Scapegoat: A Patrick Flint Novel

by Hutchins, Pamela Fagan

  But Bunny popped up and shook her finger at the arch. “Bad antwers,” she said through missing front teeth. Then she rubbed her head. “Ouch.”

  Brian exhaled.

  Trish laughed. “Bad elk. That’s what the antlers are from.” Since the nearby National Elk Refuge was one of the subjects her dad had lectured the family on—and on and on and on—during the drive-across-the-state-that-had-seemed-like-it-would-never-end, Trish knew the antlers came from there.

  “Bad eh-welk.”

  Perry sprinted up. “Is she all right?”

  Trish nodded. “I think it’s time we go back to the canoe store, though, squirt.” She knew he hated it when she made fun of his size. But he needed to face facts. He was a serious shrimp.

  Perry glared at her.

  She said, “Come on, everybody.”

  They all ran toward her, except Danny. The kid looked like he was going to fall over asleep on the grass. Brian prodded him up. Then Perry helped her marshal their charges into a line from youngest to oldest. He led the way back with Trish bringing up the rear. She hoped when they got to the shop, the dead guy was gone.

  “I’m hungry,” Stan said.

  Six voices echoed his.

  Trish raised her voice so everyone would hear, all the way to the front of the line. “We already had ice cream on the way to the square.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Barry whined.

  “I’m sure we’ll get lunch soon.” How does Aunt Vera deal with this every single day? Trish was never going to have kids. Or maybe one. Two at the very, very most. She kept them marching.

  Five minutes later, they arrived at the back of Wyoming Whitewater. Trish’s mom was standing beside her dad. Grandpa Joe and Gramma Lana were in their station wagon, windows up, with her aunt and uncle. The kids hopped in the car with them. Gramma Lana was reapplying lipstick, but she waved to Trish. Everyone in the family said Trish looked just like her. Trish hoped so. She knew they had the same big, blue eyes, blond hair, height, and high cheekbones.

  Perry walked over to their family’s Suburban and leaned against it. Trish moved closer to her dad so she could hear her parents’ conversation, keeping one eye on “her” kids to make sure none made a break from the station wagon.

  “Are the deputies done?” Trish’s mom asked.

  He nodded. “They just loaded up and left.”

  Her mom said, “Good. We bought more of everything, and we found some kids’ sleeping bags and river gear.”

  “How much?” her dad said.

  She smiled. “Let’s talk about that later, honey.”

  He groaned.

  “You’re just going to have to forget about the cost and enjoy your family.”

  “I’m going to enjoy them. You know how much I’ve looked forward to Pete being here.”

  “I know you have. So, do the deputies have any idea how the guy died on the river?”

  “They didn’t, but I do.”

  She raised her brows. “Do tell.”

  “Head trauma.”

  “Like from a fall?”

  “Impossible to say for sure, but more than likely.”

  She lowered her voice. “So, not murder?”

  “Can’t rule it out, but a rock is the most likely culprit.”

  “He still could have been pushed.”

  “You see murder everywhere.” He smiled at her. “Have you ever thought about becoming a cop? You could work with Ronnie at the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Deputy Ronnie Harcourt was their former next-door neighbor, a beautiful woman who could have been a model instead of a cop. She was one of Trish’s mom’s best friends. She teased Susanne all the time that she’d make a real Wyoming woman out of her yet. From what Trish could tell, this meant her mom would ride horses, shoot whiskey and big game, and camp outside in the dead of winter. Ronnie was going to be sorely disappointed if she counted on any of these things happening.

  “Pass.” Her mom laughed. “You’re okay taking everyone out there after this?”

  “The deputies didn’t seem concerned, and there was no evidence of foul play. It will be okay, Susanne.”

  She shuddered. “I don’t feel good about it. Not after this last year.”

  Trish shuddered, too. This last year. She knew exactly what her mom meant. Trish had been kidnapped, not once but twice. First, by her ex-boyfriend Brandon’s insane family. They’d lugged her up into Cloud Peak Wilderness in the Bighorns, where they had planned to leave her to die. The second time was by her own high school basketball coach, who’d taken Perry and her mom, too. Coach Lamkin would have killed them, if she’d gotten the chance. The funny thing was, Trish had loved Brandon, and she had really liked her coach. She’d trusted them, until she’d figured out how wrong she’d been about them. Learning the truth had hurt more than anything she’d ever experienced. She’d been so humiliated. Now she could never trust her own judgment about people again.

  The person she hadn’t trusted, Brandon’s cousin Ben, turned out to have been the truthful one. Even though he’d lived with Brandon and Brandon’s mom, Donna Lewis, Ben had testified against his Aunt Donna, for conspiracy and murder, because it was the right and truthful thing to do. Which had meant he no longer had a home with the Lewises. But her parents’ friends Henry and Vangie Sibley had taken him in. Now Ben was living and working out at their place—Piney Bottom Ranch.

  Trish had been babysitting the Sibley’s infant son Hank this summer. Ben and Trish had been around each other a lot more. They’d become friends. Good friends. But she was having second thoughts about their relationship. Her parents weren’t in favor of it. They’d been right before, about Brandon, and she’d been wrong. Maybe she just needed a break. Because, honestly, she didn’t know who to trust. So, yeah, a break from all guys. A break from her best friend Marcy, who’d been acting really weird since the ordeal with Coach Lamkin. Marcy had been on Lamkin’s 1976 state champion girls basketball team. She and some of the other girls were upset that Coach Lamkin was in jail. Trish couldn’t understand it. Lamkin was a murderer. How could a winning basketball team be more important than that? Than Trish and her family?

  Basketball had been Trish’s passion, too, until the coach had betrayed her. She’d decided to give it up altogether. Instead, she’d started running more and was going to try out for the cross-country team. Make a fresh start.

  Her dad said to her mom, “It’s going to be fine, Susanne. We’ll have a great time.”

  Her mom hugged herself around the middle. “I think we should reconsider this trip. Cancel the rentals. Just camp out for the night by the river close to town. We can still fish and pan for gold without all of us having to go so far up into the mountains.”

  Trish found herself nodding along with her mom. It sounded like a great idea to her.

  “That wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. They’ve traveled a long way for this.”

  “They traveled a long way to see us. And they’re counting on us not to endanger them.”

  Her dad’s voice grew testy. “Who said anything about endangering anyone? Have a little faith in me, Susanne.”

  The owner guy came out. Trish didn’t like him. He’d been staring at her earlier, in a way that more grown-up men did lately. It made her uncomfortable.

  He slapped her dad on the back. “Sorry for the delay, my man. Couldn’t be avoided. Why don’t you grab some lunch while we load your gear?”

  Trish raised her eyebrows, knowing full well what her dad’s response to that would be. Lunch out for fifteen people, when they had coolers full of food? That would never happen.

  “If you don’t mind, we’d just like to load up and go,” her dad said.

  Trish squeezed her lips to keep from laughing. Her dad was so predictable.

  “Fine by me. But I need to let you know we have one little problem.”

  Her dad’s lips twitched. “Just one. Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “The deputies took our six-bo
at trailer. In case there’s evidence on it, you know? All I have available is two four-boaters. I’ll need to bring an extra employee along to haul the second trailer, and, like, it’s going to cost another twenty bucks.”

  Trish held her breath.

  After a few tense seconds, her dad said, “We’ll just carry it ourselves.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Completely.” Her dad turned to Trish. “You know where I stashed all the tow rope?”

  “In your emergency supplies box?” she said.

  “Yes. Bring it out, please.”

  Not for the first time, she wondered why he always made her do everything instead of Perry, but this time she kept it to herself. “But we don’t have a trailer.”

  Her dad grinned at her. “But we do have a roof.”

  He is such a weirdo. Trish opened the back end of the Suburban and dug in the big tub of emergency supplies her dad carried with them everywhere. She thought it was overkill, mostly, but he did use things from it, like his hatchet and now the rope. His buddy Wes had an even bigger stash of emergency supplies in his Travelall. Wes was like her dad’s coach on all things Wyoming. She got the rope out and set it on the ground.

  Her dad said, “And some sleeping bags.”

  “How many?”

  “Two should do it.”

  “Use some from the shopping bags,” her mom added. “They’re closest.”

  Trish set two army green sleeping bags beside the rope. She put her hands on her hips and turned to face the shop. “Now what?”

  The owner turned over a canoe that was propped against the wall below the racks. Something let loose a high-pitched whistle. “Son of a . . .” He jumped back, flapping his hand. Then he sucked the back of it. Trish heard the scurrying of little feet.

  “Everything okay?” her dad said.

  The owner dropped his hand from his mouth. Blood trickled down his wrist. “There was a marmot hiding under there. Too many tourists feeding them. The yellow-bellied stinkers think they own the town. He’s still under there, too.” He kicked the canoe, and a fat marmot waddled at top speed through the racks of gear, around a corner, and out of sight.

  Trish was glad Buffalo was six hours away from Jackson. They got some tourists in Buffalo, but nothing like Yellowstone and Jackson Hole. She’d seen more out-of-staters today, in Jackson, than she’d seen in the Bighorns the entire time she’d lived in Wyoming. Tourists were loud, left trash in the mountains, and did dumb things, like feed marmots by hand. If she were in charge, she’d make them pay to cross the state line. Or she’d set a limit on the number of people that could visit. Someday, she hoped to work as a wildlife biologist, after she got her degree from the University of Wyoming. She’d be able to study how people affected the environment and wildlife. She couldn’t wait.

  The store owner grabbed the canoe and balanced it over his head.

  Her dad said, “You should really get a tetanus shot and a rabies test.”

  “Later, man.” The owner walked the canoe to the Suburban. “Ready to get this show on the road?”

  Her dad frowned. “Yeah. Sure.”

  Trish frowned, too. She wished her dad sounded a little more optimistic. Oh, well. Things would be better once they were up on the mountain.

  Chapter Three: Transport

  Northeast of Jackson, Wyoming

  Thursday, June 23, 1977, Noon

  Perry

  Belting out the words to “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” Perry’s dad drummed the ceiling with his palm as he followed the trailer full of canoes up the mountain road. He stopped. “Why is no one back there singing along with me?”

  “We’re singing!” Barry said.

  Bert shouted. “Yeah. Loud!”

  Perry said, “Yay, singalongs.” Last year, when he wasn’t a teenager, he’d done singalongs with his dad. But he knew now how uncool he’d been. A dork, actually. He’d leave the singing to his younger cousins.

  He stared out the window with his nose nearly on the glass. Perry was usually the one stuck in the middle of the backseat, but, this time, that honor went to the little boys. He wasn’t so sure he would have avoided the dreaded middle if Brian had been along. The kid was four years younger than him, but he was a beast. Tall, thick, and strong. If Perry hadn’t been lifting weights all year for football and then for skiing, he definitely would have been smaller than Brian. Come to think of it, he needed to figure out a way to continue his weights up here. Logs, maybe? If he quit lifting, Brian would probably catch up with him, size-wise, by the time the trip was over.

  He liked Brian, but he was glad he was in the other car.

  Trish rolled the opposite window down and stuck her head out. She moaned. “Da-ad, can’t you drive any straighter? I’m going to throw up.”

  It smelled good outside. A little dusty from the road, but good. Perry liked the smell of the pines. Like the stuff his mom used when she cleaned the house, only real.

  “Look at something stationary, in front of us,” Perry’s dad said.

  “It’s a steep winding road in a forest. There is nothing stationary in front of us,” his mom said.

  One of the Suburban’s front wheels slammed into a rock, then the hood dropped and the frame jolted as the vehicle dove into a huge pothole.

  “Ow!” Trish screamed. She pressed her hand to her ear.

  His dad yelled, “Hold on to your . . . your you-know-what, Fred.”

  Perry giggled before he could help it. His dad was obsessed with Smokey and the Bandit, which they’d seen a few weeks before, right when it came out. His dad never usually went to movies, so it had been kind of a big deal, and his mom even let his dad get away with saying the real word from the movie line occasionally because of it.

  A back wheel hit the same rock and pothole.

  “Great aim.” His mom’s voice sounded sarcastic.

  As the Suburban lurched out of the hole, his dad accelerated. “Steep incline ahead. Everybody lean forward!”

  Bert and Barry took him seriously, not realizing this was another one of the silly games Patrick played. Trish and Perry sighed in unison. The Suburban bucked and bounced. The engine whined. Patrick shifted to a lower gear as they made a switchback turn.

  “Almost to the top,” he said.

  Trish said, “Top of what? We have like a bajillion miles to go.”

  His dad ignored her. A few jolting seconds later, the Suburban turned back to the right. Now they were parallel to the river far below. It was dark and looked browner than Perry had expected. Wasn’t water supposed to be blue? Then he saw something completely cool. White water tumbled over a cliff.

  “Wow, is that a waterfall?” Perry rolled his window down. In the distance, he could hear the roar of the water.

  “It is.” His dad sounded as happy as if he’d created it himself.

  Bert said, “In Texas, we live by the Colorado River, but we had to drive through Colorado to get here and there wasn’t a Texas river there.”

  “What’s this river called?” Barry added.

  Trish flopped her head against the seat back. “Don’t get him started again.”

  “The Tukudika,” his dad crowed. “Do you know why they call it that?”

  Perry flopped his head back, too. “No. Just no. Eight hours of driving to get here. He talked about it the whole way. I can’t take it anymore.” His dad was obsessed with American Indians. He lectured all the time about the tribes local to north central Wyoming, where the Flints lived. The Crow and the Cheyenne, with a little Sioux thrown in occasionally. Back in Texas, he used to tell them about the Apache, the Comanche, and the Karankawa. But once they’d left the Bighorns, it had been all Mountain Shoshone, all the time.

  “No, why?” Barry said.

  “Because the last Indians to live here were called the Tukudika.”

  “What does Toocoodeecoo mean?” Bert asked.

  “No, silly, he said ‘Toocoo dookie.’” Barry giggled.

  “He said dookie.”
Bert pointed at his brother.

  “You smell like dookie.”

  Both boys dissolved in laughter.

  Perry’s dad went on in a serious tone, like his young audience wasn’t talking about feces. “Tukudika. It means Sheep Eater. The Shoshone liked to name groups of people by what they ate. That’s how the Mountain Shoshone got the name Tukudika. Because they ate bighorn sheep.”

  Bert laughed. “That’s a weird name.”

  “Not if bighorn sheep were a major part of your diet.”

  “Hey, Dad, it’s a good thing you aren’t a Tukudika, then, or you would have starved.” Perry covered a smile. His dad had been unsuccessful on a previous hunt for bighorn sheep. They were his second favorite thing to talk about, after American Indians.

  “Very funny.”

  “Have you ever even seen one in the wild, Dad?”

  “You’d know I had if you hadn’t been asleep on your horse when it happened. But mark my words, we won’t be able to beat them away with a stick out here.”

  “My Shoshone name is macaroni and cheese,” Bert said.

  Barry cackled. “Mine is Cap’n Crunch cereal.”

  His dad laughed, too. He accelerated some more as the road flattened out, with less rocks. “Now, those boys are funny.”

  “Do the Dookietikas still live here?” Barry said.

  The boys laughed again.

  “Tukudika. Some of them do. Down south, mostly, on the Wind River Reservation. Not up in the mountains anymore. But if we’re very lucky, we’ll see things they left behind.”

  “What things?” Bert almost chirped with excitement.

  “Arrowheads. Wickiups. Vision sites.” Patrick goosed the Suburban up another incline.

  “Wicky yucks?”

  “Watch out,” Susanne shouted.

  Perry’s dad swerved to the left to avoid a thick tree branch hanging over the road. Pine needles swept over the windshield like the brushes in a drive-through car wash. Then there was a scraping noise all along the top of the Suburban.

  “Oh, no.” Susanne winced.