C. Box - Free Fire

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 disassembled 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 scraping 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. Hell, 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. “Hell, 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 microcassette 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 carcasses?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 bumper of his pickup, embarrassed 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 wristwatch. 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 circumstancesof 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 passion. Joe wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment, 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 shore 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 pass 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.