“This is him?” Mark said. “Scott Shields?”
“That’s him. Let’s get out of here.”
Larry stumbled away from the bedroom and out of the RV and there were retching sounds from outside. Mark lingered inside, looking down into those empty eyes. Then he backed out of the bedroom, closed the door on the corpse of Scott Shields, and left the RV. The main door would no longer latch. Tonight, if the body wasn’t moved, the animals that had been kept at bay would finally have a chance to feast.
Larry was all the way back by the truck, braced against the hood, spitting into the dirt. Mark walked up beside him and looked down the empty road. This time of year, caught between snowmobiling season and fishing season, there wouldn’t have been many people passing by the RV.
“Who told you he was in Alaska?” Mark said.
“He did. He said he was headed out.”
“So was he stopped from leaving, or was he lying to you?”
Larry frowned. “Scotty was a straight shooter with me.”
“Did he know what happened when you tried to get Mom away from Pate?”
“Yeah, he knew.”
“All right. Would he have lied to you to keep you out of the fire?”
“You’re thinking that he wasn’t through with Pate?”
“I’m asking.”
Mark glanced back at the RV. “Strange place to leave him. That body could have been scattered all over these mountains by coyotes and bears by now.”
“Pate left him there for a reason.”
“What do you think that is?”
Larry turned and looked Mark squarely in the face. “So we could see the bones of those who came before us,” he said.
For a moment neither of them spoke. A haze of dust rose in the distance, back toward the main road, but then it passed as the vehicle vanished in another direction. Mark checked his cell phone. He had a faint signal. They were standing at a murder scene and he had a cell signal. You called it in, that’s what you did. That was the right thing, the only thing.
He pocketed the phone.
“We could go back to Cantu and try again,” Mark said. “Let him know that we were unimpressed.”
“You’re unimpressed?” Larry said, wide-eyed.
“That we were not helped, at least. We’re no closer to Pate.”
“Cantu isn’t going to talk much more than he already has.”
“Not even with encouragement?”
“If you’re prepared to go back there and take a hammer to the man’s fingers and toes, pliers to his teeth, a drill bit to his kneecaps, he might talk. Might. Otherwise, he’s said all he intends to say. My gut tells me that whatever fear we put into Sal won’t be greater than the fear that already lives in him courtesy of Eli Pate.”
Mark looked away, back at the RV. He was silent for a few seconds, then said, “What’s this guy’s role? Shields. He got crossways with Pate and he got killed, that’s clear enough. But what was Pate’s problem with him?”
“Your mother.”
“What does Mom have that Pate could benefit from-and I don’t need to hear any remarks about the obvious. Cantu himself said that didn’t matter to Pate.”
“Son, your mother doesn’t have anything. Never did. You know that. She doesn’t have a dime to her name.”
Mark pointed at the RV where the dead man lay. “But he did.”
“Scott had some money, sure, but not that much. Not killing money.”
“Uncle, you know better than me that to the wrong man at the wrong time, ten damn dollars can turn into killing money.”
“Not to Pate. He’s just not that sort, not impulsive. If Eli killed Scotty, it wasn’t a cash grab-and by the time this happened, Scotty wouldn’t have had any cash left to grab, anyhow. What he did have he’d put into the hunting camp. And even that was risky. I knew that from the start. All he had was the land-no lodge, no equipment; hell, no good way to get there, even.”
“The property is that hard to access?”
“Bet your ass it’s hard to access. ATV or a horse. Maybe a tricked-out Jeep. Scotty was going to run horses for the hunting trips, the way he had up in Alaska.”
“And Pate knew this place.”
“Yeah.”
“And now your friend Shields is dead, but it’s a surprise to you.”
“Only a surprise because-”
“You weren’t looking for him,” Mark finished. “He saw to that. We could consider that a coincidence, I suppose.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“I think it’s a stretch.”
Larry shook his head but didn’t say anything. He was unconvinced, but he was also wondering now.
“When you talked to Shields and Pate,” Mark said, “did they ever mention the word Wardenclyffe to you?”
Larry frowned. “No. What’s that mean?”
“I think it’s a place. I know people were looking for it.”
“Never heard of it.”
Mark looked again from Larry over to the RV, then up at saw-toothed mountaintops. The sun was angling down, unfiltered by cloud, burning the snowcap off the peaks.
“How far away is the hunting camp?”
“The drive isn’t all that bad, but it’s hiking once you get there, and there’s nothing up there but woods and rocks and wind.”
“When was the last time you saw the place?”
“Maybe seven months back.”
“Okay. So who knows what’s out at this rough property now? Pate has to be somewhere, Uncle. And he’s not alone anymore. He’s off the grid, and he needs to be hidden. The land sounds pretty good for hiding.”
“It’s surely that,” Larry admitted.
“I want to take a look,” Mark said. “If Pate’s not impulsive, as you say, then he killed Shields with a purpose. Maybe the purpose was to keep him away from his own land.”
Larry gestured at the RV. “What about this?”
“He’s sat this long. He can sit longer. Same goes for Sal, in my opinion.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Larry’s face. “Yes.”
They got into the truck and Larry fired up the engine. The smile was gone and his eyes were sorrowful as he studied the RV before putting the truck in gear.
“He was a good man,” Larry said, “and he was a hard man. That’s what worries me, Markus. Scott Shields was nobody’s pushover. When you see a hard man left like that…”
He didn’t finish, and he didn’t need to. He’d already said it before, when he’d finished vomiting out the smell of his dead friend into the dust.
The bones of those who came before us.
54
She sent the e-mails from the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant at an interstate stop in southern Wyoming. She hated not to be in motion, but Doug Oriel had some heavy lifting left to do.
Wording was key, and it took her a while to get it just right. She read it five times through, tweaking here and there, before she finally sent the message. Then she copied the text, pasted it into a fresh message, and sent it again. There were nine groups in all, ranging in size from five members to twenty-seven, reaching a total of more than two hundred heavily armed and deeply paranoid white men scattered across four states. Most were in Florida and Georgia, but there was a Texas contingent as well.
The note needed to convey the proper emotion, so she kept it terse, as close to panicked as possible.
Have any of you heard from Doug? I received a short phone call from him late in the afternoon. Police raided his house in Florida two days ago. All of his guns are gone. Confiscated. The house itself was burned. This was in Cassadaga. He told me the police will claim he murdered a woman there. He said he would not be surprised if he is implicated in another crime for every day that he stays free. He’s afraid they have all of his contacts under surveillance. That is why I am warning you. I’m destroying this computer as soon as I send this message. You should do the same. Doug believes there is something big coming. I don’t know what. He was scared, and not making much sense. Has anyone heard anything? Rumors, threats? I am afraid to be online, afraid that they will track me, if they aren’t already. There is no news about him yet, but the house fire is real. Just search for Cassadaga and fire. You’ll see it. There is also NO MENTION OF ANY GUNS BEING CONFISCATED. So they are already lying. I don’t know what to do, but I won’t use a computer or a phone. Not after what he told me. I don’t know if he is still free or if they have him. I don’t know what the “something big” means. I don’t know ANYTHING except that the police have decided to move against Doug and when this ends he will be in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and we all may be next. Everyone do what you feel is best…but be prepared for the worst. Doug thought he was, and look what happened to him.