Free Fire Part 27

"What's this?"

"Keys to Lars's pickup. You'll need a vehicle. How do you expect to get around?"

"I can't take these," Joe said, remembering Lars's obvious pride in his tricked-up 4x4.

"Take them," she insisted. "He likes you."

"I'm hard on cars," Joe said.

"Yeah," she said, dismissing him. "I'm kind of worried about that, I admit."

It was easier than Joe thought it would be, despite the suspiciouslooks the gate rangers gave him when he pulled up in the jacked-up pickup with the loud gla.s.s.p.a.ck m.u.f.flers and got out. He found they were lonely in the last days of the season and didn't mind taking the time to show him how to plug into the video units in their gatehouses and download three days' worth of taped entrances and exits. Only at the Northeast gate did he have to show his badge.

He hoped Demming would have the same good fortune.

On the way back to Mammoth, Joe turned off at Biscuit Basin. Although yellow crime-scene tape was stretched from tree trunk to tree trunk across the pathway to Sunburst, no rangers had been left to guard it. He looked around to make sure no one was watching and ducked under the tape.

The trail had been trampled into muddy goo by dozens of rangers and investigators from the day before. The runoff stream ran clear. As he approached Sunburst and felt an almost imperceptible increase in temperature and humidity from the pool, he noted the pink microbes waving in the water and the driftwood where the thermister was still hidden.

Now that he thought about it, he recalled the tickle of air on his ankle the first time he came to the pool with Cutler. Moving step-by-step, he backed around the thermal until he felt it again.

It came from a mouth-sized hole in the ground. He knelt down and put his palm out. The gas emitting from it was odorlessand made no sound. But he could feel it licking his hand.

He stepped back and lit a match, held it out.

With a m.u.f.fled whump whump, flame raced up the stream of gas and danced on the tip as if waving. He felt heat on his face and hands. It burned cleanly and nearly six feet into the air before dissipating.

He found another mouth and lit it too. And another. The three flamers undulated slightly as they burned. He imagined how they'd look at night, illuminating the trees surrounding the thermal. "Way cool" was how Samantha had described them.

He agreed.

He found four more holes that marched in a line toward the timber but stopped short of the loam and lit them all. There was now a wall of flame, each spout of fire licking silently in the air. It looked strangely tropical, Joe thought. And there was something else. The holes ran parallel to the dark line in the ground that Cutlerhad said was one of the few exposed coal seams in the park.

After watching them for a half-hour, he soaked his fleece vest in the hot pot and extinguished them.

"Way cool," he said aloud.

Joe returned to the Mammoth Hotel to wait for Demmingand to make arrangements at the front desk for a cabin for Marybeth and the girls the next night. He didn't want to subject them to rooms in the empty hotel that even he found lonely. He used his credit card, knowing the state would likely not reimbursethe cost, and wondered as Simon ran it when exactly his first new paycheck would arrive.

When Simon returned his card and said he could pick up the keys in the morning, he said, "There have been a couple of older gentlemen asking for you. I hope you don't mind, but I asked them to wait outside the lobby for you to return."

"Wait outside? Why?"

Simon looked apologetic.

Joe got it. "They were stinking drunk, right?" he said with despair.

"Beyond stinking," Simon said. "They reeked. And one of them had a little accident on the couch. He dropped his bottle of cheap whiskey."

Joe turned to see that the cushions on the overstuffed couch near the fireplace had been removed.

"Son!" George Pickett shouted as he staggered into the lobby from outside. "Son! My boy! Fruit of my loins!"

Doomsayer remained outside so he could throw up on the sidewalk.

Joe angrily intercepted his father. "What do you want?"

"To see my boy. Do you know how good it makes me feel to say I'm going to visit my son? Is there something wrong with that?"

His father hadn't shaved or changed clothes since he'd seen him at Old Faithful, as if their meeting had been the catalyst for the bender he was on. He stunk of whiskey and something rottenhe'd eaten. His eyes shone with a giddy brand of happiness that bordered on the manic. His smile was forced, and as he stumbled, Joe reached out to hold him up.

"We have nothing to talk about," Joe said.

"But you're my son!" George said loudly. "The only one I have left."

Joe glanced over his shoulder to see Simon look away discreetly.

"You can't just stand here and yell," Joe said. "You're sure as h.e.l.l not driving anywhere. Don't you have someplace to stay?"

"With you!" George slurred. "We can bunk with you! We can stay up late and tell stories and catch up. That meeting we had, that was no good. We need a new start."

Joe felt like smacking him, and instantly felt guilty for even thinking it. He was was his father, wasn't he? But he was so much less than that, even though he'd come to Mammoth to see him. his father, wasn't he? But he was so much less than that, even though he'd come to Mammoth to see him.

Joe handed George the keys to room 231.

"Don't wreck it," Joe said, getting both men into the room.

"You aren't staying with us?" Doomsayer asked.

"Never," Joe said. "And get out tomorrow when you two can walk."

"Ah, tomorrow," Doomsayer said, watching George stagger toward the bed and collapse into the middle of it. "We don't speak of tomorrow up here. It may never come."

In the cabin he had rented, Joe sat at a small table and surveyedthe accommodations. It would do, although it was dark and close. He'd hoped there would be a private bedroom for him and Marybeth. He missed his wife, and recalled their last moments together by the fireplace. Instead, there was a double bed and two singles in a long room. Maybe they could send Sheridan and Lucy out for some ice or something, he thought.

He hoped George Pickett would do as he was told and be out of the area by morning, when his family was due to arrive.

Tossing his bags into the small closet, he wondered when Demming would get back. He'd need to leave a note at the hotelabout his new location.

And speaking of location, Joe thought, where in the h.e.l.l was Nate?

22.

With electric peak to the northwest, bunsen Peak to the east, and Swan Lake ahead on her left, Demming's tires sang on the thin strip of roadway across the meadow with the peculiar, discordant note that came from the chips of sharp black obsidian that had been mixed into the asphalt by a long-agoroad crew that probably included her husband, Lars. It was twilight, twenty minutes from Mammoth and home. She was headed north; it was an hour past the end of her shift but she wouldn't claim the overtime because she didn't want to explain to anyone why she was running late.

Her laptop was on the seat next to her in the cruiser, filled with downloaded videotapes from the West and North entrance gates. She hoped Joe had been as successful.

Because she was driving the only car on the road, she goosed up her speed to fifty, five miles over the park speed limit. The brilliant flashes of white on the leaden surface of the lake ahead were, in fact, trumpeter swans. Thus, Swan Lake. She'd be good at interpretation, she thought. She noticed noticed things. things.

Like the black SUV with the smoked windows ahead of her. It was headed north also, and she could feel her heart race as she slowly closed the gap between them. She hadn't seen where the SUV came onto the road, and could only a.s.sume the driver had seen her because he was careful to keep to the speed limit as she neared.

There was no way to determine if this was the black SUV she had seen the day before, other than the fact that the hairs on her forearm and the back of her neck were standing up. She got closer.

Wyoming plates, County 22. Jackson Hole. On closer inspectionshe could see a sticker on the back window from Hertz. A rental. So the driver could be from anywhere and likely chose Jackson since it had the biggest airport of the park gateway cities and the most arriving flights.

When the last shafts of the sun hit the SUV just right she could see two people in it. Men. She recognized neither of them by profile, but noticed the driver had his head tilted up and to the right as he drove. He was watching her approach in the rearview mirror. She wished she could see his eyes or part of his face but the gla.s.s was too dark.

She slowed to maintain a cushion of a hundred feet and plucked the mike from its cradle on the dash. She tried to speak calmly.

"Dispatch, this is YP-twenty-nine, requesting backup. I'm in visual contact with a black SUV that matches the description of the vehicle reported yesterday near Biscuit Basin. I think it's the same one we issued the BOLO for yesterday. Repeat: requestingbackup. I'm northbound to Mammoth at Swan Lake. I'd like to pull it over and see who's inside."

"Roger that," the dispatcher said. "Backup is on the way."

"ETA?"

"Five minutes."

She let out a long breath in relief. Five minutes was good. Because of the distances in the park and two-lane traffic, it wasn't unusual to receive ETAs of fifteen and twenty minutes. She eased the cruiser ahead, narrowing the s.p.a.ce between them to fifty feet, sending a signal. There would be no doubt now to the driver of the SUV that he was being pursued.

Trying not to make rapid movements, she reached up and unsnapped the buckle of the twelve-gauge pump mounted on the console. For rea.s.surance, she patted her handgun on her belt, rubbed the leather of the holster with her thumb. Then unsnappedit for quick access.

As the two vehicles slowed to round a corner, she looked ahead on the highway as far as she could see for headlights, a.s.sumingthat her backup would arrive head-on, dispatched from Mammoth itself. The highway was clear.

She was both pleased and surprised when an NPS Crown Vic cruiser appeared suddenly in her rearview mirror. The backup had arrived much sooner than she antic.i.p.ated, and she was now ready.

Snapping the toggle for the wigwag lights on the roof light bar, she said, "Let's see who you are."

Behind her, the backup cruiser did the same, flooding the insideof her car with explosions of blue and red.

The black SUV continued on, without speeding up or slowingdown. After thirty seconds, she began to worry. Of course, it had happened before. Citizens who were straining to look for wildlife or simply unaware of their surroundings sometimes claimed they hadn't seen her behind them. But she knew the driver had been watching.

As she reached up to whoop the siren, the brake lights flashed on the SUV and it slowed. She did the same, closing to within twenty yards. Finally, the vehicle swung into a pavement pullout. The driver was courteous enough to park at the far end of the pullout, leaving enough s.p.a.ce for both NPS cruisers to park off the road.

"Okay, then," Demming said to herself. She was trained to emerge slowly, keeping part of her body in the cruiser in case the driver ahead decided to gun his engine and make a run. She paused, as trained, behind her open door while she fitted her hat on. The parking lights lit on the SUV, a good sign. The tailpipe burbled with exhaust, meaning the driver hadn't killed the motor.Not such a good sign.

At once, the driver and pa.s.senger doors opened and a man swung out of each.

"Get back in the vehicle," she said, surprising herself with the force of her command.

The driver wore gla.s.ses and had silver hair and an owlish look on his face. He was tall, probably mid-fifties, dressed in jeans, a white shirt, and a blazer. He didn't look like a man on vacation. The pa.s.senger was shorter, with a smaller build and an eager, boyish face and dark, darting eyes. He looked vaguely familiar and seemed to know it by the way he avoided her.

Then things happened rapidly, but with absolute, terrifying clarity.

The driver turned and reached for his door handle, but the pa.s.senger didn't. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Demming's backup, behind her and to her left. Demming fought the urge to look over her shoulder, but she did when the pa.s.senger seemed to signal something to her backup with an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

They knew each other.

Demming snapped a glance over her left shoulder, saw the ranger she recognized with a gun leveled on her-not his serviceweapon but a cheap throw-down-heard the sharp pop pop, and felt as if she'd been hit in the ribs with a sledgehammer. She didn't feel her legs give out but knew they had when all she could see were the dull black glints of obsidian chips in the pavement inches from her face. A flash of white-her hand- on the cold asphalt, scuttling across her vision like a crab for the weapon she'd dropped when she was. .h.i.t. Where was it?

"Again," the pa.s.senger said. His voice was clear.

Demming turned her head to see the black hole of the muzzleof the weapon two feet from her face and the coldly determinedlook on the face of the shooter. She wanted to ask, "Why you?" Closing her eyes tightly, she clearly saw Jake and Erin at home, watching the clock, waiting for dinner.

Part five

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

-Wallace Stegner, 1983

23.

Thirty-five minutes later, a caravan of law enforcement vehicles and the EMT van coursed through Mammothwith lights flashing, sirens on, turning the quiet night into a riot of outrage, angry colors, and grating sound. Joe stepped outside his cabin into darkness to see what was going on. The few other visitors in the cabins were doing the same, either parting curtains or opening their doors.

The caravan blasted through the village and down the hill towardGardiner, leaving a vacuum in its wake. It took five minutesbefore he could no longer see the lights flashing on the sagebrush hillside of the canyon or hear the scream of sirens.

Given the inordinate number of emergency vehicles and their display of lights and sound and the dearth of visitors remainingin the park, Joe immediately thought something bad had happened to a ranger-maybe his his ranger-and a chill shot through him. ranger-and a chill shot through him.

He jogged to a pay phone near the utility building, called Demming's home. Erin answered crying.

"My mom's been shot!" she sobbed. "Somebody called for Dad and said my mom's been shot."

"Is she still alive?" Joe asked, his head swimming.

"I don't know, I don't know . . ."

"Erin, stay calm," he said, not feeling very calm himself. "Let's not get upset until we know how badly she's hurt. Don't a.s.sume the worst. People get shot all the time and live through it."

His words seemed to help, even though he felt like he was lying.

The tiny clinic in Gardiner was popping with activity when Joe arrived. NPS cruisers and SUVs filled the parking lot, and the EMT van that had delivered Demming was parked underthe EMERGENCY entrance overhang, doors still open.