Hell Is Empty

10

“Only a professional criminal would neglect to ask an officer to uncuff him, but the dead giveaway was the Funyuns. Who but the Junk-food Junkie would know that the cutout window in a bag of chips was replaced in 2005?”

He nodded and rubbed his wrist, trying to work the blood back into the white and stiffened hand now cuffed to the other in his lap with those cuffs attached with my own to the bench seat.

“Fuck.”

“Yep, it never pays to have a nom du criminal.”

Along with the 9mm, he’d had one of the next-generation satellite phones, which I activated. The battery was fully charged and should be plenty good enough for my purposes; within thirty-six hours I intended to be sipping an Irish coffee somewhere warm. “Were you supposed to call him when you were done with me?”

“Yeah.”

I stared at the phone and then tossed it onto his lap. “Call him.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“Call him; tell him I’m dead and that you’ve uncuffed yourself and need to know what to do next.”

He looked at the phone but made no move to try to dial. “We’re supposed to like meet somebody.”

I plucked a Funyun from the bag beside him and ate it; it wasn’t the usual and tasted like onion-flavored insulation, but it would have to do. “I’m aware of that, but I want to know who and where.”

He sat there. “I can’t lie to him.”

“What, you’ve suddenly developed scruples?”

He picked up the phone and held it out. “He’ll like kill me; after he kills you he’ll come back here and kill me.”

“So, they are coming back this way?”

“No, but he’ll make an extra effort after I lie to him and he kills you. Hey look, I don’t know who we’re meeting or where. Shit, man… I don’t know where the hell I am right now.”

Still holding the 9mm, I sat on the opposite bench and looked at him. “Call him, or when I go I’ll leave the door back here open and let nature take its course.” He still didn’t move. “Survival of the fittest.”

He looked like he might cry but thumbed the CALL button and bent down so that he could hold it to his ear. After a moment, he spoke into the receiver. “He’s dead.”

There was a pause.

“No, like really. I shot him and got the keys off of him. He’s like lying here and I think there are animals outside…” He stopped talking for a moment and swallowed, the fear wafting off of him like a bad smell. “What? No, like he’s dead and…” He paused again, froze like that, and held the phone out to me, the tears openly flowing. “He says he wants to talk to you.”

I sighed and took the phone. “Yes.”

The singsong rhythm of his voice sounded close. “You should be getting kind of tired about now, Sheriff.”

“Actually, no. I’m used to the altitude, and I’ve been cooped up most of the winter and been looking forward to getting out of doors.”

“It’s beautiful up here isn’t it-sacred land.”

“Yep, it is.” I waited, but he didn’t say anything. “I’m sure we’ve got more to discuss than the scenery. Look, Shade, I don’t know where you think you’re going, or who you think you’re going to meet. ..”

There was a long pause, and then his voice bounced off the satellite in the cold dead of space and landed in what was left of my ear. “You should stop now, Sheriff. I gave you those four in hopes that that would be enough. Remember, there are only the two hostages and me. I’ve given you all I’m willing to give; if you continue to pursue me any further-I will begin taking.”

I measured my next words carefully, knowing we were playing a balancing act, attempting to get into each other’s head. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, Shade. Those two people are the only reason you’re still alive. I know you’ve got that. 223, but if you keep going up on this trail you’re going to hit some long meadows and then open areas above the tree line, and when you do you’re going to feel an itch between your shoulder blades, a. 45-70 itch. That’ll be me-and it’ll be the last thing you ever feel.”

I listened to him breathing on the other end of the line; then he spoke in a voice that was monotonous and unemotional. “Tell Freddie that I’ll be back for him.”

The line went dead.

“What’d he say?”

I thumbed off the phone. “He says he’s having a wonderful time and wishes you were there.” I drew the pack onto my shoulder along with the Sharps and grabbed the snowshoes beside the door.

“Hey look, you’re not going to like just leave me here, right?”

“I am but don’t worry, I’m going to use the phone to bring the cavalry to you.”

“What about the bears and the mountain lions?”

“When I leave I’ll close and latch the door. Both of them are amazingly adaptable hunters, but one thing they don’t have is opposable thumbs, which means the next thing that opens the cargo hold will be human. It’ll probably be Henry Standing Bear, a big Indian fellow, or a mean little brunette deputy of mine by the name of Victoria Moretti-if I were you, I’d hope for the Cheyenne.”

I stood there for a moment, thinking about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I had limited resources and a limited amount of time. I pulled Saizarbitoria’s cell phone from the inside pocket of my jacket, rescued it from the waterproof Ziploc, and flipped it open; it was still out of service. I closed it and put it back-insurance, just in case I was to get to an altitude where it might get a signal.

I looked at the satellite phone in my other hand and thought about which of two calls I wanted to make. I punched in the office number.

“Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

“It’s me.”

“Where are you!”

I held the receiver a little away from my ear. “Ruby, I need you to listen. I’ve got one of the Fed satellite phones now, so this is the number where you can reach me, and I was right, the numbers are sequential. I’m at the waterfall meadows on Tensleep Creek where I’ve got a vehicle broken down. Is there any backup nearby?”

“Wait… meadows at the base of the falls at Tensleep Creek, right? Yes, they broke through on the east and west slopes. Saizarbitoria is arranging transport for that agent.”

“McGroder. He’s alive?”

“Yes, and Henry’s with search and rescue. They’re getting ready to head out from there. Did you really leave a man handcuffed to a water pipe at Deer Haven Lodge?”

“I did, and I’m about to leave another one handcuffed at this location.”

“Another one?”

“Yep, and there’s a body at Omar Rhoades’s cabin at Bear Lake.”

“Oh, Walter.” There was a rustling of some papers. “Tommy Wayman, Joe Iron Cloud, and a detachment of Highway Patrol are at the last turn at Tensleep Canyon and should be joining Henry before too long. Do you know about the weather?”

“It’s cold but dry up here for now.”

“It’s going to get much worse. The NOAA says that was only the front of the storm and that this blizzard is carrying fifty-mile-an-hour winds with severe mountain temperatures that will likely reach forty below zero. It’s going to be a complete whiteout by midmorning.” There was only a short pause. “Walter, you have to stop.”

I placed my thumb over the OFF button.

“Walter, please? They are on their way; at least wait until Henry and the others get there.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll find me.” My thumb hovered over the button. “I’ve got to go.”

“Walter…”

I punched it and looked at the indicator, which still read fully charged. I turned the satellite phone off and hoped for the best.

The Junk-food Junkie was looking at me when I raised my face. “Popp’s dead?”

“Yep.”

“Good, he was a prick. How about the Mexican kid?”

“Hector. Alive and well.”

“What about Fingers?”

I didn’t answer.

He seemed to take a certain amount of satisfaction in that at least one of his companions was alive, but the troubled expression returned to his face as he began rocking again. “You cannot like leave me here.”

“I don’t see as how I have much of a choice, Freddie. Unless you want to leave the comfortable environs of the Thiokol and accompany me farther up the range, but the weather report isn’t good.” I studied the Fed phone and wondered if any of the other ones had been left. I held the device out. “I don’t suppose they left any more of these, dead or otherwise?”

“No.” He wiped his hands, rattling the restraints that held them close to the bench, and looked at the water bottle beside him. “How am I supposed to drink that, cuffed like I am?”

“Pour it into the lid a bunch of times, but I’d not wait too long or it’ll freeze. The other option is keeping it close to your body.” I pushed my own water bottle inside the pack to help it stay insulated and then placed the satellite phone in one of the outside pockets of my jacket in hopes that the cold would do the battery some good.

“Hey, have you got any more food?”

I dug into the expedition pack, dragged out Omar’s sandwiches, and handed one of them to him. “Here.”

He took it, crouched down to reach his hands, and began eating. He studied me from under the knit cap, his eyes shifting like bad cargo. “You should just let me have the other one, too.”

“How do you figure?”

He swallowed and took another bite. “You’re gonna be like dead here in a few hours anyway.”

I stood there looking at him for an elongated moment. “Dead, or like dead?” He didn’t say anything more, so I repacked, starting with placing the other sandwich back in my pack. “Beatrice said that Shade had a waterproof duffel with him. Do you have any idea what’s in it?”

“He’s got a lot of stuff with him, some of it that she brought and some that he took from those FBI guys.” He took another bite and chewed, suddenly sullen. “You don’t get it, do you, Sheriff?” He licked the mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth with his tongue and shook his head. “It doesn’t mean shit that you’ve stopped us; he’s not like us. I mean, we’re the kinds of guys that give people nightmares.” He shifted his weight and leaned back against the bulkhead with one shoulder. “He’s the kind of guy that gives us nightmares.”

I lifted the pack up onto the seat by the door to make it easier to hoist onto my shoulder, stretched my eyes, and rubbed my face. “Then I guess you’d better stay awake.”

It was starting to snow again, but through the tides of the storm I could see small leaks of moonlight seeping to the ground. I was able to follow their tracks, but before heading into the timber, I checked the early morning western sky for stars-there weren’t any. This was not a good thing. I was feeling tired again and that wasn’t good, either. I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nostrils, the vapor blowing across the expanse of my jacket like the twin trails of two locomotives. Maybe what I needed to do was work up some steam.

Even as cold as it was, there was still a discernible amount of water dropping from the rocks above; of course it was smothered under a two-foot casing of ice, but the dull thudding of the falling water pounded a rhythm and I settled into a comfortable pace. It’d been a long while since I’d had this kind of physical activity at altitude, and I figured the burgeoning headache that seemed to be mushrooming in the front of my head was just that. Of course, the knot on my forehead probably didn’t help.

I wondered once again where Raynaud Shade thought he was going.

The path straightened at the ridge along Mistymoon Trail, bypassing some smaller ponds I remembered. I knew this area better than Virgil’s since we were now approaching the main trail. Of course, I’d been here mostly in the summer and that was a different landscape. I’d fished Gunboat Lake with Cady and before that with my late wife, what seemed like a few lifetimes ago. Before my daughter was born, Martha and I made summer pilgrimages in an attempt to break up the heat and to supplement my civil service wages with a freezer full of brookies and a few rainbows-some as large as ten inches, big for being that high.

I remember my wife on those trips, mostly with her hair tied back with a bandana, as she dutifully breaded the fillets and carefully browned them over an open campfire. I remembered the closeness in our double sleeping bag and the smooth soles of her feet as she attempted to keep them warm by pressing them against my legs.

A surge of wind pulsed against the trees on the far ridge as if trying to push them aside and then swirled into a snow devil in the frozen meadow below, the tiny tornado jumping the hard surface of the water and moving across the small valley toward me. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, another gust caught it, and it was gone.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d stopped walking.

Standing there on the ridge trail, I realized I’d come to a fork and my subconscious mind had been unable to make the choice. The main path led north, the one to the right went east toward Mirror and Lost Twin lakes.

I felt a shudder run through me that had nothing to do with the temperature. I could feel a slight twinge in my fingers and in that little portion of my ear that was missing, and felt kind of like those amputees that reach to scratch limbs that have long been removed.

I adjusted my collar, pulled the balaclava over my nose, stuffed my gloved hands in my pockets in an attempt to further insulate my long-healed wounds, and stared at the path east. There were no tracks, but I could swear that someone was watching me. It was the same feeling that I’d had at the West Tensleep parking loop at the start of this trail. My mind made the logical connection and moved back to the time when I’d been even more sure that I’d been watched, prodded, cajoled, and enticed.

I thought about the questions I’d asked Henry after I brought George and him out of the wilderness, and the inadequacy of his answers. Maybe there were no answers to what had happened on my multiple trips to and from Lost Twin Lakes that time on the mountain-maybe there were no answers because there was nothing there at all.

Perhaps, but it still felt as if something had been there and that something was here now.

I glanced up the main trail where there were three sets of snowshoe prints. Looking for movement, I let my eyes unfocus, but there was nothing there. I took a few steps and felt a sudden sense of loss, snow devils being better than the real ones.

I lifted the binoculars just to check the trail more closely and saw what I must have sensed-there was another set of footprints along the creek bed. I tromped my way down the slope, kneeled-careful not to let the top-heavy pack topple me over-and gently blew in the nearest print. It was a huge track, moccasins, smooth with just a trace of the stitching on the side-crude stitching that could only have been homemade.

Virgil.

I glanced back up and half expected him to be standing there with the paws of the giant grizzly swaying in the breeze beside his massive girth, but there was still nothing, only the tracks that continued to follow the other three. It took the better part of a mile to get to Lake Helen, and Virgil continued to follow the others. As I trudged along, I thought about the Crow Indian. Had he known that they had left Freddie in the Thiokol and continued on? Why was he following them? Was he the guide whom Hector had alluded to, that Beatrice had mentioned? If he was, then why had he taken the time to fool with me?

He said he’d been watching them last night before waking me, and if that was the case, wouldn’t he have seen them leave? If he was the so-called guide, then why wouldn’t he have simply joined them there?

The moonlight had given way to dawn, and I could see some movement on the trail far ahead. I pulled the binoculars up again and looked.

The blue patches of the early morning sky were succumbing to a wall of gray, but it was light enough that I could see the Cloud Peak massif rising above the valley. The granite-ribbed peaks gave way to the subalpine forests trickling down to scattered groves of conifers that strung all the way to Mistymoon, one of the last lakes before the true high country.

I used the ridge as a guide and followed the trail from there to the area below where I could see three people struggling to make their way up to the next hanging plateau. The one in the back was stumbling under the weight of a large pack and was unarmed-must be the real Ameri-Trans driver; the one in the middle with the blonde hair had to be Agent Pfaff; and the one in front carrying a large pack, an automatic rifle, and what looked to be a black duffel had to be Raynaud Shade-confident son of a bitch.

I lowered the binoculars and thought about what Omar had said in his cabin before I’d left: “Kill ’em, kill ’em as fast as you can and from far away.”

I unclipped the center strap of my pack and carefully slipped the rifle off my shoulder. I figured just a hair over six hundred yards-at the edge of my limit. All my instincts were telling me to take the shot, to do it now and end it. I would never have a better opportunity or conditions.

It would take about a half second to reach out to Raynaud Shade, but there was something about shooting a man, even a guilty man, unawares from great distance that didn’t sit well with my job description.

They’d made the ridge but weren’t moving too rapidly, mostly because of the Ameri-Trans driver, who seemed to be having trouble keeping up. I looked at him for a moment, then moved the rifle back to Pfaff, and then to Shade. He had dropped his bags and was standing on the ridge, the. 223 aimed with his eye pressed to the scope.

Watching me.

I had that same eerie feeling I’d had every time I looked at him and had found him looking at me. It was possible that there was no surprising Raynaud Shade.

He knew that the Armalite wouldn’t reach this far. He was aware, also, that what I was carrying would, but he still didn’t move. We stood like that, the two of us, for a long second.

Waves of unease overtook me, and I remembered the last long-distance shot that I’d taken with a Sharps buffalo rifle and how it had ended in tragedy. In some ways they all ended in tragedy, no matter which end of the slug you were on.

He lowered the tactical carbine but continued looking at me. After a moment his left arm came up and he waved, but it was a strange wave. Then he closed his fingers as if grasping something.

The satellite phone in my pocket rang.

I lowered the rifle, pulled the device out, and hit the button.

“Hello, Sheriff. We are somewhat at an impasse.”

I measured my words. “You need to stop this.”

He breathed into the phone. “That is what I’m trying to do.”

“Let the two hostages go, and maybe we can figure all of this out.”

“They tell me you don’t believe in them.”

Of all the conversations I wanted to have with Shade, this was the one I wanted to have least. “Shade, look… We need to get you some help.”

He laughed, but there was nothing but depravity in it. “I have all the help I need.” He was silent for a moment. “More than I can stand.”

I waited.

“You should acknowledge them; so few of us can. They discovered me when I was very young, but from the reading I’ve done and what the psychiatrists and therapists tell me, that isn’t abnormal.”

“No.”

“They took part of me with them then. I’ve been trying to get that part of me back ever since-that’s why they speak to me so much; that’s why I listen.” He stopped talking but didn’t disconnect, and I pulled the binoculars up to watch him remove something from the bag he carried and place it on an uncovered boulder alongside the trail. “I’m leaving this for you because they tell me it is what I must do.”

The phone went dead, and I watched him for a few more seconds as he loaded up and continued on over the ridge with the other two following.

Adjusting the optical ring at the back of the binoculars, widening the aperture, I scanned the slope behind them, half expecting to find a giant Indian wearing a bearskin. I trailed the optics along the path all the way back to the southern edge of the lake but still couldn’t see any sign of Virgil.

I needed a drink and settled for water. I sat my pack on the trail. The bottle was on top and, as I pulled it out, the satellite phone began ringing again from my inside pocket. “Shade, listen…”

“Hey Sheriff, there are fucking Indians up here.”

“Hector, how did you get this number?”

“You were right, they’re sequestered or something like that…”

“Sequential.”

There was a jostling. “I’m not kidding. These two Indians were just here, and they’re looking for you.”

“I know. They’re on our… they’re on my side.”

“Well, I just thought that with you bein’ a cowboy and all I better call you up and let you know. These were some really tough-looking hombres. The one guy, the really big one? I mean, they had guns all over ’em, but the one guy, the big one? He had this axe thing between his shoulders.” There was a pause. “He took the gun away from me. I told him it wasn’t loaded, but he took it anyway.”

“It’s okay. He’s a friend of mine.”

“I’m jus’ sayin’.” There was some noise in the background, and I could hear someone else talking. “I’m tellin’ him about the Indians.”

I held out the phone to look at the display. “Hector, you’re eating up my battery.”

“Sorry, Sheriff, but I’ve got this Wop cop here who wants to talk to you.” More fumbling, and I heard Hector say ouch. “Hold on, here she is.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m providing a phone messaging service for the entire Bighorn mountain range.” I waited and was glad she wasn’t nearby. “It’s really good to hear your voice.”

“Where the hell are you?”

I glanced around at the eye of the storm. “I am currently enjoying an exquisite alpine idyll.” I’d loaded up, discovering that I could multitask-both talking and tracking-and, keeping an eye north, made my way down the cutback of the boulder field. I figured I could stop if the signal started breaking up. “Lake Helen, then Lake Marion and probably Mistymoon here in about an hour-I figure that’s where I’m going to catch up with them.”

“The weather is going to turn to frozen shit in a matter of hours-stop.”

“I don’t think so.”

There was an audible sigh of exasperation, which was my undersheriff’s usual response to me. “Why not?”

“He’s more likely to play nice if he knows I’m here.”

There was a pause. “He knows you’re there?”

“Yep. We just had a nice conversation.”

“You what?”

I slid a little on the ice at the base of the trail and steadied myself. “I took the satellite phone I’m talking on from the convict in the Thiokol, which, by the way, is when I had him call Shade-then he called me.”

“Get the fuck outta here.”

“Yep, we had a wide-ranging confab about conversing with dead people.” She didn’t laugh. “He’s the only one left, and he’s got two hostages, Pfaff and the Ameri-Trans driver.”

She readjusted the phone in her ear. “Walt, he’s going to kill them.”

“Not if he thinks they’re the only thing that’s keeping him alive.”

“He’s got the marshal’s. 223 for that.”

Indeed. “Speaking of, where the heck is my backup?”

“Bear was with Joe Iron Cloud and Tommy Wayman’s just above. Hey, were there any trees across the road when you went up West Tensleep?”

“No.”

“Well, lucky for you Wayman’s an old-school Wyoming sheriff and keeps a Husqvarna 42-inch chain saw in his truck. He said the last time he saw Henry and Joe they were leaping over the fallen trees in the finest James Fenimore Cooper tradition and were headed out at a high rate of speed.” I thought about how the odds were evening. “Tommy said there was no way the Bear and the Cloud were going to keep up that pace.” She laughed. “I asked him if he wanted to bet.”

“What’d he say?”

“Not now, not ever.” It was my turn to laugh as she continued attempting to bolster my mood. “Why don’t you wait; you’ve got some pretty intense Indian backup coming-both the Arapaho and Cheyenne nations.”

“Yep, the mountains are full of them.”

There was another pause. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Virgil’s up here, too.”

“The jolly red giant?”

“Ho, ho, ho.”

“That’s not good. Does he know that evil scumbag is the one who murdered his grandson?”

I stared at the trail as if approaching a cliff, and maybe I was. “That’s how it stands?”

“Yeah.” I stood still and could hear her lodging the phone against her neck, which, as I recall, was a very nice place to be. “It would appear that Virgil’s son, Eli, had a child out of wedlock-the boy, Owen White Buffalo. There are no reports of a missing child, because there are no records of him, period. We’re attempting to find the mother, but so far-nothing.”

“Okay.”

She could read the tone of my voice. “Are you getting ready to hang up on me?”

“I’d better-I’ve got to catch up.”

She gave me Joe Iron Cloud’s satellite number. “Give them a call to see where they are and what the weather is doing before you do anything stupid, all right?”

“Roger that, nothing stupid.” I would dial it into the phone after we hung up. “Gotta go.”

“And call me before you do anything stupid.”

“Anything stupid, my SOP. 10-4.”

She hung up. I turned the device off and tucked it back inside my coat. Annoying Vic was always the simplest way to get her off the phone and, all in all, it was usually pretty easy.

I started out again, looking up the valley at the west ridge of Bomber Mountain, so named because in 1943 an unfortunate B-17 had abruptly come to rest there with all crewmen on board.

I know how they must’ve felt.

So it was quasiofficial that it was Virgil’s grandson. Could he know, and how could all of these horrible coincidences have fallen in place the way that they had?

I suddenly remembered Joe Iron Cloud’s cell number, so I pulled out the phone and dialed. Even if he didn’t answer, the number would be recorded. As expected, it connected me to an answering service-the Arapaho had even taken the time to record a message. His halting voice made me smile, and I could just see those two very tough men racing their way up West Tensleep Trail; God help anything that got in their way.

“Hey, hey, this is Sheriff Joe Iron Cloud. I’m unable to answer your call right now, but if you’ll leave a message I’ll get right back to you. Ye-ta-hey.”

I waited for the beep and then spoke. “Joe, this is Walt Longmire, president of the Give America Back to Americans movement, and I was wondering if you’d help the three-hundred million of us pack? Give me a call.”

I closed the phone and tucked it away.

“That should get their attention.”

Keeping an eye on the cloud mass that seemed to be leaning on me, I worked my way around the west side of the lake. If I was lucky, I’d get them pinned in the open meadow adjacent to the big peaks, and I would have cover at the ridge of Mistymoon Lake. Raynaud Shade would have the choice of either giving it all up or taking a chance on the delivery of a high-powered, high-mortality package at long distance.

I began to climb to the next level that would lead to Lake Marion and started feeling the burn in my legs, mostly the tops of my thighs. I was doing pretty well with my lungs, but my legs were another matter, and after twenty minutes more I was starting to resent the supplies in Omar’s pack-the very supplies that, if everything went bad, were going to be responsible for keeping me alive. I trudged on, every once in a while lifting my face to scan the ridge where they’d disappeared.

When it happened, it hit like a wall. The second front of the storm came in. I knew it was just the barometric pressure, but it still felt like I was being inhaled by that giant blue devil on the cover of Saizarbitoria’s book. The exhaling riptide came quickly, and I watched it bend the trees like a sweeping claw as it topped the extended northern backbone of Bald Ridge.

It was like the winter had shattered, and the shards were now blowing in my face, small bits of the last season, blasted and blown.

My eyelids were starting to freeze, and I remembered the amber-tinted goggles that were hanging around my throat. I fumbled to pull them up as I climbed and concentrated on just putting one foot in front of the other as I pushed up the last part of the hillside trail where I’d last seen the three. Every time I looked away from my boots I’d stumble and veer from the path, so I tried to focus on their tracks. It was only when I got to the point where Shade had called me that I almost stumbled over the huge man in the grizzly bear hide. He was sitting on a boulder with the lance balanced between his knees, his back to the storm, his moccasined feet stretched out onto the path.

His booming voice carried above the keening wind that bucked me sideways as I stood above him.

“He left this for you.”

In the surrealistic amber hue of the blowing snow, the giant sat holding a small human femur in his gigantic hands.