"Maybe we should go in and say hello," Joe said.
As they climbed out, Joe dug the Glock out of his daypack and shoved it into his Wranglers behind his back.
"Did you have that gun in the park?" Demming asked.
"Yes."
"You're breaking the law. You can't have firearms in the park."
"I know."
"Joe…"
"It's okay," he said. "I can't hit anything with it."
She continued to shake her head at him as they crossed the street.
Joe entered the office, Demming behind him. A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman sat at a reception desk reading a glossy magazine.She looked as out of place as a nail salon in a cow pasture and she raised a face filled with undisguised suspicion.
"Is Clay McCann in?" Joe asked.
"Who are you?" she asked in a hard-edged East Coast accent.
"I'm Joe, this is Judy."
"What do you want?"
"To see Clay McCann."
"Sorry, he's not in at the moment and you don't have an appointment," she said, running a lacquered nail down a calendar on her desk. Joe noted there were no appointments at all written on it.
"When will he be back?"
"He's off making a call at the supermarket," she said, apparentlyunaware how odd that sounded. "That takes him hours sometimes. So, Punch and Judy, if you want to meet with him you can schedule an appointment."
"You're his secretary?"
She performed what amounted to a dry spit take. "Secretary?Hardly. I'm Sheila D'Amato and I'm stuck in this one-horsetown. I'm filling in because his real secretary quit."
Joe and Demming looked at each other. Joe didn't want to wait, neither did Demming.
"We'll be back," Joe said, handing Sheila his card, as did Demming. He used the opportunity to steal a look through an open door behind Sheila into what was undoubtedly McCann's office. One entire wall was filled with Montana statute books. There was a messy desk stacked high with unopened mail. On a credenza behind McCann's desk were binders emblazoned with corporate names and logos: Allied, Genetech, BioCorp, Schroeder Engineering, EnerDyne. The names rang no bells, but the collection of them struck the same discordant note as Sheila.
"A game warden and a park ranger," Sheila said, curling her lip with distaste. "Punch and Judy. I bet I know what you want to talk to him about."
Outside, Joe paused on the sidewalk to scribble the company names into a notebook he withdrew from his pocket. While he did, Demming said, "Let's go, Punch." "Why would he be making a call at the supermarket?" Demming asked as they cleared West Yellowstone. "I assume he's using a pay phone. Why not just call from his office?"
"Probably thinks his lines are tapped," Joe said. "Or he doesn't want Sheila D'Amato to know what he's up to."
"What is he up to?"
10
To get to bechler ranger station, they drove south toward Ashton, Idaho, skirting the western boundary of the park, which loomed darkly to the east and was constantly in sight. The terrain opened up into plowed fields, and they caught a glimpse of the Tetons on the horizon before turning back toward Yellowstone. The Bechler area was dense and heavily wooded. Stray shafts of sunlight filtered through the tree branches to the pine needle floor. Deadfall littered the ground. There was no traffic on the road. Joe pulled into the ranger station and parked facing an old-fashioned hitching post.
The station had the feel of a frontier outpost, very much unlikethe government buildings at Mammoth. There were five rough log structures built on short stilts, including a barn with horses in the corral, a long bunkhouse with a porch, and a small visitor center the size of a large outhouse. At the western corner of the complex was a trailhead for a narrow rocky path that meanderedinto the forest. No one was about, but a generator hummed in one of the buildings.
They clomped up the wooden stairway and entered the station,surprising a young seasonal ranger behind the counter.
"Wow," the man said, "I didn't see you pull in."
Joe smiled. "It gets lonely here, huh?"
The ranger, whose name tag said B. Stevens, nodded. "You're the first people here today. It gets real slow this late in the season."
B. Stevens hadn't shaved for a couple of days and hadn't combed his hair that morning. He was the polar opposite of the spit-shined James Langston Joe had met that morning.
Demming took over, telling Stevens they were following up on the murders, that Joe was with the State of Wyoming and she was providing assistance. While they talked, Joe flipped through the guest register, going back to July 21.
"Stevens was working that morning," Demming told Joe. "He was here when Clay McCann checked in."
"I was here when he came back too," Stevens said with unmistakablepride. "He put his guns right here on this counter and told me what he'd done. That's when I called for backup."
Joe nodded, asked Stevens to recall the morning. Stevens told the story without embellishment, replicating the chain of events Joe had studied in the incident reports.
"When he checked in before going on his hike," Joe asked, "did you see any weapons on him?"
Stevens said he didn't, McCann must have left them in his car. What struck him, though, was how McCann was dressed, "like he'd just taken all of his clothes out of the packages. Most of the people we see down here are hard-core hikers or fishermen.They don't look so… neat."
"He didn't seem nervous or jumpy?"
"No. He just seemed… uncomfortable. Like he was out of his element, which he was, I guess."
"Can you remember how much time he spent signing in? Did he do it quickly, or did it take a few minutes?"
Stevens scratched his head. "I just can't recall. No one's asked me that before. He didn't make that much of an impressionon me. The first time he was in here, I mean. When he came back with those guns, that's what I remember."
"Can I get a copy of this page he signed in on?"
Stevens shot a look at Demming, said, "We don't have a copy machine here. We've been requesting one for years, but headquarters won't give us one."
"Bureaucracy," Demming mumbled.
Joe asked if he could borrow the register and send it back, and the ranger agreed.
"We can't even get a phone line," Stevens said. "In order to call out we use radios or cell phones that get a signal about an hour a day, if that."
Joe said, "Does this entrance have a camera set up at the borderlike the others?"
Stevens laughed. "We have a camera," he said, "but it hasn't worked for a few years. We've requested a repairman, but…"
"We were thinking of hiking to the crime scene," Joe said. "Is it straight down that trail out there?"
"We were?" Demming asked, slightly alarmed.
Stevens nodded. "There's a fork in the trail right off, but it's well marked." The ranger hesitated. "Are you sure you want to do that?"
"Yup."
Stevens looked at Demming, then back at Joe. "Be damned careful. This area has become pretty well known with all of the publicity. They call it the Zone of Death once you cross the line into Idaho. Lots more people show up here than they used to. Some of them get as far as the border but chicken out and come back giggling. But others are just plain scary-looking. The Zone draws them, I guess. They want to be in a place with no law. It's not my idea of a good time, but we can't stop them from walkinginto it if they've paid their fee and signed in. Personally, I think we ought to close the trail until the situation is resolved, or everybody just forgets about what happened."
Demming asked, "Are there people in there now?"
Stevens shrugged. "It's hard to say. More folks have signed in than have come out. Of course, the stragglers could have gone on from here, or come back after we're closed. But you never know. Our rangers are a little reluctant to patrol in there now, if you know what I mean. They're afraid of getting am-bushedby somebody who thinks they can't ever be prosecuted for it."