the door behind him.

“I tried to use the phone,” he said. “The line was busy. I need to make a call.”

Caught, Sheridan said, “I was on the Internet for a minute.”

“For an hour, you mean.”

“I’m off now.”

“I thought you were studying.”

She gestured to her open book. But she could tell that wasn’t really why he had knocked.

“Sheridan, I want to tell you that the governor offered me a job today. I’m going to be a game warden again, sort of.”

Her first reaction was a mixture of joy and desperation. She was thrilled that her dad had gotten his job back because, well, that’s what he was: a game warden. The game warden, as far as she was concerned. She had been with him many times while he worked, and she knew how dedicated he was.

Sheridan remembered when she had been an apprentice falconer to Nate Romanowski. Nate had been given a prairie falconthat had been hit by a car. The bird was either aggressive- likely to bite or strike out-or moody, sulking for days in the mews and refusing to eat. It was her opinion that the bird should be set free, that it would never be any good. Nate proved her wrong by taking the bird out and working with it, letting its naturalinstincts reemerge. The falcon soon became swift and efficient,eager to fly, hunt, and return to Nate. “He just needed a job,” Nate told her. “He needed to do what he was born to do. Falcons, like some people, need to do things. They can’t just exist.”

“Does that mean we have to move?” she asked.

“Not this time,” he said.

“So will that ass Jason Kiner go away?”

Her dad seemed confused for a minute. He said, “No. Phil Kiner will still be the Saddlestring game warden. I won’t really have a district. I’ll sort of be working freelance.”

“Like a secret agent or something?”

He smiled. She could tell he liked that characterization but didn’t want to admit it. “No, more like I’m on loan for special projects.”

She felt good about this news, but didn’t want to show it too much because that would betray the embarrassment she’d kept hidden since he lost his job.

“Sheridan,” her dad said, “I know it’s been tough on you with me being out of work and all.”

“You’re the ranch foreman,” she said quickly. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“The governor said the same thing. But we both know it’s bothered you. With Jason Kiner saying things and all. It’s botheredme.”

She couldn’t deny it outright. She said, “Dad, it doesn’t matter. .”

But he waved her off. “Don’t say it. It’s not necessary.”

She found herself beaming.

“So you’re back,” she said.

He grinned. “I’m back.”

Her dad, she thought, needed to do things.

Joe stumbled over something in the dark kitchen of their home and nearly crashed to the floor. He righted himself on the counter, turned on the light, and beheld Lucy’s project. Three cardboard boxes marked PAPER, GLASS, and METAL. On each, she had written “To Be Recycled.” And beneath the writing, she’d drawn a stylized globe with a word balloon reading “Save me.”

“Save me from falling on my face,” Joe grumbled, and moved the recycling boxes into the mudroom so no one else would trip over them.

He dialed the governor’s residence in Cheyenne. Spencer Rulon listed his number in the telephone book, something he never tired of announcing to his constituents.

Voice mail: “This is Gov Spence. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you. I’ll only return calls to my constituents. If you aren’t from Wyoming, you need to call your governor.”

Joe said, “Governor, Joe Pickett. I accept the job. I do need to get a little more information, though. Like whom I work with in your office, how you want me to stay in contact. .”

The governor picked up. He’d obviously been listening.

“Don’t call me again,” he said brusquely.

“But. .”

"Chuck Ward will be in touch with you. Deal with him for everything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t call me sir.” Joe could hear the governor smackinghis receiver with the palm of his hand, or hitting it against the wall. “This is a bad connection. Who did you say was calling?”

Joe went into the bedroom with a vague sense of unease after his conversation with the governor. He set the feeling aside when Marybeth shut off the lights, came to bed, and started kissing him with an intensity and passion that surprised and delighted him.

He turned toward her and soon they were entwined. With each movement, the old bedsprings squeaked.

When they were through, she said, “I feel like I need a cigarette,” although she had never smoked.

“How about another glass of wine?”

“No, I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”

“I’m jazzed up,” he confessed.

“You haven’t been jazzed up in a while.”

“Thanks to you.”

She smiled and stroked his jaw. “Good night, Joe.”

“I’m going to read for a few minutes.”

“What, the file?”

He nodded.

“Not too long,” she said, and rolled over.

He knew about the crime in general. What he didn’t know until he read the file were the specifics. He read over the incidentreports filed by the national park rangers, as well as clippingsfrom the West Yellowstone News, the Idaho Falls Post-Register, the Bozeman Chronicle, the Billings Gazette, the Casper Star-Tribune, and a long feature in the Wall Street Journalthat summarized them all. It was the worst crime ever committedin Yellowstone National Park. But that was only half the story.

On July 21, a West Yellowstone lawyer named Clay McCann parked his car at the Bechler River Ranger Station in the extremesouthwest corner of the park, checked in with the ranger at the desk of the visitor center, and hiked in along the trail that followed, and eventually crossed, Boundary Creek. Later that morning, he returned to the center and confessed to shooting and killing four people in a backcountry campsite.

Investigating rangers confirmed the crime.

The victims were found near the bank of Robinson Lake, two miles from the ranger station. All were pronounced dead at the scene, although the bodies were airlifted out to the Idaho Falls hospital.

Jim McCaleb, twenty-six, was a waiter in the Old Faithful Inn and a five-year employee of the park’s concessionaire, Zephyr Corporation. Zephyr ran all the facilities and attractions in the park under contract to the government. McCaleb was shot four times in the torso and once in the back of the head with a large-caliber handgun. His body was found half-in and half-out of a dome tent.

Claudia Wade, twenty-four, managed the laundry facility near Lake Lodge. Wade’s body was in the same tent as Mc-Caleb’s. There were two shotgun blasts to her back, and she’d been shot once in the head with a handgun.

Caitlyn Williams, twenty-six, was a horse wrangler at Rooseveltfor Zephyr. Williams’s body was sprawled over the campfire pit with a shotgun blast to her back and a single large-caliberwound to her head.

Rick Hoening, twenty-five, was a desk clerk at the Old FaithfulInn. His body was located twenty yards from the others in the campsite, near the trail. Investigators speculated that he’d been the first to encounter the gunman and the first one killed. He’d been shot three times with a handgun, twice with a shotgun, and, like the others, had an additional single shot to the head.

Wade, Williams, and Hoening were also Zephyr Corp. employees.All four victims listed their original home addresses in St. Paul, Minnesota-the Gopher State-although they lived in Gardiner, Montana, or within the park at the time of their murders.The forensic pathologist in Idaho Falls noted that while each had sustained enough wounds to be fatal, the single shots to the head were likely administered after the initial confrontation.

They were the coup de grace, fired close enough to leave powder burns and guarantee that no one survived the initial assault.

Joe thought, The Gopher State Five. But there were only four of them. He read on.

The scene was littered with.45 brass and fired twelve-gauge shotgun shells. The newspaper articles called the incident “overkill,” a “senseless slaughter” with “the fury of a crime of passion.” One of the rangers who found the bodies was quoted as saying, “He killed them and then he killed them again for good measure. He was a mad dog. There is nothing at the scene to suggest that the guy [McCann] didn’t just lose it out there.”

There was no question then, and no question now, who had killed them.

Clay McCann willingly handed over two SIG-Sauer P220.45 ACP semiautomatic handguns and a Browning BT-99 Micro twelve-gauge shotgun to the park rangers. Then he shocked the rangers by asking for them back. They refused.

When asked why he did it, McCann made the statement that became infamous, the words that became the subhead of every story written about the slaughter at the time:

“I did it because they made fun of me, and because I could.”

At the time, no one imagined the possibility that Clay McCannwould be released from jail three months later to return to his home and law practice.

That he’d committed the perfect crime.