C. Box - Force of Nature

“It is,” Joe said. “But we’re not that far from the highway now, and we should be fine.”

“Late, though,” his trainee said, looking at his wristwatch. He seemed to be in a hurry to get back to his motel. Probably to talk to his girl. Joe wondered what her name was.

After being tumbled about the cab on the two-track, it felt like heaven to drive onto the snow-covered highway again, Joe thought. He turned right and began to climb toward the summit.

After shifting out of four-wheel-drive low, he snatched the mic from its cradle. They were now back in radio range. Since they were participating in the task force, the under-dash radio unit was still tuned to the mutual aid channel that included all the law enforcement agencies.

“This is GF-48,” Joe said. “We investigated the lead and it’s negative. We’re heading back to the barn now.”

“Roger that, GF-48,” the dispatcher said. The signal-and her voice-crackled with static. “I’ll inform the county sheriff’s department.”

“It was a dead mule deer wrapped in a blanket,” Joe said, and glanced to Brueggemann, who smiled.

“Roger that. A dead deer.”

“GF-48 out,” Joe said. As he leaned forward to cradle the mic, the dispatcher came back. “Joe, have you been in touch with your wife yet?”

Concerned, Joe said, “Negative. We just regained radio contact.”

“Better call her,” the dispatcher said.

“Right away.”

To Brueggemann, Joe asked, “Do we have cell service yet?”

The trainee looked at his phone and shook his head and said, “Must be the snow.”

There was an untracked foot of it on the summit of the mountain, and Joe used the reflections of the delineator posts to make sure he kept the pickup on the road. As they finally began to descend, he felt the vibration of an incoming message on his cell phone in his pocket. At the same time, Brueggemann’s cell phone chirped with received text messages.

As both men reached for their phones, the radio chatter increased in volume and was filled with distant voices.

Brueggemann reached forward to turn down the volume when Joe recognized the fast-clipped exchange of officers somewhere involved in a tense situation.

“Hold it,” Joe said to Brueggemann. “Something’s going on, and I want to hear what it is.”

They listened as Joe drove. One of the speakers identified himself as a Teton County sheriff’s deputy. The other was a Wyoming highway trooper. The third was the local dispatcher in Jackson Hole. Snatches of the conversation popped and crackled through the speakers of Joe’s pickup radio.

… One dead at the scene of the rollover…

… transporting a second victim now to Saint John’s…

… the vehicle is a Chevy Tahoe, Colorado plates, VIN number…

“Where’s Saint John’s?” Brueggemann asked Joe.

“Jackson,” Joe answered quickly, imploring his trainee to be quiet.

… need to alert the emergency room doctors that the victim is in bad shape… claims he was tortured and it sure as hell looks like it…

“Tortured!” Brueggemann yelped.

“Please,” Joe said, “I can’t hear.”

… The dead one at the scene appears to be male, late twenties to early thirties, no identification… massive head wound…

… The staff at Saint John’s has been informed…

… snowing like hell here… not sure if there are other victims around… can see tire tracks but no other vehicles…

… cannot send additional units because our personnel is currently across the border in Idaho…

… Idaho! We need them here…

… Teton Pass is closed because of the storm…

… We need an evidence tech on the scene ASAP. The snow is covering the tracks and we’re gonna lose the chance of figuring out what happened…

… Requesting once again any possible backup or assistance on the scene…

“Jesus,” Brueggemann said. “What do you think happened?”

Joe shook his head as if he didn’t have any idea, and raised his phone to listen to Marybeth’s message that had been left two hours before.

When he heard it, he felt his insides go ice cold. Despite the road conditions, he punched the accelerator.

“Jesus!” Brueggemann said. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve got to get home,” Joe said through clenched teeth.

Nine miles west of Dubois, after summiting and descending the Absaroka Mountains, Nate slowed his Jeep and turned right on an untracked dirt road that led to a wide ribbon of ink that serpentined through the snow. The inside of the cab smelled of burned dust from the heating vents, hot tears from Haley, and the musky congealing blood that covered his flesh and clothing. The grille of his Jeep was packed with wind-driven snow from the drive over, and melting rivulets coursed down his headlights.

He wheeled parallel to the bank of the Wind River and parked behind a thick stand of willows, concealing the location of the Jeep from anyone behind them on the highway. He cut the headlights before opening his door and swinging his legs out.

“Do you want me to keep the motor running and the heat on?” he asked Haley.

He couldn’t see her face well in the soft glow from the dome light. It had been nearly two hours since she’d spoken to or even looked at him. She’d spent the whole of the trip over Togwotee Pass staring out the front windows in unsettled silence, her head tilted slightly forward, her hair hanging down over her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but she’d rarely sobbed, as if she’d been too proud to make a sound and reveal herself. Instead, she gripped the safety bar across the dashboard as if holding on for dear life.

He’d spent the whole of the trip deconstructing what he’d done to Trucker Cap, and analyzing the information he’d tortured out of him.

“Haley…”

She mumbled something that was snatched away by the muscular flow of the river behind him.

“What?”

“I said I don’t give a fuck what you do, you fucking monster!” she shrieked, her mouth twisted into rage, her eyes wide and rimmed with red.

Nate leaned back on his heels and waited a full minute before walking to the back of the Jeep for his duffel bag. He left the engine running and said, “I told you not to watch.”

Falling snowflakes disappeared on contact with the icy surface of the river, leaving tiny one-ring disturbances. Curls of steam rose from the flow into the even colder air and vanished like ghosts. As Nate shed his shoulder holster and hung it over a willow branch, he heard a beaver slap its tail on the surface upriver and the gloop sound of the creature diving deep. What little filtered moonlight there was marked the sides of the current with accents of light blue.

His clothing crackled as he peeled it off, because blood had dried through to his skin. He tossed each item into the middle of the river so it would float downstream, undulating in the current and over rocks, ending up who knew where: the Fitzpatrick Wilderness Area, Crowheart, or back home on the Wind River Reservation. Maybe his wretched clothing would be trapped beneath the heavy ice for the winter, washing the blood away, diluting the dissolving blood and fluids with startlingly clean and cold mountain water.

Snowflakes landed on his bare skin like icy fly bites.

The river itself was so cold it burned his skin and made him gasp. He waded in above his knees until the current upset his balance and his feet slipped on the smooth tops of the river rocks and he sat backward and went under. The tumbled silence underneath was awesome.

For twenty long and silent seconds, he bounced along the riverbed on his back and butt, naked feet out ahead of him, arms out to the side, eyes closed. As the river cleansed his flesh and the cold numbed all feeling, he briefly forgot about the blood that flowed from ripping a man’s ears off, the muffled pop from twisting his victim’s nose sidewise until the nostrils looked up at his cheek, the dull, dry cracking sounds of fingers being snapped back one by one, the undignified screaming, the unholy crunch of shinbones being stove in.