C. Box - Free Fire

“ You’re getting on my nerves,” Sheila said. “And don’t get me started on Clay.”

McCann shrugged. Fall colors were bursting like fireworks in the wooded folds of the mountains. Not that he cared. Scenery got old. Instead, he recalled how Sheila had looked that morning when he pulled into the parking lot of her shabby apartment building to pick her up. She had never looked better, he thought. Tight black sweater, charcoal skirt, black nylons, strappy shoes. And where in the hell did she get those pearls?

Oh, how her face fell when she saw Toomer in the car. Oh, the words she used. McCann was a little surprised when she was through that blisters had not formed on his exposed face and hands.

Several times, he had tried to catch her eye in the rearview mirror. He wanted to smile at her, have her know he was smiling at her. The only time she looked back her eyes were fearsome black daggers and when they connected with his he thought the temperature in the car dropped another ten degrees.

“Do you think we’ll have time to look at a couple of horse trailers in Idaho Falls?” Toomer asked. They had just crossed the state line from Montana into Idaho.

“Why?” McCann said.

“Elk season,” Toomer said. “Christ, don’t you pay any attentionaround here? Haven’t you seen all those men wearing orangeand driving around with dead animals in their trucks?”

McCann didn’t respond. He tried to catch Sheila’s eye in the mirror again but she wouldn’t look back.

“I got a two-horse slant load,” Toomer said. “I want to upgradeto a four-horse stock, now that I’m coming into a little money. I like them stocks. They pull good and I got a mare that blows up when I try to get her to load into the slant.”

It was as if he were speaking Martian, McCann thought.

“Clay,” Sheila sighed from the back, “please take me somewherewithout horses. Or hunters. Or ex-sheriff assholes who won’t take their sunglasses off.”

McCann noted that her anger had been replaced by despair. He felt sorry for her. All dressed up and stuck in a car with Butch Toomer. And him. She deserved better, he thought. He wished Toomer was gone and she’d take her sweater off.

“Make her shut up, or I’ll do it,” Toomer growled at him.

“Leave her alone,” McCann said.

“Don’t you tell me what to do.”

McCann could tell the ex-sheriff meant it.

“Okay,” McCann said. “Let’s all settle down, please.” He tried to catch Sheila’s eye in the rearview. When he did she displayedher middle finger at him.

Mccann had heard nothing from Layton Barron. That alone told him all he needed to know. If Barron and his partner were playing straight with him, there would have been at least a call that morning. And if Barron had been unable to reach his man on the inside, he should have let McCann know he was working on it and beg him not to carry out his threat.

And when his banker told him no money had been deposited into his account, McCann knew Barron had talked to his partner,and they’d decided not to pay up, but to take another course of action. Either they didn’t believe he’d go to the police or they had plans for him. He guessed the latter.

Which meant, McCann decided, that his situation was desperate.And desperate men, well. . they hire lawyers to think of ways to use the law to save themselves. Fortunately, he had that part covered.

The road got narrower, more rural. Straightaways turned into meandering turns through farmland. The Tetons sparkled in the distance, looking clean, white, and fake.

Toomer said, “It always pisses me off that the snooty bastardsover there in Jackson Hole always refer to our side of the mountains as ‘the back side of the Tetons.’ Who in the hell gave them the ‘front’?”

McCann watched for the turnoff and ignored Toomer. Sheila had seemed to make it her mission to ignore both of them now. Instead, she kept sighing.

“I need a drink,” she said, breaking her silence. “Are there any bars ahead?”

“This is Mormon country,” Toomer said. “No bars.”

“Mormons drink,” she said. “Especially if there’s just one of them. I’ve seen ’em go at it at Rocky’s. If there’s two, they watch each other and neither one will drink. It cracks me up.”

“That’s what they always say in elk camp,” Toomer said, laughing with loud guffaws. “If a Mormon comes and he’s alone, hide the whiskey !”

They seemed to be getting along so well, McCann thought, neither noticed he had turned off the main road toward the east. Or that the bridge that crossed Boundary Creek was just ahead. Or that despite the absence of a sign or a gate, they were officiallyin Yellowstone Park.

With his left hand, McCann pushed the button on the door handle that lowered the passenger window by Toomer’s head.

“Hey,” Toomer said, “why’d you do that? Did you fart or something?” He looked back to see if Sheila, his new pal, would laugh at his joke.

“No,” McCann said, pulling the.38 out of his jacket, “so your brains won’t splash all over the glass.”

Toomer’s mouth made an O and McCann fired into the left lens of his sunglasses, and then the right. The sounds were sharp and deafening. The ex-sheriff slumped back, his mouth still open, a string of saliva connecting his upper and lower teeth.

Sheila screamed, “Clay! Clay! Clay! Oh my God!” her hands to her face, her knees clamped together.

McCann said, “I’m really sorry, honey,” and shot her three times. One bullet passed through her necklace and sent pearls flying all over the inside of the car.

At dusk, ten minutes before he’d close the office for the night, B. Stevens heard the clump of a shoe on the wooden stairs outside the Bechler ranger station and looked up as Clay McCann opened the door and came in. He looked flushed.

The ranger was stunned. “You. .” he said.

“It happened again, can you believe it?” McCann said as he wearily dropped a snub-nosed revolver on the counter. “I was giving a couple of locals a ride to Idaho Falls and they pulled this damned gun on me.”

Stevens was speechless.

McCann held his arms out, wrists together, making it as easy as possible to put cuffs on them. The lawyer shook his head, said, “They’re out there in the car. I guess they didn’t realize who they were dealing with.”

Del ashby and eric layborn drove joe and Demming back to Mammoth after the initial crime-scene procedureswere accomplished at Sunburst Hot Springs. They left at mid-afternoon while more and more rangers arrived until the basin was packed with them. The flood of vehicles to the scene attracted what few visitors were still in the park, who assumed that so much ranger action must mean bears had been spotted. Families in cars and RVs lined the narrow road into the area, causing a snarl of traffic that forced Ashby to break regulations and drive on the side of the road.

Joe listened as Ashby and Layborn complained about the quality of the crime scene, how the pathway had been trampled by Joe and Demming, thus obscuring the footprints of the killer or killers, how the condition of Cutler’s body was such that it would be nearly impossible to tell if he fell, was pushed, or was murdered and then thrown in.

Demming defended their actions. “We did nothing wrong,” she said.

“Of course not,” Layborn said, rolling his eyes. “It’s just the small things. You know, like getting into a confrontation with an Iowa mountain man who gets shot up and flown to the hospital at our expense. Or getting forced off the road by the likely killers, not getting a description or a plate number, walking all over the crime scene throwing up, getting your vehicledestroyed, not giving chase or calling it in, letting the third member of your party go on a walkabout, and delaying the initial investigation of the crime scene by three hours becauseyou had to hitch a ride with a road maintenance crew. Other than that, you did real well. Did I forget anything, Del?”