Trapped - Softcover

One
 

Will McCarroll’s foul mood escalated with each of Kola’s steps down the rocky trail that led from his backcountry cabin to the Pebble Creek campground.
Goddamn fools.
He’d been waiting for this to happen, for the middle of the night call he’d just received on his two-way radio.
“Hurry down here, Will,” Betty Stanmeyer had shouted over the two-way radio she wasn’t supposed to have. Betty and her husband, Hal, served as campground hosts at Pebble Creek. “Someone’s been shot.”
Will had to count on his mare’s familiarity with the narrow, rocky trail, as well as her surefootedness, to move at the slow gallop he’d pushed her into. A hint of a full moon filtered through branches of Douglas fir, but not enough to give light to the ground beneath. As they finally broke through the tree line, Will gave Kola a knee in the ribs. She’d developed a habit of pausing at this point, in response to knowing that’s what Will wanted—to pause at his first chance of the day to look at the Lamar Valley unfolding beneath them; to look out at the land he loved, the land he’d devoted his life to.
A life that had become a lot more complicated since the arrival of Magistrate Judge Annie Peacock.
Tonight Will couldn’t afford the pause.
“Keep moving, girl,” he urged.
Will knew what to expect when he first caught sight of the campground. He’d been doing this—serving as law enforcement inside the park—for twenty-eight years now, so very little surprised him.
At the park’s big camping grounds, kerosene lamps and flashlights usually danced like fireflies around smoldering campfires until the early morning hours, but the only thing Will could see moving were the untended flames of at least a dozen campfires. Tent flaps had been zipped tight for a false sense of security. The lights in Betty and Hal’s RV signaled they’d obeyed Will’s order to return to it and lock up.
No sign of the law enforcement backup that Will had radioed for. Will glanced at his watch. He and Kola had made it down the hill in twenty-three minutes. The drive from Mammoth was forty-five minutes at best, without incident, and that was taking it at a pace that invited accidents.
A shout drew Will’s attention to the back of the campground, the row of campsites that bordered the creek. Betty had identified campsite number twenty as where the shooting took place.
Will dismounted and looped Kola’s reins around the trailhead sign. Then, drawing his 9-mm, he crouched low, heading toward the campground, which had now fallen silent. At this hour, he would have expected to see adults getting to know each other around campfires, after the kids had gone to bed. Usually he was called because someone had had too much to drink and was getting a little rowdy.
The silence as he approached was absolute.
Something had gone horribly wrong this August evening in this nation’s first national park.
As Will passed the outhouse that served the campground, he noticed the door facing the Northeast Entrance Road slightly ajar. A sixth sense, tuned by decades on the job, told him it wasn’t empty.
Gun aimed squarely at the door, he approached and kicked the door open.
A slender East Indian woman holding a baby hovered against the back wall, pressed into it, crouching low, between the side wall and the toilet. She was dressed in a traditional sari.
She pulled the baby into the cave she’d created of her chest and torso, whimpering. Will lowered the gun, and in the moonlight filtering through the plastic skylight above, her eyes registered relief, especially when Will stepped into the light and she saw his uniform. Reflexively she straightened a bit.
“He killed a man,” she said, as if trying to convince Will that something terrible had happened.
“Stay in here,” Will said softly. Nodding toward the door, he added, “And lock that.”
“My husband tried to help but he called him a rag head. He shot him, too. Hashmuk, he told me to run, to come here and hide. I’m afraid he’s dying, too.…”
“I’ll find him,” Will replied. “Now lock the door behind me.”
Will waited outside the door, eyes trained on the campground now, to hear the click of its lock.
Skirting the north side of the campground, the side rimmed by Pebble Creek running down from Sunset Peak, Will heard another shout as he moved between RVs and tents of every color, size, and shape. With the moonlight blocked by lodgepole pines that sheltered the campsites, Will sometimes felt rather than saw the tent flaps open as he passed. Each time, he put finger to his lips to shush the relieved camper about to blurt out. When he got to the RV of the campground hosts, Hal Stanmeyer had been waiting, eyes glued to the path he knew Will would take. He stuck his head out of an open window.
“Two of them with guns,” he whispered, “at twenty. Two guys down. I think one’s dead.”
Will nodded, kept moving.
“Wait for me,” Hal whispered.
“No. You stay in there. Call for backups.”
“Betty already did. They’re on the way. Closest LE was at Roosevelt Lodge. Should be here within ten minutes.”
A lot could happen in ten minutes.
Still, aside from the shouts, it was the silence that bothered Will most. He moved forward.
Campsite twenty was one of the most coveted sites at Pebble Creek. Adjacent to the creek, campers loved to fall asleep to the sound of rushing water and wake up to the sight of sunshine reflecting off the current, and the expansive view, to the south, of Round Prairie. Getting a site anywhere near twenty was considered lucky.
But not tonight.
Will saw the twisted legs first. Hiking boots still crusted with mud from the rain earlier in the evening jutted out from between two tents packed closely together at campsite twenty. Both tents stood dark and silent, but as Will crept forward, he could hear a voice. He thought it was the same one he’d heard earlier, only now, instead of shouting, it was more of a rant. Will couldn’t make out the words.
He paused at the boots, felt for a pulse. None. A handgun lay still partially clasped in the man’s right hand, and blood trailed off into the dark.
Will inched forward alongside the tent, toward the campfire, toward the voice.
A solo man sat hunched over on a ring of short logs that surrounded the fire pit, head in his hands, alternately sobbing and talking to himself.
“What did I do? What did I do?”
A Colt .45 lay at his feet.
Will’s eyes surveyed the rest of the campsite before he straightened, walked toward the man, his own gun drawn and aimed at him, finger off the trigger.
“Police officer, don’t move.”
Kicking the gun out of the young man’s reach, he added, “You’re under arrest.”
The young man—he couldn’t have been over twenty-five—looked up, anguish in his face.
“What have I done?”
“Stand up. Hands in the air.”
Complying, the young man looked over, and, as if seeing the body for the first time, began to crumple. Halfway to the ground, Will shoved him face down on the dirt.
“Hands behind your back,” Will ordered, kneeling over him as he lay prostrate on his stomach. Double locking the handcuffs, Will began reciting his Miranda rights as he patted the skinny torso and legs down.
“He’s my best friend,” the young man sobbed.
Rage engulfing him, Will rolled the young man over, forcing him to look into Will’s eyes.
“He was your best friend.”
The young man, clearly still drunk, lunged for Will, as if Will had been the one to pull the trigger.
Will took him down with a knee between his legs.
Gasping for air, he moaned, writhing on the ground.
Hal had materialized, and behind him, other campers.
“How many shooters were there?” Will said to no one in particular in the group.
Several shook their heads. While at first they seemed relieved to approach Will, when he kneed the kid, several fell back. But a heavyset man in long underwear stepped forward, saying, “Just two. Him”—pointing toward the kid, still writhing on the ground—“and him”—he pointed at the body.
Handing his gun to Hal, Will said, “Watch him.”
Walking back to the body, he trained his flashlight on the trail of blood and followed. It led to a tidy campsite, number eighteen, that hosted a new, family-sized tent.
Will stepped inside and found what he was looking for.
An Indian man lay on his side, holding his stomach. He appeared unconscious, but when Will touched him, his eyes opened.
“My wife,” he gasped. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth, where it held on briefly before falling to the nylon floor. “My baby.”
“They’re fine. They’re safe,” Will said quietly. “I give you my word. Now don’t talk. We’ll get you out of here, to a hospital.”
“My wife…”
A face appeared at the mesh window above where he lay. Will heard a gasp and looked up. Betty Stanmeyer.
“Get his wife,” he ordered. “She’s locked in the bathroom. And see if we have a doctor in the campground.”
Wide-eyed, Betty nodded then disappeared.
Will could hear her shouting, as she ran toward the outhouse, “Is there a doctor in the campground? We need a doctor!”
The sirens drowned her out.
Chaos ensued. Sleepy-eyed children emerging from tents were pushed back inside by terrified parents. Campers of all ages stood or squat, ready to flee if necessary, their faces lit only by the screens of their cell phones as they texted frantically to friends and family back home. Those lucky enough to have RVs locked wi...