Free Fire (7 page)

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Joe said.

At that moment, the door opened and Alisha Whiteplume entered carrying two bags of groceries. Joe and Nate stood, and each took a bag and put it on the counter.

“Hello, Mr. Pickett,” Alisha said cautiously. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Alisha.”

She was slim and dark, with piercing, always amused eyes and a good figure. Joe could see why Nate was enchanted.

“Are you here to take my boy away?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.

“If he’s willing,” Joe said.

“Are you willing?” she asked Nate softly.

He hesitated, looking from Joe to Alisha.

Joe thought,
He’s got it bad. Don’t tell me he’s going to ask . . .

“What do you think?” Nate said to her.

She began to pull cans out of a sack and put them away in the cupboards. “I think Joe wouldn’t ask for your help if he didn’t think he needed it, and I’d be disappointed in you if you refused because you wouldn’t be the man I know and love.”

Nate said to Joe, “It’ll take me a couple of days to finish up some business. Where will you be staying in the park?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Joe said, choosing as always not to ask Nate what his business was. “It’s about to close for the season. Either Mammoth, Old Faithful, or West Yellowstone. Those are the only places still open. I’ll call when I know.”

Nate nodded. “Come with me for a minute.”

Alisha said good-bye to Joe and resumed putting groceries away. Joe followed Nate outside to Nate’s Jeep.

“She’s something,” Joe said.

“Damned right,” Nate answered, swinging up the back hatch and flipping open the lid on a large metal toolbox. He removed the tray of tools on top to reveal a stash of weapons underneath. Nate’s .454 Casull, manufactured by Freedom Arms in Freedom,Wyoming, was a heavy five-shot revolver of incredible power and accuracy in Nate’s hand. It was on top.

“What are you carrying up there?” Nate asked.

“My shotgun, I guess,” Joe said. He hadn’t given weapons any thought. “And I’m not even sure about that. It’s illegal to have a firearm in the park, like I mentioned.”

Nate’s look of disdain was epic. “Fuck the Park Service,” he said, digging into the box. “We’re Americans last I looked. That’s the only thing about this situation that causes me heart-burn:helping out the Feds.”

“Actually, I’m working for the governor.”

“They’re all the same,” Nate grumbled, digging into the box and handing Joe a semiautomatic Glock-23 .40.

“You’ve used one of these, right? Thirteen in the magazine and one in the chamber, so you’ve got fourteen rounds of high-caliberhell. Buy some shells, practice a little so you get familiarwith it. It’s a damned good weapon, and practically idiot-proof. Rack the slide and start blasting. No hammer to get caught in your clothes, no safety switch to forget about.”

“Fourteen misses,” Joe said, alluding to his ineptitude with a handgun. “That’s why I’m bringing my shotgun.”

“Twenty-seven misses,” Nate said. “There’s an extra full magazine in a pocket on the holster. Take it anyway. You never know. It’ll make me feel better if you have it.”

Joe started to protest, but Nate’s expression convinced him not to start an argument. He’d carried a Glock .40 before since it was the assigned weapon of the Game and Fish Department. His last weapon was thrown into the Twelve Sleep River after the situation with the Scarlett brothers. At the time, Joe had thought he’d never carry a handgun again, and that was fine with him then, and fine with him now. Handguns were good for only one thing: killing people.

“What about this letter to the governor,” Nate said. “Can you figure anything out about it?”

Joe shook his head.

“Or the fact that four of the Gopher State Five got whacked? Who is Gopher State One?”

“No idea.”

“The governor is okay with me assisting?”

“He doesn’t want to know about it.”

“I can’t say I blame him,” Nate said, reaching for the .454.

Joe found bud Longbrake in the Quonset hut working on the engine of his one-ton truck. Bud was perched high on the front bumper, leaning in over the engine. Eduardo stood on the dirt floor next to the truck handing up tools as Bud called out for them. They’d not fired up the propane heater in the corner of the building, so it was colder inside than it was outside. Bud had a policy about not turning on the heaters before November, as if to defy the coming of winter until its proper time on the calendar. Joe noticed he wouldn’t even use the heater in the truck until then.

“I’ll take over if you don’t mind,” Joe said to Eduardo.

“No
problema
,” Eduardo said, stepping away from the toolboxand blowing on his hands. “I need to eat some hot lunch.”

“Seven-eighths socket,” Bud called down.

Joe snapped the attachment on the wrench and handed it up.

“Goddamn mice get in the engine and chew up the belts,” Bud grumbled. “I gotta put new belts on every year.”

Although Bud hired contractors in semitrucks to haul cattle to buyers, he liked to move his brood stock to lower pasture himself behind the one-ton. His plans were always delayed untilhe got the truck running again.

“Bud, I got offered my old job back,” Joe said.

There was a slight hesitation in Bud’s hand as he reached down for the socket wrench.

“I took it,” Joe said.

Bud cranked on a bolt. “I figured you probably would.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Bud said. “You need to do what you’re good at.”

“Thank you.”

Bud worked for a while without saying anything and called for the fresh belt. Joe unwrapped it from the packaging and handed it up.

“You’ve always got a job here if you want it,” Bud said. “You’re a good hand.”

It was the ultimate compliment on a ranch, Joe knew, and it made him feel guilty for leaving. Worse, he had to ask, “I was hoping we could come to an arrangement for Marybeth and the kids to stay here for a while longer. At least until we can get a house in town.”

Bud snorted. “Why do you even ask me that?”

Joe didn’t know what Bud meant and froze up.

Bud said, “Of course they can stay. I’ll work up some kind of rent deal and let you know. I don’t want you even thinking about moving for a while. I like having you around here and I’d miss the hell out of those girls of yours.”

“Thank you, Bud,” Joe said, genuinely grateful.

“I’ll give Eduardo a raise,” Bud said, as much to himself as to Joe. “Make him the foreman and see how he works out. I think he can do it, as long as the immigration people don’t come sniffingaround.”

“Sorry to spring this on you now,” Joe said.

“There’s never a good time on a ranch,” Bud said. “But with winter coming, this is as good a time as any, I guess.”

Bud fit the belt on and tightened the bolts. “They giving you a vehicle?”

Joe and Marybeth had only the family van. “I’ve got to pick one up in town,” Joe said.

“You need a ride to go get it?”

“Sure,” Joe said, feeling bad about letting this good man down.

“I’ll finish up here and give you a ride,” Bud said.

As they walked to the main house, Bud turned with his grease-stained finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh. Missy is taking a little nap. That art meeting went until all hours last night.”

Joe felt a tingle in his heart.

“She didn’t get back until three this morning,” Bud said in all innocence. “They must have had a lot to discuss.”

Joe bit his lower lip to keep from saying anything. He waited on the porch while Bud went inside for his keys.

Five minutes later, Bud came out, said, “Missy wants to talk to you for a minute.”

“To me?” Joe asked. Missy rarely wanted to talk to him, which was a good thing.

“I’ll pull the truck around,” Bud said, walking away across the gravel.

Joe sighed and went inside, looking first in the living room for her. Missy wasn’t in her chair, or in the kitchen with Maria. He found her in her bed.

The bedroom was large and recently redecorated. Missy had stripped the walls, replaced the fixtures, and refurnished it with tasteful antiques. Nothing remained of Bud’s first wife, not even the floors. Missy lay under a comforter on top of the bed. The shades were pulled, which she did when she wasn’t wearing makeup and didn’t want to be seen closely. She looks so tiny, Joe thought. Even in the gloom, though, she was a startlingly, undeniably beautiful woman, even if she was at war with her true age.

“I hear it was a late meeting,” Joe said. “How’s the Earl of Lexington?”

“He’s fine . . .” she said, then quickly bit off her words and glared at him. Marybeth was right. He
was
at the meeting. Missy propped herself up on an elbow, fixing her big eyes on him.

“I heard the news,” she said with an edge in her voice, quickly regaining the upper hand.

Joe said nothing.

“I also heard that you might be thinking of a house in town.”

“Maybe.”

She shook her head slowly. “Let my people go, Joe.”

“What?”

“Let them
go,
” she said sharply, sitting up and swinging her feet to the floor. “Everything is perfect as it is. For the first time, Marybeth is comfortable. She has a fine place to live. She’s moving up, finally. Quit dragging my daughter and my granddaughtersdown with you.”

Joe felt his neck get hot.

“They deserve better than to be handcuffed to a mid-level state employee who brings danger they don’t deserve into their lives,” Missy said, the words dripping with disdain. “Don’t you dare take them away from me again. Step aside, and let them . . . blossom.”

“
Blossom
?”

Her eyes flashed. “I’ve said my piece. I wish you would think about it while you run around in the woods again like a schoolboy.”

Joe knew he was one of the few to see her occasionally in her full, evil, stripped-down honesty. He doubted Bud Sr. ever really had. It was the one thing they had together, he and Missy: icy moments of bitter, hateful truth.

“I’ll think about it,” Joe said. “While I’m thinking about it, I’d like you to come to Yellowstone so I can show you around. One place in particular, way on the western side of the park, in Idaho. I hear it’s beautiful.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and frowning.

He turned and left, his hands shaking.

5

West Yellowstone, Montana October 7

Clay mccann didn’t like how the reporter from the
Wall Street Journal
had described his hair as “pink.” The description denigrated him, made him sound less serious, like a circus clown. No one wanted to have pink hair. The reasonfor the description in the
Journal,
and this was patently unfair,was that his hair—once a deep red—was now streaked with silver-gray hairs. The silver made it look from a distance (if the observer was a jaded Eastern reporter) like he dyed his hair pink.
Which he did not!

He confirmed it once again in the rearview mirror of his car as he drove through Yellowstone Park. While looking at himself in the mirror instead of watching the road, he nearly collided with a herd of buffalo. McCann cursed and slammed on his brakes, bringing his car into a skidding stop three feet from the front quarters of a one-ton bull. The animal swung its woolly triangle head toward the car, stared through the windshield at him with black amoral prehistoric eyes, snorted with what sounded like indignation, and slowly joined the rest of the herd.

A buffalo jam. Anyone driving through Yellowstone Park had to get used to them. The dank smell that hung in the air, the
clip-clop
of ungulate hooves on the pavement.

Wouldn’t that have made a hell of an ironic story, McCann thought, saying the headline aloud: “Freed Murderer Killed in Park Collision With Bison.”

While he waited he studied his face again in the mirror. The same reporter had described him as “pale, paunchy, and past his prime” in a flowery alliterative rhetorical flourish filled with popping P’s. That prick, McCann thought.

The buffalo herd seemed endless. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred dark woofing behemoths. None of them cared that he was there, only that they needed to cross the road to get to the Madison River. McCann had no choice but to sit and wait. He had tried to push through a herd once, but a bull swung its head and dented his driver’s door with a horn.

The heavy buck-brush near the river blazed red with fall color in the last half-hour of dusk. It was a great time and season to see the park, if one cared. But the tourists were all but gone. The roads were virtually empty. And Clay McCann, who had been the focus of so much attention, the center of so many conversations, was now utterly alone except for the buffalo.

Finally, as the last cow crossed, leaving blacktop spattered with steaming piles of viscous dung, McCann shifted into drive and accelerated.

McCann was nearly out of the park. He was going home.

The ranger at the West Yellowstone gate waved a cheery “Good-bye!” from her little gatehouse as he slowed to leave the park. The town of West Yellowstone was just ahead.

Although she waved him through, McCann stopped next to the exit window, powered down his window, and thrust his face outside so she could see him.

She began to say, “You don’t need to stop . . .” when she recognizedhim. Her eyes widened and her mouth pulled back in a grimace and she inadvertently stepped back, knocking a sheaf of
Yellowstone News
flyers to the ground outside her box. “My God,” she mouthed.

“Have a pleasant night,” he said, basking in her reaction, knowing now, for sure, he’d entered the rarified air of celebrity.

He’d been away for nearly three months. During that time, Clay McCann had gone from a semi-obscure small-town lawyer specializing in contracts and criminal defense law to beingknown both nationally and internationally. For a brief time, every utterance he made to reporters inside the tiny jailhouse at Mammoth Hot Springs made the wire services. Profiles of him and the
Yellowstone Zone of Death
appeared in a half-dozen nationalpublications. For a delicious week or two, his face and the crime were as familiar to viewers of twenty-four-hour cable networks as any celebrity criminal or victim. His arguments beforethe court were dissected by celebrity lawyers who predicted,correctly, that he’d win, which he did. Although the federal prosecutors threatened loudly to appeal the decision to the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court, the thirty days allowedto file had lapsed and he’d received no notification. McCannbanked on the assumption that the Feds didn’t want the case to go further with the very likely possibility that higher courts would have to declare that the Zone of Death actually existed.