Killer View

31

ROY COATS’S WIDE SHOULDERS FILLED UP ONE SIDE OF A booth table in the dim recesses of the back corner of the Mel-O-Dee steak house in Arco, Idaho.

The woman who entered, fanning at the smoke-filled air, had aged fifteen years in the past twelve months since he first recruited her. The meth had dragged bags under her once-pretty eyes, melted her gums, and had turned her skin a pasty gray. But she still had the tight body of a thirtysomething.

She couldn’t help the way she walked-and not many men missed it. All without an ounce of self-awareness. If she’d had a face to go with it, she wouldn’t have been walking into this bar. But the small head and pointed chin, the turned-in teeth, and pixie nose had all suffered under the effects of the meth. She wore a mask of melted, sallow skin, and carried a haze of disrespect, like an out-of-work whore. At a glance, you’d never have imagined her an atomic physicist.

“Evening,” he said. “Buy you a drink?”

She shrugged.

Roy signaled the waitress, a sixty-year-old former rodeo queen with a beer belly. Without asking, he ordered his guest a double vodka on the rocks with a twist of lime, himself a draft beer.

“Do you have it?” he asked.

“Not yet. But it won’t be a problem.” She paused, then asked, “Do you have it?”

“You’re two weeks late.”

“So sue me. It’s tricky. They’re watching everyone like a hawk. You have only yourself to blame for that.”

“I need it. Soon,” he added.

“Yeah. And I need it now.” She leveled her eyes on him. Jaundice was setting in.

“You gotta take better care of yourself,” he said, caring nothing about her long-term health. “They’re going to figure you out. You don’t look so good.”

“When anyone asks-and it isn’t often-I tell them I can’t shake the flu. I can handle myself.” Her right hand trembled, and she tucked it in her lap.

They both went quiet, as the old cow approached and delivered the drinks. She asked if the younger woman wanted a menu and the younger woman laughed. She didn’t understand the concept of eating. Not anymore. The cow trundled off.

“Listen, I gotta have a backup plan. We lose this chance, no one’s going to listen.”

“I told you: I don’t know.”

“I’d hate to miss my next delivery,” he said.

Her hand clasped the glass more tightly, turning the skin beneath her unpainted fingernails a bloodless white. Her face remained impassive. “As if,” she said.

“Don’t push me.”

“I’m on it. It’s not easy.” She leaned across to him, her breath giving lie to the myth that the smell of vodka went undetected. “It’s an atomic research facility, Roy boy. What do you expect?”

“Delivery,” he said equally softly. He despised the nickname, despised her weakness, despised most everything about her but her body. Her talking in that husky voice aroused him. “All those degrees of yours…”

Her eyes went off someplace over his head. He wondered what was going on in there, if she could grasp even a glimpse of her decline at the hands of the meth. He’d taken her from a lonely, bored, successful physicist and reduced her to a skeleton-eyed addict who showed no remorse over her breaches of security. Maybe it hadn’t been him or his cause but instead the tedium of a professional life that required total secrecy, performed in the middle of an enormous desert. The government contractor daily bused three thousand specialists just like her in from Pocatello -nerds with their laptops-a Mormon town where the idea of an exciting night out was a decaf latte at Starbucks. She’d walked into a four-year contract and had burned out within six months. She’d been waiting for someone like him to come along.

He passed the paper bag beneath the table. Collected no money for it. If she’d thought about that, it might have given her pause. He’d never charged her for the meth. He understood the ways of an addict. If she wasn’t totally behind his cause, she was at the very least accustomed to his keeping her high.

His knuckles brushed her knee under the table. Her hand met his and she took possession of the bag, and, with it, an eagerness flashed across her otherwise-dull, yellowing eyes.

“I could take a room at the Lazy Horse,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to wait. To risk smoking in the car. We wouldn’t want you to get busted.”

She no longer rode the bus from Pocatello. She’d moved to a double-wide near Moore, a few miles down the road. This to be away from her coworkers, thrust into the roaring nightlife of Arco, Idaho, population one hundred and fifty. The movie theater ran two shows every Friday night.

“I think I can make it seven miles down the road, Roy.”

He wasn’t so sure. “But you wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Not if I took a room.”

“What else do you want from me?”

He smiled.

“Oh, Roy, what are we going to do with you?”

“Just about anything you want,” he said.

She upended the vodka, leaned close to him, and whispered again, “You terrify me. Whenever we meet, I leave shaking. A pit in my stomach. You scare the piss out of me, Roy. You scare everyone who meets you.”

He heard all that, but he barely reacted, because she rose and pumped her way back to the EXIT sign. Next time, he would withhold the meth. Next time, she would pay for that mouth of hers.

32

DESPITE THE PROMINENT SIGN-PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE, THIS IS A NO CELL PHONE ENVIRONMENT-Walt was on the phone for a good deal of the time his physical was being conducted. Dr. Royal McClure, a good friend who sometimes wore the hat of pathologist for Blaine County, drew his blood and ran him through a variety of tests while Walt raised his own blood pressure trying to locate a Geiger counter. Nancy was on the receiving end of his irritation, as it became increasingly clear to him that Idaho State University owned two such devices but didn’t loan them out; the state’s environmental agency used a lab in California; and buying a Gamma-Scout would cost five hundred dollars. After a number of calls back and forth, he relented and approved the purchase. He asked her to call the Idaho state crime lab and confirm that they’d tested the mess of broken glass and ice discovered on his back porch for radioactivity.

While Walt was sitting on the edge of the examination table, the paper liner crackling beneath him when he buttoned up his uniform, his cell phone rang as he was putting it away. McClure glowered at him. Bothered, Walt barked his name when he answered: “Fleming!”

“Sheriff Fleming?”

“Speaking.”

“Hold for Congressman McMillian, please.”

The line clicked.

“Sheriff?”

“Congressman?”

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, sir.”

“I was speaking with George Carliner and your name came up.”

“If this is about my suggestion we drop party affiliation as a requirement for-”

“It’s not,” the congressman interrupted.

“I told the attorney general it was an idea still in its infancy,” Walt said.

“Nothing to do with that. Let’s put a pin in that and come back to it another time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m calling about the National Law Enforcement Conference here in Washington next week. I don’t know if you’ve heard but Mel Tooley has had to withdraw at the last minute.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“His wife, I think. Something medical.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Walt liked Tooley, who was sheriff of Ada County, one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation.

“George and I were discussing a replacement. You’ve headed the Western Regional Sheriff’s Association, as I understand it. You held two terms as president, and you gained high-profile status in that fine work you did involving Vice President Shaler.”

“She hadn’t been elected at the time, Congressman. She was a candidate. And I really didn’t-”

McMillian cut him off again. “The point is that George has recommended you to replace Mel Tooley at the conference. To represent the state for us. I wish I were asking here, Walt-may I call you Walt?-but I’m not. The state needs you. I need you. The federal government is at the start of a major reorganization of everything, from communication to hardware assets for state law enforcement. A lot of us want them to keep their hands off. We need you there. You’re respected. You’re recognizable, and George and I think others will listen to you. I’d like you out here by Friday. My people will work through the talking points with you, and you’ll come out to our home in Bethesda for some meetings over the weekend. You’ll hit the ground running Monday morning on the Hill.”

His head was spinning. To be seen on the national stage was certain to open job opportunities. It was just the kind of appointment he could see his father arranging for him. Elizabeth Shaler, now the vice president, had told him she could use him in Washington; he wondered if this appointment had anything to do with her. He wondered if Mel Tooley’s wife was actually ill or if Mel had been asked to step aside so that Walt could be offered the appointment. Wheels within wheels.

“Can I think about it, sir?”

“Hell, no. You can pack your bag, and you can thank me later. One of my guys will be in touch shortly to iron out your itinerary. The state picks up the bill for everything, Sheriff. Make the necessary arrangements on your end. You’ll hear back from us by the end of the day.” The line went dead.

“Good news?” McClure asked.

Walt stared back at him, dumbfounded.

“Unexpected,” Walt answered honestly. Unexpected and slightly unbelievable, he thought. In spite of his accomplishments on a state and regional level, there were at least a half-dozen more-senior sheriffs in line for such perks. Whether Mel had dropped out or not, the chiefs of Boise, Pocatello, Coeur d’Alene, and Moscow would typically have been considered first. Should have been considered first. Someone had gotten to the congressman and had convinced him to put Walt’s name in ahead of others.

One thing seemed certain: it had been carefully orchestrated. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he couldn’t attend the conference. Worse, he saw no easy way out of it.

McClure prescribed iodine tablets and wanted a follow-up exam in two weeks.

Walt thanked him and headed out to the parking lot. He called Nancy from the Cherokee and asked for a list of all financial supporters of both his opponent and Congressman McMillian.

“I was just calling you,” Nancy said. “The lab called back almost immediately. The sample in the broken test tube-”

“It came back positive for radiation,” Walt declared, as if he’d received the call himself.

“What’s going on?”

“Mark Aker left me crumbs to follow and I almost missed it. A test tube of water, instead of just writing me a message. Why, I’m not sure. Left it on my back porch. Someone stepped on it the other night and I heard them and found it. I don’t know who. But now I get the message: its contaminated water-radioactive water. And I know someone who can clear this up for me.”

33

AS THE SHUTTLE ESCALADE ARRIVED AT ROGER HILLABRAND’S electronically controlled gate, Fiona Kenshaw checked her face once more in the Subaru’s rearview mirror. She saw the face of a traitor. She’d felt compelled to accept Hillabrand’s invitation to lunch, despite her better judgment. She’d changed clothes three times before settling on blue jeans, a tailored cranberry shirt that offset her dark hair and eyes, and a black boatneck sweater. Over it all, she wore a sheepskin coat that was her most prized, and most expensive, garment. The attention to her clothing informed her of her desire to impress him, which only served to further undermine her disposition. As she climbed out of the Subaru and headed across the squeaky snow to the black Escalade, she didn’t like herself very much.

The driver’s-side door opened and Sean Lunn climbed out, though begrudgingly. She moved quickly to avoid him opening the door for her. There were times such gallantry was a compliment and other times it felt demeaning. Lunn was not doing this out of respect but because his job required it of him. Fiona took exception, hurrying now.

“I’ve got it,” she said.

Lunn didn’t put up any fuss, immediately returning to his place behind the wheel.

The SUV stood high off the ground; she looked down to find the step rail. What she saw there knocked the wind out of her: mud. A grayish brown mud.

She wondered if she hesitated too long, how much of her reaction Sean Lunn caught. Had there been a recent thaw, had the road they now traveled up to the mountaintop estate been rutted, she might have quickly written this off. But neither of those was the case. More important was the mud’s distinctive color.

He was speaking. Talking to her. Saying something. She wasn’t listening, her thoughts locked on that mud. It was the same color mud they’d found on the dress shoes of the rape victim, Kira Tulivich-a sickly, unnatural gray. There was no mistaking it. She had a photographer’s eye. She knew color the way a painter did. It might not be the same mud. But what if it was?

“… do you think?” he said, finishing a sentence.

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind.”

“No, please.”

“It was nothing. Weather talk. I was wondering if it’ll warm again or if we’re in for a very early winter.”

“Looks like winter to me,” she said.

“Am I driving too fast?” he said, noticing her expression-a mixture of shock and contemplation-and easing back on the accelerator. The private drive twisted and wound its way steeply up the mountain. Lunn knew it well enough to drive fast. Some of the turns were indeed terrifying, though her mind was elsewhere.

“No… no. I’m fine.”

He kept the speed steady. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but this- your being asked up to lunch-is not normal. In case you’re wondering. I can’t name the last time Mr. Hillabrand had a woman up to the house for lunch.”

“Do I look that nervous?” she asked.

“Preoccupied, is how I’d put it.”

“It’s a little unusual,” she said. “His home instead of a restaurant.” But Lunn had read her correctly; her mind was on the mud and where and how the Escalade had picked it up.

“When he dines in town, he’s constantly interrupted. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. Besides, he loves showing off his place. You want to score points with him, compliment him on the house.”

She wondered if part of Lunn’s job description was to soften up Roger Hillabrand’s potential conquests. That was suddenly how she felt. She’d struggled with accepting the invitation. What signals was she sending by attending?

“Do you suppose the dirt roads will thaw or are they frozen now through winter?” She tried to sound nothing but curious. When he didn’t answer right away, she lied: “I ride horses occasionally, and the dirt roads-like Lower Broadford in Bellevue -are the best.”

“Stays this cold, I don’t see anything thawing.”

“Good point.”

She wondered how many of Roger Hillabrand’s employees drove the Escalade. One of them might have driven the same road or area where the girl had been raped. The silence between her and Lunn felt increasingly uncomfortable. Had her question about the thawing roads silenced him or had they simply run out of things to say?

When the vehicle finally pulled to a stop, Fiona made a point of dropping her purse as she opened the door. As she bent to retrieve it, she chipped a chunk of the mud off the rail. She slipped it into one of the purse’s outside pockets. As she stood, she noticed Lunn suddenly looked her way, and she wondered if he’d seen any of that.

She tried to cover her excitement by expressing insecurities over having come here. Lunn said nothing.

In fact, the invitation to lunch had taken a distant backseat to the discovery of the mud. All she really wanted now was to get back down the hill and to connect with Walt as soon as possible.

34

“WALT, YOU MAY WANT A PART OF THIS.”

Walt was in the middle of a bite of pizza at Smokey’s on Sun Valley Road, his children and their sitter, Lisa, at the table with him. He put down the pizza.

“Part of what, Chuck?” He’d recognized the smoker’s voice on the phone immediately: Chuck Webb, director of the Sun Valley Lodge’s security.

“Front desk got an anonymous call that one of our guests might be in need of medical assistance. Gave us a room number. I responded. It was Danny Cutter, stoned out of his mind. I’ve called SVPD just now. A requirement. But I know the history of you and Mr. Cutter, his probation and all, and so I’m also calling you.”

“You’re holding Cutter?”

“I’m in the room with him.”

“Can I speak to him?”

“He’s way out of it, Walt. In and out of consciousness.”

“Any drugs?”

“Found what looks like an ounce of a white powder taped under the sink.”

“An ounce?” If it tested positive, it would carry twenty years for Cutter, given his current probation. Walt felt a pit in his stomach. “The call to the front desk? Was it recorded?”

“No.”

“Anonymous.”

“Yeah.”

“Afraid for Cutter, was that it?”

“That was the claim. But it’s not right. He’s more than just stoned. He’s out of it.” He paused. “What’s Danny Cutter doing in my hotel when he lives here in town?”

“Who’s it booked to?”

“A John Greydon. Paid cash. We cleared the card for five hundred in incidentals. I can start a trace on the card.”

“What’s the condition of the room?”

“Bed’s made. That’s the stink of it. I know he has a history of drugs, Walt, but this doesn’t feel right.”

“Yeah… Okay.” Walt looked into the curiously sad eyes of his children, who understood his tone of voice well enough to know what this call meant to them. “I’ll be right there,” he said into the phone, trying to think of some new way to say what he’d said to his kids too many times before.

INVESTIGATIONS COULD spiral out of control. Walt did his best to keep things simple. But the more threads that were added, the more tangled they became. Randy Aker had been darted and had died, possibly because he was mistaken for Mark. Mark had run away, been found, and then abducted. A test tube had been left on his own back porch-a water sample that tested positive for low-level radiation. A CDC investigation had looked into Danny Cutter’s bottled-water company. Now, after two years of being clean, Danny Cutter was embroiled in a drug bust.

And, in the middle of it all, he’d been invited to a conference twenty-five hundred miles away.

Walt found himself giving Danny the benefit of the doubt as he approached room 223, on the second floor of the lodge. The plush carpet absorbed his footfalls. Framed black-and-white photographs of Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Clint Eastwood lined both walls.

Sight of the celebrity photographs reminded him of the two worlds he served: the obscenely affluent residents of Ketchum/Sun Valley and the locals that provided services for them. It was a medieval caste system with him in the middle, keeping the peace. The Sun Valley Lodge was the castle.

He knocked and a moment later was admitted. Danny Cutter lay on his back on a love seat, a pillow under his head, his eyes shut. There was a white smudge on his upper lip; his hair was a mess. He wore blue jeans, penny loafers, and a maroon cashmere sweater. Webb showed Walt the tape job under the sink. The baggie was thick with a white substance.

“Heroin?” Walt suggested.

“But taped under the sink? What is this, the Rockford Files?”

“Christ,” Walt said, taking in the room once again. “Happy hour downstairs?”

“Yeah. Macaroni’s playing.” He meant Joe Macarillo’s jazz trio.

“You called Sun Valley?” Walt asked.

“Be here any minute.”

“How much did you tell them?” Walt found himself considering tampering with the evidence, and, having never done anything close to that in his years in law enforcement, he wondered what motivated him. He owed Danny Cutter nothing; he’d given the man a number of breaks.

“I told them I had a guest needed medical attention, that maybe drugs were involved. They’ll be careful about it. Won’t make a big scene.”

“I can’t remove those drugs,” Walt stated, “even if I wanted to.”

“No one said you should.”

Walt met eyes with Webb and stared. And stared. Having not touched his phone, Walt said, “My cell’s got shitty reception in here. I’m going to try the hallway.” He did not break the eye contact. “You’ve helped out guests before, yeah? Covered up an infidelity or two, I would imagine.”

“That’s obstruction,” Webb said, glancing into the bathroom.

Walt said nothing, still staring.

“I had a call girl describe a scene to me one time,” Webb said. “This was in Portland, back when I was on the job. She and her pimp would Mickey a prospective john, get him up to the room, and lift his wallet. While the pimp hit the ATM, the girl pinched the john’s nose and covered his mouth until he was damn-near suffocated. Then she put a deep spoon of coke to his nose and released her fingers. John gasps for air and takes down a huge hit of coke. He’s now going to test positive if he involves the police. Not one of those guys ever fingered her or the pimp. They had a nice little thing going and it just kept on going.”

“So, in case we miss the smudge on his nose, they give us the ounce beneath the sink.”

“I don’t know. That’s an expensive way to do things. Why not a dime bag?”

“Because it’s got to stick. It’s got to be something we can’t ignore. And it’s got to look big-the way Danny Cutter does everything.”

“What if they covered themselves? What if there’s video and we’ve got it wrong?”

“That could do us some serious damage,” Walt agreed.

“Cameras these days-the size of a shirt button.”

“Yeah.”

“His prints are going to be on the bag,” Webb said.

“Yup.”

“He’ll go down for it.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Walt said.

“And we’re supposed to just stand here and let it happen?”

Walt shrugged. “We could be completely wrong.”

“But we aren’t.” Webb leaned his head in the bathroom. “Thing of it is, when this door’s shut and the light’s off in there, no camera’s going to pick up anything.” He paused. “I thought you had a call to make.”

“I can’t back you up on this,” Walt warned.

“I’m a big boy. Go make your call.”

“Remember, Chuck: if this comes out that Danny’s culpable, he goes away for it, so don’t get your prints on that bag. You hear? And keep it somewhere handy. I may need it.”

“Hurry,” Webb said. “Before I lose my nerve.”

35

ROY COATS CAME THROUGH THE DOOR OF THE CABIN, LOOKING like Bigfoot. He was wrapped in layers of frost-coated clothing, his beard and mustache were white with globs of snotty ice, his face wind-burned from what had to have been a long snowmobile ride.

“Nice trip?” Mark Aker asked.

“Have you finished your paper?” Coats hung various pieces of clothing on wall hooks and the backs of chairs, in a semicircle around the woodstove. The Samakinn member who had delivered the insulin and stayed to watch Aker-Coats had called him Gearbox-he began dressing for outside. With the return of Coats, Gearbox was assigned perimeter patrol.

“Haven’t started it,” Mark Aker replied. “If it’s to be credible it has to be scientific. That takes time.”

Gearbox took off. Coats installed himself on a footstool in front of Aker, his left elbow up on the room’s only table.

“You’re stalling,” Coats said. “You’ve got all the insulin you need. We brought everything in from your cabin with us, so you’ve got your papers. Don’t push your luck, Doc.”

“They’re searching for me by now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

There was something about his confidence. Aker studied him carefully. “You have contacts in the sheriff’s office?” He waited for even the faintest of signs. “Challis?” He sighed. “So it’s Challis, is it?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Coats reminded.

“Didn’t have to. Your heartbeat gave you away. Your interior jugular vein. It runs continuous with the sigmoid sinus. A barometer to the soul, and your soul was disturbed when I mentioned the Challis sheriff’s office. So that much we both know: you’ve got an insider with Challis. And perhaps they might have ways of knowing what Custer or Lemhi County is up to. But do you think they could possibly know what Blaine is up to? Walt Fleming has trained with the FBI. Did you know that? His father invented the first SWAT team ever. You think he’s going to let Custer or Lemhi know what he’s doing? You think? Seriously? You know the toys he’s got available to him, all that money down in Blaine? Have you been listening for flyovers, Roy? Your boy out there on patrol-what kind of a heat signature does he throw off when he’s out there? How about this cabin? Your snowmobiles? You think Walt Fleming’s working with satellite images? I do. How long do you think you can keep this up?”

Coats turned, ostensibly to adjust his jacket on the back of a ladder-back chair, to help speed up drying. More than anything, he didn’t want Aker reading him like that. Not only did it creep him out, that someone could read his neck, but giving anything away cost him.

He settled back onto the footstool, facing his hostage with a calm, almost serene face.

“You ever heard of Shays’ Rebellion?” Coats asked.

Mark Aker stared back, his eyes flat.

“You know your American history?”

“Don’t do this,” Aker said.

“This was near the end of the war, the Revolutionary War. The Boston merchants pressed the state legislature to levy a tax on all the farmers. And they couldn’t pay the taxes-same as we can’t pay ’ em today. Shays organized an open rebellion, put together an army of some eight hundred-odd and went after them, pitchforks and rifles. What they did was against the law, and they paid mightily for it, but that rebellion is considered the last battle of the Revolutionary War because it changed opinion forever. The federal and state governments realized they had failed at representing the people. The People, Doc. Capital P.

“Now, I’m not saying we aren’t breaking the law, because we are. And I’m not claiming to be a tree hugger. Not hardly. I’m more what you might call a militant libertarian.” That won a bemused smile. Mark eyed all the books again, his opinion of his captor changing. He’d read about Stockholm syndrome, had no desire to go there. “But we did what we did for a reason. A purpose. Our government should not be dictating to other countries about things it doesn’t have under control itself. Plain and simple: someone’s got to show the people what’s going on.”

“And that’s you? You’re Shays? That’s supposed to justify this?” he said, indicating his own situation.

“Shays’ Rebellion was put down. Eighteen were given death sentences. Two were actually executed. I understand what’s in store for me. But, goddamn it…” he said, raising his voice. His intensity lit up the air between them. Then his face softened. “I’m giving you a real chance here. All I’m asking from you, Doc, is to tell the truth. I’m not some raghead holding an AK, trying to put words in your mouth. That’s the beauty of it: I don’t have to. The truth will hang them. Whether they hang me or not.”

“Okay,” Aker said.

Coats did a double take. He looked Aker over like it was someone else sitting in that chair. “You’ll write it,” he said to himself. He tried to contain a childlike enthusiasm.

“I said I would. And I mean it this time. But I’ve got to ask: is any of what you just told me for real?”

“All of it,” Coats said proudly. “That’s our heritage, Doc.”

“Because I’ve got a story for you.”

Coats leaned in toward Aker a little too close, a changed man, gloating over his victory.

“Have you ever heard of Aker’s Rebellion?” Mark asked.

Coats’s brow knitted. At the last second, he seemed to anticipate what was coming, to understand that Mark Aker had drawn him into a trap. But it was too late.

“Now you have.” The doc moved with the quickness of a snake.

A sudden heat flashed in Coats’s thigh, followed by a searing pain that bent him over. The doc had been concealing a pair of scissors behind his back. As Coats fell forward with the pain, the doc drove both elbows into his back and forced his face against the cast iron of the hot stove. The smell of burning hair and blistering skin filled the air as Coats sat upright, at which point the scissors plunged deeply up and into his left armpit, remaining there as the doc let go and grabbed a chair. He swung the chair and a light-headed Coats ducked to avoid the blow, only to realize too late that he was not the intended target. Instead, the sheet metal stovepipe dislodged with the chair’s clanging contact and the small cabin immediately filled with acrid gray smoke. The doc snagged Coats’s winter jacket and threw it on the stove. It smoldered only seconds before melting and smoking. The doc seized his own jacket from the wall, grabbed a flashlight from the windowsill, and was out the door.

Coats vomited. The skin on his burned face felt as if it were shrinking and tightening on his skull. His beard was singed off on that side, and, in its place, branded on his cheek at an awkward angle, were the reversed letters: SGNITSAC-VERMONT CASTINGS, the embossed name on the stove.

He dragged himself toward the door, his leg wound bleeding badly, his arm in pain. The doc had known exactly what he was doing: both wounds immobilized him.

He reached the door, a blood trail painted behind him. Hacking. Unable to breathe for the pain. He tried to get to his knees, to reach the doorknob, but his leg wound wouldn’t let him. He grabbed hold of the knob, only to realize his bulk was blocking the door. He collapsed back down to the floor. Reached for his ankle. A.38 revolver, in a calf holster.

Fired off three rounds. Waited.

Debated using the last three. Decided against it: if Aker returned, Coats wanted some rounds left for self-defense.

“FUCK!” he screamed. Smoke swirled just above his head. He coughed and gagged, and forced himself up through insurmountable pain toward the door.

The doorknob.

It was Gearbox, horrified. He wretched at the sight of Coats’s face.

“Air!” Coats groaned, as he tasted blood at the back of his throat.

The cold came through the door like a hammer.

“The doc,” Coats mumbled. Right before he passed out.

36

MARTY, WALT’S FOUR-YEAR-OLD GOLDEN, BANGED AGAINST the fire screen and sent one of Emily’s mittens flying. The mitten landed on a fresh ember and soon the wet wool began to smolder, producing a god-awful stink.

The foul smell brought Walt from the kitchen. To the twins, who knew they weren’t supposed to play fetch indoors, their father’s expression came as a complete surprise. Not one of anger but curiosity. Laughing, they ran for cover behind the couch. But the admonishment never came.

Instead, a moment later, they overheard him speaking on the phone with Lisa and they mistakenly believed his leaving was the punishment for their crime.

“Could you possibly come over and get them to bed?” he asked. “Something’s come up at work.”

“THE SMELL?” Brandon asked, nursing his arm in the sling from the passenger seat of the Cherokee.

“A wool mitten. Yes. At first, I was pissed at the girls. Same old same old. But then I recognized that smell; I remembered that smell. Lon Bernie’s ranch. Remember that stink?”

“Impossible to forget.”

“Burning wool,” Walt said. “That’s what the smell was: burning wool.”

WALT KILLED the headlights way out on the plowed two-lane state road and continued on by the dim glow of a fingernail moon. They parked the vehicle a half mile from the driveway leading onto Lon Bernie’s ranch and went on foot, both sporting day packs, six-cell flashlights that doubled as nightsticks, and their 9mm Berettas.

They made quite the pair, throwing night shadows in the soft moonlight. Walt, cursed with DNA that got him to five foot ten only with boots on, had compensated by working the weight room until he was as wide in the chest as he was tall. Brandon, meanwhile, shopped the Big and Tall Guys stores. Now the deputy was one-winged and walking awkwardly because of it.

They held to the left of the road, putting the fence as a screen between them and Lon Bernie’s farmhouse.

“Does it bother you that we have no authority in this county?” Brandon said, his words puffing out from his mouth as gray fog.

“I wouldn’t say no authority, but it does make things a little tricky.”

“Tricky? If he’s up to something he’ll shoot us like dogs and ask questions later. Welcome to Lemhi County.”

“I’m aware of that,” Walt said.

“Oh, and this just in: he wasn’t real thrilled to see us last time, in daylight.”

“Point taken.”

“Are you trying to get me killed in the line of duty?”

Walt didn’t dignify that.

“It’s midnight, Sheriff. Couldn’t we have-”

Walt cut him off. “If we’d come by day, all we’d have accomplished was to tip him off to our interest in his burn pit. He’d have snuffed it, buried it, and it would have froze solid, leaving us waiting ’til April or May to dig for evidence.” Walt tugged on Brandon ’s sheriff’s coat, pulling him lower as they drew closer to the gate. “It has to be now, when we can get a good look at whatever’s in there. We owe that to Mark.”

When the wind shifted, the putrid smell hit them both at the same moment.

“Damn,” Brandon said.

They turned onto the property, staying low. The burn pit was on the far side of the ranch, requiring them to pass the farmhouse and the outbuildings to reach it. Walt assumed there would be dogs-there were always dogs on ranches-but that wild game was more likely to wake dogs than humans, and so the trick was to move quickly and keep to shadows.

It was bitterly cold, somewhere in the teens. Each light breeze penetrated and burned their faces. Ducking, they hurried through the dry, crunching snow. As barking erupted from inside the farmhouse, to their right, they ran across the plowed driveway and ducked into the deep snow behind a hay swather. If Lon Bernie was awakened by the barking, he might think he had a shot at poaching an elk or deer from his bedroom window.

They waited. Brandon began to shiver, though didn’t say a thing.

Finally, the dogs stopped their noise. Walt held Brandon there another few minutes-long minutes-knowing that Bernie could be moving window to window in hopes of spotting some trespassing game. Then they stood, returned to the plowed driveway, and moved together toward the far side of a toolshed. From there, around a granary, and, from the granary, around the far side of the main barn. Here, Walt picked up tractor tracks-dualies-two tracks of double tires, each pair four feet wide, running parallel to the barn and disappearing like train tracks into the dark. He and Brandon followed these away from the glow of the mercury lamp, out into an artificial dusk, and finally into the coal black night, clouds having moved in to mask the moon, the hideous smell growing stronger with every step. They never dared use their flashlights for fear of being spotted. At times, they stopped, awaiting a cloud to pass by the moon, the surrounding dark so intense, the silence so complete, that, had it not been for his heartbeat in his ears and the stinging cold in his toes, Walt might have thought he’d died.

It took forever to reach the burn pit. Nearly an hour had passed since they’d left the Cherokee by the side of the road. Finally, the tractor tire tracks gave way to a wide disturbance in the velvet field of snow just as the stink from the pit achieved epic proportions. The pit appeared before them as a square black shadow amid the white glaze of snowfall. Slash had been pushed into a pile on the left side, a tangle of dead limbs and detritus stacked well over ten feet high. The pit itself had been dug crudely into the brown earth some years before, a catchall of burnable waste, which to a rancher meant anything from plastic pesticide containers and fertilizer bags to household paper trash and spent gearbox oil. Walt kneeled and, cupping his flashlight to mute its light, aimed a diffused beam down into the pit.

Brandon projectile-vomited down into the pit, staggered, and stepped away. Normally he was a man of a strong constitution, but his reaction reflected the horror there: an assortment of limbs, bodies, and heads of dozens of sheep, all blackened, the burned skin peeling back in leaflike flakes, the scabbed, unmoving eyes bulging or missing, having exploded from the heat. Fuel had been poured over everything and lit, further discoloring the skin and patches of wool, and leaving a mass of twisting limbs and burgeoning flesh, ripped open by the gases of decomposition to expose frozen pink tears in the carbon wasteland of dead animal.

The smell was of everything bad in the world: excrement, burned hair, lost life.

Walt dug around in his day pack, withdrew the Gamma-Scout and a Dell laptop that was part of his office’s mobile command center.

“Jesus,” Brandon said, pulling himself together. “Sorry about the hurl, Sheriff.”

“It ain’t pretty,” Walt said.

“And then some.”

“Get rope ready.”

Brandon slipped his day pack off. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“Stop thinking so much.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Walt had the Gamma-Scout plugged into the laptop; the laptop powering up. “The cord isn’t near long enough.”

“Sheriff…”

“I’ve got to go down there. Look for a decent hold. Try that fence post.”

“Sheriff…”

“You don’t burn your hoof stock. You sell its meat. The only reason you wouldn’t sell the meat is if the meat is contaminated. Wholesale slaughter like this? Come on! It’s the only explanation. But we’ve got to prove something’s going on. And you’ve got one good arm, Tommy. You can’t go down in there and you can’t pull me out. So get that rope tied off. And do it quickly,” he said calmly. He lifted his chin, indicating the distant ranch. “We may have company.”

Brandon spun around. A flickering light appeared in flashes between the outbuildings. A powerful flashlight.

“Probably the dogs barking,” Walt said. “When a guy like Lon Bernie’s got something to hide, he sleeps a lot lighter.”

“Turn that laptop around so the screen faces away,” Brandon said.

Walt did so. His gloves were off, his fingers stinging. He doubted the screen would show at such a great distance given that they were surrounded by higher walls of moved snow, but it was a worthy precaution. A rancher out at midnight was not yet cause for alarm. It could be anything from a sick animal that needed checking to a freeze patrol- making sure all the heaters were working prior to turning in. Even if Lon Bernie’s guilt had gotten the better of him, there would be no reason to look beyond the barns and outbuildings. A vision flashed in Walt’s imagination: the twin chevrons of the massive tire treads that the tractor had imprinted in the snow. He and Brandon had followed the tracks out here, no doubt leaving a trail of boot prints.

“We should keep going,” he encouraged.

“Rope’s tied off.”

There was no way for Walt to climb down the rope with the laptop in hand, so he put it back into the day pack but without fully closing the screen so it would remain running. Then he lowered himself down the dirt wall and into a piece of semifrozen hell. Brandon trained the light down on him. Walt arrived at a muddy layer in the corner of the pit where the pile of carcasses left a gap. Despite the freezing temperature, the smell wafting up from the decomposing carcasses was as bad as anything he’d ever experienced. He zipped his coat up over his face so that only his eyes showed, one-armed the day pack around to where he could dig the laptop out, and, balancing the laptop on his left forearm like a waiter would a tray, handled the Gamma-Scout with his right hand. He trained the Geiger counter on the nearest bloated carcass. Its digital readout fell well within the range of the acceptable amounts of radiation. He’d expected to see a much higher reading.

Gagging from the odor, he aimed the Gamma-Scout up the carcass toward the rotting, burned head. The bloat had cracked open the animal’s blackened skin with expansion, and this is where the meter’s numbers edged up slightly-the frozen, exposed flesh.

Water, Walt thought.

“Sheriff! We got company!” Brandon called down into the pit, his hand cupped so tightly over his mouth and nose that Walt barely understood him. “An ATV, maybe. Two small headlights.”

Walt set the Gamma-Scout onto the keyboard and dug around the day pack with his free hand. He came out with a hunting knife with a six-inch serrated blade of carbon steel. He hesitated only briefly before plunging the tip through the hardened shell of burned skin. The bloated carcass spit through the rent and hissed out a gas that made Walt retch.

“Christ Almighty!” Brandon complained, the stink quickly reaching him.

The meter’s readout jumped significantly, this time to dangerous levels.

“Light!” Walt called out.

Brandon, in monitoring the approaching vehicle, had neglected his responsibility. Now the light caught Walt, and the sheriff glanced down at the fresh biosensor tag he had clipped to his uniform a day earlier. The same wedge was shaded a ghostly purple, indicating additional exposure to radioactivity.

“Check your tag!” Walt hollered up from the pit.

“Shit!” Brandon said a moment later. “I’m hot.”

His voice was now overcome by the whine of the ATV’s motor.

“How close?” Walt shouted.

“A minute. Maybe less.”

“Bury the rope in the snow. Hide yourself in that slash pile.”

“Hide?”

“Now, Tommy. That’s an order!”

Walt felt the same way as his deputy: it was not in his nature to hide. But for a rancher to burn this many sheep-to throw away that kind of money-the stakes had to be extremely high. High enough to kidnap or kill? A rancher like Lon Bernie was likely to shoot first and ask questions later, and Walt had no great desire to test that theory. If Lon Bernie figured out his burned sheep had been discovered, he and Brandon might wind up buried along with them.

Walt slapped the laptop shut and zipped it and the Gamma-Scout in the day pack. He kept the pack in front of him, as he curled down into the corner of the pit, his head lower than the nearest sheep, and huddled there. The sound of the ATV grew progressively closer and louder, like the buzzing of a bee. The cold penetrated, as he held his head between his legs, offering only the back of his jacket to the night sky. Bernie would have to shine a light and look right down at him in order to see him.

The ATV arrived and quieted, its motor idling.

Out of the corner of his eye, Walt caught the light from the headlights shifting, as the driver moved the vehicle to spread the light around the edges of the pit.

Walt believed he’d discovered the boot prints behind the barn, had followed them out to the pit. So now, finding no one, Bernie had to wonder if they were fresh tracks or if a couple of his hands had come out here on foot. It was the wrong time of year to go marching around the ranch on foot. Bernie-or whoever was driving the ATV-would be trying to reconcile things.

At last, Walt heard the dry crunch of footfalls. The driver was off the ATV and heading toward the pit. Silence followed. Walt could picture the man up there, studying the pile of bloated carcasses, troubled by the sensation that all was not well. Walt had been there enough times himself: trusting his senses more than his reasoning.

He heard something unexpected: a stream of water. Lon Bernie, or whoever was up there, was urinating into the pit-not a pleasant practice in these temperatures. But then Walt’s nose took over: not urine but petroleum. Diesel fuel.

A shudder rushed through him.

The driver of the ATV had not come looking for them; he’d come to douse the pit and burn the sheep in the dead of night. With the pit dug as deeply as it was, the flames would show as no more than a glow at night, the rising black smoke not revealing itself to the distant neighbors. Only a plume would linger by daylight. Burning trash and debris was a year-round practice on any ranch. A little smoke wasn’t going to raise eyebrows. The ATV held a drum of fuel oil. It was hand pumped, and it showered onto the carcasses. None of the fuel fell directly on Walt; it was concentrated toward the pit’s center and the heaped carcasses. But it came, gallon after gallon, the stench alone enough to choke him.

And then, minutes later, the match.

The pit lit on fire all of a sudden. Diesel is a slow-burning fuel. There was no great explosion, or even a whoosh. Flame simply ran across the pile, chasing the spent fuel. The heat increased. The flesh began to pop.

Walt knew Brandon would be anxious, might ruin things by leaping to Walt’s rescue, but then the ATV’s motor whirred. And grew faint.

The rope struck Walt on his back.

“Jesus, Sheriff!”

The concentration of flames was well away from Walt, but the heat was intense and the fire was spreading. He grabbed on to the rope, placed his feet on the wall of the pit, and drew himself up and out, where Brandon offered his one good hand and pulled hard.

The ATV’s taillights receded down the access road.

“You’re out of your mind,” Brandon said, his face aglow in the light of the fire. His skin shined from the sweat of anxiety. His eyes flashed white, wide with anger that he disguised as outrage.

“I would have called for help if I’d needed it,” Walt said offhandedly.

“Jesus! How was that possibly worth it, Sheriff?” Indignant. “How is that possibly-”

Walt patted the day pack. “It was well worth it, Tommy.” He looked back at the burning heap of flesh, popping and bubbling. He was thinking about Mark Aker and how much time had passed since his abduction. He was thinking that in these temperatures fire connected one person to another, one ranch to another, one life to another, and that somewhere out there Mark Aker hopefully was near a fire just like he was. Walt’s chance of finding and rescuing Mark Aker came down to efficiency, of turning a number on a Geiger counter into hard evidence, of uncovering an evidence trail that could connect the discolored biosensor to the missing veterinarian.

He understood where that trail would start and, rising to his toes, could almost see it in the blanket of darkness that stretched for miles up this nearly uninhabited valley.

Senator James Peavy’s ranch lay just out of view.

37

MARK AKER WAS SURPRISED BY HIS OWN STRENGTH. HIS legs felt good. Adrenaline, perhaps. He walked in the snowmobile track because it was easier going. It followed what appeared to be a road, given the lack of trees and shrubs. Not only could he move faster on the track, but he was less likely to leave tracks to follow. The moon turned the snow lavender. He heard shouting behind him, coming from the cabin. Coats and Gearbox. These first few minutes were critical. They wouldn’t know where he’d gone: around back to the shed, toward the woodpile, or up the snowmobile track. They’d search for tracks leading into the woods.

It wouldn’t take them long-five minutes, maybe less-to realize he hadn’t headed into virgin snow, that he must have taken the snowmobile track. And then they’d come after him.

He’d hurt Coats badly with that burn. Would Coats stay and lick his wounds or join the hunt? The answer came immediately, as more shouting erupted behind him, and the coughing of the snowmobile trying to start rumbled through the woods.

Aker had yet to turn on the flashlight, still negotiating by the light of the moon. If he left the snowmobile track, his prints would give him away. But if he stayed, he was only minutes from being caught. He could try jumping off the track, making his first prints in the virgin snow as far off the beaten track as possible, but he knew Coats to be a professional tracker. He had to outsmart him.

Think!

At the first curve, the snowmobile track left the road and weaved through the thick forest of lodgepole pine and aspen, no doubt following a shortcut only available in winter months. He passed a dozen or more trees before he heard the chain-saw-like buzz of the snowmobile’s motor catching life. They’d be on him in less than a minute.

He stopped. Turned. His mind counting down the time he was wasting. Then he saw it: a branch.

The track cut incredibly close to a twisted pine that had once been struck by lightning. It was a craggy old tree with a few sparse branches low enough to the ground to reach by jumping. Aker squatted and leaped, but his gloves slid off the only branch close enough to reach. He tried again, and again, but could not grab hold.

Now the snowmobile was crying out, well under way.

He jumped a fourth time and managed to hook his hands and lace his fingers over the branch. He walked his feet up the trunk, hooked a knee over the branch, and struggled up to a sitting position. With the adrenaline spent, he was far weaker than he’d first thought. He continued to climb, following the tree’s natural ladder. Two, three, four branches up; and now, looking down, he saw only branches. He moved himself higher, and on the opposite side of the tree from the track. He straddled the branch and kept himself against the trunk.

The snowmobile’s headlight winked through the woods, as the grind of the motor drew nearer. It was traveling slowly, and now a second light was revealed: a flashlight, searching both sides of the track.

Aker caught himself holding his breath as it came into view, staying in the track. Two men. Gearbox was driving, Coats, straddling the motorcycle-style seat behind Gearbox, holding the flashlight.

The snowmobile purred up the track approaching Aker’s tree, the flashlight alternately illuminating the forest on both sides, throwing harsh shadows that moved around in a jarring dance. It continued past.

A red taillight now. Nothing more. The sound grew more and more distant.

A person on foot was no match for a snowmobile. It would only take them minutes to realize they’d missed him.

Aker climbed down out of the tree as quickly as humanly possible. He landed back on the track and took off for the cabin. He tried to run but wasn’t up to it. It seemed to take forever to reach the camp, but it was only minutes. But how long until the snowmobile returned?

Inside the cabin now-the smell of burned hair and flesh, a nauseating stink-he stole a backpack, ripped a regional map off the wall, and stuffed it and other items into the zippered compartment: canned foods, matches, a church key, can opener, saltshaker, a fork, and a kitchen knife. He snatched up the syringes from the table and took the vials of insulin and the medication Coats had used to subdue him: opiates and narcotics. A pair of wool socks hanging by the woodstove. A wool cap. He grabbed a pair of snowshoes from a peg.

The sound of the snowmobile was suddenly louder. Closer…

He’d heard the two talk about spotting a cow elk by the salt lick. That meant game, which meant a game trail to follow. Out back, he briefly risked the flashlight, the moon having hidden behind the fast-moving clouds overhead. He couldn’t find the salt lick. The unbroken snow that formed an apron beyond the shed trapped him as neatly as a fence.

Leaving any tracks would give him away.

And there, in the flashlight’s beam, came his answer: two woodpiles, one for the split logs, neatly stacked very high, and, beyond it, a pile of ten or twelve massive tree trunks, ready for cutting and splitting. Small animals had greatly disturbed the snow in and around the logs; his tracks wouldn’t be easily noticed. By daylight, they might spot his route, but, if he hurried, he could be far gone by then.

He struggled up the pile of stacked wood, winded and weak. He fumbled his way over it and fell to the other side. Next, he took two great leaps in succession and reached the pile of felled trees. He clambered over this pile as well, the whine of the snowmobile fast approaching.

In all, he’d left but two prints in the deep snow, between the stacked wood and felled trees, both hidden by the woodpile itself. He crept under a tree’s snow-laden branches and out to the other side. Crawled under the branches of the next tree, to hide his tracks. He was at least twenty yards from the shed now.

The snowmobile’s engine coughed to silence. Coats shouted: “Fuck this! He can’t be far!”

Aker strapped on the snowshoes. His pursuers searched the far side of the cabin first, buying him precious time.

He found a rhythm in a half-speed run, leaning forward slightly to compensate for the added weight of the backpack. The adrenaline was back, and, with it, some needed energy.

He had no compass and no idea where he was. But he was no stranger to the outdoors and he knew where he was headed: as far away as he could get.