choked on pints of his own blood when he tried to speak.
“Jesus,” Cody said, elevating the man’s head by raising his own leg, trying to find a position where the victim wouldn’t have to make the gargling sound. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The man shook his head quickly but couldn’t form words yet. He was still lucid despite appearances. But, Cody knew, he wouldn’t be for long. The victim was bleeding out before his eyes and there wasn’t a single thing either of them could do about it. Bull Mitchell’s field first-aid kit had been in the panniers of the packhorse. But even if the horse hadn’t run away, Cody wasn’t sure he could have done anything to save this man’s life.
He’d known the end of this story as he approached him minutes ago. There was a hole the size of a fist in the man’s back, the exit wound. It was inches deep and pulsating. Cody dropped down to the trail and turned the man over. The victim had watched, his eyes clear and sharp. The entry wound was the size of a nickel and it was framed by a hole in the fabric of his shirt. The hole in the cloth, just below the breast pocket on the left side of the victim’s chest, was burned black on the edges in an outline that resembled a blooming flower. The reason for the pattern was powder burns-meaning that the shot had been made practically point-blank. The weapon had been of large caliber. Cody saw no other bullet wounds but there didn’t have to be any.
Cody said, “I’m not going to lie and tell you you’ll be okay.”
The man closed and reopened his eyes. Not out of disappointment, but a means of signaling Cody that he understood.
Cody could feel blood from the exit wound soaking into the denim of his trousers. It was warm.
“Can you hear me?” Cody said.
Again, the man blinked.
“Are you with the pack trip led by Jed McCarthy?”
Blink.
“Is there an older boy on the trip? Named Justin? Seventeen, eighteen?”
“Is he okay?”
“Man, I don’t know what to do. There’s no way to stop the bleeding.”
“Did you see who shot you?”
“Can you try to talk? Can you please try to tell me what happened and who did it?”
The man closed his eyes and swallowed painfully. Cody looked skyward for a fresh thought or a signal that would give him-and the gunshot victim-some kind of hope. Or something he could do to make this poor man more comfortable.
He felt the man die. It wasn’t a sound or a movement, but a sudden absence of firmness in his lap. Cody looked down. “Not now,” Cody pleaded. “Not before you tell me what happened.”
The man’s eyes were still open but there was nothing behind them. His mouth was slightly open and red inside, the color of candied cherries. Cody reached up and closed the eyes, pulling the lids and hoping they’d stay that way. They did.
Cody rolled the body off his legs. In death, it seemed twice as heavy as before. He stood unsteadily. His muscles ached from riding and he was covered with a man’s sacred lifeblood; his jeans were black and sticky and orange half-moon-shaped pine needles stuck to the denim. He bent over and dug through the victim’s clothing and found a wallet and flipped it open. Andre Alan Russell, resident of Manhattan. Cody remembered the name from the file he took from Jed’s office.
As he’d done earlier in the day, he photographed Russell’s body and wounds, knowing while he did it that the shooting had happened someplace else and this wasn’t the crime scene. He wondered how far Russell had come from where he’d been shot. He dragged Russell’s body off the trail. Before tucking it in beneath a massive fallen tree and covering it the best he could with heavy logs and branches, Cody looked skyward for a moment, then looted all of Russell’s pockets looking for a package of cigarettes that wasn’t there. Cursing, Cody then covered the body. The cover wouldn’t prevent predators from finding it-probably nothing would-but he hoped he could return with help to get the body out before it was torn up.
He kept Russell’s New York driver’s license but cached the wallet and the contents of the man’s pockets in the crook of the aspen tree he’d used to keep Gipper around.
Since Mitchell’s GPS was gone and he couldn’t get a reading of coordinates, Cody found a T-shirt in his saddlebag and ripped it up and tied one strip to the cover where the body was and another on a low overhanging branch at the trail to mark the location. He scribbled in his spiral notebook what he’d found and what he’d done with the body and Russell’s possessions.
When he was through he stood and wiped sweat from his face and took off his hat to cool the top of his head. He could see no trace of Russell’s body beneath the cover he’d put on it, but he knew it was there. And the image of Russell’s last attempt to speak would be with him forever.
Back on Gipper, Cody contemplated turning around to try and retrieve the packhorse, but he feared the animal was still running and was miles away. He couldn’t afford to let more time elapse between him and Justin.
He nudged his horse and Gipper reluctantly stepped back on the trail. As he walked his mount, Cody reached behind him into his saddlebag for the satellite phone. He’d thought long and hard about the situation he was in and had decided he couldn’t take any more chances on his own.
Because now there were two bodies, and he had no reason to think there wouldn’t be more.
He turned on the phone and watched the display screen. It was working, but there was no signal. He looked up; the tree cover was too thick. He’d need to wait until he rode into a clearing where the phone could hook up with a satellite. Clipping the phone to his belt next to the Sig Sauer, he cautiously rode on. He could smell Russell’s blood on his clothing and it mixed with the odor of his own fear.
Things were happening ahead of him. He was hours and miles behind the pack trip, but closing in. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the motivation for the murders but it was obvious whomever was behind it was entering a new stage. The killings leading up to the pack trip departure had been meticulously planned to resemble accidents or suicides. A good deal of thought had gone into them.
Tristan Glode’s body had been well hidden. It was possible, Cody thought, the murder had taken place out of view of the others on the trip and they may not even know it had occurred. But Russell was different. He’d somehow managed to get away and he’d not been pursued, probably because the killer knew his victim would bleed out. But unlike the murders preceding Russell’s, there was no indication of careful planning or execution. Russell had not been chased down and disposed of to hide the crime.
Which meant, for one reason or another, that the situation had grown desperate. Desperate men, Cody knew, were capable of anything.
As was he.
A few minutes went by and Cody checked the phone to see if he’d acquired a signal yet so he could call Larry. He looked up ahead of him and saw a pair of splayed boots that belonged to a third victim.
Gipper woofed and started to backtrack furiously.
Filtered sun shimmered on their coats and he could see at least one massive round head and the humps on their backs and the bulge of heavy muscles beneath the fur.
He’d have to fight off a feeding grizzly sow and her two cubs to identify the body.
