Free Fire

“Everything’s on the table,” Joe said. “Maybe eye-for-an-eye kind of revenge, so to speak?”

Demming nodded, uncomfortable. “I’m probably not helpingmy career talking to you so much,” she said. “You’re not exactlythe most popular guy in the park right now.”

“Who knows I’m here?” Joe asked, thinking of the two old men at Mammoth.

“You’d be surprised how word gets around,” she said, taking a generous drink of wine. “This is a big park, but a really tiny community. Information and gossip are the way to get ahead, so there’s always a lot of buzzing about what’s going on, who’s talking to whom, that sort of thing. A newcomer like you raises suspicion.” She tossed her hair girlishly and continued. “There are so many factions. A lot, I mean a lot, of conflicts. Zephyr versus the Park Service. Environmentalists against resource users. Hunters outside the park versus park policy. The three states fighting with the Feds. Even in the Park Service, it’s law enforcement versus interpretation, and seasonal rangers against full-timers. It’s bureaucracy run amok, with too many small-mindeddepartment heads trying to advance. It’s cutthroat, Joe.”

“Sounds a whole lot like government,” Joe said. “I speak from experience.”

“I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You must have ordered truth serum instead of wine,” she said, gesturing toward her empty glass.

“Would you like another?”

“No!” she laughed. “I’ve done enough damage for one night. Plus, I’ve got to get home.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I hope talking with me doesn’t do you any harm.”

She stood and held out her hand. “You never know, and frankly I don’t care anymore. I’m forty-two and Lars works for Zephyr. Up here, that means I’m in a mixed marriage, Yellowstone-style. We have two kids and live in a busted-down Park Service house, and I’m getting tired of playing the advancementgame, because after eighteen years I’ve realized I’m going nowhere fast. Maybe the best thing that could happen would be for them to try and get rid of me.”

Uh-oh, Joe thought.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, suddenly flustered. He watched her go. As she opened the front door, she shot a furtive glance into the dining room to see, he assumed, if there was anyone in there who recognized her.

As he ate, Joe skimmed through the stack of e-mails. The messages to Governor Rulon and the other politicians were on top. They were similarly vague in regard to details and the requestto contact him in “the ’Stone.” Joe found it significant that the phrase “cash flow” was used only in Rulon’s e-mail. He set it aside for later and went through the printouts. They all fit roughly into three categories.

The first was environmental activism. Saving the wolves, grizzlies, bison. Lots of back-and-forth with other activists about the upcoming buffalo hunt that would take place in Montana.Yellowdick, or Rick Hoening, was as passionate an advocatefor endangered species as he was disdainful of hunters, ranchers, uninformed visitors, and certain factions of the Park Service, mainly law enforcement. His newest cause was somethinghe called “bio- mining.”

While learning of Hoening’s political leanings and contacts within the environmental community, Joe detected a softening in his stance in the more recent exchanges. Often, Joe had found that people’s extreme views weakened when they moved to the heart of the controversy and were exposed to the other side. It didn’t happen with everyone, but many. It was easier to stay away and keep a rigid ideology when not mugged by reality.Although Hoening was certainly an environmentalist to the end, his more recent arguments to activists suggested that perhapssome of their policies and methods could be more reasonableand less harsh.

The second category was park gossip and news. These e-mails composed the bulk of the box. Yellowdick was a chatty guy. The messages consisted of which employees were moving up and down the corporate ladder, who was moving where (the five hubs of activity were Old Faithful, Grant Village, Roosevelt Lodge, Lake Hotel, and Mammoth), who said what to whom, who was sleeping with whom, where parties were going to be after work and on weekends, who would drive, who would bring what. Demming was accurate about the insular nature of Zephyr employees. Like college students on campus, they had their own culture, rituals, words, and phrases. Their social lives existed in a separate universe from what millions of tourists experiencedat the park. Visitors encountered waiters, servers, maids, front-desk staff. There was probably little thought as to what these people who served the tourists did with their lives when not in uniform, when the Zephyr name tag was off. Joe found the secret world fascinating and made himself stop readingand move on.

The third rough category he classified as Desperate Pleas to Women. In these, Joe found himself smiling and cringing at the same time. Men away from home in their early twenties could be shameless, and Hoening was no exception. Yellowdick was relentless,equal parts charm, desperation, and rakishness. He seemed to have tried to revive every friendship and chance meetinghe had ever had with a female while growing up in Minnesota,stretching back to childhood. In each correspondence, he started out recalling the particulars of their meeting, often citing what she wore and the cute things she said. He said he missed her. If she replied, he continued the long-distance back-and-forth,writing about Yellowstone and what he and his friends were doing and seeing, extolling the clean air and healthy lifestyle or, if she liked the darker side, how great the parties were. A girl named Samantha Ellerby apparently liked parties so much she had moved from Minnesota to L.A. to find really good ones. Hoening claimed the events he staged in Yellowstone rivaled anythingshe had found. She doubted it, she wrote. He said he’d prove it if she came to see him, and closed with the same line that he apparently felt was the clincher: “We’ll have some cocktails and laughs, watch the sun set over Yellowstone Lake, go hot-pottingand light a couple of flamers.” Another e-mail said, “I can’t wait to see you. I’ll be at the airport in Jackson.”

From what Joe could tell, she was the only woman Yellowdick had successfully persuaded. Based on the last two e-mails betweenthem, one to him that said “A-Hole!” and his reply, “Bitch!”, their time together had not gone well. But despite his low batting average, Yellowdick never stopped swinging for the fences. In the most recent e- mails, he had turned his sights on visitorshe apparently had met and exchanged e-mail addresses with, having exhausted his list of females from Minnesota.

Although there were still plenty of e-mails to go through, Joe admitted to himself that what Demming had told him was essentiallycorrect. There were no references to Clay McCann or anyone like him, and nothing revealing about their plans for the annual reunion at Robinson Lake. Except one thing, Joe thought. Bob Olig had been copied in on every message. It meant, Joe thought, Hoening had no reason to assume Olig wouldn’t be there.

A thought struck him.

What if Olig was at Robinson Lake? What if the employee records at Old Faithful were wrong on that fact, or Olig had manipulatedthem to appear as if he’d been working that day?

Joe retrieved his file from the box and reviewed the crime-scenereport in detail once again, looking for something that would confirm his suspicion. Like finding five sleeping bags insteadof four.

After reading and rereading the report and going over the inventoryof items found at the scene, Joe could come up with only one conclusion: either Olig or McCann had removed every single shred of evidence of Olig’s presence, or he’d never been at the camp at all, just like Layborn had said.

Joe looked up and realized he was the last diner in the restaurant. A knot of workers, busboys and waiters, had gatherednear the kitchen door, pretending they weren’t waiting for him to leave.

Joe stood, said, “Sorry!” and left a big tip he couldn’t afford.

Carrying the box outside, Joe noted how incredibly dark it was with no moon, and no ground glow from streets, homes, or traffic. The cool air had a slight taste of winter.

He called marybeth from a pay phone in the lobby of the hotel, having learned in Jackson not to rely on his cell phone in remote or mountainous places. Plus, he liked the intimacy of closing the accordion doors of the old- fashioned booth and shutting everything out so he could talk with her.

She covered the home front. Everyone was doing fine and it was too soon to really miss him. An employee in her Powell office had gotten angry and walked out for no good reason. Missy was snubbing her because, Marybeth assumed, her suspicions about Earl Alden and the arts council were correct.

“Fine with me,” Marybeth said.

Joe recounted his day: the drive up, the arrest of Bear, the meeting, drinks with Judy Demming.

As he told her, he could feel her mood change, not by what she said but by the silence.

“You’d like her,” he said. “She’s trying to help me out up here even though her bosses probably wish she