Authors: Lance Horton
Montana
It was late afternoon by the time they arrived in Kalispell. Agent Marasco picked them up and informed them they were going to the county morgue, where Henderson’s body had been transported for the autopsy. In Kalispell, there were relatively few suspicious deaths that required an autopsy at any given time, so instead of having to wait several days, the autopsy was scheduled to take place that afternoon.
“Where was he found?” Lewis asked as they drove into town.
“He was off the Forest Service road about three miles up one of the trails leading to Margaret Lake. Poor bastard either didn’t know where he was going or got lost, but he sure as hell wasn’t going that way on purpose. The trail’s uphill all the way and dead-ends at the lake.”
“Any idea what killed him?”
“Not yet. There were no visible injuries. The corpse was in good condition, though. It had been buried under the snow, and with the warmer weather this last week, it was just becoming exposed when one of the search-and-rescue patrols found him this morning. They found the missing ax from the cabin too. It was about ten yards from where the body was found. We already packed it up and shipped it off to the lab for analysis.”
“Let’s hope they come up with something more than they did last time,” Lewis said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Marasco. “It looked pretty clean. There wasn’t any blood on it that any of us could see. A lot of the snow around it had melted away, but not enough to wash a bloody ax clean, and there were no traces of blood in the snow around it either. If you ask me, it wasn’t the murder weapon. When whatever went down at the cabin, I think this guy just grabbed it and ran.”
When they arrived at the morgue, Marasco got out and lit up a cigarette before he went inside. Lewis joined him. Marasco offered his pack to Kyle, but Kyle shook his head.
“You sure?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“No shit,” Marasco chuckled. “Stick around. That’ll change.”
Kyle waited outside with Lewis and Marasco. As they stood in the small entryway, Kyle noticed Marasco seemed taller than he had thought when they had first met. As inconspicuously as possible, Kyle looked down at Marasco’s feet. Along with the black jeans he always seemed to wear, Marasco wore a pair of black, square-toed harness boots, with circular metal rings on each side and thick leather bands running under, behind, and across the top of the foot. The boots didn’t look to be particularly old, but they appeared to have been resoled or perhaps custom-ordered. Instead of the typical flat soles, these had thick, rubberized ones like the soles of hiking boots. The heels seemed especially tall for a man’s boot. Then Kyle began to understand.
“Who’s the coroner,” Lewis asked.
“Technically, the sheriff is,” Marasco said as he exhaled. “But since he ain’t a licensed physician, the autopsies are all handled by the assistant coroner, Al Crowe.”
“He any good?”
“Good enough, I suppose.”
They finished their smokes quickly and stubbed them out in the sand-filled ash can in the corner beside the door. Apparently, it was a common ritual. The dirty sand was littered with at least a dozen butts.
The sheriff was waiting for them inside. When he stood up from the chair he had been sitting in, Kyle was again surprised by the size of the man. Without further discussion, he led them past the receptionist and down the stark, industrial tiled hallway toward the autopsy room. Kyle noticed that Marasco walked on the far side of the hall from the sheriff.
As they walked down the corridor, the reason for the smoking ritual became clear to Kyle. The air was thick with the nasal-burning tang of chemicals and more noxious scents that grew stronger as they approached the autopsy room. Anything that would have dulled or numbed his sense of smell would have been preferable.
Larry Henderson’s naked body lay on a cold steel table. Kyle wasn’t sure if it was the body itself or the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights, but the man’s skin seemed to glow with a ghostly, bluish-white tint. His mouth was agape, as if frozen in the rictus of a scream.
Standing next to the body with a clipboard in his hand was Alvin Crowe. Crowe was a lean, stoop-shouldered old man with thinning gray hair atop his head, round, gold-framed glasses, and a neatly waxed, handlebar moustache. He was already wearing latex surgical gloves, and even though he had yet to start the autopsy, Kyle was glad when he didn’t offer to shake their hands.
“You’ve done a preliminary review of the body?” Lewis asked.
“Sure have. I’m about to start cutting if you’d care to watch. There’s gloves and masks over there.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Lewis said.
“Suit yourself,” the old man said with a mischievous grin. “But you’re missing all the fun.”
“That’s all right,” Lewis said. “What’s your initial impression?”
“Well, considering the amount of time he’s been missing, the body’s in excellent condition because of the snow, but that will also make it difficult to pin down the exact time of death. The report said the body was found lying face down, which is in agreement with the fixed lividity, so it doesn’t look like it had been moved. There’s very little decomposition and no signs of it being mauled or damaged by any animals.”
“Any signs of injury at all?” Lewis asked.
“Not externally. I’ll know more after the cut.”
“So what? Did he just freeze to death?” Marasco asked.
“Well, this isn’t official or anything, but he was found lying face down with his right arm across his chest as if he might have been clutching or grabbing it when he fell, and I noticed a small amount of frothy blood around the lips, which leads me to think he might have died from sudden myocardial infarction. It could have been caused by several contributing factors, including alcohol and sudden exertion in the cold. We see it all the time. A big snow hits, and you can expect a least one or two to kick it just from shoveling their drive. But you mix that with intense fear or panic, and you’ve got a heart attack just waiting to happen. Of course, we won’t know anything for certain until after the cut and the tox screen.”
“So he wasn’t murdered?” Lewis asked in confirmation.
“Well, it depends on the autopsy and how the rest of your investigation goes, but his death could still be ruled a homicide.”
Kyle was confused. “How is that?”
“Deaths resulting from fear or fright induced by threats of physical harm can be ruled as a homicide if there is a close relationship between the inciting incident and the death, which appears to be the case with this one.”
“So you’re saying—”
“I’m saying it appears that he was scared to death.”
Denver
Carrie was suddenly awake. She didn’t know what had caused it, but something had startled her from sleep. Without knowing exactly how, she sensed it had been something external—something out of the ordinary—that had interrupted her slumber.
She lay perfectly still, straining to hear the sound of the patio door being rattled or the creaking of the stairs as someone approached. The house remained silent except for the sound of her throbbing pulse in her ears.
There was a faint
click
as the thermostat in the hallway activated, and the familiar
shush
of air through the vents as the heater came on. She reached over to the nightstand and slid open the top drawer. After she groped about blindly for a moment, she placed her hand on the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber Lady Smith revolver she had purchased last week. It felt as heavy as an anvil when she lifted it from the drawer.
With the gun held tenuously before her, she slowly made her way across the bedroom to the door. Cautiously, she peered down the upstairs hallway leading past the stairs to the other bedrooms and the guest bath at the far end. She stepped across the threshold and cringed as the floor creaked beneath her. She quickly padded into the guest bedroom to her left. Moonlight angled in from the window, spilling across the bed, bathing the room in muted shades of silvery-blue.
She moved in front of the closet, her heart fluttering. She kept telling herself it was just her imagination, but she kept envisioning Bret crouching within, waiting to pounce on her the moment she opened the door.
She jerked the door open.
The closet was empty except for the bed linens, pillows, and the shoeboxes sitting on the shelves above the hanging rod. A few slinky evening dresses, which she no longer wore, hung limply above a shoe rack that contained a half dozen pairs of high-heeled dress shoes.
After she waited for her heart to slow a bit, she continued her search. Finding the upstairs unoccupied, she knew it would be impossible for her to sleep without being certain that he wasn’t lurking downstairs. She stood at the top of the stairs and peered down into the darkness. Her legs dimpled with gooseflesh as she crept into the cooler air downstairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused to wipe her sweaty palm on her T-shirt. She turned to her right and moved down the short hall toward the front door and the study on the right. The LED-indicator lamps on the security keypad by the front door glowed green, indicating that all zones were secure. She stepped into the study, checking under the desk and in the closet.
Nothing.
In the living room, the dark shadows of the sofa, love seat, and overstuffed chair could be made out. She crept around the sofa, careful not to stub her toe on the wooden corner. She made her way around the squat chair toward the back door.
The drapes hung slack and motionless before the window. She just knew that the moment she pulled back the curtains, she would find herself face-to-face with Bret, separated by nothing more than a thin plate of glass. It was a nightmare she had suffered since childhood, when she would wake in the middle of the night, terrified to look out the window above her bed, where she just
knew
the boogeyman was standing, peering down at her through the folds in the curtains.
With a trembling hand, she reached out and jerked back the curtains.
A figure stood before her in the dark.
She yelped and nearly fired off a shot before she realized it was her own reflection in the dark glass.
Carrie took a moment to catch her breath and to allow her racing heart to slow. She checked to make sure the broomstick was still in the track of the sliding glass door and then, with a weary sigh, pulled the curtains closed.
Once safely back in bed, Carrie lay there, wide awake. In spite of her relief, she hated the fact that she had become so terrified. She felt foolish for letting her imagination get the best of her, but the emotional wounds she had suffered were still too fresh and too easily reopened to be forgotten. At times, she felt as if she had been skinned alive, left to walk around with her raw nerves exposed to the world.
The little green numerals on the clock beside her read 3:13. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep—at least not without a little help. Enough moonlight slanted in through the blinds that she was able to make out her half-empty wine glass sitting on the nightstand. Without turning on the lamp, she reached into the top drawer and took out the bottle of sleeping pills her doctor had given her. She had taken one before she had gone to bed, and it obviously hadn’t done the trick, so she took another, washing it down with the remainder of the warm wine.
Montana
Kyle sat in the darkened conference room of the FBI offices in Kalispell, looking at the photo of a ramshackle, two-story building and outlying sheds projected onto the large dry-erase board. The place looked like an old, rundown army barracks.
“The man in the foreground with the red hair and beard is John White,” said Marasco. “He’s the leader of the Sons of Montana. His organization is an offshoot of the Militia of Montana, which his father was a member of. He’s described as a fiery, charismatic man who, like all the other militant groups, promotes the white power agenda. They’re antigovernment, anti-Semitic, and anti-black. Like the Freemen, they claim they were born as free citizens of Montana and the government has no power over them. Their compound is about twenty-five miles southeast of here, just past Swan Lake. It’s on this side of the mountains but not too much farther south than the Hungry Horse cabins.”
Lewis crumpled the empty Styrofoam cup in his right hand, dribbling coffee on the table. “Goddammit,” he growled. “Hang on a minute.” He strode from the room to get something to clean up the mess. Until then, Kyle had been so distracted with his own problems that he hadn’t thought about how uncomfortable this must have been for Lewis. He had probably had enough of the white supremacist talk.
Marasco pushed his chair back and switched on the lights. Kyle groaned, squinting against the brightness.
“It’s fucked up, isn’t it?” said Marasco.
“What do you mean?”
He nodded at the photo on the wall. “Cocksuckers like John White. The only reason they’re able to get away with that shit is because their rights are protected by the people they want to get rid of.”
Kyle nodded. It was a sad but true commentary on the state of the nation. “So why do
you
do it?” he asked.
“Me? I don’t do it for those motherfuckers—that’s for sure.” Marasco paused for a moment as if remembering. “My old man was a cop in Jersey back in the day,” he said. “I don’t know what it was exactly that made me want be like him, but I did. It wasn’t like he made a lot of money or anything. I think maybe it was the way everyone else in the neighborhood respected him, you know. I liked that. It made me proud to be his kid. My brother, he’s a cop too. I guess it’s just something in the blood.”
“So how did you end up here?” Kyle asked. “You don’t exactly fit in with the locals.”
“Aay, your pretty fuckin’ sharp, aren’t you?” Marasco grinned. “No, I was working undercover in the mob back in Jersey, and things started to get a little hairy. They were afraid my cover had been blown, so they pulled me out. Shipped me out here in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere. Just until things cooled down, they said. That was a fuckin’ year and a half ago.
“But you know what?” he continued. “It ain’t that bad here. I’ve kind of gotten used to it. I mean sure, it ain’t Jersey, but it’s relaxing, and the people are all right. ’Course I miss the food, and it’d be hell if I didn’t have satellite. I do miss going to Yankee games, though. There’s nothing like—”
Lewis came marching back into the room, cell phone in hand. “You know where the Jewel Basin area is?” he asked Marasco.
“Yeah, sure.”
“All right, let’s go.”
“What’s up?” Marasco asked.
“I’ll explain it on the way.”
With that, they hurried out, the spilled coffee left to stain the table.
*
Marasco drove. Like almost everyone in town, he had an all-wheel-drive vehicle, but instead of a Yukon, his was a Ford Expedition.
In the truck, Lewis said, “The sheriff says a couple of his deputies were following up on one of the leads this morning. There were some receipts from a sporting goods store among the dead men’s belongings. Apparently, the guys stopped there and bought some gear when they got into town. Anyway, the deputies went to the store and were questioning people when the manager steps up and says he remembers the guys. Says there was a bit of a disturbance when the black guy tried to buy a fishing knife. The guy at the counter—get this—a ‘Jeffrey Wayne Tucker,’ wouldn’t help him because he was black. The manager had to step in and check the guys out.”
“So what happened?” Kyle asked.
“Afterwards, the manager fired him, and as he was leaving, Tucker made some threatening comments about ‘that nigger that cost him his job.’” Just hearing Lewis say it made Kyle uncomfortable.
“Have they questioned him?” Marasco asked.
“Not exactly,” Lewis said. “Turns out he lives in some cabin in the backwoods, a real Ted Kazinski-like place. Apparently, Mr. Tucker wasn’t feeling very sociable when the deputies showed up this morning. He met them out front with a shotgun. They tried to talk to him, but he was uncooperative. After Tucker fired off a warning shot, the deputies backed off and called it in. They’ve got him surrounded now. I told them to hold off until we get there.”
“You think he’s our man?” Marasco asked.
“Hell if I know, but I’ll tell you this,” Lewis said. “We’ve got to get him to come out and talk to us,
especially
if he didn’t do it. If this thing goes south and he ends up dead, it won’t matter if he did it or not. It’ll be a goddamned Ruby Ridge all over again. The press will be up our ass, and DC’ll try to pin it on Tucker just to take the heat off. And I don’t have to tell you what that would mean to our careers. We’ve got to be damn careful with this one.”
The cabin was located about fifteen miles southeast of Kalispell in the heart of the Jewel Basin. While much of the snow in town had melted away, it remained in abundance among the woods in the shadow of the mountains. The only access to the place was from a rough, unpaved road that wended its way toward the base of the mountains from Highway 83. At mile marker four, a narrow, winding path turned away over a small rise and disappeared into the trees. A wooden sign nailed to a tree read:
PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO NIGGERS! NO JEWS! AND NO
ONE ELSE ALLOWED. TRESS PASSERS WILL BE SHOT!
They made their way up the trail another half mile before they came to a stop at the end of a line of county vehicles.
The sheriff met them as they walked up. “What have we got?” Lewis asked.
“He’s holed up in a cabin just over the hill. We have eight men surrounding the perimeter.” The sheriff pointed to a map spread across the hood of one of the trucks. “There are no good escape routes other than the road leading up here. He could try it on foot, but between the snow and our men, he would not get very far.”
“Good. Has anyone tried talking to him recently?”
“Not in the last hour. We have spotters in the trees here and here,” he said, pointing at the map. “They can see him through the window every now and then. He can’t see us, but he knows we are still here.”
“That’s good. We want him to know he can’t get away, but he can’t shoot what he doesn’t see.”
“I also requested a search warrant from the judge,” said the sheriff.
“All right,” said Lewis. “He may have helped us out with that little shotgun trick. I don’t think we could have gotten one otherwise. All we had were secondhand reports of him making threatening remarks. Now it looks like he’s got something to hide.”
“So what do you have in mind?” Marasco asked.
“Somehow we’ve got to get him to talk to us. Try to get him to come out voluntarily,” said Lewis.
“Well, don’t take this personally, but I don’t think he’s going to be too receptive to either you or the sheriff here.”
“I know,” said Lewis. “I don’t think he’s likely to talk to someone in uniform either. That’s why we’re going to send you and Kyle.”
Marasco looked appalled. “Are you fucking crazy? You can’t send a civilian up there. He doesn’t know the first thing about dealing with a situation like this.” Marasco spoke as if Kyle wasn’t standing right next to him.
“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” Lewis said. “Besides, you’re not in charge here. I am. And that’s how it’s going to go down. You have a problem with that?”
“Yeah, I do. I may go along with it, but I want it noted that I think it’s a bad idea. I’m not going to be the one going down for this if he fucks it up.” Marasco turned and looked at Kyle. Then without saying anything more, he just shook his head and marched off toward the back of the line of trucks.
Lewis looked at Kyle. “You think you’re up to it?”
“Yeah, sure, of course I am. I’m good at getting people to talk. It’s what I do,” Kyle said, trying to sound confident.
Lewis looked at him for a moment longer without speaking. Kyle struggled to keep from looking away. It wasn’t that he was afraid to talk to Tucker. He dealt with people all the time, many of whom were mentally and emotionally imbalanced. But this time was different. There was more at stake now.
“Just go up there and talk to him,” Lewis said. “Take your time. Just get him talking. Try to convince him we just want to talk, that we aren’t here to arrest him. But don’t let him know we have a search warrant, or we might never get him out. If we’re lucky, he’ll come out peacefully. Otherwise, we’ll have to try to wait him out.”
Kyle nodded and said, “Right.” It was all he could manage to get out. His mouth had gone suddenly dry.
“It could take some time if we have to wait him out,” said the sheriff. “To live out here, he must have enough supplies to survive for weeks at a time.”
They followed the sheriff to the back of one of the trucks. Deputy Johnson had popped the rear hatch. Marasco was already shrugging into one of the black Kevlar vests.
Kyle took off his coat and slipped on the vest, fastening it with the thick Velcro straps. They had him put his jacket back on inside out so that the yellow FBI logo was hidden. The idea was to make him look like a regular guy and as nonthreatening as possible. Lewis handed his Colt Delta Elite semi-automatic to Kyle. It was American-made, of course—Lewis wouldn’t carry anything that wasn’t. It felt heavy in his hand. Kyle checked to make sure the safety was on and then tucked it in the back of his jeans. It was a cold, hard lump in the small of his back.
“Now listen,” said Lewis. “If he starts getting hinky, just back out of there. We don’t want to piss him off. And you,” he said to Marasco. “Keep a close eye on Tucker. If you think he’s about to draw down on you, you take Kyle down, and we’ll hit him with the flash bangs. You got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Marasco said in a surly tone. Kyle nodded as Deputy Johnson handed him a bullhorn. It seemed as if there were a million things going through his head all at once, which made it impossible for him to focus on any one thing.
“All right, let’s go.” Lewis said with a clap on his back.
The snow crunched loudly beneath Kyle’s feet as he made his way up the trail. His senses were heightened to the point where he heard and saw things he would normally never have noticed: the sound of his breathing and the throbbing rush of blood in his ears, the chirping of a bird in the distance, sunlight slipping through the ominous-looking clouds to the west, purplish-blue shadows stretching across the ground before him. In spite of the cold, tiny rivulets of sweat trickled down his ribs from under his arms.
Just over the rise, he could see the tiny cabin tucked away among the trees. It was a ramshackle collection of logs and boards with a corrugated tin and tar-paper roof. A dented and rusting Ford pickup was parked to the right of the shack, its rear bumper hanging precariously low on the left side, where it was held to the frame with several loops of bailing wire.
“That’s far enough,” called a rough voice from within the shack.
Kyle stopped and raised the bullhorn.
“Mr. Tucker, I’m Kyle Andrews with the FBI. I just want to ask you a few questions,” he said, letting his native-Texan accent come out. He wanted Tucker to think he was just a good old boy like himself, and therefore more likely to sympathize with his attitudes.
“I ain’t got nuthin’ to say to you or no one else, specially no gov’ment men.”
Damn.
He shouldn’t have told him he was with the FBI. Tucker obviously had a problem with Big Brother. A part of him wanted to turn around and just walk away like Tucker had told him, but he was determined not to let Lewis down. He paused a moment and tried to think of the right way to approach this. He knew the first step to reaching someone was getting them talking.
“Mr. Tucker, I’m not an agent. I’m a victim’s rights advocate. I make sure that people’s rights are protected.” It was not an entirely accurate description of his job, but he was trying to make it sound appropriate for the situation. “I just want to talk with you, so we can try and resolve this little misunderstanding peacefully.”
“Ain’t no misunderstanding. You’re trespassin’ on my property, and I got a right to defend myself. Now get outta here.”
Kyle didn’t want to come across as argumentative, so he waited a beat as if considering Tucker’s demands. The second step was to build a sense of camaraderie, an us-against-them attitude. “You’re right, Mr. Tucker. It
is
your God-given right to defend yourself, and I’m here to make sure that no one takes that away from you. But I can also assure you that there is nothing to defend yourself against right now. I just need to ask you a few questions—that’s all.”