Free Fire - C. J. Box [93]
She seemed to be debating whether or not to terminate the call.
“Look,” he lied, “if it would be easier, we can send somebodyover to your place to talk about this. It might be more comfortable for you.” Hoping she wouldn’t call his bluff.
“I said I was going out. No, okay. It’s okay, I thought you were asking—”
“No.”
“We saw all the sights, I guess. Some big canyons, some trees, a bunch of geysers. Old Faithful. Way too many fat peoplein shorts. I think Yellowstone ought to have some kind of fitnesstest you have to pass to get in. I mean, gross.”
“Did you go to a place called Sunburst Hot Springs?” Joe asked casually.
“Hmmm, I’m trying to remember the name.”
“Did you go hot-potting there?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sunburst. That was actually kind of a cool place. Except it’s illegal, you know. They keep you from going to the really cool places.”
“Okay,” Joe said, “I’m going to ask you a question but beforeyou answer I want you to know that however you answer it, you will not be incriminated in any way.”
“Huh?”
“Was Hoening involved with drugs? I’m not asking about you, I’m asking about him.”
She seemed relieved and said, “Alcohol only. But lots of it. He was really backward in his thinking. I couldn’t get him to . . . never mind.”
“So he never used drugs in your presence?”
“Alcohol. It’s a drug, you know.”
“Then can you tell me what he meant when he wrote to you”—Joe fished out the e-mail—“‘We’ll have some cocktails and laughs, watch the sun set over Yellowstone Lake, go hot-pottingand light a couple of flamers.’ ”
“Ooooh,” she said, enthusiasm gushing for the first time, “those things were the coolest of all! Flamers, yeah. They were, like, great.”
21
TWO POINT TWO MILLION ACRES, JOE THOUGHT. YELLOWSTONEwas that big. And while he now had a plan, he didn’t have a car.
There was a layer of light snow suspended on the grass and melting on the pavement in front of the Mammoth Hotel. He could see his breath as he walked to the restaurant for breakfast. The morning was achingly silent. Rising columns of steam from the hot spring terraces on the hill muted the sun, making it seem overcast despite the cloudless blue sky. Although it could, and did, snow any month of the year in the park, it definitely felt like summer was spent and had stepped aside in utter exhaustionto yield to fall and winter.
His mind was on something else, though.
Flamers, they called them.
Like the snowflakes that hung in the air, turning into floating sparks by the morning sun, thoughts and facts seemed suspendedtoo. While it might be folly to try to connect them, Joe felt the need to try. It was more of a hunch than a theory, and he’d made mistakes going with his hunches before. But somehowit felt right. It was the new knowledge of the flamers that did it.
Flamers. The Gopher State Five. Clay McCann. Sunburst Hot Springs. Bob Olig. The black SUV. What Mark Cutler figuredout but never got a chance to explain. And now Clay McCannagain, with more blood on his hands. Somehow, they were all connected.
Samantha Ellerby had described flamers as streams of gas coming from tiny quarter-sized holes in the ground that could be lit with a match. She said the flame reached at least six feet into the air, sometimes higher, and provided both heat and light for hot-potting. She said there were at least seven of them near Sunburst Hot Springs, and when they were all lit up at night surroundingthe hot pool the atmosphere was “way cool.” She said when it was time to leave, Hoening smothered the flames by covering the holes with a thick wet blanket.
The Zone of Death was a diversion, he thought. This wasn’t about the Zone of Death at all. The murders were a means to an end, a way of dealing with those facts that hung in the air and were somehow, some way, connected.
He hoped that a revelation would come to him while he ate breakfast, that the