Death Canyon (18 page)

Stormy was exactly what it looked like the afternoon was going to become, and quickly. Dark palisades of thunderheads rolled ominously toward Jake and Noelle from the south, filling up the canyon. The air was cooler and more fragrant now as well—a sure sign of an approaching storm. When they pulled into the tavern's parking lot the rain was beginning to fall in large, bulbous drops. The parking lot was so dusty and the drops so huge that each individual dollop tossed up its own dust cloud into the air.

“Well, we could use the rain,” Jake said aloud as he looked up
at the darkening sky, eyes half-closed in case one of the giant drops unluckily landed on him.

“Isn't that always the case?” Noelle responded. “Same deal as before? You want the hot chick to do the talking?” Noelle smiled.

“Pretty much.” Jake's eyes bugged at the flirty tone, but he kept his cool. “Let's just have a seat at the bar and see where it leads.”

Jake held the door for Noelle as she entered the cavelike taproom. It wasn't an intentionally polite gesture, but one that she appreciated nonetheless. She acted as if she wasn't expecting him to hold the door and then slipped through, mouthing the words “thank you.” Her lips were only a few inches from his face.

Jake felt silly—was he using this opportunity to spend a bit more time with Noelle? He fruitlessly tried to steer his mind from Noelle and his feelings for her. He'd spent too much time in the past pondering questions of romance and women. Unfortunately, he never came up with much.

Elspet had presented him with an unsolvable problem, and it had left him confused and insecure about romantic relations. She was a strong woman who needed independence but still demanded a man stronger than herself. She had high expectations, but also yearned for someone free-spirited and adventurous. She was incredibly sweet but, when crossed, horrifyingly lethal.

After much post-Elspet pondering, Jake's conclusion was that whatever he felt for her or she felt for him, it wasn't love.
Love
was a word that described the mutual feeling of respect and reliance between two people. It wasn't the attraction or lust that one felt early in a relationship. That was something else, something dangerous. It was also the close brethren of jealousy, hateful passion, and insanity. There was a reason they called it “sparks.” It almost always led to a wildfire.

Now, as he and Noelle sat on the knobby pine bar stools, something
occurred to Jake that seemed like a final piece of the puzzle dropping easily into an otherwise complete picture. The problem in part was his own expectations—he couldn't expect any woman to be his savior and that was exactly what he had needed during those last few years on the East Coast. Now, as he settled into the seat, he understood that he finally wanted someone to
love
.
Someone to care for and enjoy.
He didn't expect perfection, but could something very close to it be sitting right next to him?

“Jake?” Noelle asked, at first with a worried face and then laughing as Jake came back to reality with the same tiny daydream shudder that affects a person as he is falling asleep.

“Ah, I'm sorry—was just trying to think about the forest, but I got stuck in the trees,” Jake said coolly, glancing to see if a bartender was near.

“Easy, Wordsworth. If there's a big picture here, we'll find it,” Noelle responded, misunderstanding his sentiment. Jake gave her a meaningful look.

A large, tattooed bartender ambled over, and Jake motioned for Noelle to order first. She got a bottled beer, some microbrew that Jake wasn't familiar with. Jake ordered tonic water with lime.

“Can't have just one?” Noelle said.

“It's not that—just the driver.” He patted the pocket of his jeans where he kept the keys. This was only partially true. He wanted to stay sharp, not just because he was keen to do some serious problem solving regarding the recent deaths, but also because he wanted to listen to Noelle and learn about her. A couple of beers and he might just talk about himself. This was something he wanted to avoid.

When the bartender returned with their drinks, Noelle asked him if he had been working the prior weekend.

“Sure was,” he responded. “I work every night this time of
year.” He began drying a few old, pitted pint glasses in front of them with a stained cloth.

Jake looked around the bar. It featured a handwritten sign advertising a “roll-a-day” dice game among the traditional beer mirrors and posters.

It wasn't at all uncommon around Jackson. He knew that when closing time was approaching, the bar probably turned into a dice casino. People mostly played with small bills—usually just ones or sometimes fives. There would be some hard-core players that bet twenties, but they were a small group and most folks wouldn't play with them for fear of losing their modest paychecks. For the most part, the cops turned a blind eye.

“Do you think you would happen to remember a certain patron if we could describe him to you?” Noelle asked the bartender.

“More than likely. It's been pretty empty around here. Only a few guys a night and I know most of them. Who's asking?”

Noelle glanced at Jake, giving him his cue. “Right,” he said. “The guy was five ten or so, fit, blond hair. He was young.”
Sounds like every guy in Jackson Hole,
Jake thought.

“Well, there were mostly locals here Saturday night—people I recognized, and most of our demo is not so young,” the bartender said, keeping his eyes on Noelle as if she were the one who described the man.

“Friday night there was a couple here early—around eight p.m.—and the guy was
not
fit. Later on, three dudes came in and hit it pretty hard. I guess they were young and fit, not that I really noticed.” He laughed, keeping his eyes on Noelle.

Machismo bullshit,
Jake thought.
Judging by this guy's muscles and the way he keeps his hair, he pays plenty of attention to what his competition looks like.

Noelle resumed the questioning. “What do you remember about the three guys? Were they people you know?”

“Nope, never seen 'em before in my life,” the bartender responded. “Looked like it must have been the one guy's bachelor party or something. It seemed like the other two were kinda taking care of him—feeding him drinks, clapping his back—but they didn't have much to drink themselves. Bad tippers, too.”

“What made you think it was a bachelor party?” Jake interjected.

The man seemed annoyed that Jake was getting involved again. He huffed quietly. “They didn't
say
it was a bachelor party, no, but I didn't ask. I just got that idea because it seemed like they were celebrating something for the guy in the middle.”

“The guy who was drinking more than the others?”

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe it wasn't a bachelor party, maybe my man just broke up with his girl, how should I know? Could've been a pity party.”

Jake got up and headed for the bathroom without saying anything to Noelle or the bartender. As he rounded the corner of the bar he looked back to see if the bartender was watching him. He was still focused on Noelle. Jake reached behind the bar to the keypad of the cash register and grabbed the pen that was resting there. Then he took a napkin from the disorderly stack on the bar. Jake returned shortly and smiled at the bartender, who didn't return the smile. In his absence, Noelle and the man had started making small talk. Jake set his hand on Noelle's thigh and said, “Honey, I've got to go to the car and make a phone call. Meet me there?” Jake finished his virgin beverage.

“Of course,” Noelle replied smoothly, and Jake left the bar.

The bartender stepped away for a moment to tend to another
patron. Noelle looked down at her thigh, which was shielded from the bartender's view by the overlapping edge of the bar's counter. Scrawled on the napkin were the words “Get cc info. Meet at car.”

Cc info?
Noelle thought for a moment. Jake must have meant credit card information, but how the hell was she supposed to procure the credit card information for the men at the bachelor party, or whatever it was that caused them to celebrate that night? There was no way that the bartender would give up this information. She thought again.

The bartender was chatting with another customer. When he came to see if Noelle wanted another drink, she had figured out a solution, though she was doubtful it would work.

“The reason we asked about those men is that . . . well.” Noelle feigned embarrassment.

“Well, go on,” the man urged her, interested.

Noelle put on her best spoiled-housewife facade.

“My dear husband is in sales. Has been forever. His father was in sales and his father before him. They have been very successful. Selling extremely rare items. Unfortunately, my husband's little brother was never interested in the family business. He was always sort of—how shall I say—a fuckup, you know, like the black sheep?”

Where am I getting this stuff?

“He wanted to start his own business. Anyway, my husband invited him up to our place to stay and figure things out or whatever. His brother shows up, but with two friends, two guys we don't know. They don't even make it one night before they take off with all of my husband's inventory. The thing is, this stuff is valuable, old stuff,
really
old stuff, and it's worth a fortune. Our entire savings.”

The bartender was listening intently. Noelle had him hooked.

“The problem is, it's not all on the books. Do you know what I mean? We can't try to recover our stuff by normal means. We can't just call the cops.” Noelle looked directly at him.

“So what do you want from me?” the bartender asked. She brushed a few strands of hair from her eyes and intensified her eye contact, whispering:

“If you can, I need the names of the guys that were here. Did they happen to leave a credit card receipt, anything like that?” Noelle was cringing on the inside. This was the moment of truth.

“I can check,” the man responded, as if she hadn't asked for much. As Noelle breathed a sigh of relief, the bartender pointed at her hand. “Where's your ring?”

“If you must know, we haven't been getting along so well recently.” She winked at the man. “It's mainly a financial relationship these days.” The bartender looked at her and nodded.

The wink and the possibility that Noelle might in fact be single had sealed the deal. He went to the cash register, grabbed a stack of receipts from under the cash drawer, and went into the back. Noelle could only hope that the men hadn't paid in cash. The fact that they had apparently heartily indulged made it more likely that a credit card was used.

“Your lucky day,” the bartender said as he strode toward Noelle, now on her side of the bar. She crumpled up Jake's note in her fist. “I've got a name on the receipt.”

“Wow, I can't thank you enough.” Noelle took the receipt from the man and looked at the name. C. Stanford. It didn't ring a bell, but it was something to go on.

“That's perfect. Thanks so much! I'll see you around.” She winked again and left the bar.

The Shaman was furious. He had just been asked—ordered, really—to abandon his followers and stay under the radar until the original task was completed. Even the Shaman had a boss.

You have to lay low at this point,
his boss had told him. When they were done the Shaman would have to disappear anyway, but with his pockets fuller and his wicked thirst finally quenched by the crisp chill of due revenge.

He had agreed to do what was asked of him during their little meeting but never intended to actually follow through.

Fuck him! Who is he to tell me what to do?

He was enjoying his ploy too much to abandon it now. There was intense satisfaction in maintaining power over his contingent. To them, he was like a god.
Why throw it all away now?

The Shaman's cell phone rang. “Yes.” His tone was cold as he
spoke into the mobile phone. Every phone was purchased with stolen credit card numbers and prepaid, except for one. That mobile phone was purchased on an account under the name of a real individual—Jake Trent of Jackson, Wyoming. A name the Shaman thought about often. This was the phone the Shaman primarily used.

“I hit someone . . . um, I hit someone with my car, er,
the
car,
your
car.” A nervous voice threw the stream of words into the phone and they poured out of the small speaker, which added its own edge to the already annoying whine.

“Okay,” the Shaman responded, being cruelly cool at first. “I have no idea
who the hell
I am talking to.” His intensity escalated. “Let's start over and please stop shrieking like a woman.” Only a handful of his followers knew the number to this phone and so the Shaman did in fact have an idea who it was. One of his moronic followers had screwed something up already.

“I hit someone with the car on my way to the stakeout point. I . . . I think I probably, er, definitely killed him. This guy, he had just killed an elk, hit it with his car. I saw red, thought he deserved the same. This is Sam, sir.”

“Did anyone see you?” The Shaman gripped the phone tighter with anger.

“I don't know—I don't think so, there was a truck nearby but I couldn't tell whether or not he saw it—the collision, I mean. He didn't stop, I don't think.”

The Shaman weighed the consequences before speaking. “And that's all?” The Shaman was calm now. This incident might not be such a bad thing after all, as long as nobody had seen Sam.
Hell, it might actually work out better if someone did see the car.

“Um, yes . . . sir. That's all.” To the Shaman, the kid seemed confused. His voice was still strained and trembling.