Scapegoat: A Patrick Flint Novel

by Hutchins, Pamela Fagan

  For a few agonizing seconds, the river pulled them downstream as one. Les squirmed in Patrick’s grasp. He lifted something out of the water. A rifle barrel. He still had the rifle. How could that be possible? He aimed it at Patrick’s face.

  Could it fire after being submerged? Patrick wasn’t taking a chance. He raised the paddle and slammed it down on Les’s head.

  THUD.

  CRACK.

  The rifle fired. That answers one question. Patrick closed his eyes, certain he was breathing his last, but he hadn’t felt the sting of a bullet. He opened his eyes again and brought the paddle down on Les’s head once more. He raised it for another blow, but he didn’t get the chance.

  Because he was falling. And Les was falling. Patrick saw spraying water. Rocks. Trees. Blue sky. And then nothing as he plunged down the face of the waterfall.

  Chapter Forty-five: Pay

  Jackson, Wyoming

  Wednesday, June 29, 1977, Noon

  Patrick

  “Nice doing business with you,” Brock said.

  He stuffed a piece of paper into the cash register along with Patrick’s money and a check, slightly hampered by the enormous bandage on his hand, the result of the marmot bite from a few days before. He’d informed Patrick that he didn’t normally take out of town checks, but, due to Patrick’s recent celebrity status in the Jackson news, and the fact that Patrick couldn’t scrounge up enough cash to cover the total for the damaged canoes and lost paddles and life jackets, he’d made an exception. After he’d cleaned Patrick out of every last cent he had, of course.

  Patrick stuffed his depleted wallet and checkbook back in his pocket. “And with you. Although I wish we’d picked a different week for our trip.”

  “Or a different river. We’ve got some nice ones you can check out on your next visit. The Snake. The Gros Ventre.”

  Susanne snorted. “That’s not happening.”

  Patrick tried to catch her eye and smile at her, but she crossed her arms and studied a blank space on the wall.

  Brock shrugged. “At least you all made it out alive.

  Patrick nodded. “My son nearly didn’t.”

  But he had. It had been four days since the Flints had escaped the Gros Ventre Wilderness with the help of none other than Klaus and Sylvie, who had been heading back up to the Yellowjacket Guard Station after a health scare of their own. Sylvie had been stricken with angina and stayed in the hospital overnight for observation. They’d rushed Perry, Susanne, and Patrick to the hospital, then alerted Wyoming Whitewater to the plight of the rest of the Flints. Brock and company had canoed down the river until they found Joe and the girls, then ferried them and the rest of the Flints to town, along with what was left of their equipment—including the canoe Patrick had ditched riverside when he went to check on the Hilliards. Joe and Pete had arranged for new tires and brought the vehicles down—even stopping to pick up the packs they’d ditched by the river. Of course, this meant yet another bill for Patrick. And Lana had set the group up in a motor court outside of Jackson, where they’d all enjoyed a low-key couple of days at the pool and playground.

  Everyone except for Patrick, Susanne, and Perry. Perry had spent the time in a hospital bed with his parents by his side. His doctor had asked him if he remembered how he’d hurt his head. “My dad tripped me,” he’d said, serious as could be. Patrick hadn’t known whether to laugh or get a lawyer. “Um, no, son. You fell off a waterfall,” he’d explained. Fortunately, the doctor hadn’t thought Patrick had actually hurt Perry, and, instead of calling Child Protective Services, he said that people often didn’t remember how their head injuries had occurred.

  Perry’s condition had improved rapidly from then on. He’d been lucky. The swelling and bleeding in his brain had already been going down on its own by the time they got him to the hospital. A few days of rest and hydration had been all he needed. Now, he was mostly recovered from the nausea and massive headache and had been released.

  Patrick sympathized with Perry’s ordeal, but he’d never had a severe concussion himself. Once he’d drank too much and been sick for days with a violent hangover. It was the closest he’d come, but even that fell far short.

  “We were lucky. Perry was lucky,” Susanne said. Her mouth was set in a firm, straight line.

  Brock’s eyes lit up. “Lucky you were with Mr. Flint. I read about you nearly bashing that dude’s head in with our paddle. Like, I bet you’re glad you sprung for that extra one now, aren’t you?”

  Patrick shifted before he answered, sending fresh pain through his sprained ankle and wounded hip. The bullet had only grazed him. He’d been fine after a few stitches. He’d refused treatment for the ankle, but he had bought an Ace bandage and kept it wrapped. His mom hadn’t allowed herself to be taken to the emergency room either. She'd finally relented to an x-ray the next day. It hadn’t shown a break, but she’d consented to a real sling afterwards.

  “It depends. How much did it cost me again?”

  Patrick didn’t think it was worth mentioning that he’d actually used one of the Hilliards’ paddles on Les’s head. Les had survived the bashing and going over the waterfall while unconscious. Patrick cursed the thing in him that drove him to rescue bad guys. He’d done it again with Les when he’d seen him face down in the pool below the falls. Patrick had dragged him to the shore and stared at his blue-tinged face. He’d wrestled with what to do, but, ultimately, he’d given in to his moral code and administered CPR. It had sickened him when Les had spit up water and started breathing on his own. Thinking about hospitals and medical ethics, he remembered he needed to check in with the hospital in Buffalo. He was going to be a few days late getting back to work.

  Brock roared with laughter.

  “Well, as much as I spent, would you be willing to let me make a call on your phone?”

  “Local or long distance?”

  “Long distance.” Patrick took out his wallet and opened it to show Brock it was completely empty inside.

  “Keep it short.” Brock handed him the phone.

  Susanne was browsing the t-shirts, so Patrick went ahead and dialed the number, one of the few he knew by heart. He never memorized phone numbers on purpose. Why waste gray matter on something you could look up in the phone book?

  The man that answered sounded cheerful.

  “Wes? This is Patrick.”

  Wes Braten guffawed. “If it isn’t the hero doctor. Are you back in town, Doc?”

  “Gonna be late. That’s why I was calling. I was hoping to talk to Dr. John.”

  “He’s not here, but I’ll leave him a message. I think things will survive without you. But you missed some excitement here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lamkin had her baby in our ER. A little boy.”

  He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Susanne, Barb Lamkin had her baby.”

  Susanne dashed over to him, leaving the t-shirts swinging on their hangers. “In prison?”

  “No. At the ER.” He held the phone so she could hear through the ear piece, too. “Poor kid,” Patrick said to Wes.

  “Not poor kid. He’s already got a foster family.”

  Susanne’s eyebrows shot sky high.

  “Who?”

  “Deputy Ronnie Harcourt and her husband.”

  “Ronnie and Jeff?”

  “Yep. Hey, Doc, an ambulance just pulled up. Gotta go. I’ll leave that note for Dr. John.”

  “Thanks, Wes.”

  The connection was replaced with a dial tone. Patrick hung up and handed the phone back to Brock. With the close friendship between Susanne and Ronnie, he knew this baby—and a piece of Barb Lamkin—would remain in the Flints’ lives for a very long time.

  “Ronnie and Jeff will be great parents,” Susanne said.

  “Yes, they will.”

  “But this means the trial will be soon.”

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He hoped someday soon things around their house would be placid and boring
. Murder and mayhem wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “I’m sorry,” Patrick said. “Let’s get out of here. Catch up with the rest of the group for lunch.”

  She nodded, her face grim. He put his hand on her back and headed toward the door. He could still feel her resistance to him in the stiffness of her posture.

  “Thanks for letting me use the phone. Take care,” he said over his shoulder to Brock.

  Brock called after them, “I feel sorry for that other family, though. The ones they killed.” He couldn’t seem to drop the subject of their ordeal.

  Patrick had stopped short at that, hand still on Susanne’s back. The Hilliards. He couldn’t get the memory of the grizzly gorging on their murdered bodies out of his mind. A recovery team had brought them back—what was left of them, anyway. It was enough, Patrick was told, to confirm they each had been shot. Patrick wanted Les, Hector, and Booger to pay for their crimes. Not just the murders of the Hilliards, kidnapping of Pete, Bunny, and Trish, and assaults against the rest of the Flints, but also the killing of Jimbo. Patrick had learned that, indeed, the dead body that had floated down the river a few days earlier was the prospectors’ partner.

  Diego and Winthropp had gotten off easy, dying in the wilderness, compared to the life in prison they deserved. Of course, both he and Pete had borne witness to Les’s control over the men. Les should be held responsible for Diego’s and Winthropp’s deaths, too, in Patrick’s opinion. Thank goodness, he and Pete would not be. They’d been honest with the sheriff and the FBI about the actions they’d taken to try to escape the men and their efforts to fight back against them. Law enforcement had assured them it would all be classified as self-defense, to Patrick’s immense relief.

  The door opened. Joe and Lana walked in. Joe was sporting butterfly bandages on his banged-up forehead. Lana—still wearing her safari outfit, but this time with a wide, bright yellow scarf or belt thing around her waist—was holding onto her husband’s arm with the hand not in a sling. Patrick felt a pang of guilt. The entire family had been giving him the cold shoulder since they got back, Susanne most of all. He couldn’t help but feel he was being cast as a scapegoat. It wasn’t like he’d known Les and his men would be out on Trout Creek. And in the end, he’d fought Les in hand-to-hand combat and then survived going over a waterfall, which he thought ought to have been enough that they’d cut him some slack.

  But, on the other hand, the family had been up there because of his choices. And he had pushed, he guessed. Well, he knew. He felt guilty about that. Even a little bit responsible. But not completely. And it didn’t feel good having everyone hate him. Especially his wife.

  Patrick waved to his parents, then said to Brock, “I feel bad for the Hilliards, too. Very bad.” The words didn’t begin to cover how he felt about them, but they were all he had. “They were good people. And all of it over gold nuggets in a cave.”

  Joe shook a copy of the Jackson Hole News. “It wasn’t even gold. The fools kidnapped my granddaughters and went on a killing spree over pyrite.”

  Patrick’s jaw dropped. “Iron disulfide.”

  “It was fool’s gold?” Brock said.

  Joe brandished a fist. “Those ‘nuggets’ were nothing but rocks with veins of pyrite. The paper said they were worthless. Like those lowlifes were.”

  “That’s not all it said.” Lana gently pushed her husband’s arm down. “The cave is a treasure trove of Mountain Shoshone antiquities.”

  “The Tukudika.” Patrick focused his complete attention on his mother. “And this was a new find?”

  “Apparently so. Hand me the paper, Joe.” She took it from him. “The article said the prospectors uncovered the entrance when they found a vein of what they thought was gold.” She started reading. “The find included Sheep Eater soapstone pots, tri-notched arrow points, and an intact bow made from the horns of a bighorn sheep.” She looked up. “And a lot more. They’re calling it the most significant find in this area in the last fifty years.”

  Brock said, “I’ll bet that’s worth a fortune. Collectors line up for that stuff.”

  “Hopefully it will go to a museum.” Patrick bowed his head. The beveled, bifacial knife he’d found on Booger. He was going to have to turn it over to whatever government agency took custody of the artifacts. That made him a little sad, but he knew it was right that it be studied and shared with the public.

  Joe said, “The fellow I took the girls back from. Diega. He had some, too.”

  Lana’s forehead crinkled. “Diego, dear.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Not exactly. In Spanish, the feminine ends in ‘a’ and the masculine in ‘o.’ If you call him Diega, you’re sort of calling him a girl.’”

  “Diega, Diego. Whoever he was.”

  “Actually, it was Hector, Dad.” Patrick almost laughed. When Patrick had told Trish and Bunny that their “Mr. Smith” was actually named Hector, Bunny had said, “Whatever his name is, he’s not nice.” Patrick couldn’t have said it better himself.

  Joe glowered at his son. “This Hector had a pocket full of Injun relics.”

  Lana’s face spasmed. “Indian, Joe.”

  “Injun, Indian. Same thing.”

  She sighed and shook her head. Patrick wanted to tell her not to bother, that no one could make his father more attuned to the feelings of other people, but that he loved her for continuing to try. And his father had other redeeming qualities. A lot could be forgiven of a man who ventured alone into a wilderness to rescue his granddaughters from killers.

  Lana said, “The paper says the other two are singing like canaries. They say it was all that ringleader fellow.”

  “Les.” Patrick nodded. That wasn’t surprising.

  “Apparently, he promised to split the gold with them if they’d help him get it out before July when the tourists and rangers overrun the whole area. They’re also saying they didn’t kill anybody. That it was all him.”

  “I hate to back up their stories, given that Hector took the girls and Booger tried to trap the rest of us, but Pete and I did hear them talking about Les forcing them to do things, and I believe that Hector at least didn’t kill anyone. But he did plenty of other rotten things. Like kidnapping.”

  “Should have taken him out when I had the chance,” Joe muttered. “I felt safer behind enemy lines in World War II than I did on this trip. Next time, you’re visiting us in Texas.”

  The door opened again. Four blond kids walked in. Bunny, pulling Trish by the hand, and Perry, followed by Brian, whose big eyes were fixed on his older cousin.

  “What are you kids doing here?” Susanne gave them the smile she’d withheld from Patrick.

  Perry grinned under a big white bandage around his head. His face had regained some color and his buzz cut had grown out to the bushy stage. “Uncle Pete sent us. The pizza is ready. He said he’s willing to let Dad have some if he pays for it.” The greater Flint clan was next door, celebrating Perry’s release from the hospital with a pizza party before Pete, Vera and their kids got on the road back to Texas with Patrick’s parents.

  Susanne put a hand over her mouth. Is she hiding a smile? Patrick sucked in a deep breath. Everyone was taking a chunk of his hide. You have it coming. But it sounded like this was meant as a way to earn his way back into their good graces.

  “Fine,” he said.

  The kids all grinned.

  To Brock, he added, “Anyway, thanks again.”

  Brock waved to them and disappeared into the back of his shop.

  Trish stepped in front of Patrick. “Dad, I have something to ask you.”

  “What’s that?” She looked beatific, so he braced himself. She wants something.

  “Since I was so helpful and babysat the kids—well, Bunny—basically the whole trip, I was hoping you’d consider paying me. So I can use it for a down payment on a car.” She batted her long, thick lashes.

  “Uhh . . .” He looked to Susanne but again her eyes found something more interesting to gaze a
t, this time the wood floor.

  “That reminds me.” Joe pulled something from his pocket. It was a piece of paper. He handed it to Patrick

  “What’s this?” Patrick studied it. A receipt?

  “The bill for repair of the station wagon.”

  “Repair? You mean for the tires? I already gave you a check for those.”

  “No. For the cracked windshield and dents you put in my car with the canoe you didn’t tie well enough onto the Suburban.”

  Patrick frowned. He’d forgotten about that. The hits just kept coming. He wondered if he could find a second job in Buffalo, but he wasn’t sure when he’d find the time to work one since his hours as a doctor were so demanding.

  Susanne took the bill from his hand, her eyes widening at the number. He tried to take it back from her. He hadn’t even seen the total yet. But she smiled and put it in her pocket.

  “There are some things you’re better off not knowing, Patrick.” She turned to her father-in-law. “But it’s a small price to pay for you bringing Trish back to us, you old softie, and your son would be delighted to cover it. He is the one, after all, who dragged us all the way up the Tukudika River where your car got beat up, Lana hurt her wrist, Perry nearly died, Pete was almost murdered, Trish and Bunny were kidnapped, you had to risk your life to find them, and the rest of us had to survive a grizzly, whitewater, and a group of deranged murderers.” She smiled sweetly at Patrick, then winked.

  His heart somersaulted. She might be enumerating everything that he’d pushed the family into, however well-intentioned he’d been, but that wink said she forgave him, and that was all that mattered to him now.

  She turned back to her father-in-law. “I don’t suppose you’d take a check, Joe? Patrick doesn’t carry this much cash with him.”

  Joe frowned. “As long as you think he’s good for it.”

  Patrick groaned.

  “He may not be, but I am.”

  Brian was suddenly standing in front of his aunt. “Hey, Aunt Susanne, I almost forgot. Who was that guy you said was helping you, you know, right before we got in the canoes and the bad guys were shooting at us?”