Free Fire by C.J. Box Page B

hadn’t really thought about it. He was thinking that he was glad he had never had to wear one of those flat-brimmed ranger hats.
    “Maybe a couple weeks,” he said.
    “Most of the facilities will be closing by then,” she said. “Winter’s coming, you know.”
    “Yes,” he said, deadpan.
    He bought an annual National Park Pass for $50 so he’d be able to go in and out of the park as much as he needed without paying each time. While she filled out the form, he was surprisedto see the lens of a camera aiming at the Yukon from a small box on the side of the station.
    “You’ve got video cameras?” he asked.
    She nodded, handing him the pass to sign. “Every car comes in gets its picture taken.”
    “I didn’t realize you did that.”
    She smiled. “Helps us catch gate crashers and commercial vehicles. Commercial vehicles aren’t allowed to use the park to pass through, you know.”
    “I see,” he said, noting for later the fact about the cameras.
    He listened to her spiel about road construction ahead, not feeding animals, not approaching wildlife. She handed him a brochure with a park road map and a yellow flyer with a cartoon drawing of a tourist being launched into the air by a charging buffalo. He remembered the same flyer, the same cartoonish drawing, from his childhood. He could recall being fascinated by it, the depiction of a too-small buffalo with puffs of smoke coming out of his nostrils, the way the little man was flying in the air with his arms outstretched.
    “Are you okay?” she asked because he hadn’t left.
    “Fine,” he said, snapping out of it. “Sorry.”
    She shrugged. “Not that you’re holding up traffic or anything,” she said, gesturing behind him at the empty road.

7
    The law enforcement center for the park service,known informally as “the Pagoda,” was a gray stone buildinga block from the main road through the Mammoth Hot Springs complex in the extreme northern border of the park. Joe turned off the road near the post office with the two crude concrete bears guarding the steps. Mammoth served as the headquarters for the National Park Service as well as for Zephyr Corp., the contractor for park concessions. Unlike other small communities in Wyoming and Montana where the main streets consisted of storefronts and the atmosphere was frontier and Western, Mammoth had the impersonal feel of governmentalofficialdom. The buildings were old and elegant but government’s version of elegance—without flair. The architecture was Victorian and revealing of its origin as a U.S. Army post before the National Park Service came to be. Elk grazed on the still-greenlawns across from the Mammoth Hotel, and the hot springs on the plateau to the south billowed steam that dissipatedquickly in the cold air. When the wind changed direction, there was the slight smell of sulfur. A line of fine old wood and brick houses extended north from behind the public buildings, the homes occupied by the superintendent, the chief ranger, and other administrative officials, the splendor of the homes reflectingtheir status within the hierarchy of the park.
    In the height of summer, the complex would be bustling with traffic, the road clogged with cars and recreational vehicles, the sidewalks ablaze with tourists with bone-white legs and loud clothing. But in October, there was a kind of stunned silence afterall that activity, as if the park was exhausted and trying to catch its breath.
    Joe parked the Yukon on the side of the Pagoda. It wasn’t well marked. The Park Service didn’t like signs because, he supposed, they looked like signs and the park was about nature,not people trying to go about their business in the world outside the park. He circled the building twice on foot before deciding that the unmarked wooden door on the west side was, in fact, the entrance.
    The lobby was small and dark and he surprised the receptionist,who quickly darkened the screen of whatever Internet site she had up. She