As joe crossed the street to the restaurant he noticed a park ranger cruiser at the curb. The door opened and Judy Demming got out.
“Del Ashby asked me to give you something,” she said, poppingopen the trunk with a remote on her key chain.
Demming was out of uniform, in jeans, a turtleneck, and a sweater. She looked smaller and more scholarly in street clothes, Joe thought, her eyes softer behind her glasses.
“Were you waiting for me?” Joe asked.
“I just pulled in.”
He followed her around her car as she lifted a cardboard box out of the trunk.
“All of those e-mails printed out,” she said, holding the box out to him. “The ones you said you wanted to look at.”
Joe tossed the Zone file into the box and took it from her. It was heavier than he would have guessed.
“That was pretty efficient,” he said. “I hope you didn’t have to do this on your time off.”
“No bother,” she said. “My husband’s home with the kids. I called him and told him I’d be late. He’s a saint.”
“I’ve got one of those at home too.”
She didn’t rush to jump back into her cruiser, but seemed to be waiting for Joe to say something.
“Can I buy you dinner?” Joe asked. “I’ve got lots more questions.”
She looked at her watch and shook her head. “Lars is cookingsomething, so I don’t have time for dinner,” she said. “But maybe we could have a glass of wine in the bar.”
“Sounds good,” he said, wishing he hadn’t had the bourbon already. He wanted to be sharp.
Less than a quarter of the tables were occupied in the diningroom, Joe noticed, as they entered and turned right toward a small lounge. Several men sat at the bar drinking draws and watching SportsCenter on a fuzzy television, the first set Joe had seen in the park. The men looked like they’d been there awhile, and Joe discounted them as being the strangers in the hallway. Demming chose a small dark table in the corner farthest from the bar and sat with her back to the wall. He guessed she didn’t want to be seen but didn’t ask why. Since it was a slow night they waited for the bartender to top the glasses of the viewers before coming to take their orders himself. Joe ordered another bourbon and water and Demminga red wine.
“Thanks for the e-mails,” Joe said. The box was near his feet.
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t think you’ll find anything very useful in them. I read them myself, hoping against hope that there would be some kind of reference to Clay McCann, but there isn’t. You’ll learn all kinds of things about environmentalactivism and how horny those poor guys got being out here all alone, but I don’t think you’ll find anything valuable. There are some messages planning their trip to Robinson Lake, mainly who is to bring what alcohol and food. I’m afraid the e-mails are another dead end.”
“If nothing else,” Joe said, “maybe I’ll get a better feel for Hoening and the other victims.”
She agreed. “They weren’t bad people, just young and misguided.You’ll find that the five of them had a yearly reunion at the end of the season.”
Joe was interested. “Was it always at Robinson Lake?”
“No, but all of the reunions were in that little corner of the park,” she said, her tone low but amused. “It’s kind of a funny story, really. When the five of them left Minnesota to come out here together to try and get jobs in Yellowstone, they didn’t have a road map with them, I guess. They entered the park for the first time at the Bechler entrance, coming from Idaho. They had no idea they couldn’t go any farther into the park from there, so they camped out their first night in that area. Apparently,a ranger told them they’d need to go back out of the park and drive up to West or down to Jackson to get on the right road to Mammoth to apply for jobs. So, because of that inauspicious beginning, they held a reunion of the Gopher State Five every year down there where they first showed up, even though it was the wrong place to enter the park.”
“So,” Joe said, as the bartender arrived with their drinks, “it’s possible that McCann knew where they’d be and when.”
“It’s possible,” she said, sipping, “but we can’t prove it. He denied knowing them, you know. He said they just happened to be there at the time.”
“Which brings us back to the guest register,” Joe said.
She nodded. “That’s why I’m here now,” she said. “I’d like to go down to Bechler with you tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
Joe said, “I’d be honored.”
“Of course, Ashby wants me to keep an eye on you as well.”
“I figured that.”
Now that it was out, a heavy silence hung between them.
“Why does Layborn hate Zephyr employees so much?”
Demming rolled her eyes. “I wish he wasn’t so strident about it, but he is. Layborn used to be a SWAT assault team captainfor the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,and he brings too much of that gung-ho training to his job. He’s like a lot of real-world cops I’ve met. Day after day, he only sees the worst side of human nature, you know? He never gets calls to watch thousands of them serving food, or doinglaundry, or giving tours. He only encounters the employees who get into trouble, so he assumes they’re all like that. And some of them really are. The Gopher Staters used to drive him crazy. They made it personal.”
“How so?” Joe asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers.
“They were like frat boys. He caught them hot-potting more than once and he gave them tickets for it.”
“Hot-potting?”
“Sorry, we have so much lingo up here. Hot-potting is soakingin thermal pools. It’s illegal, but lots of people do it at night. It’s relaxing and a way to wind down-a natural hot tub. Becausethere aren’t any movie theaters or nightclubs or anything like that up here, some of the Zephyr employees go hot-potting for date night. Alcohol is usually involved, of course. Most of us look the other way because it’s basically harmless. There’s even a spot called Ranger Pool, if you catch my meaning. But we leave them alone unless they’re being particularly loud or blatant about it. Not Eric Layborn, though. He busted the GopherState Five a few times and they got to know him, and to know him is to dislike him, as you learned today. It escalated from there.”
Joe encouraged her to go on.
She said, “Once they found out Layborn suspected them of dealing, they declared all-out war on him. They’d let the air out of his tires when he was at lunch, or they’d put a potato in his exhaust. Stink bombs, stuff like that. Once they acted like a big drug deal was going down in employee housing at Old Faithful-they put the word out to people Layborn used as informants-so Layborn put a huge squad together to raid it. It turned out to be a birthday party for a seventy-year-old waitress who’d worked in the park for forty-some years. Layborn was reprimanded, and it made the local papers. They set him up. And I’m sure you noticed his eye?”
Joe said he had.
“One time, they did that trick from
“That explains it,” Joe said.
“It’s glass,” she said. “Rumor has it Eric had the National Park Service logo engraved and painted on the inside of his glass eye, so it points at his brain in his socket. But that’s just a rumor-I’ve never seen it.”
Joe was taken aback. “You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was.”
Demming was so deadpan when she said it they both burst out laughing.
She covered her mouth with her fingers. “We shouldn’t laugh.”
“No, we shouldn’t.”
“So,” Joe said, recovering, “no one was ever caught?”
“No. Nobody would fess up. We all knew it was the Gopher Staters, but we couldn’t prove it.”
Joe shifted uncomfortably. “Judy, did Layborn have any dealings with McCann?”
Demming wasn’t shocked by the question. “I know what you’re asking. But no, I don’t think so.”
