Free Fire - C. J. Box [41]
Joe didn’t know what to say. He looked back down at the list he had made several days before and continued as if nothing had happened.
“There are several references to the Gopher State Five,” he said. “Four are dead. Who survived?”
“His name is Bob Olig,” Demming said quietly. “We haven’t been able to find him.”
“There’s a nationwide BOLO for him,” Portenson said, meaning Be On The Lookout. “No solid hits yet.”
“He worked here also?” Joe asked.
Layborn said, “Another Zephyr scumbag.”
“He was employed at the Old Faithful Inn,” Ashby said wearily, having lost all control of Layborn and given up trying. “He vanished the day after the murders were reported.”
“Where was he the day of the murders?” Joe asked.
“Giving tours of the Old Faithful Inn,” Ashby said. “That’s been verified by the site director, Mark Cutler. Olig was a tour guide, and a pretty good one.”
Joe sat back, thinking. “So three of the five—Rick Hoening, Jim McCaleb, and Bob Olig—all worked together at Old Faithful?”
Ashby nodded. “In the area, anyway. But it’s a big complex with hundreds of employees, nearly a thousand in the summer. It wasn’t like they did the same job.”
“But I assume they lived in employee housing together?”
“Correct.”
“And it’s been searched?”
“Torn apart,” Layborn said. “We found some meth, some dope, like I said. A bunch of books about environmental sabotage,monkey-wrenching, that sort of crap. And e-mails from their fellow loons around the world. But nothing about Clay McCann, or anything we could use.”
“Can I look at them?” Joe wondered how many of the e-mails were to and from Yellowdick, and what they were about.
When he asked the question, he saw Layborn, Portenson, and Ashby all smile paternalistically. Portenson leaned forward on the table. “You can quit the charade, Joe.”
Joe didn’t respond but he knew his face was flushing because it was suddenly hot. The thunderhead of doubt rolled across the sky, blacking it out.
“We know about the e-mail to your governor,” Portenson said. “It was sent by Hoening. He was Yellowdick. He sent messages to the governors of Montana and Idaho too.” He paused, letting that sink in before continuing. “And the president,and the secretary of the interior, and the head of the EPA. None of them make any sense. All of the e-mails have referencesto resources and cash flow. The best we can determine is the guy objected to some aspects of management up here and liked to be a scaremonger. The Park Service is an easy target, you know. Everyone’s a critic. Hoening liked to stir things up, is all.”
Joe was embarrassed. They had known all along why the governor sent him and had been waiting for him to come clean. His duplicity shamed him.
“We know all about his e-mail traffic; we know everything there is to know about the victims,” Portenson said. “We didn’t just fall off the fucking turnip truck. But what we can’t figure out is if there is anything more to this case than what is staring us right in the face: that Clay McCann walked into Yellowstone Park and shot four people in cold blood and got off. That’s bad enough, but I’m afraid that’s all there is.”
Joe swallowed.
Portenson said, “This is the strangest case any of us have ever been involved in because everything’s transparent.” The FBI agent raised his fist and ticked off his points by raising his fingers one by one: “We know what happened. We know who did it—the son of a bitch admits it. We think we know the motivation.And we know there isn’t a goddamned thing any of us can do about it.”
Joe said, “Unless we can prove McCann went there specificallyto kill those four people as some kind of bigger scheme, then we can get him on conspiracy to commit murder.”
Portenson sighed. “You think we haven’t tried?”
“You’re welcome to follow up with me and my staff with any questions you might have,” Ashby said, taking back control of the meeting as Joe gave it up. “But we resent the idea that your governor thinks we’re a bunch of incompetents up here and he needs to send a game warden to figure things