Cold River Resurrection (22 page)

C
hapter
52

Cold River Indian Reservation

Biddle Pass

Smokey leaned down and studied the trail. They were walking toward Milk Creek through stands of trees. The burn area from the Lightening Complex Fire of 2007 was just ahead. A single burned tree stood up like a black pencil marking the edge of the burn. The tracks on the trail had been bothering him for an hour, and now he studied them.

They were too new.

“Hey
, Dad,” Laurel said, walking up behind him, “Jennifer wants to . . .”

He held his hand up for her to stop. “Wait here, I want to see the trail.”

“Okay, me and Jennifer are going to take our packs off and have some water.”

He waved at her to go ahead and looked at the impressions in the trail. The sun highlighted the ridges in
the tracks. Smokey followed them with his eyes to a shady patch, then out in the sun again. This wasn’t right. He had known it for the past hour, but since he knew pretty much where they were going, he didn’t need the trail for that. He had a GPS position for the ledge where he thought they would find the woman’s remains.

He thought the footprints might turn in a different direction, and had been made by day hikers, some tribal members up here for a picnic. But they had gone on too far.

There should be tracks on the trail through Biddle Pass. Tracks from the searchers. The search ended four days ago.

But these tracks are less than four hours old. These tracks were from someone ahead of us, and the tracks were going in, none coming out.

Three people, three men, three different boot sizes and prints.

Do I tell the other?
. Yeah. Tell them. They need to know. 

“Jennifer, Laurel.” He called quietly, aware now for sure that they were not alone.

“We’re taking a break, Dad,” Laurel said. They laughed. “Yeah, Dad,” Jennifer said, and giggled.

He didn’t want to ruin their mood, but there was nothing else to be done.

“Hey, guys, I want to show you this.” He waited, looking for some sign that he might be wrong. Laurel came up and leaned on his shoulder.

“What’s up, Daddy? Or as my friend Tim says, ‘sup?”

“I’m looking at tracks here, three men, carrying packs. Maybe four hours ago, six at the most.”

“How do you know they are men?” Jennifer asked, leaning in over his left shoulder.

“Length of stride, shoe size, weight, although the weight is not always a determinant. And I’ve tracked enough people to know. These prints are men’s boots, and they are all carrying fairly heavy packs. They walk differently with a pack on, not used to the weight, don’t pick their feet up the same way as a normal walk, the heels dig in more. With the packs, they are all well over two hundred pounds.”

“You sure?” Jennifer asked.

“Yeah, he’s sure,” Laurel said.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Smokey said, “but first, you have to let me up.” He walked back up the trail, above where they had stopped.

“Look, this is Jennifer’s print. See the shoe size, the length of stride.” He pointed to the trail. “And look at Laurel’s. Smaller, length of stride. Those prints up there are men.”

“What’s it mean?” Jennifer asked. She had a worried look on her face. Smokey was instantly sorry for spoiling their day.

“It means three people went up this trail this morning. Maybe hikers. Just stay alert, okay?”

“Okay Dad.” Laurel walked down and picked up her pack, looked at Jennifer, and shrugged.

“You sure know how to ruin a hike, Daddy, you sure do.”

“Wait a minute,” Jennifer said, looking down at the trail. “How do you know that these aren’t some of the searchers, the ones looking for me. I mean, there must have been a lot of people on this trail when I was lost. Maybe it’s just their tracks.”

Smokey took a knee and motioned Jennifer closer. Laurel bent down on the other side.

“We’re in a volcanic region, and what looks like dirt on the trail is pumice, very light, porous, and crumbly. Tracks form easily in pumice, but they also lose their shape quickly. Look at this one here.” He pointed at the side of the trail.

“This is a track, an old one, now just a large, unformed, rounded impression. The wind for the past week has almost obliterated it.” Smokey shifted to the middle of the trail.

“This track, one of the three new ones, is just starting to crumble on the outside, with a line of dirt filling the inside, where the vibram tread is. The more dirt on the inside, the older the track is. Four hours.”

I should turn around now, take them both back. Come back with Nathan, war paint on, full tactical gear. Be ready to take out people if necessary.

Ready to kill them.

Smokey did the next best thing. He pulled the sling of the sniper rifle from his shoulder and carried it at port arms. He started down the trail, following the unknown tracks. But he knew in his gut that the tracks represented a lot of trouble for someone.

A lot of trouble for us.

He looked down the trail. He stopped, removed binoculars from his pack and scanned the countryside. He knew one thing in all of his years up here. The mountain didn’t care about mere humans, tribal or not. He put the binoculars away and looked at the two women he loved.

In a few minutes they would enter the burned area, an area where they were exposed, with little or no cover if trouble started.

The area of his dream.

C
hapter
53

Below Biddle Pass

“I don’t care if we haven’t taken a movie of Bigfoot yet, I want out of here,” Amy said. Stan was such a fool sometimes. He was determined to wait one more night, even after finding the remains (and there really wasn’t much remaining) of the woman. She had gone along with all of his shit to this point, even helping him move the tent closer to where the woman was, thinking for some reason that Bigfoot was close by. That just didn’t make any sense.

“Stan, are you listening to me?” He was in front of the tent, fooling with his dart rifle.

“Stan!”

He looked up. Amy couldn’t see any interest or concern in his look, and that made it worse.

“Stan, just wondering, do you have a real gun in that bag of crap you carry with you?”

“You know I don’t like guns, Amy. They just cause problems.” He went back to wiping a cloth on his dart gun.

“Well, someone has been killing people here on the reservation, maybe putting dead people here, might be a good time to rethink the whole gun thing. I’m pretty sure Bigfoot is going to be none too happy about you shooting it, him, her, whatever, with the dart gun. I don’t know or care, all I know is I want to go back to Albany. That town never looked so good. It might even smell better, certainly better than us by now. Stan are you
listening
to me?”

“Yes, Amy,” Stan said, sounding to her like he was bored, trying to humor her. Keep her quiet.

“In fact, Bigfoot is probably heading for the next county with all your chatter.” He lowered his voice. “See that rock face over there? I’m gonna be there this afternoon, hiding with the dart gun. May stay there all night. Then, no matter what happens, if I see Bigfoot or not, we’ll hike out in the morning. Satisfied? Only, it would help if you could be a little quieter.”

She looked at the rock face across the canyon, near where they had found the woman.

This is way too close for me. I’m not going with Stan tonight, I’m gonna stay in camp and then get the hell out of here in the morning.

Amy had to admit, Stan’s idea of being set for life appealed to the part of her that wanted to set up a preserve for the animal, a large tract of land, maybe in Montana, or on the upper peninsula rain forest in Washington State. So she would go with Stan after all this afternoon. She had come this far.

“When we gonna get the hell out of here
?” the Eighteenth Street gang member whined. Roberto glanced at the tweeker. He wanted this to be over as well, to quit fucking around in the United States. He also wanted to be rid of the little asshole they were saddled with on this particular hike. He wondered if the boss would let Justine kill the gang banger before they left. Leave him on the mountain. But they had needed him to get them on the trail.

They had hiked in during the morning. Everything had changed with the disastrous assault on the cop’s house. Well, this was the cop’s last day on earth.

They set up in a large group of trees, on the hillside near a shear rock outcropping, close to where they thought the hooker was. This should have been over days ago, Roberto thought, except for the lost woman.

“Roberto.” Justine was laying over a log, looking through a spotting scope. A sniper rifle was propped on the log next to him. Roberto kneeled down.

“Roberto, I see them, on the trail, there.” Justine pointed up toward the round mountain, back the way they had come. “About to enter the burn area.”

“How far?” Roberto asked. Things were going to happen quick
ly now.

“Maybe a mile. If they go to the cliff, they will pass within two hundred yards of us. The little girl is wearing a red shirt. Spot them pretty easy from now on.

“We need to take them close if we can, but the cop is good, don’t want to give him a chance. We’ll take him first, then capture the woman. I don’t want to get into a foot chase. Take them close.”

“How about I take the
nina
first?” Justine asked, picking up the rifle and looking through the scope.

“Take the cop first, no mistakes.”

Justine grinned, still looking through the rifle scope.

Roberto kneeled and looked through the spotting scope. It took him
a minute to find them, then he saw a flash of red. They were on the trail, fifteen hundred meters. The cop was in front, carrying a rifle of his own, the girl with a red t-shirt was next, and then the woman. She also had a rifle, slung on her back.

The cop was the threat.

Wouldn’t be long now.

C
hapter
54

Smokey stopped at the edge of the burn area. In the sun the place seemed surreal – Mt. Jefferson dominated the western landscape with glaciers on the south and east side. He looked at the blackened area, a strip hundreds of yards wide and five miles long in the middle of paradise, a dark and twisted lunar landscape in the middle of green. For the next half mile, the area resembled the dark side of the moon. 

Laurel threw her pack down and took a long drink
from her water bottle. Sweat streamed down her face.

“Dad, must be a hundred up here,” she said, blowing her breath out.

“Two hundred,” Jennifer said, working her water out. She raised it to her lips and looked over the bottle at Smokey.

He turned and watched them as Jennifer shrugged her pack off as well. She pulled her bottle down and looked over the valley in front of them. She stayed in that position, frozen, and Smokey followed her stare.

She pointed.

“T
here!” She said, the excitement in her voice coming to Smokey.

“What?” But he knew as he looked. The rock wall, partially obscured by burned trees was across the valley from them.

Jennifer’s heart pounded. She forgot about the heat. She was back again, lost on the mountain, staggering around, scared out of her wits, trembling after running headlong in the twilight. Now she knew that the thing she wrapped in the cloth wasn’t her Nanna, but was a thing too horrible to accept. She knew at some level that her mind just wouldn’t let her see what it really was, that she needed her doll to survive, so she made the awful fleshy artifact her doll.

There it is, the place she had dreamed about all these days, the place where she found the hand, the place where she had seen something too horrible to remember. Something that had put her at the center of a violent group of criminals. Something that meant a lot of people died, including some of the innocent people on the reservation. The hand.

It was dark, Jennifer. It was too dark to see.

Close your eyes and go back to the dark time. Close them and see what you found.

She closed her eyes, unaware that Smokey and Laurel were watching her.

It’s dark now. I’m holding Nanna, looking down at the ground at the base of the rock cliff. It’s getting cold in the night, the darkness, what’s in the darkness making bumps on my neck? I’m afraid to turn around. Things here I don’t want to see. Open your eyes.

And she opened her eyes, standing on the trail with Smokey and Laurel, seeing only darkness.

Jennifer didn’t see Laurel step over to take her hand, and Smokey motioning his daughter away, putting his arm around Laurel as they watched.

Jennifer was standing on the trail in mid-afternoon, feeling the cool of the evening a week ago, looking into the darkness. She saw it, the thing she blocked, coming back to her in the dark. A moonlit night, the scene below the cliff, a place she wandered upon while running from the  body of the man, running, screaming, and finding something too horrible to imagine. When you are lost.

Jennifer, you know what was there. What you left there. The thing they wanted.

The hand attached to the briefcase.

She could see her flight that night, an almost out-of-body viewing, watching as the frightened Jennifer ran headlong into the cliff, falling down to her knees, and in the moonlight seeing something that did not belong in the woods.

A black square object. Shiny. Leather.

A briefcase.

A severed hand attached. She laughed. It reminded her of diamond merchants carrying their wares, only someone had removed the handcuffs the hard way. A handcuffed hand on an attaché case.

Except now there were no handcuffs.

She touched the hand.

Pretty nails. Glitter.

Don’t look at the end, where the wrist used to be, neatly cut, a surgical cut, or maybe a butcher’s cut (I’ll take the veal)
, sharp implement, the tendons white nubs in the flesh, the metacarpal bones orderly and neat, like small white mints sticking out of the flesh.

Don’t look.

She caressed the hand.

Nanna.

The hand looked cold, like Nanna. I’m just gonna pry it loose, wrap it in a piece of my shirt, like I used to carry my Nanna.

Nanna. Where have you been
? I’m getting out of here with you, Nanna. We’ll go out together. Away from here.

Jennifer closed her eyes, still seeing the lost Jennifer with a grisly artifact, not a doll, as the lost Jennifer believed.

She felt the heat of the sun, and gradually became aware of where she was, back on the mountain, this time with Smokey and his daughter. She opened her eyes.

“I know what they are looking for,” she said as she walked to Smokey and Laurel. She put her arms around the two people who would save the Jennifer who had been lost before she started on the expedition. Lost and she didn’t know it.

Breathing.

Alive.

But not like this.

“What are they doin
g?” Roberto asked, reaching for the scope.

“They’re stopped on the trail. Pointing at the mountain.”

Roberto grabbed the scope. “They’re not pointing at the mountain,
puta
, they’re pointing at that. The cliff. Idiot.” 

“Keep watching, don’t let him see any reflection. We’ll be at the cliff when they arrive.”

He pushed himself back on his stomach until he was below the small rise, out of sight of the trail where the cop stood. “Oh,” he said, turning back to look at the shooter, “kill the cop first, on my command.”

Stan was out ahead of Amy, moving cautiously, exaggerating each step to be as quiet as possible. He stopped every hundred feet to look at the screen in his GPS tracker. The blinking light for the location of Bigfoot hadn’t moved (if that was what he had shot last night). The animal should be close to the base of the cliff across the way, and he was approaching it as one would stalk a grizzly bear. Careful. Out of sight.

Even though Bigfoot was supposed to be nocturnal, he must be sleeping nearby. With the tracking dart, if they could get a film, they had every chance to get a movie. A new movie would make him more famous than the 1967 film. They could now track Bigfoot
to his home, and they would get a film.

He watched his screen one more time and looked for a route that would take them through the trees to the top of the cliff. He looked behind him and saw Amy walking around a tree a hundred yards back. Good girl. She’s stepping softly, getting into the game.

There. Movement up ahead. He held the monitor steady.

There, on the trail. Something moved up ahead, halfway to the cliff, maybe a hundred fifty yards. His heart raced. He was going to
see, for the first time in his life, a giant biped here in the forest.

But it’s not the one on the monitor. Another one, of course. There would be more than one.

Proof.

He walked forward, crouching. There. A flash of red.

He stepped around a tree, camera ready. A bandanna, tied on a piece of bitterbrush.

What the hell?”

“Amigo!”

The sound came from directly behind Stan. He whirled with the camera, more puzzled than afraid.

A man stood on the trail behind him, holding a knife in his right hand. He wore black pants, the army kind, Stan thought, and a camouflage shirt. Some kind of floppy hat. Black hair on his shoulders.

The man was grinning.

Stan dropped the GPS unit and dug in his pack for the dart rifle.

“Who –“

And he knew where the bodies came from, that this man was responsible. He wished he had a gun for the first time in his life. He backed up the trail and went down, pulling the pack on top of him.

“Noooooo!”

The knife hit his throat and the grinning man jumped on top of him. Stan’s blood pumped out down his chest, and he found he didn’t have time to be afraid.

“
Amy!” He yelled her name. It came out as a gurgle, and he knew it was going to be bad. So much blood. He tried to push the knife out, the grinning man still on top, holding him down.

Amy, ah, Amy.

He died on the trail, wondering why he couldn’t see Bigfoot.

“Get the camera,” Roberto said. “We can record what happens to those who meddle with us.”

What a beautiful day, Amy thought. She stopped and looked around, not wanting to get too far behind Stan. She saw him on the trail, his head down, looking at his hand-held GPS.

She gave a little wave, wanting him to look up so he would know she wasn’t too far behind. A man materialized on the trail, and from where she was it looked as if he was right behind Stan. Where the hell did he come from?

She wanted to yell, but he had insisted that they remain as quiet as possible.

Stan, behind you! Look up!

Amy stood in the trail and watched. At least they were talking. Stan had looked up and was talking to the man.

This isn’t right. Stan was walking backward, and then he went down. When the man jumped on Stan she couldn’t see the knife, but the sudden spurt of blood made her cry out.

He was killing Stan!

She started to run toward them, crying, she started to yell his name, and then she stopped. Another man had joined the killer on the trail. They stood looking down at Stan, and she was sure that he was dead. She could see the blood on the trail from where she was.

If they look around, they’ll see you.

She was now only fifty yards behind them, exposed. She took a trembling step behind her. She slid behind a tree to her left, tears streaming down her face. She shook, and forced herself to look out again. The men were bending over Stan. They took his camera, and walked up the trail and out of sight.

Go to him.

No, they’ll see you. Kill you.

Who are they?

People who kill, the ones who kill on the mountain.

When they were out of sight, Amy hesitated, and then she ran to him. She sat in the trail and touched his face and tried not to look at the horrible gash in his neck. He was weird, but he was her weird, and he hadn’t ever hurt anyone that she could remember. She suddenly felt exposed and very alone.

She picked up his pack and looked inside.

They don’t know me. They don’t know that I was working in a mill when I was sixteen, out on my own by seventeen.

She felt the beginnings of anger and let it grow, keeping it tight inside, her mouth forming in a grim thin line. Some people would call it “spunk,” but it was a look her mother had said was her “fuck somebody up” look. Amy reached in the pack and found the stock and barrel of the dart rifle. The
small laptop was laying next to Stan’s outstretched hand. She put the dart rifle and laptop in her pack, stood, took a last look at Stan, tucked away her last sob for now, and started cautiously up the trail.

I’m going to
track them. Follow them. Mark them with a dart. Could track them anywhere then.

Gonna fuck somebody up.