Текст книги "Nowhere to Run"

Автор книги: C. J. Box

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

29

One by one, the glassy surfaces of the alpine cirques Joe and Nate rode past mirrored the stars and slice of moon. When a trout rose and nosed the water at the second cirque, Joe found himself unexpectedly heartened as he watched lazy ringlets alter the reflection.

They’d cut down the bodies and stacked them on the side of the trail. Joe rooted through their pockets and found no personal items or identification of any kind. He and Nate covered the bodies with dead logs and sheets of bark to try to prevent predators from feeding on them, and Joe bookmarked the location in his GPS so he could later direct search teams to the exact place to recover and identify the bodies. Dave Farkus had not been among the dead.

It was two in the morning when they rode by the last cirque and Joe clucked and pulled his horse off the trail to parallel the meandering outlet stream.

Nate said, “Is this the creek you followed out of the mountains last time?”

“Yup.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“No Name Creek,” Joe said. “Really.”

“Seems fitting,” Nate said, clucking his horse forward.

“Stay alert,” Joe said to Nate, although he was really talking to himself. “Those brothers could be anywhere.”

Deep in the timber and far down the mountain on its western slope, Joe almost rode by the dark opening where the cabin had been. He didn’t so much see it as feel it-a creeping shiver that rolled from his stomach to his throat that made him rein to a stop and turn to his right in the saddle.

“Here,” he said. He nosed the gelding over, and the horse splashed through the shallow stream and to the other side. As he rode through the opening, the familiarity of it in the starlight made him relive his escape from the cabin. When he reached the clearing where the cabin had been, he rode around it, puzzled. Ghostly columns of pale starlight lit the opening. But there was no sign of the burned cabin, just a tangled pile of deadfall.

Nate asked, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“It’s got to be,” Joe said. He probed the deadfall with the beam of his flashlight.

Sweeping the pool of light across the dead branches, he noted a small square of orange.

“Ah,” he said with relief, and dismounted. With the flashlight in his mouth shining down, Joe tugged at branches and threw them away from the pile. He kicked away the last tangle to reveal a square foundation of bricks, which was where the woodstove had been.

“The Grim Brothers hid the scene,” he said to Nate. “They carted away whatever was still here and covered the footprint of the cabin in downed timber. No wonder Sheriff Baird and his men never found this.”

“I was starting to wonder myself,” Nate said with a grin. “I was thinking maybe you made it all up.”

“Ha ha,” Joe said sourly.

Joe and Nate sat on opposite ends of a downed tree trunk at four in the morning, facing the slash pile that covered up the remains of the cabin, each with his own thoughts. Joe tried to eat some deer jerky he’d brought along, but every time he started to chew he thought of the faces of the three bodies hanging from the cross pole, and he lost his appetite. He could hear Nate slowly crunching gorp from a Ziploc bag on the other end of the log, and their horses munching mountain grass. There was no more reassuring sound, Joe thought, than horses eating grass. Their grum-grumchewing sound was restful.

If only everything else were, he thought.

That’s when he clearly heard a branch snap deep in the timber. The sound came from the north, from somewhere up a wooded slope.

There were distinctive sounds in the mountains, Joe knew. He was never a believer of trees’ falling silently in the forest if there was no one there to hear it, because he didn’t believe it was all about him, or any other human. Nature did what nature did. To philosophize that acts occurred in the wild in the presence of people and for their benefit was to acknowledge that humans were gods. Joe knewthat not to be the case, and always thought anyone who bought that line of thought to be arrogant or new to the outdoors. In fact, from his experience, the forest could get downright loud. Trees, especially pines, had wide and shallow root systems. Hard winds knocked them over, where they’d fall with a crash and expose the upturned root pan. Dead branches blew off and fell down. One tree fell into another. Sometimes a bear or cat tried to climb one of the inferior high-altitude trees and the weight of the animal toppled it over. A herd of elk moving through dry and down timber sometimes sounded like a freight train that had jumped the tracks.

But there was a unique sound to a dry branch snapping under the foot of a man. It was a deep and muffled crack, like a silenced gunshot. It was a different sound from that of a twig breaking under the hard cloven hoof of an ungulate-an elk or moose-that produced a sharp snap like a pretzel stick being halved. At the sound, Joe rolled to his right and he sensed Nate roll to his left. Joe had no doubt Nate was on his knees with the.454 Casull drawn by now. For his own part, he had the shotgun ready. He slowly jacked a shell into the chamber to keep the metal-on-metal action as quiet as possible, and when the live shell was loaded into the chamber he fed another double-ought round into the receiver. He held his shotgun at the ready and felt his senses straining to determine if whoever had made the sound was closer, farther, or standing still.

Joe turned to his left to ask Nate if he could hear any more sounds, but Nate was gone. Joe squinted into the darkness, trying to find his friend.

When he couldn’t, Joe settled back on his haunches behind the downed log, his shotgun muzzle pointed vaguely uphill.

There was another muffled snap, this one closer than the first. He estimated the sound coming from fifty feet away.

He raised the shotgun and lay the doused Maglite along the forward stock. His heart pounded in his chest, and he thought if it beat any harder, everybody would be able to hear it.

As he stared into the shadowed darkness of the trees, he saw a single small red dot for a moment six feet off the ground. It blinked out. Then he saw it again. Joe was sure that he was close enough that if he fired he’d probably hit the source of the light. He remembered Nate’s admonition to shoot first, but he couldn’t simply pull the trigger. Not without knowing who it was.

The roaring of blood in his ears nearly drowned out the voice of the man who said, “Joe, is that you?”

Then, “For Christ sake, Joe, don’t fucking shoot me!”

Joe said, “Farkus?” And he heard the hollow sound of the heavy steel barrel of Nate’s.454 smack hard into the side of Farkus’s head, toppling him over.

“Don’t kill him, Nate,” Joe said, sighing and getting to his feet. “I know this guy. He’s the local who owned one of the burned-up trucks back in the campground. The one who didn’t seem to fit into all of this.”

“Night vision goggles,” Nate said with contempt, nudging Farkus with the toe of his boot, “and unless I’m wrong, he’s wearing body armor, too. I’m thinking this Farkus guy isn’t quite what you and Baird thought he was.”

Farkus moaned and reached up to put his hand over the new gash and bump on the side of his head.

Joe stepped over the downed log and fixed his Maglite on Farkus. The bright light through the lenses of the goggles must have burned his retinas as if he were looking into the sun itself, the way Farkus winced and pulled the goggles off. He threw the equipment away from him, saying, “It’s like you blinded me.”

“You didn’t shoot,” Joe said to Nate, ignoring Farkus.

“No reason to,” Nate said. “I watched him come down through the trees focused totally on you. He was watching you every second. I was behind a trunk and he never even turned my way.”

Farkus croaked, “Why’d you smack me?”

Nate squatted down next to Farkus. “Because we’ve nearly been killed twice tonight by people who more than likely had night vision gear. And because you were lurking around in the dark, you idiot. You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off. Where did you get those goggles?”

Joe kept his flashlight on Farkus’s face, trying to read it. Farkus said, “I stole them. The vest, too.”

“Who’d you steal them from?” Nate asked.

“I took them off a dead guy,” Farkus said, sitting up. “He didn’t need them anymore. Being he was dead and all.”

Said Nate, “Who was the dead guy?”

“His name was Capellen. He was with the other guys from Michigan up here to find the Cline Brothers. Capellen was killed first, and I took his stuff.”

Joe said, “Start from the beginning, Dave. How did you get from the other side of the mountain to here?”

“They kidnapped me,” Farkus said. “The men from Michigan, I mean. I drove up on them at my elk camp, and they took me along with them because I know the mountains. They were tracking those damned brothers, but everything went bad for them. The brothers ambushed us and I was the only one left alive. Them brothers, they ain’t human, I tell you. They ain’t. You guys should turn around and get the hell out of here while you have the chance.”

Joe said, “What are they if they aren’t human?”

“Wendigos. Monsters. They can move through the trees like phantoms or something, and they can just appear wherever they want. I told you back at the trailhead, remember?”

“I remember,” Joe said.

“So how did you get away from them?” Nate asked with a smirk. “Did you hold a cross up and just walk away?”

“I waited until they were gone,” Farkus said, “and I managed to get untied. They’ve completely left the mountains for somewhere else. They ain’t around no more. They had me tied up in a cave, I mean a cabin.”

Nate drew his arm back as if he were going to backhand Farkus, and the man flinched and grimaced, raising his arms to cover his face, ready for a blow.

“Nate,” Joe said.

When Farkus lowered his arms, Nate slapped him hard across his face.

“Why’d you do that?” Farkus protested. “I haven’t done nothing.”

Nate said, “You scared us, that’s what. And now you’re speaking gibberish. I hategibberish. Nobody confuses a cabin with a cave. So you’d better start telling us the truth about what’s really going on up here, or you won’t see morning come.”

Joe nodded. “Your story doesn’t jibe, Dave. Like maybe you’re making it up as you go along.” He kept his flashlight on Farkus’s face and noted how the man averted his eyes and blinked rapidly as he spoke-two signs of a lying witness. “Somebody set a trap that could have killed either one of us and later rolled a boulder down the mountain that could have taken us out. The brothers were seen clearly this afternoon by a sheriff at the trailhead where they were in the process of burning your truck. No one else would match thatdescription.

“Plus,” Joe said, lowering the beam of the flashlight to Farkus’s hands in his lap, “I don’t see any marks on your wrists from rope or wire. Which says to me you weren’t tied up at all. Now, I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them. If I think you’re lying again, I’m going to get up and walk away and leave you with Mr. Romanowski.”

He nodded toward Nate. “And whatever happens, happens. Got that?”

Farkus said, “Yes.”

“Good. Let’s start with the men from Michigan. We found three of them back on the trail. Who were they?”

“I told you. They were here to find the brothers and kill them.”

“Why?”

“They wouldn’t explain it all to me outright,” Farkus said. “Every time I asked what they were doing up here, they basically told me to shut up. But from what I could get from what they said to each other, it had to do with something that happened back in Michigan, where all of them were from. They were taking orders from this guy named McCue. He was at my elk camp with them, but he didn’t come along with us-”

“McCue?” Joe broke in. “Did I hear you right? Bobby McCue? Skinny guy? Older, kind of weary-looking?”

“That’s him,” Farkus said.

Joe took a deep breath.

Farkus continued, “The guys I was with knew the brothers, or knew enough about them, anyway. I got the feeling they might have clashed at one time or other.”

“It was personal, then?” Nate said.

“Not really. I think they knew of the brothers, like I said. But I’m sure it wasn’t personal. They were hired and outfitted by someone with plenty of money.”

“Did you hear any names besides McCue?”

“None that meant anything.”

“Try to remember,” Joe said, his head spinning.

Farkus scrunched up his eyes and mouth. He said, “McGinty. I think that was it. And Sugar.”

Joe felt a jolt. He said, “Senator McKinty and Brent Shober?”

“Could be right,” Farkus said.

Nate’s upper lip curled into a snarl.

Joe said to Nate: “What’s going on?”

Nate said, “It’s worse than we thought.”

Then Joe said to Farkus, “And all of you rode into a trap of some kind?”

“At the last cirque,” Farkus said, nodding. “We rode down the trail to the water and the lead guy, Parnell, rode through some rocks. He tripped a wire and a spike mounted on a green tree took him out.”

“We’re familiar with the trap,” Joe said. “Go on.”

“The brothers were on us like ugly on an ape,” Farkus said. “The horses blew up and started rearing and everybody got bucked off. The brothers finished off the wounded except for me.”

“Why’d they spare you?”

Farkus shook his head. “I don’t know, Joe. I just don’t know.”

“So they took you to their cabin. Or was it a cave?”

“It was a cabin.”

“Why did you say cave earlier?”

“You might have noticed there’s a big guy with a big gun right next to me. I was nervous and probably misspoke.”

“Ah,” Joe said, as if he was happy with the explanation. “And then the brothers just left?”

“Yes. They packed up and left me to die. They are completely out of this county by now. Maybe even out of the state.”

“Interesting you’re sticking with that,” Joe said. “So the rock that was rolled at us a while back was just a natural occurrence?”

“I don’t know anything about a rock,” Farkus said, his eyes blinking as if he he’d got dust blown into them. “All I know is there’s no point in you guys going after them anymore. They’re gone.”

“Were the brothers alone?”

“What do you mean?” When he asked, Farkus looked away and blinked his eyes.

“Was there a woman with them?” Joe asked softly.

“A woman?” Farkus said. “Up here?”

“Terri Wade or Diane Shober. I’m sure you’ve heard of at least one of them.”

Farkus shook his head.

Joe said to Nate, “We’re done here,” and stood up. “Should we dig a hole for the body, or let the wolves scatter his bones?”

Nate said, “I say we put his head on a pike. That kind of thing spooks Wendigos, I believe. Sends ’em running back to Canada, where they belong.”

Farkus looked from Nate to Joe, his eyes huge and his mouth hanging open.

“I’ve got no use for liars,” Nate said.

Joe turned to say something to Nate, but his friend was gone. He was about to call after him, but didn’t. Nate’s stride as he walked away contained purpose. And when Joe listened, he realized how utterly silent it had become in the forest surrounding them. No sounds of night insects or squirrels or wildlife.

He quickly closed the gap with Farkus and shoved the muzzle of his shotgun into the man’s chest. He whispered, “They’re here, aren’t they?”

Farkus gave an unwitting tell by shooting a glance into the trees to his left.

Joe said, “They sent you down here to distract us and pin us to one place while they moved in,” Joe said, his voice as low as he could make it.

Farkus didn’t deny the accusation, but looked at the shotgun barrel just below his chin.

“Hold it,” Farkus stammered, his voice cracking. “Hold it. You’re law enforcement. You can’t do this.”

Joe eased the safety off with a solid click.

“Really, please, oh, Jesus,” Farkus whispered. Then he raised his voice, “Don’t do this to me, please. You can’t do this. ”

“Keep your voice down,” Joe hissed, shoving the muzzle hard into Farkus’s neck.

From the shadows of the forest, Camish said, “I’m real surprised you came back, game warden.”

And fifty feet to the right of Camish, Nate said, “Guess what? I’ve got your brother.”

30

The standoff that occurred at 4:35 A.M. on the western slope of the Sierra Madre transpired so quickly and with such epic and final weight, and such a simple but lethal potential conclusion, that Joe Pickett found himself surprisingly calm. So calm, he calculated his odds. They weren’t good. He knew the likelihood of his sudden death was high and he wished like hell he had called his wife on the satellite phone and said good-bye to her and his precious girls. He also knew he would have apologized for dying for such a cause, and at the hands of the dispossessed. As if a man could choose his killer.

In this moment of clarity, Joe thought, sharp points elbowed their way to the fore:

• His shotgun was on Farkus and it would take one or two seconds to wheel and aim it at Camish;

• Camish had Joe’s heart in the sights of his rifle; knew Joe and Nate could cut him in half, so he must have a trump card, likely.

• Caleb had a.454 muzzle pressed against his temple and was unable to speak anyway;

• Farkus was clueless-he’d obviously been coerced by the brothers but hadn’t firmed up his storyline and he’d therefore stumbled into lies that piqued Joe’s interest;

• If one man pulled a trigger, a cacophony of exploding shots would throw lead through the void like a buzz saw and cut down all of them for eternity, and;

• Nobody wanted that.

At least Joe didn’t.

Joe said, “We all know the situation we’ve got here. It can go one way or the other. Things can get western in a hurry. If they do, I’m betting on my man Nate here to tip the scales, Camish. But I think a better idea may be sitting down and starting a fire and hashing this out.”

After a beat, Camish said, “You’re one of these folks thinks everything can be solved by talking?”

Said Joe, “No, I don’t believe that. No one has ever accused me of excess talking. But I think something really bad will happen any second if we don’t. I’m willing to sit down and discuss the possibility of more than two of us walking away from here.”

Camish said, “Caleb, you okay?”

The response was a muffled groan.

Nate said, “He’s about to lose the rest of his head.”

Camish’s voice was high and tight: “Don’t you hurt my brother.”

Joe realized his initial shocked calm had slipped away and he was sweating freely from fear. He struggled to keep his words even, hoping Camish would give in. It was easier to sound serious because he was.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s meet at that downed log a few feet from me. Camish can keep aiming at me. Nate can keep his gun at Caleb’s head. I’ll keep my shotgun on Farkus here. But when we get to the log we’ll sit down. How does that sound?”

From the dark, Joe heard Farkus say, “I’m kind of wondering where I fit into this deal.”

And Nate growl, “You don’t, idiot.”

Camish said, “Deal.”

Camish looked even thinner than Joe remembered him. It had been a rough few days. The man’s eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into hollows above his cheekbones and resembled marbles on a mantel. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, and all the silver hairs in his beard made him look gaunt and wizened. Like a Wendigo, Joe thought.

Joe and Nate sat on one log, the Grim Brothers on another. They faced each other.

Caleb sat in utter, pained silence. If anything, he looked more skeletal than his brother. His dark eyes flicked like insects between his brother and Joe and Nate as if hoping for a place to land. A dirt-filthy bandage was taped to his lower jaw. Caleb had an AR-15 with a scope across his lap, with the muzzle loosely pointed a foot to the right of Joe. Joe was sure the weapon was locked and ready to fire, and that Caleb was capable of spraying full automatic fire at him and Nate in a heartbeat. The weapon must have come from the Michigan boys, Joe thought.

In between them, they’d started a small fire. Farkus sat on a stump near the fire, positioned carefully equidistant from both logs. Farkus fed the fire with pencil-sized twigs. The fire shot lizard tongues at the darkness and occasionally flared due to a particularly dry piece of wood or because of time-concentrated pitch within the stick. The effect made Camish and Caleb’s faces fade in and out of the darkness in various stages of orange.

Nate sat silently on the log to Joe’s left. His friend didn’t even attempt to hide his proclivities, and he kept his.454 lying across the top of his thighs with his hand on the grip and his finger on the trigger. Joe knew Nate was capable of raising the weapon and firing at both of them in less than a second.

Whether Nate could take out both brothers before Caleb could fire his weapon at Joe and Nate was the question.

Joe said to Caleb, “I see your tactical vest now. I guess you were wearing it when I shot you with my Glock. Now I know why you didn’t go down.”

Caleb glared back at him, his eyes dark and piercing but his expression inscrutable.

“You know he can’t talk,” Camish said. “That shot to his lower jaw splintered his chinbone and somehow drove slivers of it into his talk box. The point-blank shot to his chest later probably didn’t help much, either. Anyways, he hasn’t spoken a word since that night.”

He said it matter-of-factly, and Joe let it sink in. Joe said, “I fired blindly when I hit him in the face. Not that I wasn’t trying to do damage-I was.”

Caleb almost imperceptibly nodded his head.

Joe said to Caleb, “I would have been happy to have killed you given the circumstances.”

Camish nodded, and he and Nate shared a look, which Joe found disconcerting.

“The circumstances are different depending on where you stand, I guess,” Camish said. “You have one version, we have a different version.”

Joe nodded. “Maybe so. But what I know is you boys came after me and killed my horses.”

Camish made his eyes big, and there was a slight smile on his face. “My version, game warden, is me and my brother were minding our own damned business and not bothering a soul when you rode up and wanted to collect a tax on behalf of the government, the tax being a license to fish so we could eat. And when we didn’t produce the license, you threatened our liberty. We, as freeborn Americans, resisted you.”

Joe held his tongue, but he shared a look with Nate. This confirmed his friend’s earlier theory.

Nate tipped his head toward Joe, but never took his eyes off Caleb. He said, “Joe’s kind of like that. It’s his worst fault. He’s damned stubborn.”

“My horses,” Joe said, glaring at Camish. “They belonged to my wife. She loved them like only a woman can love horses. You two killed them and butchered them.”

“Better than letting them go to waste, eh, Caleb?” Camish said, as if it made all the sense in the world, Joe thought. “Anyway,” Camish said, “we didn’t target your horses. They were collateral damage. We came after you so hard because there was something in your eyes when we met you. We knew you’d follow this goddamned stupid fishing license deal to the gates of hell. Otherwise, we’d just have let you ride away. We practically begged you to just ride out of here. But you wouldn’t let it go. You said you’d march us into court. All for a stupid twenty-four-dollar license.”

Joe said, “You boys are out of state. It’s ninety-four dollars for Michigan residents.”

Camish leaned back on his log and tipped his head back and laughed. Caleb snorted, sounding like the angry pneumatic staccato spitting of a pressure cooker on a stovetop.

Nate moaned.

Joe felt his neck get hot. He said, “It’s my job. I do my job.”

Camish finished his run of laughter, then cut it off. He leaned forward on the log and thrust his face at Joe. “That may be. But the things you set in motion. ”

Joe stood up. He let the muzzle of the shotgun swing lazily past Camish, past Caleb, past Nate. He said, “Tomorrow by this time, these mountains are going to be overrun. There will be hundreds of law enforcement personnel. Some of them will even know what they’re doing. You boys assaulted a sheriff and humiliated him. You assaulted meand humiliated me. The people who’ll be coming after you don’t even know about those three men you killed yet, which makes you cold-blooded murderers.”

From the far end of the downed log, Farkus said, “They killed four, not three.”

Camish said, “I wish you’d shut up, Dave.”

Joe broke in. “Four, three, it doesn’t matter at this point. You boys are done. Even if you figure out a way to hole up and not get caught tomorrow, this is only the beginning. You can’t really think you can stay here, do you? That you can set traps and hang dead men from cross poles and the world will just stay away? What are you thinking?”

With the last sentence, Joe stood and leaned into them and his voice rose. And he realized, by looking at Nate’s face, and the Grim Brothers, and Farkus in the light of the fire, how utterly alone he was.

“You people,” Camish said, his eyes sliding off Nate and settling on Joe, “you government people just keep coming. It’s like you won’t stop coming until you’ve got us all and you own everything we’ve got. Until we all submitto you. It ain’t right. It ain’t American. All we want to do is be left alone. That’s all.

“Hell, we know we make people nervous, me and Caleb. We know we look funny and we act funny to some people. We know they judge us. They made my mom out into some kind of stupid hillbilly when they went after her.”

Joe studied Camish’s face in the flickering firelight. Unlike Caleb’s terrifying, almost manic glare, Camish’s attitude had softened from its initial ferocity. Into what? Joe thought. Victory? Resignation?

“That’s all,” Camish echoed. “We thought you’d leave us alone back in Michigan if we just paid our taxes and kept our mouths shut. Didn’t we, Caleb?”

Caleb nodded and grunted.

Said Camish, “When they tried to take our property the first time, we fought ’em off pretty good. We thought it was over, that there was just no damned chance in the United States of America that the government could take a man’s land and give it to somebody just because they’d pay moretaxes. They backed off at first, and we thought we won. But they was like you, like all governments, I guess. They just kept coming. Those three things that are supposed to be our rights-life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Hell, the government’s supposed to protect those things. Instead, they took the last two of them away from us, just like that. Finally, they took our place from us and we lost our dad, our mom, and our brother in the process. They took all three of those rights away from them, didn’t they?”

He spoke in a flat, unsentimental way. Joe nodded for him to go on.

“When a thief comes into your home in the night and tries to take your property, it’s okay to shoot him. But when the government comes and wants the same thing, you go to jail if you resist. At least the thief puts his ownass on the line.”

Camish said, “We just wanted to find somewhere we could be left alone. Is that so damned much to ask?”

Nate said, “No, it isn’t.”

Joe sighed. “Problem is, no one can just walk away. Everyone has obligations.”

Camish said, “You mean like paying taxes?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Joe said, grateful it was dark so no one could see him flush. “Folks can’t expect services and programs without paying for them somehow.”

Camish said, “Why the hell should we pay for things we don’t want and don’t get? Why should the government take our money and our property and give it to other people? What the hell kind of place has this become?”

Joe said, “It’s not that bad or that simple. This whole mountain range, for example. It’s managed by the U.S. Forest Service, a government agency. Taxes pay for that.”

“We do our part,” Camish said. “We keep the riffraff out.”

Caleb snorted a laugh.

Joe said, “You boys vandalized some vehicles and scared the hell out of some campers. Not to mention that elk you took.”

Joe saw a flash of anger in Camish’s eyes. He didn’t even look at Caleb, hoping Nate had him covered. Camish said, “We did that to keep people away. To spook’em. We didn’t want to have to hurt somebody or take things too far, so we laid down a marker: Leave us alone. It’s our way of managing the place. We didn’t disturb or hurt anything that was perfect. Fish, deer, elk-whatever. If anything, we helped cull the herd. That’s management, too. It just ain’t done by bureaucrats sitting on their asses. Like the Forest Service, you know? Or you guys.”

Joe could feel Nate’s eyes on the side of his face, but he didn’t look over.

Instead, Joe said, “Diane Shober. Tell me about her.”

“Yeah,” Camish said. “I was expecting you might have recognized her that night. She thought so, too.”

Joe waited. He looked up and realized Caleb was trying to tell Camish something with his eyes. Caleb looked distressed.

Camish said, “I won’t get too far into it, but Diane felt like she needed a refuge, too. So we offered her one.”

Joe said, “I find that hard to believe.”

Camish said, “Believe whatever the hell you want. But sometimes it’s hard to see how much pressure is being put on a person. And how it’s pretty damned nice to find a place where no one expects you to live up to a certain standard.”

“Her fiance?” Joe said.

“Yeah, him. But especially Daddy,” Camish said. “That man expected one whole hell of a lot. He lived his life through her, but she can’t stand him. He’s one of those parasites. He got rich taking other people’s property and money. We’d tangled before. She knew we didn’t like or respect the man. She knew we’d help her out.”

Joe nodded his head. “You had a common enemy,” he said, echoing Marybeth’s words.

“’Course we did,” Camish said. “He’s the developer who got our family property. Friend of a damned crooked Senator McKinty from Michigan and his no-good son.”

Joe sighed. He had no reason to disbelieve Camish, though he looked hard for one.

Camish turned to Farkus. “He’s the one sent them Michigan boys after us, right Dave?”

Farkus nodded, his eyes moving from Joe to Camish as if watching a tennis match.

Joe said, “You mean the senator? Are you saying a U.S. senator sent a private hit squad after you?”

“Naw,” Camish said. “Diane’s old man did that. They were supposed to take us out and take her back. And the way things work, I’d bet the senator and his son knew all about it, but nobody would ever be able to prove that. That’s how those folks are. We don’t want no part of those politicians anymore. That’s why we’re here.”