Trial by Ice and Fire (30 page)

FORTY-ONE

W
HEN WE STEP
onto the parking-lot asphalt at the Moran Junction ranger station, the helicopter's crew chief palms my head to keep it down as he guides me toward a crowd of people. An ambulance with flashing lights waits nearby, and I'm forced to lie back on a gurney even as I protest that I'm not hurt. Cali is more compliant when she's laid down on another next to me. Beyond a temporary chain-link fence is a horde of tourists who stare through the mesh with curious eyes. A hundred or more cameras are aimed our way. Their owners are shouting questions, wondering what all the commotion is about. I peer through the fence at the crowd and try to spot Rebecca. If she's there, I can't see her.

It's not a heroic homecoming. And it shouldn't be. Only if Wokowski were still alive, as the audacious instigator of the harebrained rescue, would it be appropriate to celebrate.

Someone is pushing through the EMTs, rangers, and police officers around us. A woman's voice sounds close to choking as she shouts, “Let me through!” It's Alana Reese, and she's even less composed than she'd been at the fire headquarters. Her blonde hair is wild and her mouth is twisted in an ugly grimace. Her movements as she breaks free from the people around us are jerky and frantic. She runs to kneel beside Cali's stretcher. She takes her daughter's hand and covers it with her lips and tears.

“I'm okay, Mom,” Cali insists. But it doesn't stop her mother from weeping over her.

People turn their backs, embarrassed for the actress. But they also spontaneously gather closer so as to shield the mother and daughter from the camera lenses. After a few minutes Alana raises her head from where it's been buried in her daughter's neck and looks at me with red, running eyes. She doesn't say anything, but I think I can read an apology in the way she nods at me and makes a brave attempt at a smile.

I manage to get out of there although it seems like everyone is trying to stop me. The paramedics want to take me to the hospital, talking about needing to test for smoke inhalation. The Forest Service people want to talk to me about the blaze. The sheriff and two angry-looking guys with FBI badges want to know what the hell happened up there. And all I want is to be alone. Well, not exactly alone.

A young fire crew member gives me a ride to the airport, where the Pig still waits at its illegal parking place by the curb. From there it's just fifteen minutes to my cabin.
Be there, Rebecca. Be there.

When I turn into the lane I see that a car is parked tight against my porch. But it's not Rebecca's shiny green Saab. It's a small pickup of indeterminate make and vintage, even rustier than my Land Cruiser. Actual holes have been chewed through the fenders, panels, and doors. The windows are dark with cracked purple tinting. It has Idaho plates from a small county on the state's northeast border with Montana.

The bumper stickers belie the truck's ominous appearance. One is a Jesus-fish symbol that has sprouted legs. Another reads, “I'm a Gay New Yorker Here to Take Your Guns!” And then there are numerous stickers from environmental and pro-choice groups, as well as a Jamaican flag and a marijuana leaf.

I pull in behind the pickup and get out. The front door opens and Mungo slinks toward me, dancing shyly across the porch. My brother steps out after her.

“Nice wheels,” I tell him as Mungo wags her tail and pushes her nose over my clothes. I push her away, not wanting her to smell the odors on my clothes.

“Was all I could borrow,
che.
Didn't want to draw any attention by stealing one.”

“I thought you were going to lay low until meeting up with the Feds this afternoon in Salt Lake. You don't get going, you're going to be late.”

“I was worried about you, little bro. You looked a little wigged up there. Thought I ought to check up on you before I leave.”

He goes on to explain that he'd slept a few hours in a borrowed bag at the Exum hut before climbing the Middle Teton. Then he slipped down into Idaho from the mountain's west face. He'd called a friend in Driggs who'd lent him the pickup, then driven over Teton Pass into Jackson.

“Couldn't you have found something less conspicuous?”

He just grins and shakes his head at me. “You look like you've been dragged through a cesspool.”

I walk past him through the door and collapse onto the couch. “It was worse than any cesspool. A thousand times worse.”

Roberto follows me in and helps himself to a Snake River Ale from the refrigerator. He sits down at the table. “
Now
did you get the guy?” He's staring, sensing that something's very wrong with me but not understanding what.

“I didn't. But the fire did.” I tell him what had happened, everything up until the end—that part, Wokowski's death, I'm not ready to talk about. My words dry up when I reach the point where the flames are all around us and we're diving for the supposed safety of the hole.

Roberto tries to fill the silence that follows by shaking his head some more and saying, “I wish I'd been there for you, bro.” Then he tries in a lighter tone, “Besides, I would've liked to have seen it.”

“I'm glad you weren't. I almost got cooked. Two men did, and one of them was a friend of mine.” My throat constricts so tight when I think of Wokowski that it threatens to pitch my voice high. I try to shrug it off. “Right now you ought to be worried about missing your hookup with the Feds. And getting me arrested and fired for harboring a fugitive.”

“Thought you'd already gotten yourself fired,
che
.”

“Just warned off the Morrow case. Now that Laughlin's burned up, I guess I'm in the clear. Everything's going to be cool with the office.” But it's not the office I'm worried about. “Listen, 'Berto, I can't talk about this anymore. Not right now. Tell me, have you seen Rebecca?”

He takes a long pull from the beer, half draining it. Then he lets his grin come back onto his face even though his eyes are still probing me. “If she saw me, she wouldn't stick around very long.”

“You scare her, 'Berto. It's nothing personal. It's got more to do with me than with you.”

I walk out on the porch and dial Rebecca's cell phone but she doesn't answer. No service, an automated voice tells me.

Mungo, who's followed me outside, cocks her head at me. The sly, shit-eating grin displays the tips of her teeth before she looks away.

Information gives me the number for the Spring Creek Ranch. The front desk there tells me that no, Mr. Hersh and his daughter have not checked out yet—they've asked for a late departure at noon. I realize it's been more than twelve hours since I shouldered my pack and walked out on Rebecca.

When I'm connected to the room, it's Rebecca's father who answers. “Anton,” he says stiffly. “What do you want?”

“Please put Rebecca on, David.”

He doesn't say anything for a moment, and then his voice is angry. “Why do you think my daughter would be interested in talking to you after you left her again last night, when she came to you?”

“Please. Get her.” I want to explain about the fire and the kidnapped prosecutor but none of it will come out.

There's another long silence on the other end. Mr. Hersh sighs. “None of this was my idea, you know. She wanted to go about it her own way. Feel you out, I guess, before putting it to you directly. And from what I understand, the feeling-out process didn't go too well.”

“I know. I fucked it up. Please, just put her on.”

“I can't. Her paper called early this morning. They wanted her to cover the fire until they could get another reporter and a photographer up here. Then, at breakfast, one of those movie people she recognized but I didn't was introduced to her. In the ensuing conversation, an interview was agreed to. She thought it might make for an interesting story, to view the fire with a movie star. That's where she is this morning.”

“Was it Alana Reese?” I'd just seen her at the ranger station. Why hadn't Rebecca been there, too?

“No. Even
I
know who she is. It was a young man. Gordon, or something like that.”

Danny Gorgon. What had Angela said, about how he was too chickenshit to come at me directly, but watch out, that he'd try to do something nasty behind my back? My legs feel weak. I feel as if I've been socked in the stomach. I have to brace myself against the porch railing.

“Where are they?”

“They must have taken a hike together. Rebecca came back to the room to change and get her hiking boots. She said something about how they were going to go and view the fire from a place this Gordon knew about. A place that hadn't burned. A thermal spring, I believe.”

I hit the
END
button without saying good-bye then sag even farther against the rail. Roberto comes out and sits on the steps. Even before he went to prison he was like that, hardly being able to stand a few minutes indoors. He strokes Mungo's head with one hand, cooing in Spanish to her. When I pull the car keys from my pocket, Mungo's ears catapult forward.

“You look seriously freaked,
che
. Where you going?”

“To get Rebecca.”

“She in some kind of trouble?”

I shake my head. “Don't worry about me. You leaving for Salt Lake?”

His blue eyes burn right through me. “Yeah. I guess,” he answers slowly. “Trap or not, I'm gonna walk into it. That's what you think I ought to do, right?”

I'm finally learning not to worry about him. If it is a trap, he'll go to prison for a long, long time. And if he runs, he'll keep soloing and using until one or the other finally kills him. He lives how he wants.

“Shit, 'Berto. It's your choice. Either roll the dice or get out of here, go back home.”

His strange blue eyes never leave my face. He doesn't even blink. “How about I come with you for now? You're looking seriously wigged,
che
. Like you might need your big bro around.”

I walk down the steps into the lane and open the truck's door. “No. This isn't anything dangerous. Not physically. Not for me, anyway. Besides, if I'm seen with you we're both going down. I'll see you around, 'Berto. Good luck.”

Only later do I realize that I forgot to hug him good-bye.

FORTY-TWO

T
HE TRAILHEAD LEADING TO THE SPRING
is not far from both my cabin and the hospital. It's on the Elk Refuge, up an unmarked offshoot of the dirt road that cuts through it. I guess it will take me no more than twenty minutes to be on the trail. But when I pull onto the refuge road from Broadway, I find that it's clogged with traffic.

A long line of cars stand idling on the prairie. Brake lights are lit up all the way to where the road rises up into some low hills. They've come to view the fire's devastation, like it's some gruesome accident that just demands active rubbernecking. There are some breaks in the traffic where a few humped buffalo have set up an unofficial roadblock. Tourists are getting out to snap pictures of the surly beasts and further stalling traffic. Making things worse, other cars are returning from the hills and the road is too narrow in many places for passing.

I beat both fists on the steering wheel. Mungo pulls her head back inside the window and stares at me in concern.

“Hang on, girl.”

Pressing down on the gas pedal, I nose up onto the grass on one side of the road and start bouncing over the prairie. When thin groups of trees block my path I swerve back down onto the road, cut through the line of cars, and climb back up on the other side. I can't drive as fast as I'd like because of all the buffalo. But I still leave a big cloud of dust and a symphony of blaring horns. I hope they all get gored. I'm too busy steering to look back at the chaos I'm leaving behind me. I don't bother checking the rearview mirror to see all the middle fingers that are surely upraised in my wake.

I almost blow by the turnoff for the trailhead. It's barely visible around one bend in the road, nothing more than a pair of faint tracks half covered by grass and brush. The Pig's big tires spit dirt against the undercarriage as I accelerate onto it.

For two miles it climbs east into the Gros Ventre Range. The woods grow thicker on both sides as I gain elevation. At some turns I have a view of the raw, blackened landscape to the north. I shiver, unable to forget hours earlier having been in the middle of what had caused that. I've never known nature to show her power so nakedly.

The double-track dead-ends in a small turnout surrounded by a buck fence. A break in the fence and a Forest Service backboard mark where the hiking trail begins. Two cars are parked here. One is a red Range Rover with a rental sticker on the back bumper. The other is Rebecca's green Saab. Barely taking the time to shut off the engine, I'm out of the Pig and running with Mungo loping behind me.

The trail is well maintained and obvious. It zigzags up a well-maintained forested hillside to where it then follows a rocky ridge even higher.

The ridge itself starts out broad and tree covered but soon narrows to only twenty or thirty feet across. At times it narrows even further, becoming little more than a knife edge of vertical stone. There is a steel cable bolted to the rock to form a handrail at one such place. I scurry across it without needing to touch the metal, but behind me Mungo lets out a small cry of concern. I turn around and see her hesitating.

I could probably coax her across but I can't spare the time. Instead I yell for her to stay there—that I'll be back soon. Then I turn and keep running.

The fire hadn't reached the top of the ridge because of two hundred feet of blank, unvegetated stone below. The cliff served as a firebreak, containing the fire to the north and funneling it beyond the low hills toward Elation Peak. A fast-flowing river tumbles at the cliff's base, undercutting it and further protecting it. Beyond the river the earth is still smoking. Only five miles to the north is the box-shaped outline of Elation Peak. It causes me to shiver again.

In the distance, farther up the ridge, I can see where it bisects a hanging valley that droops between two large peaks. The dale on the left has what looks like a small lake in it. It glistens in the sunlight where it's not surrounded by trees. A waterfall spills down toward the river far below. It looks like some kind of magical Shangri-la, especially with all the devastation around it.

With worry and rage pounding in my blood, I race over the ridge, careless of the drop on both sides. It doglegs at one broad spot and the trail switches to the other side. As I clamber over some boulders, reaching a flat area the size of a small room, I notice that a man is sitting on top of some rocks on the other side. Looking as if he's meditating, he faces to the north and Elation Peak. The sun is in my face so I can't get a good look at him but I'm sure it's not Gorgon. His posture isn't right for the arrogant prick, and he doesn't have the same muscular outline.

One of my boots kicks loose some rocks. The man's form jumps at the sound and he turns to face me. My skin crawls on my bones as I make him out.