Free Fire Part 8

"Exactly." Joe smiled.

Nodding at the rest of the hunters on the porch as he pa.s.sed them, he reached for the door handle.

"Got your elk yet?" one of them asked.

"Nope," Joe said pleasantly. In Wyoming, "got your elk yet" was a greeting as ubiquitous as "good morning" was elsewhere, but Joe was momentarily struck by it. For the first time he could remember, he was taken for a hunter and not the game warden. In the past, his arrival would have been met with stares, sn.i.g.g.e.rs,or the over-familiar banter of the ashamed or guilty.

Inside, he bought water, jerky, and sunflower seeds because he had forgotten to pack a lunch. While he was paying for the items at the counter, a stout, bearded man in the saloon eyed him and slid off his bar stool and entered the store. Joe a.s.sessed him as the man pushed through the half-doors. Dark, close-croppedhair, bulbous nose, windburned cheeks, chapped lips. Watery, bloodshot eyes. A hunter who'd been at it for a while, Joe guessed. No other reason for him to be up there this time of year. The hunter had rough hands with dried half-moons of dark blood under his fingernails. Joe could tell from his appearancethat he wasn't a member of the group out on the porch. Those men were sportsmen.

"Got your elk?" the man asked, keeping his voice low so the clerk wouldn't hear him ask.

Joe started to shake his head but instincts kicked in. "Why do you ask?"

The hunter didn't reply, but gestured toward the door with his chin, willing Joe to understand.

Joe shook his head.

Frustration pa.s.sed across the hunter's face because Joe didn't appear to get it.

"Come outside when you're through here," the hunter said, sotto voce, and went out the door to wait.

While the clerk bagged his snacks, Joe shook his head. He knew what the hunter was telling him but had played it coy. Over the years, he'd learned that deception, unfortunately, was a necessary trait for a game warden. Not open dishonesty or entrapment-those ruined a reputation and could get him beaten or killed. But in a job where nearly every man he encounteredin the field was armed as well as pumped up with testosterone-and calling backup was rarely an option- playing dumb was a survival skill. And Joe, much to Marybeth's chagrin, could play dumb extremely well.

The bearded hunter was not on the porch when Joe went outside,but was waiting for him near a cabin at the side of the building. Joe shoved the sack of snacks into his coat pocket as he walked down the length of the wooden porch onto a well-wornpath. As he approached the hunter, he wished the .40 Glock Nate had given him wasn't disa.s.sembled in a duffel bag in his Yukon.

The hunter studied Joe with cool eyes and stepped on the other side of his pickup and leaned across the hood, his blood-stainedfingers loosely entwined, the truck between them.

The hunter raised his eyebrows in a greeting. "You might be a man who's looking for an elk."

"Think so, huh?" Joe said, noncommittal.

"Me and my buddies jumped 'em this morning early, down on the ridge. They was crossing over the top, bold as you please."

Joe nodded, as if to say, "Go on."

"That's the thing about elk hunting. Don't see nothing for five straight days, and all of a sudden they're all around you. Big herd of 'em. Forty, fifty. Three of us hunting."

Joe glanced behind the cabin, saw three big bulls hanging from the branches, their antlers sc.r.a.ping the ground, hides still on, black blood pooling in the pine needles. Despite the distance,Joe could see gaping exit wounds on the ribs and front quarters. Even in the cold he could smell them.

"Yeah, three good bulls," the hunter said, following Joe's line of sight. "But my buddy went a little crazy."

"Meaning," Joe said, "there are a few more killed down there than you have licenses for."

The hunter winced. He didn't like Joe saying it outright.

"At least four cows if you've got a cow permit," the hunter whispered. "A spike too. That's good eating, them spikes."

Spikes were young bulls without fully developed antlers. Cows were female elk. Five extra animals wasn't just a mistake, it was overkill. Joe felt a dormant sense of outrage rise in him but tried not to show it.

He said, "So a guy could drive down there with an elk tag and take his pick?"

The hunter nodded. "If a guy was willing to pay a little finder's fee for the directions."

"How much is the finder's fee?"

The hunter looked around to see if anyone could hear him, but the only other people out were back at the building.

"Say, four hundred."

Joe shook his head. "That's a lot."

The hunter grinned. "How much is your time worth, is what I think. h.e.l.l, we've been up here five days. You can go get you a nice one without breaking a sweat."

"I see."

"I'd go three seventy-five. But no less."

"Three hundred and seventy-five dollars for a cow elk?" Joe said.

Again, the hunter flinched at Joe's clarity. Again, he looked around.

"That's the deal," he said, but with less confidence than before.Joe's manner apparently created suspicion.

Joe glanced down at the plates on the hunter's pickup. Utah. He memorized the number.

"Would you take a check?" Joe asked.

The hunter laughed unpleasantly as his confidence returned. "h.e.l.l, no. What do you think I am?"

"I'll have to run back to Dayton to get cash from the ATM," Joe said. "That'll take me an hour or so."

"I ain't going anywhere. Them elk aren't either."

"An hour, then."

"I'll be in the bar."

Joe leaned across the hood and extended his hand. The hunter took it, said, "They call me Bear."

Joe said, "They call me a Wyoming game warden, and I've got you on tape." With his left hand, he raised the microca.s.sette recorder from where he always kept it in his pocket. "You just broke a whole bunch of laws."

Bear went pale and his mouth opened, revealing a crooked picket fence row of tobacco-stained teeth.

"Killing too many elk is bad enough," Joe said. "That happensin the heat of battle. But the way you take care of the carca.s.ses?And charging for the illegal animals? That just plain makes me mad."

Joe called dispatch in Cheyenne on his radio. He was patched through to Bill Haley, the local district warden.

"GF-thirty-five," Haley responded.

"How far are you from Burgess Junction, Bill?"

"Half an hour."

Joe told him about the arrest.

"His name is Carl Wilgus, goes by Bear," Joe said, reciting the license plate number. "Cabin number one. Five extra elk, Wanton Destruction, attempting to sell me an elk and the location.You can throw the book at him and confiscate his possessionsif you want. We've got him down cold, on tape, telling me everything."

While Joe talked on the mike, Bear was handcuffed to the b.u.mper of his pickup, embarra.s.sed and angry, scowling at him.

"You going to stick around?" Haley asked. "Grab a burger with me?"

"I'm here just long enough to give you the tape and turn him over," Joe said. "I've got a meeting to get to in Yellowstone."

"I heard you were back," Haley said. "How's it going, Joe?"

"Outstanding," Joe said.

"We're all trying to figure out what's going on with you. Did Pope give you a district?"

"Nothing like that," Joe said, not wanting to explain the situationfurther.

"What are you up to, then?"

Joe thought. "Special projects," he said, not knowing what else to say. Special projects sounded vague yet semiofficial.

"Well, welcome back."

"Thanks, Bill."

"See you in a few."

"GF-fifty-four out."

"Fifty-four? They gave you fifty-four? For Christ sake."

The speed limit through the Wapiti Valley en route to the East Entrance of Yellowstone dropped to forty-five miles per hour and Joe slowed down. He checked his wrist.w.a.tch. If he kept to the limit and didn't get slowed by bear jams or buffalo herds, he should be able to make it to the park headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs by 3:30 P.M., enough time to locate Del Ashby and get the briefing.

As he drove on the nearly empty road, winding parallel to the North Fork of the Shoshone River, Joe thought again about the murders and how they'd taken place because the circ.u.mstancesof the crime bothered him. All those shots, multiple weapons. That's what jumped out. Most people reading the reportswould come to the conclusion the park rangers apparently had, that the crime had been committed in anger, in pa.s.sion. Joe wasn't sure he agreed with that a.s.sessment, despite all the blasting.Just because Clay McCann fired a lot of shots didn't mean he had gone mad. It might mean he wanted to make sure the victimswere dead. Most of the wounds Joe read about could have been fatal on their own, so they were well-placed. There was nothing in the reports to suggest McCann had shot at the victims as they stood in a group, or peppered the sh.o.r.e of the lake with lead. Just the opposite. Each shot, whether by shotgun or pistol, had been deliberate and at close range. Although there were no facts in the file to suggest McCann was anything other than what he was-an ethically challenged small-town lawyer-Joe couldn't help thinking the murders had been committed by a professional, someone with knowledge of death and firearms. Since McCann's biography didn't include stints in any branch of the military and didn't include information that he was a hunter, Joe wondered where the lawyer had received his training.

Joe had spent most of his life around hunters and big game. He knew there was a marked difference between the way Bear and his friends killed those elk and the way the men on the porch hunted. Bear and his friends were clumsy amateurs, firingindiscriminately at the herd and finding out later what fell. In contrast, the men on the porch were careful marksmen and ethical hunters.

Simply pointing a long rod of steel (a gun) and pulling the trigger (Bang!) didn't instantly snuff the life out of the target. All the act did was hurl a tiny piece of lead through the air at great but instantly declining speed. The bit of lead, usually less than half an inch in diameter, had to hit something vital to do fatal damage: brain, heart, lungs. To be quick and sure, the bullethad to cause great internal damage immediately. Rarely was a single shot an instant kill. That only happened in the movies. In real life, there was a good chance a single jacketed bullet would simply pa.s.s through the body, leaving two bleeding holes and tissue damage, but not doing enough harm to kill unless the victim bled out or the wounds became infected. Pulling the triggerdidn't kill. Placing the bullet did. McCann had placed each and every shot.

In a rage, a man like Clay McCann would much more likely start pointing his weapons and shooting until all his victims were down and consider the job done. But to have the presence of mind to walk up to each downed camper and put a death shot into their heads after they were incapacitated? That was pure, icy calculation. Or the work of a professional. And if not a pro, someone who had reason to a.s.sure himself that all his victims were dead, that no one could ever talk about what had happened,or why it happened. Vicinage and jurisdiction aside, the murders had been extremely cold-blooded and sure.

Joe couldn't put himself into Clay McCann's head on July 21. What would possess a man to do what he did with such efficientsavagery? What was his motivation? An insult, as McCannlater claimed? Joe didn't buy it.

At the east entrance gate, the middle-aged woman ranger asked Joe how long he'd be staying. Until that moment, he hadn't really thought about it. He was thinking that he was glad he had never had to wear one of those flat-brimmed ranger hats.

"Maybe a couple weeks," he said.

"Most of the facilities will be closing by then," she said. "Winter's coming, you know."

"Yes," he said, deadpan.

He bought an annual National Park Pa.s.s for $50 so he'd be able to go in and out of the park as much as he needed without paying each time. While she filled out the form, he was surprisedto see the lens of a camera aiming at the Yukon from a small box on the side of the station.

"You've got video cameras?" he asked.

She nodded, handing him the pa.s.s to sign. "Every car comes in gets its picture taken."

"I didn't realize you did that."

She smiled. "Helps us catch gate crashers and commercial vehicles. Commercial vehicles aren't allowed to use the park to pa.s.s through, you know."

"I see," he said, noting for later the fact about the cameras.

He listened to her spiel about road construction ahead, not feeding animals, not approaching wildlife. She handed him a brochure with a park road map and a yellow flyer with a cartoon drawing of a tourist being launched into the air by a charging buffalo. He remembered the same flyer, the same cartoonish drawing, from his childhood. He could recall being fascinated by it, the depiction of a too-small buffalo with puffs of smoke coming out of his nostrils, the way the little man was flying in the air with his arms outstretched.

"Are you okay?" she asked because he hadn't left.

"Fine," he said, snapping out of it. "Sorry."

She shrugged. "Not that you're holding up traffic or anything," she said, gesturing behind him at the empty road.

7.

The law enforcement center for the park service,known informally as "the PaG.o.da," was a gray stone buildinga block from the main road through the Mammoth Hot Springs complex in the extreme northern border of the park. Joe turned off the road near the post office with the two crude concrete bears guarding the steps. Mammoth served as the headquarters for the National Park Service as well as for Zephyr Corp., the contractor for park concessions. Unlike other small communities in Wyoming and Montana where the main streets consisted of storefronts and the atmosphere was frontier and Western, Mammoth had the impersonal feel of governmentalofficialdom. The buildings were old and elegant but government's version of elegance-without flair. The architecture was Victorian and revealing of its origin as a U.S. Army post before the National Park Service came to be. Elk grazed on the still-greenlawns across from the Mammoth Hotel, and the hot springs on the plateau to the south billowed steam that dissipatedquickly in the cold air. When the wind changed direction, there was the slight smell of sulfur. A line of fine old wood and brick houses extended north from behind the public buildings, the homes occupied by the superintendent, the chief ranger, and other administrative officials, the splendor of the homes reflectingtheir status within the hierarchy of the park.

In the height of summer, the complex would be bustling with traffic, the road clogged with cars and recreational vehicles, the sidewalks ablaze with tourists with bone-white legs and loud clothing. But in October, there was a kind of stunned silence afterall that activity, as if the park was exhausted and trying to catch its breath.

Joe parked the Yukon on the side of the PaG.o.da. It wasn't well marked. The Park Service didn't like signs because, he supposed, they looked like signs and the park was about nature,not people trying to go about their business in the world outside the park. He circled the building twice on foot before deciding that the unmarked wooden door on the west side was, in fact, the entrance.

The lobby was small and dark and he surprised the receptionist,who quickly darkened the screen of whatever Internet site she had up. She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

"Don't get many visitors, eh?" he said.

"Not this time of year," she said, chastened, guilty about whatever it was she had been looking at and obviously blaming Joe for making her feel that way. "May I help you? Do you know where you're at?"

"I'm here to see Del Ashby. My name is Joe Pickett."

"Del is off today," she said.