Back of Beyond (11 page)

“Jesus,” Cody said.

“What? You’re scaring me, Cody.”

“Don’t be scared,” he said to her as well as to himself. “Just find the name of the outfit they’re using.”

“I think I have a brochure,” she said. “But I can’t call them. Justin said they’d be out of cell phone range…”

“Jenny,” he said, “we might have a big problem.”

*   *   *

Cody had the Ford backed
up to his open garage door and was throwing gear into it—sleeping bag, tent, pad, cooking set, Uncle Jeter’s old saddle—when Larry pulled his SUV into the driveway and blocked him.

Larry kept his motor running and his headlights on and swung out. “You didn’t answer your phone.”

“I was out here,” Cody said.

“You can’t leave. You know that. You’ll give the sheriff a damned good reason to fire you.”

Cody said, “Let him.”

Larry spun Cody around so they were face to face. “Have you been drinking?” Larry asked.

“Not yet.”

Larry leaned forward on the balls of his feet and stared into Cody’s eyes. Cody didn’t flinch, and said, “Get any closer and I’ll clock you.”

Larry relaxed a little, apparently content that Cody was sober. “You need to slow down. It’s two thirty in the morning. You can’t just run away in the middle of the night.”

“I’m not running,” Cody said. “I’m pursuing a lead.”

“You’re not a cop right now.”

Cody shrugged. “I’m
always
a fucking cop.”

“I was afraid you were going to do this,” Larry said. “All I can say is it’s stupid, and useless, and you’re doing more harm than good.”

“Sounds like me,” Cody said. “Hey, why don’t you give me a hand. I was looking for an old pack saddle of my uncle’s in that mess of a garage. Maybe you can find it.”

“To hell with that,” Larry said, squinting past Cody toward the garage. It was piled with junk Cody had never bothered to unpack or organize. His disabled pickup truck took up most of the space.

“Look,” Larry said. “I left messages at RMIN and ViCAP, but nobody is working tonight. We should hear back from them first thing in the morning. There’s no reason for you to leave tonight and risk your job. And risk
my
job, because if you take off now they’ll ask me if I knew you went.”

Said Cody, “Tell them the truth, Larry. Tell them you tried to talk me out of it but you couldn’t.”

Larry shook his head, and his eyes flashed with anger. “Cody, damn you, I can’t risk this job. I’ve got child support payments and no one is hiring. I have to stay in this town to be near my kids. You can’t put me in this position. You’re such an asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cody said, flicking a cigarette butt into the street where it exploded in a shower of little sparks. He lit another. “I know,” he said, drawing deep, “but—”

“I found something,” Larry cut in. “On the ViCAP Web site.”

Cody went silent, squinting at Larry’s face through the smoke.

“We won’t know for sure if we’ve got anything until I can talk to an analyst or profiler tomorrow. But since they’re on eastern time, I should hear back from them early tomorrow.”

“What did you find?” Cody asked.

“I used the national crime database they’ve got,” Larry said, dragging it out like he always did. “I used the keywords
murder, arson, single victim, head injury,
I don’t remember what else. Just trying to find out if there were any hits. It isn’t an exact science…”

Cody felt something red and hot pop behind his eyes and reached out as if he were going to grab Larry’s throat. Larry anticipated the move and ducked to the side.

“What did you find, goddamn you?”
Cody hissed.

“Four of ’em,” Larry said.

Cody’s mouth dropped. “Four?”

“One in Virginia a month ago. One in Minnesota two weeks ago. Hank Winters. And another one in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, two nights ago. Three men, one woman. All professional, middle-aged. Alone at the time. No suspects in any of them, and as far as I could tell no one has linked them up yet. They’re all classified as still under investigation, although they read like accidents. Just like ours.”

“Four?”

Larry nodded. “Of course, we won’t know until—”

Cody said, “Justin is on that trip.”

Larry rubbed his eyes. “Oh no, man.”

“You need to move your rig,” Cody said. “I need to get the hell out of here to Bozeman.”

Larry sighed and his shoulders slumped.

“Larry, move your truck.”

*   *   *

Cody roared down down U.S. 287
toward Townsend, the flat south end of Canyon Ferry Lake shimmering with moonlight. The night was warm and he kept his windows open so the rush of air would keep him awake. Synapses in his brain seemed to be firing with the crackling machine-gun rhythm of a spark plug. He shot by the sleeping ranch houses and barns, past the faded wooden archway to the ranch his friend Jack McGuane’s parents still ran.

The sight of the ranch brought back a flood of memories both painful and euphoric. A year and a half before, he’d laid it all out there for his friends Jack and Melissa McGuane. In the end he’d lost his boyhood friend Brian Eastman, gutted his own reputation, and lost his stripes in the Denver PD, but it all still felt right to him. Even with the high body count of scumbags, he’d gleefully do it all over again.

That was the thing, he thought. Throughout his life his friends, lovers, and colleagues wondered aloud what made him tick. As if he were like Churchill’s description of Russia, a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” when really it was so damned simple. So damned simple. Cody was born damaged. His Maker had flinched when soldering his hard wires together, and they would always short out or overheat at the wrong time. He could probably blame his white-trash family for his criminal tendencies and penchant for self-delusion and self-medication, but he didn’t believe in justifying bad behavior with that kind of touchy-feely crap. Cody was not good and he was incapable of being good, but that didn’t mean he didn’t recognize and revere goodness, and he’d do anything—
anything
—to protect those blessed with clean, unimpeded wiring. Like his friends the McGuanes, whom he’d helped. Like Hank Winters, whom he’d failed. Like Justin, his miracle son, whom he
had
to save.

*   *   *

He slowed through Townsend,
glancing over his shoulder at a yelp that came from two drunks stumbling out of the Commercial Bar into the street. Thought maybe he might even know them, and smiled bitterly.

Two miles south of Townsend, the inside of the Ford exploded with red and blue light. He glanced into his rearview mirror and squinted at the intensity of the wig-wags on the light bar of the Highway Patrol car.

“Shit,” he hissed, noting he was only five miles over the speed limit.

Fuming, he pulled over. He reached for his badge which was no longer there and sat back and closed his eyes. He hoped like hell he knew the trooper and could manage to talk his way out of a ticket so he could get back on the highway as soon as possible. For a second he considered flooring the Ford once the trooper got out of his vehicle, but he knew that wouldn’t work for long. No doubt, his plates had already been called in, and there wouldn’t be a record of them.

He was caught, unless he could talk his way out of it and get the plate search canceled.

A flashlight blinded him through the driver’s window and he looked away.

The trooper, an unfamiliar beefy youngster who looked six months out of the training center, said, “You were aware you only have one operating headlight, mister?”

Cody said, “I’m an investigator for the sheriff’s department. I’m in a hurry.”

The trooper grinned, his teeth glinting in the secondary light of his flashlight’s reflection.

“Well, you’ll just have to show me a badge and get the sheriff on the horn,” the trooper said. “And in the meanwhile you can follow me back to town until we can get that headlight fixed. What happened, anyway? It looks like you hit something.”

“A fucking elk,” Cody said, not able to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Yeah,” the trooper said, shining his beam on the damage. “I can see some hair and blood. Male or female?”

Cody sighed and covered his face with his hands. “Female,” he said.

“Got your cow permit?” The trooper chuckled.

8

Sixteen-year-old Danielle Sullivan was
furiously texting her on-again off-again boyfriend Riley as fourteen-year-old Gracie Sullivan looked on. Their father drove the rental car and pointed out bison far below in the valley and two distant elk crossing a river in the early morning sun. Danielle and Gracie were in the backseat.

“I’m surprised he’s even up this early,” Gracie said to Danielle. She marveled at her sister and the desperate fire in her eyes as she tapped out messages with a blur of her thumbs.

“He’s got to get up early for work,” Danielle said, not looking over. “Remember—he’s got that stupid job with the grounds crew with the schools. They make him show up every morning at eight. They’re evil.” Gracie nodded and snapped her phone open. She didn’t expect any messages although she’d be ridiculously thrilled if there were any. There weren’t, so as she often did in the presence of her beautiful, popular, constantly in-demand sister, she tapped out a message to her own phone via her e-mail account:

How are you this morning?

When it came through, she wrote:

Crappy start, but thanks for asking.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be. Things are looking up. WE’RE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK.

Even though Danielle thought Gracie pathetic for spelling out all the words in her texts rather than using text-speak or shorthand, Gracie thought there was no harm done since she was, in effect, talking to herself. It was a scheme she’d come up with to make Danielle think she had admirers in constant contact as well.

You’re up early.

I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking I forgot something.

Like what?

Toothbrush. Glasses. I got up at 2:30 to make sure I packed underwear. I had a nightmare I didn’t bring underwear and I had to borrow a f**king thong from Danielle.

She lowered the phone to her lap with the screen facing away from her sister and looked through the window. There were no buildings, no roads, no power lines. To the south was a vast river valley with tall grass that rippled in the cold morning breeze. A ribbon of river that looked like sheet metal serpentined through the valley floor. To the north the terrain seemed to swell and rise to meet tendrils of pine trees, and above them a dark wall of forest.

“Oh my God,” her dad said as the car slowed suddenly. “Look, girls:
wolves
.”

Gracie snapped her phone shut and hurled herself forward. All her life she’d wanted to see a wolf.

Her dad pulled over to the side of the two-lane blacktop and rolled down his window. The small of pine, sage, and cool fresh air wafted in. He pointed toward the river.

“See them, at that bend? Near those big rocks the sun is starting to hit?”

Gracie threw her arms over the front seat and squinted where her father was pointing. Far below, she saw movement.

“They look like dots,” she said. “Two little dots.”

“They’re wolves,” her dad said. “Aren’t they magnificent?”

Magnificent
dots,
she thought. She wished she could see them closer or figure out what they were doing to make them seem magnificent to her father, who tended toward hyperbole.

“Here,” her father said, handing her a pair of binoculars that still had the price tag on them. “You focus using that little wheel in the middle.”

While Gracie tried to manipulate the binoculars and frantically rolled the wheel all the way to the left and then to the right and finally realized she was bringing the hood ornament into sharp relief, she heard her dad say to Danielle, “Don’t you want to see these fantastic animals, Danny?”

“Maybe in a minute,” Danielle said, still texting.

“They may be gone in a minute,” he said, trying to disguise the disappointment in his voice.

Gracie finally figured out where to point, and started bringing the animals into focus.

“Dad, it’s not like we won’t have a chance to see wolves,” Danielle said, not looking up from her phone. “Aren’t we going to be in the middle of nowhere for five friggin’ days? We’ll be
sleeping
with wolves. Like that movie.”

Gracie mumbled, “
Dancing
with wolves, not sleeping with them,” as she brought the animals into sharp detail.

“Whatever,” Danielle said sharply.

“I think there’s a difference,” Gracie whispered, and not too loudly, wishing she’d never said anything at all. To confirm her thought, Danielle drove a sharp fingernail into her ribs that made her jump and lose the animals. She recovered and refocused.