As he drove on the nearly empty road, winding parallel to the North Fork of the Shoshone River, Joe thought again about the murders and how they'd taken place because the circumstancesof the crime bothered him. All those shots, multiple weapons. That's what jumped out. Most people reading the reportswould come to the conclusion the park rangers apparently had, that the crime had been committed in anger, in passion. Joe wasn't sure he agreed with that assessment, despite all the blasting.Just because Clay McCann fired a lot of shots didn't mean he had gone mad. It might mean he wanted to make sure the victimswere dead. Most of the wounds Joe read about could have been fatal on their own, so they were well-placed. There was nothing in the reports to suggest McCann had shot at the victims as they stood in a group, or peppered the shore of the lake with lead. Just the opposite. Each shot, whether by shotgun or pistol, had been deliberate and at close range. Although there were no facts in the file to suggest McCann was anything other than what he was-an ethically challenged small-town lawyer-Joe couldn't help thinking the murders had been committed by a professional, someone with knowledge of death and firearms. Since McCann's biography didn't include stints in any branch of the military and didn't include information that he was a hunter, Joe wondered where the lawyer had received his training.
Joe had spent most of his life around hunters and big game. He knew there was a marked difference between the way Bear and his friends killed those elk and the way the men on the porch hunted. Bear and his friends were clumsy amateurs, firingindiscriminately at the herd and finding out later what fell. In contrast, the men on the porch were careful marksmen and ethical hunters.
Simply pointing a long rod of steel (a gun) and pulling the trigger (Bang!) didn't instantly snuff the life out of the target. All the act did was hurl a tiny piece of lead through the air at great but instantly declining speed. The bit of lead, usually less than half an inch in diameter, had to hit something vital to do fatal damage: brain, heart, lungs. To be quick and sure, the bullethad to cause great internal damage immediately. Rarely was a single shot an instant kill. That only happened in the movies. In real life, there was a good chance a single jacketed bullet would simply pass through the body, leaving two bleeding holes and tissue damage, but not doing enough harm to kill unless the victim bled out or the wounds became infected. Pulling the triggerdidn't kill. Placing the bullet did. McCann had placed each and every shot.
In a rage, a man like Clay McCann would much more likely start pointing his weapons and shooting until all his victims were down and consider the job done. But to have the presence of mind to walk up to each downed camper and put a death shot into their heads after they were incapacitated? That was pure, icy calculation. Or the work of a professional. And if not a pro, someone who had reason to assure himself that all his victims were dead, that no one could ever talk about what had happened,or why it happened. Vicinage and jurisdiction aside, the murders had been extremely cold-blooded and sure.
Joe couldn't put himself into Clay McCann's head on July 21. What would possess a man to do what he did with such efficientsavagery? What was his motivation? An insult, as McCannlater claimed? Joe didn't buy it. At the east entrance gate, the middle-aged woman ranger asked Joe how long he'd be staying. Until that moment, he hadn't really thought about it. He was thinking that he was glad he had never had to wear one of those flat-brimmed ranger hats.
"Maybe a couple weeks," he said.
"Most of the facilities will be closing by then," she said. "Winter's coming, you know."
"Yes," he said, deadpan.
He bought an annual National Park Pass for $50 so he'd be able to go in and out of the park as much as he needed without paying each time. While she filled out the form, he was surprisedto see the lens of a camera aiming at the Yukon from a small box on the side of the station.
"You've got video cameras?" he asked.
She nodded, handing him the pass to sign. "Every car comes in gets its picture taken."
"I didn't realize you did that."
She smiled. "Helps us catch gate crashers and commercial vehicles. Commercial vehicles aren't allowed to use the park to pass through, you know."
"I see," he said, noting for later the fact about the cameras.
He listened to her spiel about road construction ahead, not feeding animals, not approaching wildlife. She handed him a brochure with a park road map and a yellow flyer with a cartoon drawing of a tourist being launched into the air by a charging buffalo. He remembered the same flyer, the same cartoonish drawing, from his childhood. He could recall being fascinated by it, the depiction of a too-small buffalo with puffs of smoke coming out of his nostrils, the way the little man was flying in the air with his arms outstretched.
"Are you okay?" she asked because he hadn't left.
"Fine," he said, snapping out of it. "Sorry."
She shrugged. "Not that you're holding up traffic or anything," she said, gesturing behind him at the empty road.
7
The law enforcement center for the park service,known informally as "the Pagoda," was a gray stone buildinga block from the main road through the Mammoth Hot Springs complex in the extreme northern border of the park. Joe turned off the road near the post office with the two crude concrete bears guarding the steps. Mammoth served as the headquarters for the National Park Service as well as for Zephyr Corp., the contractor for park concessions. Unlike other small communities in Wyoming and Montana where the main streets consisted of storefronts and the atmosphere was frontier and Western, Mammoth had the impersonal feel of governmentalofficialdom. The buildings were old and elegant but government's version of elegance-without flair. The architecture was Victorian and revealing of its origin as a U.S. Army post before the National Park Service came to be. Elk grazed on the still-greenlawns across from the Mammoth Hotel, and the hot springs on the plateau to the south billowed steam that dissipatedquickly in the cold air. When the wind changed direction, there was the slight smell of sulfur. A line of fine old wood and brick houses extended north from behind the public buildings, the homes occupied by the superintendent, the chief ranger, and other administrative officials, the splendor of the homes reflectingtheir status within the hierarchy of the park.
In the height of summer, the complex would be bustling with traffic, the road clogged with cars and recreational vehicles, the sidewalks ablaze with tourists with bone-white legs and loud clothing. But in October, there was a kind of stunned silence afterall that activity, as if the park was exhausted and trying to catch its breath.
Joe parked the Yukon on the side of the Pagoda. It wasn't well marked. The Park Service didn't like signs because, he supposed, they looked like signs and the park was about nature,not people trying to go about their business in the world outside the park. He circled the building twice on foot before deciding that the unmarked wooden door on the west side was, in fact, the entrance.
The lobby was small and dark and he surprised the receptionist,who quickly darkened the screen of whatever Internet site she had up. She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
"Don't get many visitors, eh?" he said.
"Not this time of year," she said, chastened, guilty about whatever it was she had been looking at and obviously blaming Joe for making her feel that way. "May I help you? Do you know where you're at?"
"I'm here to see Del Ashby. My name is Joe Pickett."
"Del is off today," she said.
"Excuse me?"
She nodded toward a whiteboard on the wall. It listed the names of ranking rangers, with a magnetic button placed either "in" or "out." Del Ashby was marked "out." So was the chief ranger, James Langston, who Chuck Ward had said would also be in the meeting.