Game of Cages

“Before we get to that: Why were you in the campground?”

“I was looking for the pastor, obviously.”

“Who did you take away from the scene?”

Damn. He knew more than he’d let on. Well, to hell with him. “No one. I did have Catherine with me, though. Why?”

Steve turned to Ford. “Did you see a third person in his car?”

Ford’s face flushed and he looked at the ground. “Um. I didn’t see everything.…”

Which meant he’d been waiting for me at the Sunset and had fallen asleep. I sympathized with him. Steve looked even more irritated than he had been. “Ursula said you took a man out of the trailer and drove off with him.”

“Maybe she thought Catherine was a dude. She never seemed all that sharp to me. Or maybe she’s lying. I did knock her down and cuff her, after all.”

He rubbed his chin. “She didn’t mind admitting to mass murder. I find it hard to believe she’d lie after being honest about that.”

I shrugged. “I did …” Hit her pretty hard, I was about to say. I felt dirty just thinking it.

“What about her gun?” He stared up at me squarely.

“Oh, you mean the handgun I took off her?” I laid my hand against my jacket pocket, then moved it away when I noticed Steve’s sudden tension. “Do you want it?”

He held out his hand. “Please.”

I had been aware this whole time that Ford was standing somewhere behind me and to the right, but I’d mostly ignored him. I felt his presence keenly as I took Ursula’s pistol from my pocket. I handed it over slowly.

Steve accepted it. “This weapon has been fired.”

I wouldn’t be able to hide the bullet hole in the back of the Neon. “Yeah. I thought the safety was on.” I shrugged again. “I’m not really a gun person.”

“What about Ursula’s rifle?”

I should have ditched it after I cut it apart. “What about it?”

“Ray, if I find you’ve been playing games with me—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I shouted, my voice echoing off the mountains around us. Steve flinched, but I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Games? You think I’m having fun here? You think I want to hang around some strange town, tripping over gut-shot people? Over corpses?”

And yet, this was what I wanted. This was my part in the society. I’d sought it out and now it made me sick.

“Chief,” I said, trying to give Steve a little respect because I wanted him on my side, “when all this happened to me that first time, it ruined my life. I can’t sleep right anymore, can’t focus at work, can’t … I sit in my room with a book in my hand and stare out the window for hours. I think about this stuff all the time. I’m constantly on the watch for it, in the faces of people on the street and in the newspaper and … and now here I am again. I found it here and I’m trying to stop it, because it absolutely has to be stopped.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Ray. But that doesn’t mean you’ve told me everything you know, does it?”

I saved you, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I hadn’t saved him to earn a marker I could call in. Still, it would have been nice to have a little more trust, even if he was right.

Steve sighed and turned away from me. “I believe you’re trying to do what’s best, son, but if you hold back on me, I’ll see you in jail, you hear?”

I nodded. I’d been in jail before and I’d expected to be back already. It wasn’t much of a threat.

Steve led me into the log cabin, and Ford followed. For a moment I thought they were flanking me, but they were too relaxed for that.

Inside was a store, with racks of skiing, climbing, and camping gear, along with flyers promoting climbing lessons and kiddie camps. Yin’s bodyguards lay around the room, handguns in their fists, their guts and brains all over the floor and walls. There’d been a gunfight. They’d lost.

Steve’s voice was shaky. “Ford found a .32 slug in the wall, but these fellows are all carrying .45-caliber weapons. They fired them, too. See the casings all over the floor? Doesn’t look like they hit what they were aiming at, does it?”

And I’d heard them, too, but I’d thought it was thunder. “What were they aiming at?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Sorry. I can’t.”

“Then come look at this.” He led me behind the counter, through the back office, past a very interesting little goosenecked desk lamp and out onto a weather-beaten wooden deck. There were three more bodies out here. Two were burned and shriveled, lying on scorched sections of the deck. The third was Yin himself. His thick tongue stuck out of his mouth, and his face was purplish. He’d been strangled.

Lying on the deck beside him was his soul sword. It had been broken into three pieces.

The smell of blood and burned flesh became too much. I stepped off the deck and vomited into the bushes, making a mental note not to eat greasy grilled cheese when I was on society business.