Path of the Dead

by Mark Edward Langley

  She went to settings and changed the ringtone to “none,” closed the phone, and stuck it back in her pocket. She stood and collected herself, then opened the door.

  “’Bout fucking time,” Gloria said, looking into the small room. She sniffed, then said with a surprised grin, “I guess your shit really doesn’t stink.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Morning hit hard as the clock radio on the nightstand exploded with a forgotten eighties hair-band hit. Arthur woke facedown in his hotel pillows and reached out in a blind effort to silence the onslaught of wailing guitars and screaming lyrics, but all his fumbling did was knock his cell phone to the floor. The hair band screamed on. He opened one eye long enough to find the radio’s sweet spot and send the band back to rock-and-roll oblivion, then flopped back down in the short stack of pillows.

  But it was no good—he couldn’t get back to sleep. Now that he was awake, his mind raced with possible scenarios out of his control. He turned his head to the left and met with Ak’is’ patient stare. The screaming band had roused him, too. Arthur scratched the wolf-dog’s head and rolled over onto his back, extending both legs in a stretch that quickly took over his whole body. He rolled his head over again. Ak’is’ patience was surpassed only by his persistence. And right now that meant only one thing—he wasn’t about to pay for carpet cleaning.

  “Sometimes you’re a pain,” he said as he rolled out of bed.

  Retrieving his cell phone from the floor, he pitched it onto the bed and put on yesterday’s clothes. Then he pocketed his room card, dropped the phone into his shirt pocket, and walked out the door, leaving the do not disturb tag hanging on the knob. Ak’is led the way down the absurdly decorated hallway toward the lobby. Arthur had never thought of using a leash on him and wasn’t about to start now. The animal was always free to do as he pleased.

  Passing the front desk, they drew curious stares from the clerk and the free-breakfast crowd. Arthur could hear the faint whispers circling among the handful of people sipping and noshing in the breakfast area and ignored them. Ak’is’ nostrils flared at the scents of bacon and sausage, and Arthur could swear that he saw him lick his chops on their way out. They wandered around just past the parking lot until the animal found a suitable spot where he could make a deposit. Then it was back to the room.

  After shedding his clothes and jumping in the shower, Arthur was out in ten minutes and pulling on fresh underwear, jeans, socks, and a long-sleeved khaki shirt from his duffel. The shirt was only slightly wrinkled from its military roll, and he didn’t care whether anyone noticed. Out of habit, he picked up his cell phone and held his thumb over the button to unlock it. Who said he wasn’t with the times?

  The phone lit up, displaying all its applications, most of which Arthur never used and kept threatening to delete someday. The blue square holding the little white envelope appeared with a small “2” in the upper right corner. He tapped it, and a half a moment later he saw the Find Russian Brides and the Drastic Change to your Credit Score emails. He deleted them both and tossed the phone back onto the bed. He had made it as far as the bathroom before the phone on the nightstand rang. He returned to the bed, sat down, and picked up the receiver. It was Jake Bilagody. Some new information had come to light. Thorne had been right. Hidden somewhere in a forgotten file regarding Kanesewah’s violent history was a name.

  “A Gloria Sanchez,” Bilagody was telling him. “Seems that when they conducted several interviews with his people on the San Carlos rez, they spoke to a young woman named Nashota Kah-Zhe. She had dated Kanesewah before Sanchez showed up. Anyway, this woman said our boy has an angry side. Real mean. ‘Sadistic’ was the word she used.”

  “No kidding,” Arthur said. “He beat her?”

  “That’s why she left him. Gave her a black eye more than once and broke her left arm twice. She said this Sanchez came into the picture about a month after she ran out on him.”

  “They find Sanchez yet?”

  “FBI went to her apartment in Globe. Looks like she packed quick and left quicker. Hasn’t been at her job in days, and her car is missing. A brown ’87 Buick Regal.”

  Jake gave Arthur the license number, and he typed it into the “Notes” app on his cell phone. Some apps did come in handy, it seemed.

  “Thorne’s got every cop in the Mountain time zone looking for that car. He’s pulled his troops from downstate and has them heading up your way. He’s also trying to commandeer a helicopter or two. Wants to throw a wide net, he said.”

  “Sure,” Arthur said.

  “What’s your next move?”

  “Keep following my gut and continue north. At least now I have something solid to look for. Any way you can get me a picture of Sanchez?”

  “I’ll email it to you,” Jake said. “If you can’t open the attachment, I’ll text it.”

  “Listen to you, sounding all tech-savvy,” Arthur said. “Makes me think you know what you’re doing.”

  “Screw you. My granddaughter showed me how to do some things. Kid knows more about this stuff than I ever will.”

  “It’s their world, my friend. We just live in it. I’ll be looking for the picture. Right now my continental breakfast is calling.”

  The breakfast area was an L-shaped affair with contractor-grade cabinetry and the usual lithographed mountain scenes adorning the papered walls. The well-worn cream-colored ceramic tile floor was set with small square tables and cushioned wooden chairs. He opened one of the stainless warmers to find the sausage gravy, then took three biscuits from the clear plastic beehive to its right and ladled on the gravy. Stepping around to the small row of coffeepots, he stuck his cup under the spout and pulled the triangular lever of the one marked “Mountain Blend.” He watched the cup fill to within half an inch of the lip before he let the lever up, then dumped in three creams from an ice-filled bucket and grabbed a stir stick. He picked his silverware from the three round containers set at an angle on the counter and put them in the front pocket of his jeans. Then he picked up his plate of biscuits and gravy and wandered to a small square table by a window and sat.

  Arthur swished the little flat stick and turned the coffee into the proper shade of tan before cutting a wedge of gravy-covered biscuit. He was enjoying the taste when his cell phone buzzed and vibrated in his shirt pocket. Laying down his fork, he pulled the phone out and put his thumb against it. A number 1 showed up in a red circle by the little white envelope outlined in blue. He tapped it. The application opened, and there was Jake’s email titled “Sanchez pic.”

  The familiar clockwise spinning circle told him the photo was loading. When it popped up, he saw a pretty but rough Latina face framed by shoulder-length black hair. Gloria Sanchez now had an image to go with the name. He saved the photo and put the phone away, then spent the next fifteen minutes finishing his breakfast and pondering the day ahead.

  Arthur’s phone buzzed in his pocket again. He wondered what new information Jake could be sending him now, then was puzzled by the 218 area code. And he didn’t recognize the phone number displayed in the green bar alerting him to the text. He tapped his fingertip against the screen and opened the message.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  may b only chance to contact

  somewhere north of Yellowstone

  heading for great falls

  then canada

  brown yukon mn plt

  find me I luv u

  S

  Arthur’s breath trembled as the words find me repeated over and over in his mind. Suddenly self-conscious, he glanced around the breakfast area. Had anyone heard him? If so, they paid him no mind. Most were caught up in conversations that he tuned out and turned to white noise. Others stared at the flat-panel TV mounted on the wall by the faux-pillared entrance, watching the breaking report on the latest car bombing in Kabul.

  That’s my girl, he thought. She had done it. He had ho
ped she would find a way of contacting him, and he knew that she had taken a grave risk doing it. Kanesewah would make her pay for it, and he didn’t want to think of how. Would he beat her for her betrayal? Kill her? Not if he still thought she could be used as a bargaining chip. Arthur quickly pulled himself back into the reality that surrounded him, remembering what Jake Bilagody had said about Special Agent Thorne and cell phones. He dialed the commuting chief’s number on the walk back to his motel room.

  Jake Bilagody picked up as Arthur pulled the key card from its slot in the door lock and went inside. Ak’is wagged his bushy tail in anticipation. Seeing and smelling nothing, the wolf-dog stepped away from him and lay down on the floor, doing the canine version of a pout. Arthur told Bilagody about the text.

  “Then that rings true with the information we got just after I sent you the picture,” Jake said. “A couple in their seventies from Minnesota vacationing in Jackson Hole had their Yukon stolen last night. Sanchez’s Buick was found next to the spot where the SUV had been parked in the lot. They found the old man’s body in a dumpster at the end of the motel. He’d been stabbed to death.” Jake paused. “Hell of a way to die.”

  “Did anyone see anything?” Arthur asked. “Anyone see Sharon?”

  “There was a guy that walked to the motel office earlier last evening,” he said. “He claims to have seen the car parked in a different spot in the lot. Thought there may have been three people in it—two in the front seat and one in the back—but it was too dark to make out any faces.”

  “Damn it, I’m this close, Jake!” Arthur said. “They were only four hours or so ahead of me last night.” He paused to let that soak in. “I shouldn’t have stopped, tired or not.”

  “You can’t think like that,” Jake said. “What good would you be to Sharon cracked up at the bottom of a ravine somewhere because you fell asleep? Besides, Thorne and his bunch are already there. They converged on Jackson Hole like Sitting Bull coming down on Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.” Jake chuckled. “Kanesewah’s probably already gone to ground somewhere in Montana by now.”

  Arthur thought about that for a moment. “You think you could run a check on where the number Sharon texted from pinged off a tower last?”

  “Probably,” Jake replied. “I know a guy I can call.”

  “You know a guy?” Arthur said.

  “What makes you think I can’t know a guy? I’m a sworn officer of the law with over twenty years’ experience and an extensive list of guys I know.”

  “I’m gonna toss my stuff together and head toward Helena. Call me when you know something.”

  It hadn’t taken long—less than twenty minutes, in fact. Arthur was throwing his gear in the back of the Bronco when his cell phone vibrated again. It was Jake. The guy he knew had run the number and located the cell tower where Sharon’s phone last pinged. The explanation was too full of computer jargon to be of any use, but there were six towers in Livingston, Montana. The first one was owned by Cold Creek Cellular. He could pinpoint it with latitude and longitude if Arthur wanted him to, but that wasn’t necessary. The next ping came from a tower at Meyers Flat. That was on Route 89 on the way up to Great Falls.

  “If he’s heading up that way,” Jake said, “it means he’s still staying off the Interstates and sticking to the less-traveled routes. And this traveling by night and keeping contact to a minimum seems to be working for him.” Jake paused. “The old guy’s Yukon is the third vehicle he’s stolen since this all began. And it’s a four-wheel-drive, too. What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me Kanesewah will be trying to get to Canada the rough-and-tumble way,” Arthur replied. “But I don’t think he’ll have any easy way to get through the Montana Rockies in a Yukon.” Now Arthur paused, thinking. “He’ll have to go off road and get as deep as he can get with the truck before dumping it and trying to hump it the rest of the way on foot.” Arthur shook his head. “He must have started planning this after he realized he screwed up with the Braun girl. He isn’t just running. He has a schedule, and he has his route already planned out. If they get caught in a big snow up there, they’ll freeze to death. But then, Kanesewah probably thought about that, too.”

  Jake said, “Sharon is going to pass three more towers before they get into the Lewis and Clark National Forest. That’s where they’ll probably go dark until they come out the northern side of the forest and start heading toward Great Falls. There’s almost three thousand square miles of pristine wilderness, and one road right through the middle of it. My guy says after that, there are over twenty cell towers surrounding Great Falls. I told him to keep me posted, and if it pinged off any of them, I wanted to know about it. She might try to contact you again if she gets the chance.” Jake paused, as if weighing something. “I guess you already thought about texting her back? Letting her know you got it?”

  “I was born at night,” Arthur replied, “but it wasn’t last night. If that phone she’s got makes any kind of sound, she’s screwed.”

  Arthur thanked the chief, disconnected the call, and put the phone back into his pocket. Helena was almost an eight-hour drive on a good day with no weather to contend with. And adding another hour to get to Great Falls meant he would have to drive nonstop to catch up. But it was now daylight, and Kanesewah would be in hiding. That would give him the time he needed. He was also thinking that the trip could be made even longer if the snow that seemed to be hanging in the graying skies decided to cut loose. Damn this early fall mountain weather, anyway. He longed for the milder conditions of his own high desert.

  Arthur pulled open the passenger door, and Ak’is jumped in. When he slammed the door shut, it rang with that same hollow metal sound that old truck doors made when they passed the thirty-year mark. Had it been that way for the past fifteen years and he simply hadn’t noticed until now? He paused as a hint of realization settled in. A lot of things had been catching up to him since Sharon was taken from him. As he circled around and climbed in, he wondered how he had become so oblivious to the details of life. He started the engine and shut the door—another hollow metal clang.

  Time was going to become a scarce commodity, and he could not waste a second of it. An errant thought came out of nowhere, and he pulled his phone out, opened his contacts list, and tapped a name, then a number. When the call finally went through, he took a deep breath and hoped the familiar voice would answer on the other end.

  The last time he had seen Abraham Fasthorse was before they left the Shadow Wolves. The day the Wolf pack had gone hunting for a rip crew thought to be part of the Sinaloa Cartel. They had tracked the team of two armed guards and ten smugglers carrying drug-filled burlap backpacks to the steep ravine known as the Crow’s Nest, on the Tohono Odum rez. It was a well-known place where smugglers liked to hole up during the day before traveling at night. The human mules had worn booties made from carpet scraps, lashed to their feet so they wouldn’t leave behind any prints. But that never fooled the Wolves. And neither did the smugglers’ trick of walking with small herds of wandering cattle when they had to cut across some of the smaller ranches, to throw off the trackers.

  The pack had cut sign for six hours in the blazing desert heat and had just finished fanning out into a wide line before heading down into the ravine, when Arthur caught the scent of marijuana on the breeze. Sometimes, in the heat of the day, they would pick up the strong smell of pot moistened by the sweating backs of the men carrying it. Just then automatic gunfire from two AK-47s echoed in the dusk. The pack instantly returned fire with their M4s. The firefight lasted ten minutes. And when the automatic fire had stopped, the smugglers’ armed guards lay dead, along with six of the poor souls who had been forced to pack the marijuana. Abraham Fasthorse was on the ground, holding his legs and writhing in the sand in a creosote thicket. Bullets from an AK had ripped into his thighs, narrowly missing both femoral arteries but causing major damage all the same. Arthur quickly pulled off his be
lt and fashioned a tourniquet around one leg. He repeated the task with his partner’s belt while yelling, “Officer down!”

  Someone radioed for Air Unit Omaha, the helicopter aiding them in the search from the CBP’s Air and Marine Operations, to come and get his friend to the nearest hospital as fast as it could. And it had done just that. Now the ringing in his ear stopped, replaced by the voice of Abraham Fasthorse. Arthur smiled.

  “Oki Ni-kso-ko-wa,” Arthur said. His command of the Blackfoot language was feeble, at best and “Hello, greetings, my kinsman” was all he could remember of what Fasthorse had taught him.

  “Not half bad for a desert dweller,” Fasthorse said. “I almost thought you were a real Blackfoot.”

  “It’s all I could remember, my friend.” Arthur got right to the point. “I need your help.”

  “I have seen the news,” Fasthorse told him. “How are you holding up and what do you need from me?”

  “I’m fine. Listen, back in the day, you told me of the network of brothers up in the Nation. I’m on my way to you, leaving Rock Springs, Wyoming, as we speak. I need you to get the word out to the brothers to look for a brownish GMC Yukon with Minnesota plates. Should be coming out of the Lewis and Clark National Forest tonight and heading toward Great Falls.”

  “I will circulate the word to keep an eye out for this Chiricahua man and his woman. If he is in our country, we will find him.”

  “They stay hidden during the day and travel by night,” Arthur told him, “so I should be able to get to Great Falls by the time they do, if not before. They’ll be going to ground now, so I’ll try to get there by sundown. That’s when they’ll be on the move again.”

  “Like the cockroach,” Fasthorse said. “They only come out in darkness.” He paused. “You are my brother, Nakai, and it would be my honor to help you. When you get here, we will talk. Maybe I will have some news.”