Free Fire

and he’s alone, hide the whiskey!”

They seemed to be getting along so well, McCann thought, neither noticed he had turned off the main road toward the east. Or that the bridge that crossed Boundary Creek was just ahead. Or that despite the absence of a sign or a gate, they were officiallyin Yellowstone Park.

With his left hand, McCann pushed the button on the door handle that lowered the passenger window by Toomer’s head.

“Hey,” Toomer said, “why’d you do that? Did you fart or something?” He looked back to see if Sheila, his new pal, would laugh at his joke.

“No,” McCann said, pulling the.38 out of his jacket, “so your brains won’t splash all over the glass.”

Toomer’s mouth made an O and McCann fired into the left lens of his sunglasses, and then the right. The sounds were sharp and deafening. The ex-sheriff slumped back, his mouth still open, a string of saliva connecting his upper and lower teeth.

Sheila screamed, “Clay! Clay! Clay! Oh my God!” her hands to her face, her knees clamped together.

McCann said, “I’m really sorry, honey,” and shot her three times. One bullet passed through her necklace and sent pearls flying all over the inside of the car.

At dusk, ten minutes before he’d close the office for the night, B. Stevens heard the clump of a shoe on the wooden stairs outside the Bechler ranger station and looked up as Clay McCann opened the door and came in. He looked flushed.

The ranger was stunned. “You. .” he said.

“It happened again, can you believe it?” McCann said as he wearily dropped a snub-nosed revolver on the counter. “I was giving a couple of locals a ride to Idaho Falls and they pulled this damned gun on me.”

Stevens was speechless.

McCann held his arms out, wrists together, making it as easy as possible to put cuffs on them. The lawyer shook his head, said, “They’re out there in the car. I guess they didn’t realize who they were dealing with.”

19

Del ashby and eric layborn drove joe and Demming back to Mammoth after the initial crime-scene procedureswere accomplished at Sunburst Hot Springs. They left at mid-afternoon while more and more rangers arrived until the basin was packed with them. The flood of vehicles to the scene attracted what few visitors were still in the park, who assumed that so much ranger action must mean bears had been spotted. Families in cars and RVs lined the narrow road into the area, causing a snarl of traffic that forced Ashby to break regulations and drive on the side of the road.

Joe listened as Ashby and Layborn complained about the quality of the crime scene, how the pathway had been trampled by Joe and Demming, thus obscuring the footprints of the killer or killers, how the condition of Cutler’s body was such that it would be nearly impossible to tell if he fell, was pushed, or was murdered and then thrown in.

Demming defended their actions. “We did nothing wrong,” she said.

“Of course not,” Layborn said, rolling his eyes. “It’s just the small things. You know, like getting into a confrontation with an Iowa mountain man who gets shot up and flown to the hospital at our expense. Or getting forced off the road by the likely killers, not getting a description or a plate number, walking all over the crime scene throwing up, getting your vehicledestroyed, not giving chase or calling it in, letting the third member of your party go on a walkabout, and delaying the initial investigation of the crime scene by three hours becauseyou had to hitch a ride with a road maintenance crew. Other than that, you did real well. Did I forget anything, Del?”

“I think you covered it,” Ashby said. “Except maybe the fact that Joe Pickett and his mystery buddy have been flashing their weaponry out in the open every place they go against Park Servicepolicy.”

“Oh, that too,” Layborn said.

“You two are poised to become media stars,” Ashby said, biting off his words. “We’ve got more calls for comment than all of us can handle. Just exactly what we didn’t want-more attentionon the Zone of Death and now a fully cooked Zephyr employee.”

“I think you’re out of line,” Joe said. “Both of you.” He wonderedwhich of them, or if both, had sent the black SUV to interceptCutler that morning.

Layborn fixed him with a cop stare, except that one of his eyes peered at something to the side of Joe’s face. “We might just have to pull over and settle this.”

“Maybe so.”

“Let it go, Joe,” Demming said. “This is a Park Service thing, you know?”

“That’s right,” Ashby said. “You have no say here. In fact, I’m thinking of punching your ticket and sending you back home to your governor.”

Demming shot Joe a desperation glance, pleading with her eyes for him to keep quiet. For her sake, he did. He thought that while he could go home, she couldn’t.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the Pagoda at dark, Joe was plotting his moves that evening. Call Chuck Ward, tell him what was going on and what had happened, let him in on his suspicions. Beg for a new vehicle. Apologize for the last one. Call Marybeth. Drink.

“I want your full written statements by tomorrow morning,” Ashby said. “I’m meeting with the chief ranger and want to be fully briefed. Plus, I would expect we’ll be getting some calls from Washington wanting to know just what in the hell is happeningto our park.”

Ashby said to Demming, “When I asked you to come back yesterday, I meant it. But no, you wanted to continue to play cowgirl to John Wayne here. If you would have, maybe Cutler would still be alive.”

Demming turned ashen.

Joe said, “That was low.” He sort of liked being compared to John Wayne, though.

He and demming followed Ashby and Layborn into the Pagoda. Demming looked pale and on the verge of tears she was fighting to hold back. Joe resisted the impulse to put his hand on her shoulder, to reassure her. He thought if he did that it would make her look weak to Ashby and Layborn.

The night dispatcher threw open the door to the lobby, his headset dangling from where he’d jerked it out of his phone. His eyes were wild.

“Chief,” he said to Ashby, “you’ve got to take this.”

“Take what?” Ashby said, grimacing.

“Stevens from Bechler.”

“Wait here,” Ashby told Demming and Joe, and followed the dispatcher.

Five minutes later, he came back. He was seething, his face bright red: “That son of a bitch Clay McCann did it again!”

20

Joe finished writing his report-including the news of Clay McCann killing two more people in “self-defense” within the Zone of Death-and had it faxed from the front desk. While he watched Simon feed the pages through, something nagged at him. He needed to talk to Demming.

Lower-level federal housing was down the mountain from the Mammoth Hotel, a half-mile walk nearly straight downhill. The moon was full and lit the sagebrush-covered hillside. A small herd of elk grazed in the moonlight. Joe could smell their familiar musky smell in the air. He noticed blue parentheses on either side of the moon. Snow was coming.

The cluster of Park Service housing was built on a plateau on the sagebrush hillside. The houses were packed