C. Box - Free Fire

Joe looked up and realized he was the last diner in the restaurant. A knot of workers, busboys and waiters, had gatherednear the kitchen door, pretending they weren’t waiting for him to leave.

Joe stood, said, “Sorry!” and left a big tip he couldn’t afford.

Carrying the box outside, Joe noted how incredibly dark it was with no moon, and no ground glow from streets, homes, or traffic. The cool air had a slight taste of winter.

He called marybeth from a pay phone in the lobby of the hotel, having learned in Jackson not to rely on his cell phone in remote or mountainous places. Plus, he liked the intimacy of closing the accordion doors of the old-fashioned booth and shutting everything out so he could talk with her.

She covered the home front. Everyone was doing fine and it was too soon to really miss him. An employee in her Powell office had gotten angry and walked out for no good reason. Missy was snubbing her because, Marybeth assumed, her suspicions about Earl Alden and the arts council were correct.

“Fine with me,” Marybeth said.

Joe recounted his day: the drive up, the arrest of Bear, the meeting, drinks with Judy Demming.

As he told her, he could feel her mood change, not by what she said but by the silence.

“You’d like her,” he said. “She’s trying to help me out up here even though her bosses probably wish she wouldn’t. You’ll need to meet her when you come up.”

She asked for a description.

“Early forties, married, mother of two,” he said. “She and her family live in broken-down federal housing and she says she’s lost in the system. Kind of sounds familiar, huh?”

“She sounds nice,” Marybeth said.

Changing tack, he asked, “Have you heard anything from Nate? Any idea when he’s leaving?”

“He’s already gone,” she said. “He left a message on our phone tonight. I meant to tell you about that earlier.”

“Did he say when he’d get up here?”

“No. Just to tell you he was on his way but he needed to tend to something in Cody first.”

“So maybe tomorrow,” Joe said.

“I’d assume.”

She waited a beat. “How are you doing, Joe?”

He knew what she was referring to. He described his room, the hotel, the feeling he’d had since he arrived of the presence of ghosts.

“Does anyone know about your brother?”

“No. It’s not important that they know.”

They made plans for Marybeth to bring the girls to the park in a week.

Although tired, joe couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time. He couldn’t determine if it was the strange bed, the unfamiliar night moans of an old building, or the particularlyvivid dream he’d had of sleeping on the floor at the side of the bed, knowing his parents were tossing and turning two feet away. He awoke to the foul, sour odor of his dad’s breath after a night of drinking.

He sat up and found his duffel bag with his equipment in it and assembled his Glock and put it on the nightstand.

When he opened the window to let in the cold night air, he thought he saw two figures down on the lawn in the shadows, hand-cupping tiny red dots of lit cigarettes. When he rubbed his eyes and looked again, they’d been replaced by a cow elk and her calf.

YELLOWSTONE GAME PROTECTION ACT, 1894

AN ACT TO PROTECT THE BIRDS AND

ANIMALS IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL

PARK, AND TO PUNISH CRIMES IN SAID PARK,

AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES,

Approved May 7, 1894 (28 Stat. 73)

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Yellowstone National Park, as its boundaries are now defined, or as they may be hereafter defined or extended, shall be under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; and that all the laws applicable to places under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States shall have force and effect in said park: Provided, however, That nothing in this act shall be construed to forbid the service in the park of any civil or criminalprocess of any court having jurisdiction in the States of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. All fugitives from justice taking refuge in said park shall be subject to the same laws as refugees from justice found in the State of Wyoming. (U.S.C., title 16, sec. 24.)

SEC. 2.That said park, for all the purposes of this act, shall constitute a part of the United States judicial district of Wyoming, and the district and circuit courts of the United States in and for said district shall have jurisdiction of all offenses committed within said park.

The next morning, joe waited alone in the hotellobby for Demming to arrive. There were no other guests up and around so early and he had the entire lobby to himself. He sat in an overstuffed chair and read a day-old Billings Gazette - newspapers from the outside world didn’t arrive in the park untillater in the day-sipping from a large cup of coffee. Morning sun streamed through the eastern windows, lighting dust motes suspended in the air. The old hotel seemed vastly empty, the only sounds the scratch of a pen on paper and occasional keyboardclacking from Simon behind the front desk. On the lawns outside the hotel he could see that a herd of buffalo had moved in during the night and both the elk and buffalo grazed. The presence of wildlife larger than him just outside the hotel humbledhim, as it always did, reminding him that he was just anotherplayer. When an official-looking white Park Service Suburban pulled aggressively into the alcove in front of the hotel,Joe assumed it was Demming and started to gather his daypackand briefcase.

Instead of Demming, a uniformed man of medium build pushed through the front doors. He had the aura of officialdom about him. Joe watched him stride across the lobby floor with a sense of purpose, his head tilted forward like a battering ram despite his bland, open face, his flat-brimmed ranger hat in his hand whacking against his thigh, keeping time with his steps. The ranger’s uniform had crisp pleats and shoes shined to a high gloss. He had a full head of silver-white hair, thin lips, a belt cinched too tight, as if to deny the paunch above it that strained against the fabric of his shirt. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, although the white hair made him seem older at first. Beneath a heavy brow and clown-white eyebrows, two sharp brown eyes surveyed the room like drive-by shooters. The ranger saw Joe sitting in his Cinch shirt and Wranglers, dismissedhim quickly as someone of no interest to him, and approachedthe front desk.

“I need to check on a guest,” the ranger said in a clipped, authoritativevoice.

“Name?” Simon asked without deference.

“Pickett. Joe Pickett.”

“He checked in last night.”

“How long is he staying?”

Tap-tap-tap. “The reservation extends through next week.”

“A week! Okay, thank you.”

The ranger turned on his heel and began to cross the lobby.

“Can I help you?” Joe asked, startling the ranger. “I’m Joe Pickett.”

The man stopped, turned, studied Joe while biting his lower lip as if trying to decide something. He held out his hand but didn’t come over to Joe. Meaning if Joe wanted to shake it, he’d need to go to him . Joe did.

“Chief Ranger James Langston,” the man said, biting off his words. “Welcome to Yellowstone.”

“We missed you at the meeting yesterday,” Joe said.

“I had other matters to tend to.”

“I thought it was your day off.”

Langston nodded. “In my job, you never have a day off.”

“That’s too bad,” Joe said, not knowing why he said it.