The Glacier Gallows (30 page)

“So you think Blake Foreman stashed the gun—” Derek started.

“No. Whoever Blake was, he was just the helper. You see, we also found a few strands of nylon from a climbing rope, which means that before Brian was killed, someone down-climbed to that ledge and retrieved the gun and climbed back up. We put that together while we were out there, Derek. Then someone sent us a message to
back off
. They trashed our camp. I think they were trying to flush us down the Crypt Lake Trail. I think they intended an ambush.”

“It sure as hell wasn't me—”

“There's more.” Cole cut him off. “I never could buy the story that Blake Foreman, who was out helping look for Brian, tripped and fell to his death. It just didn't work. I've been out in the mountains a lot in my life. I know accidents happen. But this just seemed too much. Why didn't he come back when he was told that Brian's body had been found? What was he doing?”

“He wanted to see if he could find any sign—”

Again Cole cut Derek off. “That's a load of crap, Derek. What do you think this is, an episode of
Man Tracker
? You can't track someone over a pile of rocks like the one above Crypt Lake. Not unless they leave a baggie lying around for someone to find, that is. No, it just didn't add up. What really got me was that Blake supposedly fell a good thirty feet. He landed on his back and split the back of his head open. Blood all over the place. Brains leaking out. A real mess.”

“It was. I did the
ID
. It was awful.”

“He didn't fall. He was murdered. He was hit in the back of the head with a rock and he fell forward.”

“The
FBI
has ruled out foul play in his death.”

“I think they will be re-examining that decision.”

“Do you have evidence?”

“I have logic.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What would you say Blake's pack weighed when he was out that morning?”

“I don't know.”

“Guess.”

“I don't—”

“Guess!” Several patrons looked at Cole as he yelled the word.

“Twenty pounds, maybe twenty-five.”

“What was in it?”

“A first-aid kit, binoculars, food, water, his Nikon.”

“If Blake Foreman fell thirty feet to his death and cracked the back of his skull open, what was between him and the ground when it happened?”

“Nothing was. He fell straight onto the rocks.”

“His pack. His pack was between him and the ground. But when the
FBI
recovered that bag, was anything broken? The fragile glass in the binoculars? His camera? No case, just a Nikon stuffed into the bag, right at the back. It's fine. He didn't fall. He was hit on the head and then the body was arranged to make it look like he fell. He was murdered.”

“So whoever killed Brian killed Blake? Why?”

“Eliminate witnesses.”

“Who could have done this?”

“Good question. I was originally thinking about Rick Turcotte.”

“That could be. But they were friends.”

“Sure they were. But Brian had recently crossed the floor, and Rick felt betrayed.”

“He went off to make that phone call.”

“Sure did. He could have tracked down Blake and bludgeoned him with the rock. Maybe he even hired someone to kill Chip. That's where the supposition ends. Rick couldn't have engineered the set-up with Charlie Crowfoot. I mean, he could have paid someone to do all of this, but it's a huge stretch. Besides, someone else had a much better opportunity to kill Chip, then Brian, then Blake, and to provide a young, impressionable, dependent Charlie Crowfoot with the means to frame me and then take his own life.”

“Cole—”

“You know, Derek, talking with you here, I've been thinking about your business model. They say that diversity is the key to a successful business enterprise. Maybe you need a new angle, Derek. Maybe what you need is to branch out. I hear there's good money to be made in the energy business.”

“Cole, I climb mountains, hump packs, show people around Glacier Park. I don't know the first thing about looking for natural gas.”

“Oh, but you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You worked a security detail while you served in Iraq, didn't you?”

“Yeah. I did. So did lots of guys. It was almost a decade ago. I was in the National Guard. I got called up.”

“You went back after your first rotation, you and a bunch of others. Two years doing private security for the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister for Energy. You were kind of famous.”

Derek McGrath looked down at his coffee cup. It was empty. He fiddled with it.

“
Then
you got out. But you didn't really get out, did you? You just came home and continued to do what you had been doing before, and this time you played for the home team.”

“Cole, you've been under a lot of stress. I don't know what you're driving at, but you'd better take your foot off the gas before you say something stupid.”

“When you got home, you started doing legwork for
HCE
on the Blackfeet Reservation. It was a good extension of what you'd been doing overseas. I was told that there is two million dollars missing from
HCE
's advertising and promotion budget. Is that what this was about? Mind you, there wasn't as much wetwork—isn't that what you call it? When things get messy?—as there was when you were cleaning up after your bosses over in Iraq. Back here, you carried the bag for Senator Thompson. You were the one who was meeting with Blackfeet elders and council members. They're starving and you were only too happy to promise them the moon. Let
HCE
frack the shit out of the place and you'll make sure people like Charlie Crowfoot get jobs driving the high-paid help—all white—out to the well sites. You even promise them a new grocery store and maybe a gymnasium for the high school. But then along comes Brian Marriott. And he starts poking his nose into things, and gets people all fired up about wind power, and it starts to look like
HCE
isn't going to have an easy ride, no matter how much graft it pours into the game. So someone—maybe Lester Thompson—tells you to take care of things. Maybe he even spells it out. And you go and clean things up.”

“Cole, you've lost your marbles.”

“Have I? I don't know, Derek—this all makes perfectly good sense to me. First you tried to scare Brian off. You even gave him fair warning. Sent him death threats. He didn't take the hint. He didn't back off. You suggested to Joe Firstlight, who you knew was in league with Brian, that maybe the two of them should organize a hike, and then you had Brian right where you wanted him.”

“You're fucking crazy, Cole.” Derek's voice was low. He was toying with his cup. The server refilled it, but he didn't look at her.

“Why kill Chip? And why bring Blake on the hike? That's what I don't understand. And why set me up? Why not just push Brian off a cliff and be done with it?” Derek started to stand, but Cole shot out a hand and clamped it down on the guide's arm. “Where's your ring, Brian?”

“Get your hands off me.”

“When we were on the hike, you had a ring on. It's a platoon ring, isn't it? Same one Lester Thompson wears. I bet it's the same one his son wears. That's how you know each other. You served with his son. Where's the ring?”

Derek had arms like corded steel, and he pulled his hand out from under Cole's grip. Cole grabbed his coffee and threw it in Derek's face. Derek seemed unharmed; he grabbed Cole by his injured shoulder in a viselike grip, and Cole felt as if he would faint. Several patrons moved away from the struggling duo as Derek walked Cole toward the front door. Two men jumped out of a
GMC
Yukon parked in front of the building. Special Agent Steve McCallum drew his sidearm and shouted, “
FBI
! Hands where I can see them!”

Before the agents could close the distance, Cole felt the barrel of a gun press into his neck. Derek pulled Cole by the shoulder back into the café, and Cole winced, the pain immobilizing him.

“What are you doing? You know you won't get out of here.” Cole had his eyes closed against the pain.

“Then neither will you.”

“Did Thompson pay you to kill Brian?” They were halfway through the back room of the restaurant now. Patrons gave them a wide berth.

“Lester Thompson had nothing to do with any of this. This was
my
doing. Me alone. It had nothing to do with Thompson or Iraq.”

“Then why? Why kill all those people.”

“Brian should have minded his own business. He was going to make it impossible for me to branch out. I was at my wit's end. It went too far.”

They reached the back of the Two Medicine Grill. Cole opened his eyes and felt like he would pass out from the pain in his shoulder. “Why not just do what everybody else does? Just use the system to beat the enviros? Brian didn't have to die. Those others too. And Charlie Crowfoot? Would you really have killed his family?”

“Cole, I swear to God, when people come between you and your chance to feed your kids, you fall back on what you know. That's all there is to it. You've got to believe me.” Derek's voice had gone from menacing to almost pleading. He let go of Cole. Cole turned and faced him. They were standing by the rear door of the building. It opened into a small courtyard and then an alley.

Cole said, “Put the gun down, Derek.”

“You're right, Cole. It all went too far. But I can still save my own family and yours too. Just let it go. It was all me. I did this. I bought into
HCE
. I knew Thompson's son in Iraq. We served in the same unit. When the senator quit politics, I invested everything I had in
HCE
. Then they got into fracking, and the Blackfeet and you guys started making life difficult. I made the decision to kill Brian.
I
was the one. Let it go.
Please.
” Derek shoved Cole against the wall and reached for the back door.

“Derek, stop!” Cole shouted.

Derek pulled open the back door. Through the adjacent window, Cole saw movement; someone was crouched behind a truck parked at the rear of the building. Derek turned and said calmly, “Cole, get down.” Instead Cole lunged at him, but Derek charged out the door. Blinded by the pain in his shoulder and the glaring midday light, Cole tripped on the doorsill and fell into the dirt.

Cole heard a shout. “
FBI
! Drop your—” The voice was cut off by a single shot. It was followed quickly by half a dozen more, and Derek McGrath's body fell to the ground beside Cole.

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA. JULY 9.

BRIAN MARRIOTT DROPPED HIS PACK
at the top of the long, steep incline. Several other hikers were already setting up their tents on the hard stone of the plateau. Behind him others were arriving, including his good friend Joe Firstlight and his old buddy Rick Turcotte. Rick stopped next to Brian, breathing hard. “It's been awhile since we did anything like this, Brian.”

“Rick, I don't think our hunting and fishing trips to your cabin were anything like
this
. I seem to remember steak, red wine, and baked potatoes most nights.”

“Still . . . this really is something.”

“It is.” Brian turned and looked to the west. “You see that cirque over there?” He pointed to the valley on the far side of Waterton Lake, ten miles distant.

“That
what
? Cirque?”

“A hollowed-out valley left behind by a glacier.”

“Man, you have changed.”

“I read a lot. You see that? Just thirty years ago, there was a glacier there, five miles long and half a mile thick. Now, nothing.”

“You can't blame oil and gas companies for that, Brian. I read too. Some people say that this warming is just the natural cycle of the sun.”

“When Glacier National Park has no glaciers left, what are we going to call it? A few more years, and they will be gone. What do we do for water?”

“ARE WE OKAY?”
Brian sat down next to Cole at supper. They balanced plates on their laps.

“Yeah, we're fine. How could we not be?” Cole looked around him at the crepuscular light slipping down the dip-slope mountains.

“I just mean—”

“Look, Brian. There was a time when you and I couldn't agree on one damn thing. Now we're working together. Hell, in many ways you're way out in front of me on this climate-change thing. But from time to time we're going to disagree. That's inevitable.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I just don't like to fight in front of the kids.”

“It's good for them. Makes them tough.”

“Man, I forgot about your temper.”

“I'm working on it. I see a shrink now.”

“Really?”

Cole sighed. “Yeah, for about the last year. Things got pretty out of control for a while. Bad dreams, drinking, and a downward spiral toward . . . I don't know what.”

“We never know what's going to happen. When my wife left, I thought I'd kill myself.” Cole stopped eating and looked at Brian. “It's no big deal, man,” Brian continued. “I got over it. The work helped. But I'll tell you, it's amazing we survive what we do.”

“Well, we'll survive our little dustup.”

“I thought I saw Tara Sinclair from the
Globe
tweeting about it,” said Brian.

“I should have taken their Blackberries. How the hell is she getting a connection up here?”

“You know, I almost called this whole thing off. I got a bad feeling about the trip. Thought it might, you know, go really badly.”

“You've done good, Brian. Rest easy.”

“LET ME HELP
you guys with that,” said Brian. The three guides were huddled around a pot of hot water, washing cooking gear and discussing the next day's long, tricky descent toward Crypt Lake.