Back of Beyond (16 page)

Cody heard the rolling-thunder sound of the garage door being opened up. He turned to see the mechanic backing out his SUV. There was a headlight there, all right. It didn’t fit into the damaged fender but was wired and taped around the dented hole. It looked like a detached eyeball.

“I’m ready to roll,” Cody said. “Keep me posted on what you find out from ViCAP and RMIN.”

Larry sighed.

“You call me, I won’t call you,” Cody said, “but keep that burner phone handy and hidden, okay? In case I find something out from the office in Bozeman.”

“Gotcha,” Larry said.

“Thanks, buddy.”

*   *   *

Cody waved and took a deep breath
as he drove by the highway patrol car pulled over on the side of the highway a mile out of Townsend. The trooper whooped on his siren and gestured for him to pull over.

Cody sat seething while the trooper slowly got out of his car and slowly walked up along the driver’s side. He powered the window down.

“Now what?” Cody said.

“I see you got a headlight. It doesn’t look so good, though,” the trooper said. “I hope you’ll get that front end fixed and get a new light as soon as you can.”

“I will.”

“I’ve got a question for you,” the trooper said, tipping his hat back and watching Cody’s face carefully for tics or tells. Cody knew the drill. He was about to be asked a question he wouldn’t want to answer, and the trooper hoped to catch him in a lie. “I ran your plates. According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, this vehicle doesn’t exist. Your number doesn’t correspond with a name, in other words.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Cody said quickly. “I bought it at a county auction up in Helena. They used to use it for undercover surveillance, the auctioneer told me. He said the sheriff’s department uses some dummy plates so the bad guys don’t know who they are. I guess they just kept the plates on.”

The trooper rubbed his chin, thinking that over.

“I’ll get some new plates as soon as I get home to Bozeman,” Cody said. “I promise you. I’ll send you the receipt to prove it.”

At that moment, the trooper’s handheld squawked. Cody heard the dispatcher reporting a one-car rollover five miles north of Townsend.

“Guess you better go,” Cody said.

The trooper hesitated for a moment, then said, “Send me that receipt. But something about that story of yours is fishy.”

“Check it out,” Cody said. “You’ll see.”

The trooper waved at him dismissively and started back to his car. Cody silently thanked whomever had lost control of their car north of town, and eased back out onto the road.

*   *   *

The headquarters for Wilderness Adventures
was located south of Bozeman on U.S. 191 near the Gallatin Gateway Inn on the road to West Yellowstone and Yellowstone Park. Cody arrived at 1:30
P.M.
, cursing himself yet again for the debacle in Townsend that put him twelve hours behind where he wanted to be.

The office was a converted old home shaded by ancient cottonwoods and surrounded by rolling pasture and outbuildings and corrals in decent repair. Six or seven horses grazed and twitched their tails against the flies and didn’t look up to greet him. It wasn’t the kind of office guests were likely to visit, he thought, but no doubt it made for a good staging area for large-scale horse operations. The pasture fed the horses when they weren’t on a pack trip. The sign for Wilderness Adventures was homemade; a modern swooping logo painted on a frame made of old barnwood. There was an older blue sedan parked on the side of the building.

He killed the engine, vaulted up the wooden steps to the porch, and banged on the frame of the screen door.

“Yes?” A woman’s voice. She sounded startled.

“My name’s Cody Hoyt,” he said. “I need to talk to someone who knows something about the pack trip in Yellowstone.”

“Oh my,” said a plump older woman who suddenly came into view through the screen. “You weren’t booked on the trip, were you? Because it left this morning.”

*   *   *

Her name was Margaret Cooper
and she was the sole office employee of Wilderness Adventures and had been for twenty-five years, she said. She wore thick glasses and her hair was tightly curled and looked like steel wool. She wore jeans, a white shirt that bulged in the middle, and a Western pattern vest embroidered with cowgirls and lariats. The lobby of the office was filled with large cardboard boxes reading
DELL
.

“We’re in the process of computerizing,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Jed is making me learn how to run one of those things. He says it will make us more efficient, but I think it’s, you know, a
fad
. This old dog doesn’t need new tricks. I’ve been running the business part of the company all these years and I don’t need a machine. I’ve got everything I need in there,” she said, and gestured toward a bank of old metal filing cabinets. “I’m supposed to put all that information back there into the machine, and Jed says he wants me to update the Web site so he doesn’t have to do it from home. Can you imagine that? The World Wide Web? I want no part of it.”

Cody nodded curtly. He noticed the telephone on her desk was blinking with messages.

“Don’t you answer your phone?” he asked. “My colleague was calling you all morning.”

“Of course I answer the phone,” she said, her eyes flashing behind those thick lenses. “But it’s a little hard to do when you’re sitting in a computer class the entire morning learning how to work a program called Excella.”

“Excel,” Cody said. “So you haven’t been in until now?”

“I just got here a half hour ago,” she said, still miffed at him. “I was working. I just wasn’t here. Jed insisted I take that class once a week and today is the day.”

Cody said, “Do you have the list of clients on the current trip? I need to look at it.”

“Of course I have it,” she said. “But can you tell me why you want to see who is on it? Isn’t this kind of an invasion of privacy?”

Cody caught himself before he rolled his eyes. “I don’t see how it could be,” he said. “Look, I need to know if my son is on this trip. It’s important. There’s an emergency in the family.”

“You won’t be able to contact him,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no way to communicate with a pack trip once they’ve left into the park. There are no cell things.”

“Towers,” he said. “Look, I know that. But if he’s on it I need to know. I’ll figure the rest out.”

She squinted at him and pursed her lips. “Your manner is very brusque.”

“Sorry,” he said, stepping toward her. “But show me the
list.”

She made a show of sighing dramatically, then turned around and approached the filing cabinets. “I know where everything is,” she said. “I have my own filing system. Apparently, it aggravates Jed that he can’t find anything, even though I’ve tried to explain to him how it works. Let’s see, today is July first, so 07/01. Seven corresponds with G in the alphabet, the seventh letter. One corresponds with A.…” She reached for a middle drawer and pulled it out and started fingering through tabs marked by handwritten letters.

Cody tried to remain calm.

“Here it is,” she said, pulling a file. “All the applications and signed releases of liability. And here,” she said, slipping a single handwritten sheet out of the file, “is the complete list in alphabetical order.”

He snatched it out of her hand and read down the list.

  1. Anthony D’Amato

  2. Walt Frank

“His Richness,” Cody mumbled. “Damn it.”

  3. Justin Hoyt

“Damn it,”
Cody whispered. “He’s on it.”

Cody scanned the rest of the list:

  4. James Knox

  5. Rachel Mina

  6. Tristan Glode

  7. Donna Glode

  8. André Russell

  9. Ted Sullivan

10. Gracie Sullivan

11. Danielle Sullivan

12. K. W. Wilson

None of the other names rang a bell. But he thought one of them might produce a ViCAP hit.

“I’ll need that back,” she said.

“In a minute,” he said, shuffling through the applications. Here, in the folder he held in his hand, were the names, addresses, physical descriptions, and details of each client on the trip. He was ecstatic. “Where’s your fax machine?”

“Is it long distance?” she asked. “You know, each fax is just like a long-distance phone call.”

Cody dug in his pocket and threw her a twenty-dollar bill. “That should cover it.”

“Where are you faxing the pages?” she asked.

“Just tell me where the goddamn machine is,” he said.

“No need to be like that,” she said, pointing to a supply room behind her.

*   *   *

While Cody fed in each page
and transmitted it to Larry, he turned on the copy machine next to the fax. After each application was sent he made a copy for himself. Margaret Cooper was at her desk retrieving telephone messages, and had left him alone. He hoped she wouldn’t object to him making copies but it didn’t matter—he was taking the applications with him. Because one of these people, he thought, killed Hank Winters and was near his son.

When he was through he returned all the original documents to the folder and stuffed the copies in under his shirt.

He handed the folder to her at her desk.

“Why do you suppose a detective is calling me?” she asked him. “Is this your colleague? Are you a policeman?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said, suddenly sitting up straighter.

“Undercover,” he said. “And this matter is confidential. Please tell no one I was here. Do you understand?”

She nodded furiously.

“Now I need you to think for a minute,” he said. “What is the best way to catch up to the pack trip? Don’t tell me the outfitter doesn’t have a satellite phone or some way to get in touch with the outside world.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but he doesn’t.”

“How can that be in this day and age?” Cody spat. “What if the Park Service needs to contact him? What if he’s got an emergency, like a client has a heart attack or something?”

She smiled sympathetically. “Then he’s to locate a park ranger and the park ranger places the call. You don’t understand how they can be. The Park Service, I mean. Such bureaucracy! They’re the reason Bull Mitchell finally sold the business. I wish he never had. I know
he
wouldn’t be making me learn how to work a computer.”

Cody took a deep breath. “Okay, so I can’t call them. So how would I find them? Is there a designated route? Doesn’t the Web site indicate they stay at a specific camp every night of the trip?”

She nodded her head. “Unless they camp somewhere else,” she said. “Things happen out there. Sometimes they’ll camp in other places, or even on a different trail if the trail is washed out or trees fall over it or something. All I ever know is where they start and where they end. The middle is kind of … random.”

He slapped the desk in frustration. Then he said, “Where can I find Bull Mitchell?” Thinking:
Does he even live in Bozeman? Is he alive?

She looked at her watch.

“It’s nearly two,” she said. “That means he’ll be at the library.”

“The
library
?”

A misty look came over her eyes. “You’ll see,” she said.

12

Gracie didn’t mind being so far back
in the string at all. She liked being able to observe the riders ahead of her, something she couldn’t have done if her horse was higher in the pecking order.

Jed was first, trailing three mules strapped with massive pack-boxes of gear and food. He constantly turned in his saddle to make sure everyone was behind him and in the order he’d set for them.

Behind the mules was the older couple, Tristan and Donna Glode. Gracie hadn’t heard Tristan say much so far on the trip, but he had a kind of serious and businesslike bearing, she thought. His wife seemed cold and aloof, but Gracie noted how gracefully she’d climbed on the saddle and how elegantly she rode. She was the only guest wearing honest-to-God English riding boots. Gracie tried to model her riding style—relaxed, not slumping, head up, reins loose in her left hand—after Donna Glode. But that’s the only thing about Donna Glode Gracie wanted to learn.

Walt and Justin were next. Gracie noted how often Walt turned in his saddle and sized up his soon-to-be stepson and then nodded approvingly at what he saw. She wondered what it was Justin was doing that was worthy of the head nods since it seemed to her the only thing Justin wanted to do was bump along and steal looks at Danielle. Justin rode well, Gracie thought, the way a natural athlete would ride. He wasn’t smooth but he looked strong and well balanced. He had a certain style about him, an attitude: confident, cocky, maybe a little full of himself. He knew he was the only young buck on the trip. He apparently saw no reason to put his feet in the stirrups, for example, and they dangled on the sides of his horse.

Rachel, the divorcée or widow or whatever she was, rode behind Justin on a slick jet-black gelding. Gracie thought the horse, named Midnight, was by far the best-looking of the herd. Midnight’s coat was so black it shined dark blue, like Superman’s hair, Gracie thought. And Rachel Mina looked good on him. She wasn’t as self-consciously slick as Donna Glode, but she’d obviously ridden before. Her posture was good, Gracie thought, as she found herself sitting more upright in Strawberry’s saddle. Gracie thought it would be interesting to talk to Rachel Mina to find out why she’d come alone on a trip like this. She had a feeling the woman was interesting, or had a good story, at least. And was she mistaken, or did Rachel Mina smile at her earlier in an almost familiar way? Like they’d met before, which Gracie was certain hadn’t happened.

The three Wall Streeters rode behind Rachel Mina; James Knox, Drey Russell, and Tony D’Amato. Gracie guessed that
maybe
Knox had been on a horse before, and possibly Drey. But certainly not Tony, who kept saying things like, “Where is the brake on this thing?” and “What good is a saddle horn that doesn’t honk?” Tony kept the other two laughing with his stupid asides and observations, and Gracie guessed it was kind of an act. Tony pointed out each time Knox’s gelding’s long penis unfurled and swung loose from side to side as the horse walked, saying, “Look who’s relaxed,” or “He reminds me of
me
when he does that.” The three men together were interesting, she thought. She’d seen very few male friendships up close in her life and the way they chided and insulted each other was a way of showing affection, she guessed. If women talked like that to each other there would soon be scratching and blood. She also thought how quickly boring it would become if every other statement was about their sexual organs, as it was with the male Wall Streeters. Despite their goofiness, though, Gracie liked having the three men around. They seemed solid and anchored. Better than three women, she thought. Especially on a trip like this.