Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I snorted a laugh. “Great.” I nodded and put a hand on the metal bar that stretched across the door. “If I find the vehicle, I’ll get it and a satellite phone. Keys?”

He nodded toward the Suburban. “They’re in it.”

“How trusting of you.” I smiled, but he didn’t smile back.

It was, as the Basquo had said, like driving on greased goose shit, and now it was really dark with a skim of snow on the road that made it even slicker. The Suburban was heavy, and I started slowing before Willow Park but still locked the wheels in a left-hand turn that resulted in my sliding into the crusty snow at the side of the road and knocking over one of the ten-foot reflector poles.

“Well, hell.”

I threw the Chevy into reverse and easily backed off the roadside onto the snow-covered asphalt. I hit the brakes and could feel the whole truck slide backward an extra four feet.

“Wonderful. At this rate I’ll be in Ten Sleep by Memorial Day.”

I dropped the gear selector down into D and pulled back into the flow of things, slowed a little, and was able to keep the Suburban on the road as my mind raced ahead. All the signs pointed to Beatrice Linwood and Shade being in cahoots-the bobbypin keys in the sandwiches, her turning west instead of east, the fact that she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off of him at the lodge-but the Ameri-Trans van was another story. Why hadn’t it arrived at Joe Iron Cloud’s or Tommy Wayman’s roadblocks at the base of the mountain? The snow continued to collect on the conifers, and they began looking like rib cages in the contrast of light and dark as I thought about all the loose strings.

It was after I’d made the last curve before hitting the downslope that I saw lights shooting up at an angle. It was a steep embankment alongside a relative straightaway, but there was something odd about the reflection. As I got closer, I could see that it was not one vehicle in the barrow ditch but two.

I crept the Suburban to a stop about thirty yards away, cut the motor, and put on the flashers along with the Lite-Brite-the name my daughter Cady had given the emergency bars on the roofs of my assorted cruisers. I directed the spotlight at the vent window-a term from my own youth-and illuminated the wreckage.

It was Beatrice Linwood’s Blazer and the Ameri-Trans convict transport van. From the slush marks and the point where the two vehicles had crashed their way through the snow piled by the road, I was pretty sure that she had driven into their vehicle at the front driver’s side. With her greater velocity, she’d been able to push the much heavier step van into the ditch, where it had partially rolled over and now lay on its side.

Drawing my Colt, I stepped from the Suburban, careful to take a wide stance, which resulted in my sliding a good nine inches on the glassy surface of the road. I let out a breath, and it sounded like a rattler uncoiling in my lungs, the condensation blowing back in my face with the smell of snakes. I minced a few steps toward the front of the Chevy and could see the body of another one of the federal marshals, lightly covered with splatters of the wet snow, lying beside the ditch.

“Damn.”

I eased past the grillwork and crouched by the man’s outstretched hand. There’s nothing quite so still as the dead-an otherworldly stillness. His flesh was frozen, and there was no movement in him. His coat was missing along with his boots and weapons-the sidearm and the shotgun.

Crouching a little, I pulled my hat on tighter, just to keep it from sailing off with the wind, and started down the slope. The lights were still on inside both vehicles, but the ones from the old Blazer were starting to dim to a sickly yellow. The main cargo doors of the reinforced van were open-I couldn’t see anyone inside but could see the restraints that had attached the convicts lying in the doorway.

Slipping my Maglite from my belt, I focused the beam into the cavernous space where the prisoners should have been but weren’t. I played the light over the cab of the Blazer, but no one was there either. The tracks led back up the hillside and onto the road-a lot of tracks.

If I was to make an assumption, it would be that Shade had picked up all of the survivors in our DOC van.

I scanned the surrounding area again and then continued to the front of the transport. The driver was there, leaning against his seat belt, and he was painfully and obviously dead, as was the man in the passenger seat. They’d both been shot at close range with one of the. 40 pistols. I rested an elbow on the cracked windshield and listened to something in the distance, something unnatural.

It was a whining noise that rose and fell and then stopped.

I listened some more but could hear nothing except the wind. The collar of my sheepskin jacket was providing little protection, but I improved the odds by pulling it up higher and buttoning the top button. I took a second to think about the numbers: that meant six fugitives including Beatrice Linwood and two hostages-Pfaff and the other Ameri-Trans guard.

Just to make sure no one was hanging around, I checked the front of the Blazer at closer quarters, but it was indeed empty. Slogging my way back up the hillside, I remembered Santiago’s cell phone and pulled it out of the Ziploc. I flipped open the face of the device and watched as it searched for service. After about a minute, I decided it was another opportunity to wait for Memorial Day and pocketed the useless thing.

I pulled the federal marshal completely from the road and covered his face with his hat. It was all I could do for now.

The Suburban started up easily, and I punched off the emergency lights and flashers; if I ran into the DOC van farther down the highway, they weren’t likely to pull over. I kept the spotlight pointed in the general direction of the roadside and pulled out.

I’d gone about a quarter of a mile when something caught my eye, and I stood on the brakes. It was the main entrance to Deer Haven, another of the shuttered lodges in the throes of renovation. The Chevrolet slid sideways but finally stayed on the road. I refocused the spotlight and could see a clear set of tire tracks leading into the deep snow.

“Gotcha.”

I wheeled the SUV into the entranceway, careful to avoid the deeper drifts to the left and the remnants of the broken swing gate where they had crashed through; the padlock was still hanging on the post to the right.

There was a single, dusk-to-dawn fixture about thirty feet above the ground, with a bulb that created a giant, illuminated halo that lit up the blowing snow but didn’t shed a lot light on too much else. I repositioned the Suburban’s spotlight into the gloom. Up ahead, there was a forest service bridge with a large drift blocking the road, and it looked as if they’d attempted to head up West Tensleep but had been turned back. The tracks showed that they had reversed and then swung around just ahead of me and plunged into the area where the parking lot would’ve been.

This was when a smart man would’ve parked the Suburban at the head of the road and waited for backup, and I thought about it. It was going to take hours for my reinforcements to get here, if they ever did, and I had a federal agent and a transport officer being held hostage. I applied the simple rule that allowed me to make stupid decisions in these types of situations: if I was down there, would I want someone coming after me?

Yep.

I swept the spotlight to the left and could see the complex of low-slung, dark log cabins-but no van. The tracks led straight across the flat area in front of them and then turned to the right, away from the main lodge. I drove slowly in their path and finally saw the van parked between two of the log structures that sat in a row.