Free Fire - C. J. Box [54]
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.”
“You’re right,” Demming said. “We should close the trail.”
“We’ll be okay in a few weeks,” Stevens said, “when the snow comes. We’ve had twelve feet by Halloween in the past. That’ll give us the winter to make our case.”
Joe thanked Stevens and left