Scapegoat: A Patrick Flint Novel
Page 1
Scapegoat
A Patrick Flint Novel
Pamela Fagan Hutchins
SkipJack Publishing
Contents
Free PFH eBooks
Author’s Note
Chapter One: Lock
Chapter Two: Shock
Chapter Three: Transport
Chapter Four: Input
Chapter Five: Setup
Chapter Six: Abstain
Chapter Seven: Pile
Chapter Eight: Free
Chapter Nine: Irritate
Chapter Ten: Disrupt
Chapter Eleven: Misstep
Chapter Twelve: Care
Chapter Thirteen: Hurt
Chapter Fourteen: Changeup
Chapter Fifteen: Intercept
Chapter Sixteen: Reconvene
Chapter Seventeen: Rescue
Chapter Eighteen: Escape
Chapter Nineteen: Realize
Chapter Twenty: Encounter
Chapter Twenty-one: Choose
Chapter Twenty-two: Catch
Chapter Twenty-three: Discover
Chapter Twenty-four: Meet
Chapter Twenty-five: Shoot
Chapter Twenty-six: Portage
Chapter Twenty-seven: Disagree
Chapter Twenty-eight: Crush
Chapter Twenty-nine: Oppose
Chapter Thirty: Flight
Chapter Thirty-one: Repulse
Chapter Thirty-two: Ally
Chapter Thirty-three: Yield
Chapter Thirty-four: Defy
Chapter Thirty-five: Clothesline
Chapter Thirty-six: Endure
Chapter Thirty-seven: Amaze
Chapter Thirty-eight: Gorge
Chapter Thirty-nine: Shoulder
Chapter Forty: Risk
Chapter Forty-one: Sicken
Chapter Forty-two: Stick
Chapter Forty-three: Leap
Chapter Forty-four: Duck
Chapter Forty-five: Pay
Acknowledgments
Books by the Author
About the Author
Other Books from SkipJack Publishing
Foreword
Free PFH eBooks
Before you begin reading, you can snag a free Pamela Fagan Hutchins ebook starter library—including an exclusive Patrick Flint short story—by joining her mailing list at https://www.subscribepage.com/PFHSuperstars.
Author’s Note
I like to use real settings, but, in Scapegoat, I have made up a river and a guard station. They may bear similarities to an actual river and guard station, but they’re not the same ones. You won’t find them on any map. However, they are as close to authentic as I can make them.
Chapter One: Lock
Jackson, Wyoming
Thursday, June 23, 1977, 10:00 a.m.
Patrick
Patrick Flint kept a tight grip on his wallet as the owner of Wyoming Whitewater pulled out a pencil and tallied up the damages, tongue out and eyes squinted. The shop was in a musty log cabin near downtown, close enough to the Jackson Hole Historical Society & Museum to taunt Patrick. He was dying to see their new exhibits—one on the history of bighorn sheep in the area and another on the Mountain Shoshone or “Sheep Eater” Indians who had inhabited the surrounding high country since long before the advent of Yellowstone as a national park.
He glanced over his shoulder. Out the front windows, the green stripes of ski runs crisscrossed the face of the mountains that were crowding the downtown area. It was pretty, but it paled next to the wonders he’d seen in the previous twenty-four hours. During their drive to Jackson that morning after camping near Dubois, Patrick had been amazed by the sharp granite teeth of peaks in the Shoshone National Forest. By the prominence of stately Gannett, the highest peak in the state. By the high sagebrush flats in the Wind River Range. In fact, the whole drive from Buffalo to Jackson had further cemented his belief that Wyoming was the wildest and most beautiful state in the nation. From the bright red cliffs of the Chugwater Foundation, to the range of colors in the palette of the arid western slope of the Bighorns, to the high canyons, gorges, and gulleys carved by wind and water. But by far his greatest moment of wonder was his first glimpse of the iconic skyline of the jagged Cathedral Group peaks. Grand Teton’s rocky, snow-topped spire stood above the rest, basking in the mid-morning sun.
His skin actually tingled with anticipation. He couldn’t wait to get out into the wilderness, where he felt closest to nature, his true self, and the majesty of the Almighty, but the shop owner’s voice drew him back around.
“You want four canoes, eight paddles, and eight life jackets, for three days. Canoeing the backcountry. Like in the movie Deliverance. Or, actually, let’s hope it’s not like Deliverance.” Patrick had never seen Deliverance, and he had no idea what the man was talking about. “That comes out to . . .” The owner, whose name was Brock, quoted a number and brushed sun-bleached curls from his eyes with his other hand. Mid-to-late twenties, tall and stooped, looking more California cool than Wyoming rough and ready. He also gave off an odor like he’d poured most of a bottle of cheap cologne down his chest. No self-respecting mountain man left the house smelling like that. “Anything else, man?”
Patrick groaned. Not for the first time, he compared the cost of the extra gas he would have used if he’d borrowed the gear and equipment back in Buffalo, to the rental total. Just when he’d been about to hit up his friend and co-worker Wes Braten to make the trip with them and pull one of the trailers, his wife Susanne had put the kibosh on the plan. She didn’t like the idea of caravanning with trailers through multiple mountain ranges, regardless of the savings he’d projected. Patrick had been disappointed and not just because of the expense. Wes and his International Harvester Travelall, “Gussie”, were a rugged pair and good to have along.
“Do you offer any kind of volume discount?” Patrick suggested a lower number.
Brock laughed. “It’s 1977, not 1957, you know? That’s my best price. And you won’t find a better deal in the western part of the state.” He straightened the shoulders on his t-shirt, light green with short-sleeves and the words LUNCH COUNTER below a graphic of a turbulent river. Identical shirts hung on a carousel rack. Shelves displayed sunscreen, Chapstick, hats, insect repellant, and bumper stickers with the state flag. Elsewhere on racks, the shop offered life jackets, paddles, seat cushions, and much more. In one corner, a cooler contained drinks and snacks for sale. The walls showed off an array of action photos on various local rivers, mostly the famous Snake River. The showpiece of the place was an ancient rowboat that no longer looked like it would stay afloat. A nameplate was affixed to its stern. SNAKE CHARMER.
“All right, then.” What Brock said about the price was true. Patrick knew, because he had called all the shops in Jackson. And in Cody. “What’s that mean on your shirt, ‘Lunch Counter?’”
“It’s a super awesome rapid on the Snake River. You wouldn’t want to go down that in canoes. Or anything but a nice, big raft. The water is moving at fifteen hundred cubic feet per second, just like you’ll find on the Tukudika. But two of my buddies are convinced they can surf it.”
“With surf boards?”
“Yeah. But they’ll probably die trying.” He grinned. “There’d be less competition for guides on the river then.”
A bell dinged, and a cool breeze swept through the building. Wyoming could be warm during June in Jackson Hole—the wide, flat 6000-feet elevation valley on the west side of the Continental Divide, between the Tetons and Gros Ventre mountain ranges—but it often wasn’t. The paper the owner had been writing on levitated and tumbled through the air. Patrick chased it and stomped on it.
He wanted to check the math.
Before he could, the floor creaked and familiar voices reached his ears.
“There’s my boy.” The tinkle of bells. That’s what he thought of when Lana Flint spoke.
He turned and caught sight of her. His mother was dressed as if for an African safari, only jauntier, with a pink and red scarf tied around her neck. Probably one of her own designs. She had worked as an inhouse designer for a clothing manufacturer ever since his youngest sister Patty, his daughter Trish’s namesake, had left for college.
“Hi, Mom.” He continued naming his family members as they filed into the store. “Dad. Pete. Vera.” Then his throat dried, and his words stuck. “And the . . . the . . . rest of you.”
Patrick had thought his brother Pete and Pete’s young wife Vera were traveling without their kids, but he counted all seven of their young brood behind them. The oldest, Annie, scowled at two brown-headed boys. Stan and Danny. The three of them were Pete’s birth children. Vera’s kids were tow-headed and freckled. Brian was holding the hand of Bunny, the youngest, and Bert and Barry were peeking around their big brother’s shoulders.
“Just call them the seven dwarves,” Joe Flint didn’t crack a smile under his thin mustache. The older Flint—shivering in brown corduroy pants, a green and navy flannel shirt with what looked like a t-shirt underneath, and hiking boots—was a flat-top wearing whipcord. He had a tongue like one, too, which he used anytime he thought people wanted his opinion, usually about whether they carried an excess ounce of flesh, and he’d been known for his heavy hand as well when his kids were young. Patrick had his father’s brown hair and blue eyes, but, despite their similarities, something kept them from looking much alike. Maybe it was World War II that had hardened Joe and pinched features that on Patrick were rounded and full.
Patrick didn’t laugh. When his father had announced the visit and asked to go fishing, Patrick had planned a few modest day trips into the Bighorn Mountains near the Flint family’s home. Then his mother had phoned to ask if Pete and Vera could come and told him how much they all wanted to see Jackson Hole and Yellowstone National Park. Patrick had been dying to visit the area. So, he’d planned this trip on the Tukudika River, excited that his thirteen-year-old son Perry was finally old enough and strong enough, and sixteen-year-old Trish cooperative enough for a canoe and fishing trip to be feasible. He’d read everything he could on the Mountain Shoshone native to the area, and he was really hoping to see some authentic artifacts in the wilderness.
He hadn’t counted on Pete and Vera’s young family.
Patrick looked toward the line of humanity still filing into the store. Susanne waved Trish and Perry in last, scowling at her offspring. He felt a familiar pride that a woman as vivacious, lovely, and kind as Susanne had chosen to be his wife. She looked so darn cute in cut-off blue jean shorts, a sleeveless t-shirt, hiking boots, and a red bandana scarf holding long brown curls off her face. And was it his imagination, or had Perry grown an inch overnight? Not that his son was tall. He was still six inches behind his grade level buddies. But taller, and his face looked slimmer, too. His body slightly harder than it had been in shorts and a tank top the summer before. He hoped so. Perry hated being small. Trish, on the other hand, had clearly blossomed into young womanhood. With her long braids and bright blue eyes and a body toned by basketball, running, horsemanship, and youth, she radiated vitality. He felt the shop owner’s eyes light on her.
Back off, buddy. She’s too young for you.
Just as his eyes traveled from his kids back to his wife, Trish socked Perry in the kidney. Patrick didn’t react. He was too numb from shock over the seven youngsters for anything else to faze him.
“Honey, can I talk to you for a second?” he said to Susanne.
As she made her way over to him, all smiles now, he hugged his visiting family members one by one, starting with the children and moving on to his brother, Pete. The two of them had bedeviled scout leaders and teachers for years with their nearly identical looks, although now Pete had long sun-streaked hair while Patrick kept his darker hair fingernail short. The brothers were best friends, partners in crime, and Irish twins, separated by less than a year in age. Vera was next. Her marriage to Pete was recent, and Patrick had only met the tiny woman a few times before, and then she’d been tongue-tied. She was from a large family in a very small town, but that was about all Patrick knew about her.
After Patrick embraced Vera, she pulled Danny forward. The eight-year old had olive skin, a shock of jet-black hair, and dark eyes, just like his mother, who had passed away soon after he was born. But he looked enough like Vera that he could have been her birth child.
“What do you think of this rash?” Vera swiveled Danny around and rolled up the hem of his cut-off jeans. “This one’s always into something. He’s been scratching like a flea-bitten dog half the day.”
Patrick crouched beside Danny and examined the red, irritated skin closely. As a doctor, he was on call twenty-four/seven when it came to family. Heck, who was he kidding? He was on call twenty-four/seven with anyone he encountered. Kneeling to pray at church. Paying the cashier at the hardware store. Throwing out his garbage at the town dump. He turned Danny around and smiled at him. The boy smiled back. The expression gave him a mischievous look.
“Do you feel bad anywhere else, Danny?”
The boy shook his head, sending his hair flying around the crown of his head like he was a human May pole.
Patrick laid the back of his palm across the boy’s forehead. No fever. “Say ah.”
“Ahh.”
Patrick considered the boy’s tongue and the back of his throat. Pink and unremarkable. He palpated Danny’s belly. The boy didn’t react.
Patrick stood. “Is he allergic to anything?”
Vera frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s anything serious, but let’s give him a Benadryl, since it’s probably his skin reacting to something he came into contact with. Do you remember touching anything itchy?” he asked Danny.
“No.”
Vera said, “They were playing in the grass when we took a rest stop earlier.”
Danny nodded. He sounded solemn. “I fell on my bottom in a bush.”
Wyoming bushes that cause irritant dermatitis? Russian thistle. AKA the tumbling tumbleweed, once it dries out.
“All right.” Patrick eyeballed Danny, pegging his weight at about fifty-five pounds. “But just one Benadryl. Twenty-five milligrams. Do you have any?”
Vera shook her head. “Not with us, I don’t think.”
“It’s good to travel with some, especially when you’re going to be in a remote location. I have some in our Suburban.” He called to his daughter. “Trish, can you bring the Benadryl in to your Aunt Vera? It’s in my—”
“—Doctor’s bag behind the driver’s seat. I know,” Trish said, in a singsong voice. “Why don’t you make Perry get it?”
Patrick glared at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay.”
He pitched her the car keys, and she headed for the front door.
“Thanks,” Vera said. “Gotta love little boys.”
“That we do.” Patrick riffled Danny’s hair. He missed the days he’d been able to do that with Perry, who had decided when he turned thirteen that hair mussing was undignified for a fellow of his advanced age. Vera was already chasing after Bert and Barry, who had knocked over the t-shirt display and run for the hills before it hit the ground.
Patrick walked over to join Susanne beside a bathroom door covered in hand-painted psychedelic peace signs. She tilted her head toward him so he could talk quietly into her ear, and her long brown waves fell over a bare shoulder. After a few cold Wyoming winters, cool June temperatures didn’t bother her anymore.
He kept his voice low. “What’s going on? Are they planning on bringing the kids on the river trip?”
Facing away from their family, she widened her eyes
. “I think so.”
“This isn’t a trip for little kids.”
“Tell them that.”
Patrick’s lips started moving, but no sound came out.
“I can’t understand you when you’re talking to yourself.”
“Probably best if I don’t repeat it.”
“It will be okay.” She winked at him. “It’s our vacation. How bad could it be?”
He snorted. The last family vacation Patrick planned had ended with Trish kidnapped by multiple-murderer Billy Kemecke. Not exactly idyllic. This trip was his do-over. His chance to show his Texas family a wonderful time in his chosen home state.
“It had better be wonderful. We’re celebrating Kemecke taking the plea deal for life in prison, and you being off the hook from testifying against him.”
“Thank the good Lord for that. But we’ve still got the Barb Lamkin trial to go.”
Lamkin was the most recent criminal the Flints had faced, and Trish’s former basketball coach. She’d used Patrick’s family to bait her former lover into meeting her in the mountains, fully intending to kill all of them. Luckily, a mountain lion in the road had sent her vehicle plummeting toward a creek bed, where Perry had achieved hero status by rescuing his mom and sister. Patrick arrived just in time to free Lamkin by hacking her trapped wrist off with a hatchet and getting her out before the truck had exploded. Now Lamkin was facing first degree murder charges, but the trial couldn’t be held until after her due date, because she was pregnant. The baby’s father, a judge, had been charged with fraud in a slam-dunk, decades-old case the county prosecutor had just uncovered.