Free Fire - C. J. Box [85]
“Man!” he shouted. “Where’d he come from?”
Demming squirmed in her seat, lap soaked with spilled hot coffee.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Joe said. “My fault. I wasn’t expecting anyone because we haven’t seen another car all morning.”
Nate was half-turned in the seat, watching glimpses of the SUV wink through the trees. “Two in the car but I couldn’t see them clearly,” he said. “Wyoming plates, but I didn’t get a number.”
Demming said, “I look like I wet my pants.”
“His driving does that to people,” Nate said.
“I’m sorry,” Joe said to Demming, shooting Nate a glance. Nate smiled back.
Joe breathed slowly until his nerves calmed, then pulled back onto the road.
Cutler’s park service pickup was sitting where they had parked the day before. Joe pulled up beside it as Demming used the last of a box of tissues to absorb the coffee on her uniform pants. He put the close call behind him and climbed out.
The odor in the air was familiar, he thought, but it was from a different time and place. It reminded him of Sundays, growing up, and the smell that came from the kitchen while he lounged in the living room with his brother, Victor, watching football.
Joe wondered if the meeting with his father had skewed his mind, triggered reminiscences that had long been put away.
Nate got out, sniffed, squinted with puzzlement, said, “Pork roast?”
Joe clipped the Glock onto his belt, cold dread gripping his stomach, remembering something Cutler had said the day before.
By the time they found Mark Cutler’s body in Sunburst Hot Springs, his volunteer Park Service uniform and most of his flesh had separated from the skeleton and was floating free, boiling in the water. Commas of black curly hair were being carried down the runoff chute along with bouncing yellow globulesof parboiled fat.
“No . . .” Demming gasped, stuffing her fist in her mouth, turning away.
Joe froze, stared in absolute horror, and forgot for the longest time how to breathe. Finally, he unclenched himself and put his arms around Demming and held her. She didn’t resist. He felt her hot tears on his neck.
He looked over her head at the scene. The trunk of the body turned slowly in the hot springs and more pieces came loose. The spring boiled angrily. Joe made himself look away, despite a morbid fascination that shamed him.
“That poor son of a bitch,” Nate said as he joined them. “When I go, I want it to be from a bullet to the head. I sure as hell don’t want to be stew.”
Demming was the first to recall the encounter with the black SUV. Voice trembling, she tried to contact dispatch on her handheld to alert rangers on patrol as well as the personnel at the park gates. No one answered.
“Come in, anyone,” she said.
Static.
“We’re out of range,” she said dully, indicating the radio. “Let’s try Mark’s truck radio.”
“On the chance he left it unlocked and his keys in it,” Joe said, clearly remembering how fastidious Cutler had been about taking his keys and locking the truck at every stop the day before.
As they trudged back toward the vehicles, Joe said, “That SUV can’t be more than fifteen minutes away. Maybe we can catch it.”
“Mark was such a nice guy,” Demming said. “No one deserveswhat happened to him. If whoever was driving that SUV did this, I’ll shoot and ask questions later.”
“I like her style,” Nate said to Joe.
“We don’t know anything yet,” Joe said. “We don’t even know if the SUV driver even saw Mark,