The lodgepole pine trees had closed in around him. They weren’t tall but they were dense and so closely packed it would be difficult for a man to walk through them without turning to the side. It had been so long since the trail had been used, long silky remnants of spiders’ webs, broken by Jed’s party ahead of him, fluttered like ghosts from boughs over his head. It was as if he were riding through a shroud.
He heard a grunt, and he thought: Bear.
Gipper heard it, too, and the horse planted his feet and leaned backwards with his heavy haunches. Gipper’s ears cocked forward and his nostrils opened and he snorted either a warning or a cry of alarm. Cody brought the rifle up to his shoulder one-handed, aiming it vaguely ahead of him, keeping a hold on the reins with his left hand. The packhorse, oblivious to what was going on, walked into Gipper’s hindquarters and jostled Cody’s shaky aim.
There was another grunt, this time closer, and a heavy footfall. It was coming toward him, whatever it was.
Cody didn’t know whether to dismount or stay in the saddle. He longed for solid footing, but knew he couldn’t slip gracefully to the ground and not risk losing control of the horses. If he was on the ground and they decided to panic and run off, he was stuck. The rifle just seemed to be in the way.
There was a flash of color through the thin trunks ahead. Beige and red.
A low moan, “Naugh.”
“Who’s there?” Cody called out. His mouth was so dry his voice cracked. “Who is it? Identify yourself. I’m a cop.”
A man on foot lurched into view, startling Gipper further and the gelding crow-hopped, fouling Cody’s aim. As he tried to gain his balance in the saddle, he dropped the reins to the ground. The only thing that stopped Gipper from turning completely around was the wall of thin trees on both sides of the trail.
“Easy,” Cody said, as much to himself as to Gipper, “Easy…”
The man, an African American wearing jeans, a once-beige shirt soaked almost entirely in glossy red blood, and a look of horror and anguish, cried out again and pitched forward onto his knees on the trail.
Clumsily, with both of his horses stutter-stepping, Cody dismounted and managed to gather up Gipper’s reins. While he was tying his horse to the trunk of a thick aspen tree, the packhorse jerked back and the lead rope unraveled from Gipper’s saddle horn. Cody reached out for it as it pulled away, missed it, and he stood seething and confused for a few seconds, watching the packhorse gallop away back down the trail. He could see chunks of dirt flying from the horse’s hooves and the panniers flapping hard, spooking the horse further.
The drumbeat of the hooves and occasional snap of dry twigs faded away. Cody spat out a string of curses and kicked at the ground.
Then he turned toward the injured man.
Never in his career had Cody confronted a dying man. In nearly every case, the victim was already dead-in many cases for days-and Cody could observe with clinical detachment and dark humor. Bodies were no more than heavy wet bags of organs, muscle, tissue, fat, and bone bound together by a taut wrapping of skin. He studied those bags for likely offered evidence of what method was used to douse the flame of a soul inside.
Cody sat on the trail. He’d never cradled a stranger’s head in his lap before while the man cried real tears and choked on pints of his own blood when he tried to speak.
“Jesus,” Cody said, elevating the man’s head by raising his own leg, trying to find a position where the victim wouldn’t have to make the gargling sound. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The man shook his head quickly but couldn’t form words yet. He was still lucid despite appearances. But, Cody knew, he wouldn’t be for long. The victim was bleeding out before his eyes and there wasn’t a single thing either of them could do about it. Bull Mitchell’s field first-aid kit had been in the panniers of the packhorse. But even if the horse hadn’t run away, Cody wasn’t sure he could have done anything to save this man’s life.
He’d known the end of this story as he approached him minutes ago. There was a hole the size of a fist in the man’s back, the exit wound. It was inches deep and pulsating. Cody dropped down to the trail and turned the man over. The victim had watched, his eyes clear and sharp. The entry wound was the size of a nickel and it was framed by a hole in the fabric of his shirt. The hole in the cloth, just below the breast pocket on the left side of the victim’s chest, was burned black on the edges in an outline that resembled a blooming flower. The reason for the pattern was powder burns-meaning that the shot had been made practically point-blank. The weapon had been of large caliber. Cody saw no other bullet wounds but there didn’t have to be any.
Cody said, “I’m not going to lie and tell you you’ll be okay.”
The man closed and reopened his eyes. Not out of disappointment, but a means of signaling Cody that he understood.
Cody could feel blood from the exit wound soaking into the denim of his trousers. It was warm.
“Can you hear me?” Cody said.
Again, the man blinked.
“Are you with the pack trip led by Jed McCarthy?”
Blink. Yes.
“Is there an older boy on the trip? Named Justin? Seventeen, eighteen?”
Yes.
“Is he okay?”
Yes.
“Man, I don’t know what to do. There’s no way to stop the bleeding.”
Yes.
“Did you see who shot you?”
Yes.
“Can you try to talk? Can you please try to tell me what happened and who did it?”
Yes.
The man closed his eyes and swallowed painfully. Cody looked skyward for a fresh thought or a signal that would give him-and the gunshot victim-some kind of hope. Or something he could do to make this poor man more comfortable.
He felt the man die. It wasn’t a sound or a movement, but a sudden absence of firmness in his lap. Cody looked down. “Not now,” Cody pleaded. “Not before you tell me what happened.”
The man’s eyes were still open but there was nothing behind them. His mouth was slightly open and red inside, the color of candied cherries. Cody reached up and closed the eyes, pulling the lids and hoping they’d stay that way. They did.
Cody rolled the body off his legs. In death, it seemed twice as heavy as before. He stood unsteadily. His muscles ached from riding and he was covered with a man’s sacred lifeblood; his jeans were black and sticky and orange half-moon-shaped pine needles stuck to the denim. He bent over and dug through the victim’s clothing and found a wallet and flipped it open. André Alan Russell, resident of Manhattan. Cody remembered the name from the file he took from Jed’s office.
As he’d done earlier in the day, he photographed Russell’s body and wounds, knowing while he did it that the shooting had happened someplace else and this wasn’t the crime scene. He wondered how far Russell had come from where he’d been shot. He dragged Russell’s body off the trail. Before tucking it in beneath a massive fallen tree and covering it the best he could with heavy logs and branches, Cody looked skyward for a moment, then looted all of Russell’s pockets looking for a package of cigarettes that wasn’t there. Cursing, Cody then covered the body. The cover wouldn’t prevent predators from finding it-probably nothing would-but he hoped he could return with help to get the body out before it was torn up.