“I did,” Justin said, squeezing harder. “I can’t believe you. I just can’t frigging believe you.”
Cody grunted but hugged him back for a moment.
Gracie ran to her dad, Danielle behind her. He was crying with joy, tears on his face. She helped him walk up over the lip of rock, and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Careful,” he said, sobbing, “I think I broke my tailbone.”
“Jeez, Dad,” Danielle said, and Gracie could almost feel her sister rolling her eyes in the dark.
Cody said to Justin, “Can you build a fire?”
Justin stepped away. His face was still lit with wonder, and he shook his head as if trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened. Cody felt the same way as his adrenaline crash started to take hold. He noticed his hands were trembling.
“Yeah, I can make a fire. We’ve had a lot of practice the last couple of days.”
Cody nodded. “Then please gather some wood. Maybe you can get your girlfriend to help you.”
“Her name’s Danielle,” Justin said. “I don’t know if she’s my girlfriend.”
“Can she help gather wood?”
“I guess.”
“Good enough,” Cody said. “I’m going to make a couple of calls and get us out of here.”
An hour later, Cody peered down the crevice. The beam of his Maglite wouldn’t reach the bottom where Jed’s body had ended up. He could see bits of clothing and blood on the walls where Jed’s body had pinballed his way down.
From what he could discern, Jed had been telling the truth. The fuselage of the airplane had been ripped open by the trees and peeled back like the lid of a soup can. One wing had come off and likely fallen to the bottom and the other was mangled and parallel to the crack in the opening.
Two partially clothed skeletons hung from the cockpit by seat restraints. Inside the plane, Cody could see mounds of shredded money as well as a few skittering field mice. It was possible, he thought, there could be some intact bundles of cash buried deep or even down on the floor of the crevice. That would be for the investigators to determine.
He heard a bass thumping in the night sky and turned around. Justin and Danielle had built a massive bonfire that crackled and lit up the rock walls and the trees and threw off so much light the stars had retreated into urban mode. Ted Sullivan lay across two downed logs, suspending his injured tailbone.
Cody said, “Helicopters coming.”
In the distance he could see approaching lights in the sky. Two sets of them. He hoped the pilot of one of them would see the fire from Camp Two and swoop down for the others, as he’d instructed the dispatcher.
He hadn’t noticed Gracie approach him until he looked down. She was a slip of a girl.
“I want to thank you,” she said.
He nodded.
“Justin’s really proud.”
“That means a lot. Your dad should be proud of you.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged.
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Cody said. “He came up here even though he couldn’t ride. He obviously cares about you and your sister.”
Gracie nodded, looking over at her father on the downed trees. “He does, in his way,” she said. “I feel bad that Danielle and I thought he’d run. Rachel pretty much convinced us. You see, he told us why he showed up late at the airport to get us. It turns out he was late because he was booking a weekend at a spa for us in Billings when we were done with this trip. He’d arrived the day before to meet Rachel and he wanted us to feel all girly again when we went back home. And the reason he wasn’t in the camp was because he was feeling sick and resting in his tent. He had no idea Rachel told us that story.”
Cody had nothing to say.
“Rachel had me completely fooled,” Gracie said.
“She fooled a lot of people.”
“Even though she’s dead and I wanted her to be, I feel kind of bad. Jed, too.”
Cody squeezed her on the shoulder. “You should feel that way,” he said. “It’s the difference between you and them.”
She nodded, not sure.
“I hope you don’t mind if I smoke,” he said, digging the last of D’Amato’s cigarettes out of his breast pocket.
She looked up, said, “Justin said you’d quit.”
“Nope,” he said, lighting and inhaling as deeply as he could without falling back into the crevice.
Epilogue
Three days later, Cody Hoyt slumped in the uncomfortable chair across from Sheriff Tub Tubman’s desk, but Tubman wasn’t there yet. Undersheriff Cliff Bodean perched as he usually did on the corner of Tubman’s desk, looking down at him. Cody had brought a small briefcase with him filled with statements and his files and another object and had placed it near his feet.
“He said be here at eleven to discuss my situation,” Cody said. “So I’m here.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Bodean said, shooting a cuff to look at his watch. He gestured toward the credenza in back of the sheriff’s chair. “His hat is here.”
“Goddamn it,” Cody said, standing with difficulty and walking around the desk to turn the hat crown-down, “the man doesn’t listen.”
Cody sat back down in the chair and moaned. It seemed like every inch of his body still hurt. The gash on his face across his nose was stitched closed and there was a fresh bandage on his ear. His body was a mass of bruises. His knees still hurt from riding the horses.
“Frankly,” Bodean said, “I’m surprised he’s taking you back.”
Cody snorted in response.
“The coroner is likely to use it as a campaign issue against him,” Bodean said, shaking his head. “You’re coming out pretty damned good on this. I don’t know how you do it. Larry used to joke about you having illicit photos of him. Is that the case?”
Cody looked up and grimaced. “I’ll never tell.”
Bodean looked at his watch again. Then: “I hear there have never been as many Feds in Yellowstone for an investigation before. They’re practically tripping over each other. They’ve got FBI, DEA, Park Service, Homeland Security, not to mention detectives from Minnesota, Utah, California, Wyoming, and our state guys. You must have given a lot of statements.”
Cody grunted.
Bodean said, “I read your initial one. I noticed you didn’t say anything about being suspended while you were there.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
Bodean raised his eyebrows. “Oh really?”
Cody said, “I could have told them, I guess. But then I’d have to tell them the reason I was there was because I was freelancing on a murder investigation prohibited by my superiors. How do you think that would play in the press?”
Bodean didn’t respond.
Cody said, “I’ve got requests from USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AP, and five cable news shows. I haven’t called any of them back. Would you like me to amend my statement before I call them so they know why I was in the park on my own?”
“You can be such an asshole,” Bodean said.
Cody shrugged.
“Following up on your statement,” Bodean said, “are the other survivors back home?”
“Far as I know. Bull Mitchell is back with his daughter and his wife in Bozeman. I guess he’s quite the local celebrity. I owe him a lot of money but he’s graciously set up a long-term payment plan. Knox is doing a lot of interviews for the New York press. I’ve seen a couple of them. As you can imagine, it’s quite a story there. Donna Glode isn’t talking. Walt went home with his tail between his legs.”
“What about the Sullivan family?”
Cody nodded. “They’re okay. My son Justin is constantly texting the older daughter. They’re scheming something but I don’t know what. I plan to keep in touch with the younger one, Gracie. She’s a smart little lady.” When he said her name he smiled. He couldn’t help it.