C. Box - Free Fire

“I will,” Joe said. “How’d you learn all that about Toomer? Did you call the DMV in Montana?”

Nate chuckled. “It wasn’t necessary. Everybody knows everybody up here, don’t you know that by now?”

Joe waited for the rest.

“There’s a hard core of full-time Zephyr people,” Nate said. “They’re the ones who work different jobs all year-round, unlikethe thousands of seasonal folks who go home for the winter.I found out I knew a few of the hard-core types from when I was here. They’re still around, still crazy. But they keep track of what’s going on. They know when that ranger Layborn is on the prowl for them, and they sure as hell know an ex-sheriff when they see him.”

“Ah,” Joe said, smiling.

“Something else,” Nate said. “Bob Olig is still around.”

Joe sat forward. “What?”

“I heard it three or four times today.”

Joe and Nate leaned forward in their chairs until their heads nearly touched. “Either it’s him or his ghost,” Nate said. “He’s been spotted, mostly here around the Old Faithful area. One man swore he saw him in the kitchen one morning but Olig ran off before he could stop him. A couple of fine ladies said they saw a guy who sounds like Olig just strolling along the boardwalkone night in the moonlight like he didn’t have a care in the world. When he saw them, he ducked into the trees. And an old guy who has insomnia and wanders around swears he saw Olig standing behind the front desk one night about three-thirty goingthrough the guest register. The old guy yelled at him becausehe knew Olig pretty well from Olig’s days as a tour guide, but Olig ducked behind the counter and disappeared. But he swears it was him. He said Olig looked scared.”

“Olig,” Joe said, “or a guy who looks a lot like Olig? I mean, this sounds like the kind of thing lonely people would come up with to keep themselves amused.”

“Take it for what it’s worth,” Nate said.

“Were any of them interviewed by the Park Service or the FBI?”

“If they were,” Nate said, “they didn’t say anything about seeing Bob Olig. I think most of the sightings happened long after those murders, long after anyone was asking.”

Joe sat back. “Do you believe them?”

Nate was stoic. “You know I believe this kind of shit,” he said. “But that’s just me.”

They stopped talking when they heard the footsteps of a uniformedZephyr employee crossing the wooden floor. Joe looked up, half-expecting to see Bob Olig.

Instead, it was a grizzled bellman with a full beard and a name tag that said Herve from France.

“Are you Joe Pickett?” Herve asked.

When Joe said yes, Herve handed him a message. “Since we don’t have telephones in the rooms, this is the way we deliver them.”

“Thank you.”

“I want to remind you, sirs, that the inn closes tomorrow at noon,” he said.

“We know.”

Herve smiled, turned on his heel, and returned to the front desk, where his colleagues were packing up and closing down for the season.

Joe unfolded the note and read it aloud.

“ Joe: I thought a lot about everything and may have figured something out. It’s a doozy. Meet me at Sunburst Hot Springs tomorrowat seven. Best, Mark Cutler .”

At six-forty-five the next morning the thermalsin the upper geyser basin created a wall of billowing steam across the highway that wetted the outside of the windshield of the Yukon so Joe had to brake, turn on the wipers, and crawl through. For a moment, in the midst of the sharp-smelling steam, he was blinded and had the strange sensation of being in an airplane as it rose skyward through the clouds.

Demming was in the passenger seat clutching a large paper cup of coffee; Nate was in the backseat smelling of wood smoke. The two had met uneasily at the Yukon ten minutes before.

“Thanks for saving us,” Demming had said.

“Anytime,” Nate said.

It was crisp and cold, the first shafts of sun pouring over the western mountains as if assaulting the day. A heavy frost made the grass sparkle and coated the pine trees. Elk grazed in the open parks, wisps of steam curling up from their nostrils.

Joe’s holstered Glock was on the console between him and Demming. He had watched her reaction when she saw it and detected no official warning. Maybe she hadn’t awakened yet, he thought. Nate wore his.454 in a shoulder holster beneath a billowy, open fatigue jacket, the leather strap in clear view across his chest. He had no doubt she’d seen that too and said nothing.

They didn’t encounter a single vehicle until they turned from the highway to Biscuit Basin and nearly hit a black SUV head-on that was coming out. Joe swerved sharply right, missingthe front bumper of the SUV by inches. The SUV turned away from the Yukon as well, and both vehicles went off the road into opposite shallow ditches. Joe stopped but the SUV continued on, the driver jerking it back onto the road and roaringaway, heading north with a spray of pea gravel that pepperedthe back window of the Yukon. It happened so quickly that Joe didn’t get a glimpse of the driver through the smoked glass windows of the SUV-only the gleaming grille like the bared teeth of a shark that had just missed an attack.

“Man!” he shouted. “Where’d he come from?”

Demming squirmed in her seat, lap soaked with spilled hot coffee.

“I’m all right,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Joe said. “My fault. I wasn’t expecting anyone because we haven’t seen another car all morning.”

Nate was half-turned in the seat, watching glimpses of the SUV wink through the trees. “Two in the car but I couldn’t see them clearly,” he said. “Wyoming plates, but I didn’t get a number.”

Demming said, “I look like I wet my pants.”

“His driving does that to people,” Nate said.

“I’m sorry, ” Joe said to Demming, shooting Nate a glance. Nate smiled back.

Joe breathed slowly until his nerves calmed, then pulled back onto the road.

Cutler’s park service pickup was sitting where they had parked the day before. Joe pulled up beside it as Demming used the last of a box of tissues to absorb the coffee on her uniform pants. He put the close call behind him and climbed out.

The odor in the air was familiar, he thought, but it was from a different time and place. It reminded him of Sundays, growing up, and the smell that came from the kitchen while he lounged in the living room with his brother, Victor, watching football.

Joe wondered if the meeting with his father had skewed his mind, triggered reminiscences that had long been put away.

Nate got out, sniffed, squinted with puzzlement, said, “Pork roast?”

Joe clipped the Glock onto his belt, cold dread gripping his stomach, remembering something Cutler had said the day before.

By the time they found Mark Cutler’s body in Sunburst Hot Springs, his volunteer Park Service uniform and most of his flesh had separated from the skeleton and was floating free, boiling in the water. Commas of black curly hair were being carried down the runoff chute along with bouncing yellow globulesof parboiled fat.

“No. .” Demming gasped, stuffing her fist in her mouth, turning away.

Joe froze, stared in absolute horror, and forgot for the longest time how to breathe. Finally, he unclenched himself and put his arms around Demming and held her. She didn’t resist. He felt her hot tears on his neck.

He looked over her head at the scene. The trunk of the body turned slowly in the hot springs and more pieces came loose. The spring boiled angrily. Joe made himself look away, despite a morbid fascination that shamed him.

“That poor son of a bitch,” Nate said as he joined them. “When I go, I want it to be from a bullet to the head. I sure as hell don’t want to be stew .”