Walt slowed it down some for the next hill, not for Kevin’s sake but because the clear Idaho air was faintly clouded by a shimmer of dust. As the Cherokee crested the hill, Walt cut the wheel sharply, skidding to a stop a few feet short of the back of the Taurus.
The road narrowed here, and though the wrecker and Taurus were pulled to the side of the road they still blocked it.
Walt spotted two men, one working the wrecker’s hoist to lower the Taurus, the other on foot already fleeing, heading for an aspen grove. Seeing the Cherokee and its rooftop light rack, the other took off.
The man behind the wheel of the Taurus was either dead or unconscious.
Walt calmly reported the situation to dispatch, then dropped the mic on the seat.
“Stay!” he called to Beatrice. “You too,” he added for Kevin’s sake. Then he threw open the Cherokee’s door and hit the ground in his stocking feet.
He ducked when he mistook a sputter of an engine starting for small weapons fire. Two camo-painted ATVs raced out from the aspen grove and headed away from him. Walt snapped a mental picture, trying to grab any identifying characteristics he could. But the two men had their backs to him, and the ATVs were commonplace.
He hurried back to the Cherokee, climbing behind the wheel before realizing Kevin’s door was ajar. The boy was curled in the dirt in front of the Taurus’s open door.
Beatrice was pacing nearby, refusing to go closer.
She smells something, Walt thought.
For a fraction of a second-only a fraction-Walt considered pursuing the ATVs. He then held his breath and approached Kevin, the boy’s condition matching the driver’s.
A lump in his throat, he dragged his nephew away from the scene. He checked Kevin’s pulse and found it steady. He elevated the boy’s feet, wondering what he was going to tell Myra.
He called for an ambulance and his ad hoc crime-scene crew, including local news photographer and part-time deputy Fiona Kenshaw.
Far in the distance, a spiral of dust rose like smoke, marking the path of the two ATVs headed north toward Deer Creek Road. He issued a BOLO-be on the lookout-for the ATVs or for a pickup truck carrying ATVs. But, given the few hundred thousand acres of uninhabited wilderness facing him, he understood the ATVs were likely long gone.
He turned his attention to the Taurus and the wrecker, quickly spotting the gas canister, the tubing, and, climbing under and shutting it off, wondering what could possibly justify such elaborate planning. An attempted kidnapping? Breath held, he pulled the driver from the vehicle and searched for his wallet.
Randall Everest Malone carried a corporate AmEx, issued to Branson Risk, LLC. He knew about the private security company, it being one of many repeatedly mentioned by Walt’s father as an employment possibility.
A search of the Taurus revealed a black attaché case handcuffed to the frame of the passenger’s seat. Larger and thicker than a standard briefcase, it featured a thin slot underneath the handle next to which glowed a red LED.
Government work? he wondered. Corporate securities? In all likelihood a delivery to one of the many financial moguls living a few miles north in Sun Valley.
He heard the ambulance sirens approaching. He returned to Kevin’s side. The boy’s eyes were open. He was coming around.
“What the hell?” Kevin said.
“I told you to stay in the truck.”
“I don’t think that’s going to help me right now.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I was trying to help the guy,” Kevin said, now sitting up and leaning on his elbows, pleading his case. “I couldn’t believe you just abandoned him.”
“I-” Walt cut himself off. He wasn’t going to explain himself. “You okay?” he asked.
“Head hurts. My stomach feels weird.” Kevin rose higher, from his elbows to his hands, and looked over at the car and tow truck. “What the hell, Uncle Walt?”
“I think we interrupted an attempted robbery,” Walt said. “Maybe a kidnapping.”
“Seriously? Like Ocean’s Eleven?”
Walt didn’t answer. He hurried to the top of the rise to slow down the ambulance, all the while wondering about the contents of the attaché, how much, if anything, Branson Risk would tell him about it, and when, if ever, he’d apprehend the two who had fled.
5
Before disturbing it, Walt photographed the scene-including the wrecker and the Taurus. He then lowered the Taurus, hoping Fiona would arrive before the paramedics left. He wanted as much of a record of this as possible, and she was five times the photographer he was.
Malone was coughing while being attended to.
“Respiratory occlusion,” the male paramedic said. “We can’t seem to stabilize him. We’re going to move him.”
Malone’s eyelids fluttered, revealing only the whites of his eyes. Even with his mouth covered by the oxygen mask, he was caught in a downward spiral of suffocation.
Kevin was now on his feet and next to Walt.
“Can’t they do something?” Kevin pleaded. Tears sprang from his frightened eyes. “Help him! Someone fucking help him!”
The paramedics moved the man to a gurney. Puffs of fine brown dirt swirled out from under him like smoke.
Ashes to ashes, Walt thought.
When the convulsions began, the two stopped the gurney and tended to him. But death was upon him, in its unforgiving way. A series of violent, guttural gasps were followed by an oppressive silence, and he had passed.
Kevin went quiet, looking on in horror, longing for a PAUSE button that didn’t exist.
The paramedics, not giving up, finally got the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
Kevin sank wordlessly by his uncle’s side.
“God…” Kevin finally choked out.
“Let’s hope so,” Walt said.
6
Cantell heard the insectlike buzzing of the two ATVs approaching the rendezvous. He’d parked the Yukon, engine running, on Deer Creek Road at the intersection with Harp Creek. Their reckless speed, along with the fact that they’d been told to keep a low profile, told Cantell all he needed to know.
Roger McGuiness and Matt Salvo drove the ATVs straight into a thicket of golden willow along the creek and disappeared. They ran out on foot a moment later, frantic and panicked.
The two piled hurriedly into the vehicle. McGuiness shouted “Go!” too loudly for the confines of the truck’s interior.
Salvo climbed into the front passenger’s seat and dragged a sleeve across his face, mopping off the sweat and dirt. “Cops!” he said.
“Sheriff ’s Office,” Roger McGuiness clarified. An Irishman of unpredictable temper, McGuiness was a hell of a wheelman. Cantell wished he were driving.
“Did we-?”
“No,” Matt Salvo cut him off, “we lost the case.” A wiry man of thirty, Salvo could bench-press two-eighty, run a 4.6 forty, and contort himself into ungodly positions. He was their spider, capable of free-climbing anything. “The shit had it handcuffed to the seat frame.”
“Resourceful,” Cantell said, keeping his disappointment in check.
A vehicle approached in the distance. Cantell slowed the Yukon.
“Get down,” he instructed. “Matt, into the far back. Roger, between the seats. Use the blankets.”
Salvo scrambled into the back.
Cantell pulled the Yukon over. He was climbing out when McGuiness spoke up.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“My part. Stay put.”
He closed the car door, rounded the back of the Yukon, unzipped his fly, and spread his legs. He urinated into the scrub.
It was a Blaine County Sheriff ’s cruiser. It pulled alongside the Yukon just as Cantell zipped up. “Help you?” Cantell called out to the young deputy, who was just rolling down his window.
“Looking for a pair of ATVs. We got a complaint.”
I’ll bet you did, Cantell thought. He made a point of keeping his back to the deputy, not allowing him to see anything more than his profile, no face to remember.