A steady snowfall began as he climbed the loose rock behind Barrett, boots slipping, the wind flapping his coat hood like a loose awning. Snow drove sideways as he crossed the ridge, and it wasn’t too late to turn around. He could drop back down to Barrett Lake and leave it to helicopters and dogs to try to find Nyland in the next few days. He lost time now, searching for the trail that really wasn’t visible on the rock. He resorted to the topo, worked his way to where the trail should be, and talked with Shauf. The GPS locator could tell her where he was, and she could direct him.
He found the trail again, pulled the night goggles on, adjusted his gloves, no longer worried about Nyland fixing laser gun sights on him, no risk of that with this snowfall and twilight. The trail dipped and descended, left the rock and became trough-shaped after dark, curved like a chute ahead with the new snow layering it.
He spotted a footprint and adrenaline kicked in, then more boot prints nearly filled with snow and he knew Nyland was somewhere up ahead. He passed a wooden sign, Red Peaks Trail, crouched behind a rock, used his flashlight to study the map, drank water, ate, and made a call to Shauf. With the locator she confirmed he was on the correct trail.
“Any sign of him?”
“Footprints. I’m taking it slow, not trying to catch him, just keep track of him.”
He signed off with her and started again, hiking in heavier snow but less wind. He’d gauged the whole hike across and through Desolation as eight hours and had been up here a couple. His hands and feet were cold, though everything else was fine. Cheeks a little numb. He squatted and checked marks on the trail, risked the flashlight again, and the marks didn’t read as footprints. An hour later he made another call to Shauf and huddled under a granite shelf trying to warm up, telling Shauf he’d lost the footprints but figured he had no choice but to continue hiking across toward Tahoe. He fired the gas stove, let it boil a cup of water in the shelter of a rock cleft, wrapped bare hands around the flame, cleaned the goggles, and stared out into the storm again. Where are you?
When he started again he stumbled, kicking rocks newly covered by snow, losing the trail, losing time finding it again, using Shauf and the satellites to locate himself. The wind kept working the cold in, and each mile came hard. Then not long after midnight the snow lessened and there were breaks in the clouds, ragged tears, starlight on the new snow and darkness again. It became easier to keep the goggles operable. As he hiked toward Velma Lakes he knew either he had a break in the storm or it was ending, and he checked with Shauf, who was monitoring air traffic weather. She told him that Doppler radar showed the worst was over, which heartened him, took some of the leadenness out of his legs. He figured the expenditure of adrenaline and the cold gnawing away at him accounted for the unusual tiredness. He cleaned the goggles again and saw the outline of terrain farther ahead, saw no sign of Nyland.
At 1:30 he ate more of his food, the almonds, another candy bar, a slug of water. He sloughed ahead through snow drifted six inches deep in the low sections of trail. Anyone walking ahead would leave tracks, and periodically he stopped, leaned on a rock, and studied the terrain behind. He switched the Gore-Tex hood for a cap because he didn’t like the way the fabric affected his hearing, the constant rustling.
Then he heard a hound bay and looked for a place to hide, left the trail and found rocks. He heard the hound again and with the wind couldn’t place the direction, then realized it was from behind and that Nyland could be following his tracks, not knowing who he was. He crossed the trail, stepped among red firs growing closely together, stepping on patches of needles the snow hadn’t reached, using the needles as stepping-stones to avoid leaving tracks. He pulled his gun and wrapped his other hand around the small flashlight.
With his belly against a rock he lay and waited, then heard Nyland quieting his dog, the hound whining and snuffling, Nyland hesitating, stopping on the trail, still not quite to where the trail passed below Marquez’s position. The dog had picked up a scent. Now he heard Nyland’s boots sloughing through the snow and the dog running ahead. He waited for Nyland to pass by and then got ready to come over the rock and slide down behind Nyland onto the trail. Do it. It’s not going to get any easier. He drew a deep breath and went, clicked the flashlight on as he came down on the trail.
“Don’t move! I’ve got a gun on you, Nyland. Don’t move!” But Nyland went into motion, spinning, and then coming at Marquez. Marquez had time to shoot him but didn’t pull the trigger, and Nyland tackled him. Marquez lost his gun as he went down and the hound ripped at his pant leg. Nyland was strong, fighting hard, and was trying to get a gun out. He managed to pull it out and then it discharged, missing both of them.
Marquez struggled to get the gun Nyland held, pinning the arm that held it while Nyland clubbed at Marquez’s head with his other hand. But now Marquez gripped the gun and twisted. Nyland’s trigger finger was trapped, and it made a dry snapping noise as bone broke. The gun fell into snow and Nyland grunted in pain, tried to retrieve the gun, and Marquez brought an elbow down on his face, crushing the lens of his goggles. The next blow shattered Nyland’s nose.
“Stop moving and lay still,” Marquez said, gasping for breath, forcing the words out as he got ready to hit him again. Nyland surged, and Marquez had to hit him hard one more time, this last with the butt of Nyland’s gun. He handcuffed him, the hound barking inches from his face. He searched Nyland for weapons, took yet another gun off him and a cell phone, he recovered his own gun and rested, holding the gun and flashlight beam on Nyland, deciding as he caught his breath how to do this, hike him out or wait for morning and help.
Nyland bled from the nose. The broken finger pointed sideways, and Marquez moved the flashlight back to his face.
“You’re going to hike out, so suck it up. Unlike Petroni you’re alive.”
“I didn’t kill fucking Petroni.”
“You’re a good man, Nyland, just misunderstood. You’re going to walk ahead of me, but don’t get up until I tell you to.”
He went through Nyland’s pack before placing it in the trail where it could easily be found in the morning.
“I can’t see,” Nyland said as Marquez got him to his feet.
“I’ll shine a light through your legs. If you fall, stand up and start walking again. If you run, I’ll shoot you.”
Marquez had tied the thin rope he’d found in Nyland’s pack to one of Nyland’s ankles, figured if Nyland ran he’d bring him down by jerking his leg out from under him and dragging him. Keeping Nyland twenty feet ahead, they started walking, the thin rope sliding along the snow behind, the hound sticking near Nyland. A mile into it Nyland started playing games, staggering, pretending to trip, shuffling his boots through the snow, exaggerating his difficulty walking. Marquez said nothing to any of it.
They moved slowly, but they moved, and sometime after daylight Marquez knew they’d reached the Eagle Lake Trail. An hour in he had Nyland stop and kneel on the trail while he called Shauf.
“I’ve got him. I’m walking him out.”
“Okay, got your position, I’ll notify everybody.”
He hung up with her and listened to Nyland spit blood and mucus. He gave him some water, sat on a rock nearby and listened to the rhythm on his breathing, decided Nyland was fine to keep walking. But before telling him to get to his feet again he tweaked him.
“Who killed Petroni?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. Was it Durham?”
“I don’t know. I hardly see Durham. I haven’t seen him in three weeks.”
“Who milks the caged bears?”
“I don’t know anything about caged bears.”
“Sophie has turned on you, but battered women can be like that. She led the detectives to where you hid the rifle in the sales office, and now they’ve got a murder warrant. She’s turning state’s witness. You’re going to be the fall guy for Durham and whoever else.”
“I don’t want to hear your shit. Walk me out.”
“Where were you headed? Is Durham waiting up ahead? If I was him and you could testify against me, I might be waiting up ahead. Of course, with all the police, I don’t know. But I sure wouldn’t want you to get a chance to plea-bargain.”
They started down the trail again and nothing was said for another hour. When they took the next rest Marquez could tell Nyland was getting ready to try something, and then he asked for his night goggles back.
“You’re doing okay without them.”
“I can’t move my hand.”
“I’ve been looking at numbers on your cell phone.” Marquez had relayed a list of them via text messaging and the satellite phone to Shauf. “Which one is Durham’s?”
Nyland ignored him, then a little while later repeated that he hadn’t killed anybody and didn’t know about any rifle. His boots slogged through the snow ahead of Marquez, his voice stronger, saying he didn’t “put Petroni in the teddy bear suit,” but he wished he’d seen him.
“Sophie says you killed Vandemere for money. Who wanted him dead?”
“She’s a lying bitch.”
“If you want to hit back at her, start talking to me. You know Kendall isn’t going to listen to you.”
“Fuck off.”
Near first light Marquez holstered his gun, figured Nyland was hurt and cold, tired, and didn’t have much run left in him. Nyland was sluggish, exhausted, not quite the mountain man he figured himself for. He started to complain more about the pain in his hand.
“I can’t take it any longer,” he said. “My fingers are gone.”
Marquez had slid a sock over the bad hand to prevent frostbite.
He told Nyland to lie down in the snow. Nyland dropped to his knees, went face forward on the trail, and Marquez knelt and looked at the hand. It was badly swollen around the wrist and the fingers were bloodless, white. There was another six miles to go, a lot of it rocky and the steep downhill past Eagle Lake. Nyland’s coat was multilayer, waterproof, ripstop, and Marquez got an idea.
“All right, don’t move.” With a knife Marquez leaned over and right in the small of the back he cut through the coat. “I’m going to uncuff you and if you move I’ll do whatever I have to.”
Marquez freed his wrists and then bunched the coat up and clicked the empty handcuff through the hole he’d cut. That would keep Nyland’s good hand behind his back as long as he had the coat on. He told Nyland to keep the free hand, the bad hand, in his coat pocket, then got him to his feet and made sure the coat was zipped up tight before working the knife into the zipper at chest level and ruining it, so the only way he could get the coat off was over his head.
“If you can take me with one hand behind your back, now is your chance. Stay twenty feet ahead and don’t take your bad hand out of your pocket.”
“I wasn’t there,” Nyland said.
“Wasn’t where?”
“I haven’t been in the barn since we moved the bears to a place in Nevada that I didn’t even know about before. I wasn’t there when Petroni got it.”
“Who was?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long has Durham been farming bears?”
“Durham doesn’t know shit. It’s the other guy.”
“What other guy?”
“I don’t know his name, a dark-haired guy.” Nyland spit blood in the snow. “Fuck, man, my nose.”
“Durham has a partner?”
“I don’t know what their deal is.”
“Where does this other guy live?”
“Look, I didn’t kill Petroni.”
“You killed Vandemere. Sophie took Kendall to the rifle.” Marquez could see he finally hit home. Nyland stared at him without speaking. “Why Vandemere?”
“I didn’t kill anybody. It was probably him, the guy who set up the farms.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“Then you’re nowhere. Where in Nevada are these bears?”
“On a ranch outside Minden. Troy drove the rest out there while I was locked up.”
“Sophie says you bragged about killing Vandemere.”
“She’s fucked up.”
“I need the bear farmer’s name.”
“Hey, man, he’s way fucking smarter than you are.”
“He must be, he hired you. Let’s go.”
They shuffled through the snow another mile before Nyland answered. When he did his voice was different, empty.
“Petroni was out there.”
“Where?”
“In a cage at the place in Nevada, in one of the empty cages. It wasn’t anything to do with me and I didn’t see him. I wouldn’t do shit like that even to that asshole.”
“Stop walking, face me and say that again.”
The wind felt colder and seem to blow down his spine as he listened to Nyland. He shone the light on his face.
“Petroni was in a cage?”
“For a couple of days. That’s what I heard from Troy.”
“Troy saw him.”
“I don’t know if he saw him.”
“Sophie?”
“I think she did.”
Marquez got up close to him, and Nyland ducked his head like he was going to get hit. “She told you as you made bail?”
“Yeah.”
Nyland was silent after that. Dawn came. The dark blue line of Lake Tahoe showed in the distance when they started down the steep canyon and passed Eagle Lake. Marquez checked in with Shauf. A half mile later as they started down a long open slope, Kendall and three deputies came out of the trees well down the grade.
“Want to tell me anything else before they get here?”
“Maybe I knew he was in a cage, but I didn’t see him and I wasn’t there when he got done. It was the freak that did him.”
“Why do you call him a freak?”
“Because he wouldn’t ever let me see him.”
Marquez took a guess now. “The freak paid you to do Vandemere.
Vandemere saw him one day and questioned what he was doing. After that the freak wanted him killed.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Am I?” Marquez pointed at Kendall and the deputies crossing a snowfield, their guns drawn and their voices starting to carry up. “They plan to lay it all on you and you know Kendall, he’ll do it. He’ll make it work. If you know anything more that can help you, you’ve got to tell me now. I’m looking for the bear farmer, and if you’re telling anything like the truth you need him found as badly as I do.”
Nyland didn’t answered, stayed focused on the approaching men.
“Where’s this ranch, what’s it look like?” Marquez asked.
“It’s got some metal buildings way out in a field. There’s a little Chinese dude that lives out there all the time, but I’ve only been there once. I didn’t shoot Vandemere. I’ve been bear baiting, that’s all.”
“Maybe they put you up to shooting Vandemere. Durham and the other guy, the bear farmer. You could get a much lesser sentence for that, but they’ve got you for that one. You wiped the rifle with solvent but not well enough. DNA is like dandruff, falls everywhere, nothing you can do about it.” Marquez paused. “And you know Kendall. If he doesn’t have the evidence, he’ll make it. This guy has a name, you’ve heard a name.”
“We just call him Bearman.”
“Who knows his name?”
“Durham knows fucking everything.”
The hound surged forward and Marquez grabbed his collar before he could charge the officers. There wouldn’t be but another sixty seconds to talk.
“What road is this ranch in Minden on?”
“Old something road. I don’t have anything to do with the freak’s bear thing. I wouldn’t do that to an animal.”
The dog lunged, and Marquez lost his hold. When that happened, Nyland jumped off the side of the trail, pulling the rope out of Marquez’s hand as Marquez struggled to get a hold of the dog.
Nyland stumbled, ran, his strides long on the steep slope, sloughing through snow toward trees below.
“Freeze, Nyland, freeze,” Kendall yelled.
Then came a warning shot, but Nyland made it down into trees and there was a lot of yelling as the county officers spread out and went after him. It wouldn’t take long to catch him, and Marquez tried to slow a deputy hustling down.
“Hey, hold up, he’s hurt, he’s unarmed, he’s not going to get far. We can talk him out.”
The man continued past him, and Marquez turned and yelled, “Kendall, slow it down.”
A deputy called out, “I see him. He’s moving down the creek.”
Trying to get to his ride, Marquez thought. Still thinks he can get there and it’ll be okay. Marquez heard more yelling as he hurried down. He heard the shot, and Nyland was on his back, one leg folded under him, bleeding out from a neck wound when Marquez arrived. Blood pulsed onto the snow. A deputy moved to try to save him but there was no point. He died within a few minutes.
The deputy who’d shot him pointed at a dry branch about an inch thick and two feet long that Nyland had picked up as a weapon. He moved over to show Kendall what had happened, explaining, his voice rushed.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
From behind, Marquez heard Kendall’s voice. “It’s okay, just back away from the body, Pete. We all heard you order him to stop.”
Marquez slowly turned to look at Kendall, who was still talking to the deputy.
“You did what you had to,” Kendall said, and then to Marquez, “I hope you’ve got all the answers because I sure don’t. Why’d you let him run?”