Kirk Russell - Night Game

“I can’t see,” Nyland said as Marquez got him to his feet.

“I’ll shine a light through your legs. If you fall, stand up and start walking again. If you run, I’ll shoot you.”

Marquez had tied the thin rope he’d found in Nyland’s pack to one of Nyland’s ankles, figured if Nyland ran he’d bring him down by jerking his leg out from under him and dragging him. Keeping Nyland twenty feet ahead, they started walking, the thin rope sliding along the snow behind, the hound sticking near Nyland. A mile into it Nyland started playing games, staggering, pretending to trip, shuffling his boots through the snow, exaggerating his difficulty walking. Marquez said nothing to any of it.

They moved slowly, but they moved, and sometime after daylight Marquez knew they’d reached the Eagle Lake Trail. An hour in he had Nyland stop and kneel on the trail while he called Shauf.

“I’ve got him. I’m walking him out.”

“Okay, got your position, I’ll notify everybody.”

He hung up with her and listened to Nyland spit blood and mucus. He gave him some water, sat on a rock nearby and listened to the rhythm on his breathing, decided Nyland was fine to keep walking. But before telling him to get to his feet again he tweaked him.

“Who killed Petroni?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. Was it Durham?”

“I don’t know. I hardly see Durham. I haven’t seen him in three weeks.”

“Who milks the caged bears?”

“I don’t know anything about caged bears.”

“Sophie has turned on you, but battered women can be like that. She led the detectives to where you hid the rifle in the sales office, and now they’ve got a murder warrant. She’s turning state’s witness. You’re going to be the fall guy for Durham and whoever else.”

“I don’t want to hear your shit. Walk me out.”

“Where were you headed? Is Durham waiting up ahead? If I was him and you could testify against me, I might be waiting up ahead. Of course, with all the police, I don’t know. But I sure wouldn’t want you to get a chance to plea-bargain.”

They started down the trail again and nothing was said for another hour. When they took the next rest Marquez could tell Nyland was getting ready to try something, and then he asked for his night goggles back.

“You’re doing okay without them.”

“I can’t move my hand.”

“I’ve been looking at numbers on your cell phone.” Marquez had relayed a list of them via text messaging and the satellite phone to Shauf. “Which one is Durham’s?”

Nyland ignored him, then a little while later repeated that he hadn’t killed anybody and didn’t know about any rifle. His boots slogged through the snow ahead of Marquez, his voice stronger, saying he didn’t “put Petroni in the teddy bear suit,” but he wished he’d seen him.

“Sophie says you killed Vandemere for money. Who wanted him dead?”

“She’s a lying bitch.”

“If you want to hit back at her, start talking to me. You know Kendall isn’t going to listen to you.”

“Fuck off.”

Near first light Marquez holstered his gun, figured Nyland was hurt and cold, tired, and didn’t have much run left in him. Nyland was sluggish, exhausted, not quite the mountain man he figured himself for. He started to complain more about the pain in his hand.

“I can’t take it any longer,” he said. “My fingers are gone.”

Marquez had slid a sock over the bad hand to prevent frostbite.

He told Nyland to lie down in the snow. Nyland dropped to his knees, went face forward on the trail, and Marquez knelt and looked at the hand. It was badly swollen around the wrist and the fingers were bloodless, white. There was another six miles to go, a lot of it rocky and the steep downhill past Eagle Lake. Nyland’s coat was multilayer, waterproof, ripstop, and Marquez got an idea.

“All right, don’t move.” With a knife Marquez leaned over and right in the small of the back he cut through the coat. “I’m going to uncuff you and if you move I’ll do whatever I have to.”

Marquez freed his wrists and then bunched the coat up and clicked the empty handcuff through the hole he’d cut. That would keep Nyland’s good hand behind his back as long as he had the coat on. He told Nyland to keep the free hand, the bad hand, in his coat pocket, then got him to his feet and made sure the coat was zipped up tight before working the knife into the zipper at chest level and ruining it, so the only way he could get the coat off was over his head.

“If you can take me with one hand behind your back, now is your chance. Stay twenty feet ahead and don’t take your bad hand out of your pocket.”

“I wasn’t there,” Nyland said.

“Wasn’t where?”

“I haven’t been in the barn since we moved the bears to a place in Nevada that I didn’t even know about before. I wasn’t there when Petroni got it.”

“Who was?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long has Durham been farming bears?”

“Durham doesn’t know shit. It’s the other guy.”

“What other guy?”

“I don’t know his name, a dark-haired guy.” Nyland spit blood in the snow. “Fuck, man, my nose.”

“Durham has a partner?”

“I don’t know what their deal is.”

“Where does this other guy live?”

“Look, I didn’t kill Petroni.”

“You killed Vandemere. Sophie took Kendall to the rifle.” Marquez could see he finally hit home. Nyland stared at him without speaking. “Why Vandemere?”

“I didn’t kill anybody. It was probably him, the guy who set up the farms.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“Then you’re nowhere. Where in Nevada are these bears?”

“On a ranch outside Minden. Troy drove the rest out there while I was locked up.”

“Sophie says you bragged about killing Vandemere.”

“She’s fucked up.”

“I need the bear farmer’s name.”

“Hey, man, he’s way fucking smarter than you are.”

“He must be, he hired you. Let’s go.”

They shuffled through the snow another mile before Nyland answered. When he did his voice was different, empty.

“Petroni was out there.”

“Where?”

“In a cage at the place in Nevada, in one of the empty cages. It wasn’t anything to do with me and I didn’t see him. I wouldn’t do shit like that even to that asshole.”

“Stop walking, face me and say that again.”

The wind felt colder and seem to blow down his spine as he listened to Nyland. He shone the light on his face.

“Petroni was in a cage?”

“For a couple of days. That’s what I heard from Troy.”

“Troy saw him.”

“I don’t know if he saw him.”

“Sophie?”

“I think she did.”

Marquez got up close to him, and Nyland ducked his head like he was going to get hit. “She told you as you made bail?”

“Yeah.”

Nyland was silent after that. Dawn came. The dark blue line of Lake Tahoe showed in the distance when they started down the steep canyon and passed Eagle Lake. Marquez checked in with Shauf. A half mile later as they started down a long open slope, Kendall and three deputies came out of the trees well down the grade.

“Want to tell me anything else before they get here?”

“Maybe I knew he was in a cage, but I didn’t see him and I wasn’t there when he got done. It was the freak that did him.”

“Why do you call him a freak?”

“Because he wouldn’t ever let me see him.”

Marquez took a guess now. “The freak paid you to do Vandemere.

Vandemere saw him one day and questioned what he was doing. After that the freak wanted him killed.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”