Montana Midwife

by Cassie Miles

  “It’s a bad place. Evil lives there. I heard screaming. Not like when the kids were having parties.”

  “Did you go closer?”

  “The screaming stopped. I figured I was wrong. It was just those kids, those damn kids and their beer parties.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “Two men. They were loud and angry. None of my business. No, sir, I don’t go looking for fights.”

  She imagined Wally in his buffalo robe, hiding behind clumps of sage brush and watching everything. In his way, he’d become a guardian of the reservation land. Nothing happened that he didn’t know about.

  Aiden asked, “When was this?”

  “A week, maybe.”

  “Is that when you saw the blonde girl? The girl named Ellen?”

  “She was loud when she laughed. She made an echo.” He opened his eyes wider and blinked. “At Half-Moon Cave, that’s when the two-face must have seen me. I ran away, but he sees everything. And he’s fast. You can’t escape him—no, sir. You can’t escape.”

  His words faded into a mumble, and he closed his eyes. This might be all they got from him, and it wasn’t going to help clear Clinton from suspicion.

  Aiden switched positions with her. “Talk to him about your grandma’s house.”

  She smiled down at the old man. “Maria Spotted Bear sends her best wishes for your recovery. She’s sorry she wasn’t home when you came calling.”

  Without opening his eyes, Wally said, “Kind woman.”

  “And she makes yummy pies.” Appealing to his senses might get him to wake up. “And she grows herbs, fragrant herbs like rosemary and lavender.”

  His nose twitched and he smiled.

  “When you came to visit,” Tab said, “the house was dark. Did you go inside?”

  He shook his head. “I knew something bad was following me. An evil spirit. Didn’t want to bring it inside.”

  “And you had to hide.”

  “I went to the barn.” His lower lip quivered. “That’s where he got me. Two-face attacked me. I told the sheriff. I already told him.”

  “It’s okay,” she said in the same soothing voice she used with women in labor. “You don’t have to talk about it. I want you to breathe and relax. Let yourself go quiet.”

  When his agitation had passed, she asked, “After the two-face left you to die, did someone else come to you?”

  “A man.”

  Beside her, she heard Aiden murmur, “Good job, Wally. Tell us about the man.”

  “I was cold. He covered me with my robe. He tried to help.” Wally opened his eyes and looked at her. “Then I saw an angel. That was you.”

  “What about the man who helped you? Did you know him?”

  “He was young. Used his cell phone. Strong hands. I might know him. Don’t remember.”

  She looked across the bed at the officer who was scribbling in his notebook. Wally’s information matched the story Misty told them. This might be a break for Clinton.

  Leaving Wally to sleep, they went into the hallway. The officer had his cell in hand. “I need to get this information to the chief. Where’s this Half-Moon Cave?”

  “Not far from where David was shot,” Aiden said. “Thanks for letting us see him.”

  “I should be thanking you. This is a good lead.”

  Aiden took her elbow and directed her down the hall. He was moving too fast for conversation, and she knew he had a purpose. As soon as they were on the sidewalk outside, he pulled out his cell phone. “I need to make a couple of phone calls.”

  “Are we going to Half-Moon Cave?” she guessed.

  “And taking Sheriff Fielding with us,” he said. “I want to get this cleared up as soon as possible.”

  “I’m kind of surprised that the cave wasn’t searched before,” she said. “When everyone was looking for Misty’s mystery shooter, it seems like the cave would be a good hiding place.”

  “We checked it out but didn’t search thoroughly. The cave is on the other side of the river from where David was killed.”

  She understood the logic. The Little Big Horn River formed a natural barrier that ran through the rez with very few bridges crossing from one side to the other. Though the current usually rolled lazily along, it was too deep and wide for a vehicle to cross.

  While Aiden made his call to the sheriff, she sat on a stone bench under a honey locust tree in a landscaped area outside the hospital. Casting back in her memory, she visualized the place where she’d seen Clinton’s Jeep stuck in the almost dried creek bed. The brush at the edge of the river had obscured the view of the water’s edge.

  On the opposite side, about a hundred yards beyond the riverside cottonwoods and rugged shrubs, a wall of rugged, sandstone cliffs stretched for nearly two miles. Half-Moon Cave looked like a giant hand had reached down and torn a chunk from the wall, leaving a shape that resembled a moon coming halfway over the horizon.

  When Tab had been at the Jeep and with Misty, she hadn’t been looking toward the cave. The shooter could have fired the rifle, fled into the brush and crossed the river. From there, he could have run or taken a mountain bike to get to the cave or beyond that where David’s van must have been parked. When Aiden had searched from the sky, he hadn’t gone toward the cave. He’d stayed on the west side of the river.

  It was such a simple solution. The shooter had escaped because they were all looking in the wrong direction. The story Misty had told them wasn’t a lie. Nor was her unlikely tale of why Clinton’s fingerprints were found at Maria Spotted Bear’s house.

  When Aiden finished his calls, he didn’t look happy. He sat on the bench beside her. His shoulders slumped.

  “Misty took off,” he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After returning to the ranch house, Tab stood at the porch railing and watched as the helicopter rose from behind the barn and swooped toward Henley. Aiden wasn’t leaving her behind; they had decided on a divide-and-conquer strategy. While he flew with the sheriff and a couple of deputies to Half-Moon Cave, she would talk to his mother and try to figure out where Misty had gone.

  Sylvia stood beside her. In her trembling hand, she held the note that Misty had left behind.

  “If I’d known what she was planning,” Sylvia said, “I would have lassoed and hog-tied the girl. She told me she was going to the supermarket. Then, I found this.”

  Tab took the note. Written in purple ink with Misty’s flamboyant scrawl, it said: “Don’t worry. I’m going to be gone for most of today. Please, Mom, don’t worry. I love you.”

  “When did she leave?” Tab asked.

  “A couple of hours ago. She took off a little after ten o’clock. You and Aiden had just left for Billings. Why would she do this? Is it Clinton? Do you think she’s meeting up with Clinton?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  Tab found it hard to believe that Misty had been planning this escape earlier today. Her attitude had been subdued without a single giggle. She’d looked them straight in the eye and said that she didn’t know where Clinton had gone. Getting ready to run away with him? Tab didn’t think so. Misty wasn’t that good a liar.

  Sylvia raised both hands to cover her face. “I feel terrible.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Tab wrapped her arm around the other woman’s shoulders and led her inside. “Let’s put our heads together. We can find her.”

  “Why doesn’t Aiden want to tell the sheriff about Misty?”

  “Don’t worry.” Tab inadvertently echoed the note. “If there’s any reason to think she’s in danger, we’ll organize search parties. But for right now, let’s keep the sheriff in the dark. He might think Misty has gone on the run.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why would she run?” Sylvia’s voice cracked. “She’s not guilty.”

  “Sometimes, innocence isn’t enough.”

  It would kill Sylvia to see her pregnant daughter behind bars. The Gabriels were a proud family. Suspicion of murder wasn’
t supposed to happen to people like them.

  In the kitchen, her grandma directed them to seats at the table and placed steaming mugs of tea before them. “Chamomile and valerian with a pinch of mint,” she said. “This will settle your nerves.”

  “No offense,” Sylvia said, “but it’s going to take more than tea to make me feel better.”

  “We start with a calm spirit—” Maria Spotted Bear offered her wisdom “—then we will reach a good conclusion.”

  Tab lifted the mug to her nose and took a sniff of the fragrant potion. She used this same formula to help pregnant women who couldn’t get to sleep. “Before Misty left, did she do anything unusual?”

  “She was on the phone. She’s always on the phone.”

  “Could she have been talking to Clinton?”

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia said miserably. “I don’t want to blame him. If anything, Clinton has been a good influence on Misty. He wants to settle down with her, wants to take care of their baby.”

  Tab had an idea. “When Misty and Clinton wanted to be alone, where did they go?”

  “I wish I knew. Misty used to confide in me. We used to have that kind of relationship. I was so proud of her. She got good grades in school, she was a cheerleader and she had friends. She had ambitions. Everybody liked her.”

  “And then?”

  “It started when she got her driver’s license. She was never home. She didn’t talk to me anymore.”

  Tab had heard this story many times before. Young women—even more than young men—were given to bouts of foolishness when they reached the age of independence. Misty had taken a leap into Clinton’s arms. She’d fallen in love. They’d made a baby.

  “Did she mention any special place?” Tab asked. They were both teenagers living with their parents. Making love in their family homes wouldn’t have been feasible. “I hate to say this, but there might have been a motel.”

  “That’s real doubtful,” Sylvia said. “Everybody in Henley and this area knows our family. Misty wouldn’t have taken a chance on getting caught.”

  Talking to Misty’s friends might lead to useful answers, but there wasn’t time to break through the teenager code of silence. And Tab didn’t want to start the rumor that Misty was gone.

  She tried a different tactic. “During the summer I lived here, Misty and I wrote every day in our diaries. Did she keep that up?”

  “She did for a long time, but I don’t know where she’d keep a diary. I respected her privacy and never had cause to search my daughter’s room. She doesn’t do drugs or drink too much.” Sylvia winced. “At least, I don’t think she does.”

  Tab rose to her feet. “I’m going upstairs to her room to look around.”

  “Before you leave,” her grandma said, “the BIA agent has been trying to reach you.”

  “Laura Westerfall?”

  “She said it was important.”

  “I’ll talk to her later.”

  “Tabitha,” her grandma snapped, “listen to me. Agent Westerfall offered you an opportunity. You must answer her.”

  Tab had enough on her plate without worrying about setting up a health center that would serve the pregnant women on the rez and in Henley. Initially, the idea appealed to her. That was before she’d made love to Aiden.

  If Tab said yes to the project, she’d be committed to staying in the area for an extended period of time, and she wasn’t ready to make that decision. The newly formed relationship with Aiden was tentative. If it blew up in her face, she didn’t want to be near him.

  “I’ll talk to Agent Westerfall soon,” she promised as she dashed from the kitchen to the staircase.

  Standing in the threshold of Misty’s room, Tab took a moment to settle her thoughts. Her intense focus on the investigation left little time to consider what was happening in her personal life. She had given her virginity to the man she’d always thought she was meant to be with. Long ago, she’d cast Aiden in the role of soul mate, unbeknownst to him. Making love to him should have meant that her dreams had come true.

  But she was young when those dreams were born. She was older now and ought to be wiser. She shouldn’t make too much of one night together.

  As her gaze circled Misty’s room, Tab identified with the odd juxtaposition of a girlish pink velvet chair and a high-tech computer station. On the bedside table, a fluffy stuffed bunny sat beside a book on the stages of pregnancy. The fantasies of a teenager mingled with adult responsibilities and concerns. Do we ever really grow up?

  She crossed the room and knelt beside the dresser. Misty used to hide her diary in this secret cache under a loose floorboard. When Tab pried it open, she found a small stack of spiral notebooks with years written on them. The last date was four years ago on Misty’s thirteenth birthday.

  Combing through these pages would have given useful insights into Misty’s life, but Tab didn’t have hours to pore over these pages, many of which were scribbled pictures of hearts, flowers and whorls. Misty no longer used the notebooks to record her thoughts. Why would she when she had a computer?

  Feeling like a voyeur, Tab turned on the laptop. Misty hadn’t used password protection, and her documents were readily available. Scanning the labels, Tab smiled in recognition when she read one labeled “D-Abby.” When they first started their journals, they joked about writing to Dear Abby with their problems. She clicked on the document and opened the file.

  The first entry, the most recent, was dated on the day of the murder. It said: “Nobody believes me. I didn’t shoot David. I would never do that. He’s been hurt enough.”

  Tab recalled the autopsy information. The wounds on David Welling’s body indicated that he had been abused for a long time. Did Misty know? Or was she referring to a different kind of pain? Either way, her journal hinted that she knew more about David than she’d admitted.

  Tab scanned through the entries. Some were only half sentences about a mood or a random thought. Others rambled on and on, especially those about having a baby and how that was scary and happy at the same time.

  Tab needed a reference to a place—somewhere Misty might have gone to meet with Clinton. When Tab first got the phone call from Misty, she and Clinton said they were driving around, going off road in his Jeep. At the time, their activity seemed odd. Why would a pregnant woman want to bounce all over the countryside? It seemed more likely that they had simply wanted to be alone. Maybe they’d been on their way to a private hideaway where they could lie in each other’s arms and forget about the rest of the world.

  Tab did a word search on Half-Moon and found a reference from several months ago. Misty had written about an abandoned cabin with a corrugated tin roof that was on the opposite side of the Little Big Horn River and wasn’t far from the cave. Not exactly a GPS description, but Tab had something to go on. If she could get Aiden to search with the chopper, they might spot the roof.

  With a silent apology to Misty for peeking into her inmost thoughts, Tab closed the Dear Abby journal. In the hallway, she put through a call to Aiden that went straight to voice mail. Cell phone reception—as she well knew—was unreliable on the rez. She’d have a better chance of reaching Aiden if she drove to the cave.

  * * *

  THOUGH AIDEN WASN’T AN authorized lawman, the sheriff hadn’t objected when he entered Half-Moon Cave two hours ago with the other searchers. They hadn’t known exactly what they were looking for, but evidence hidden in the cave might have been important enough to motivate the nearly fatal attack on the Buffalo Man.

  In a dark recess at the back of the cave, one of the deputies had noticed scrapes against the wall and had signaled to the others. A flat piece of wood was held in place by three rocks that leaned at an unusual angle.

  “Looks like a door,” the sheriff said. “See if you can move those rocks.”

  “I’ll do it.” The deputy passed his flashlight to Aiden. “There’s not much room here.”

  Single-handed, he shoved the rocks out of the way, cre
ating other scrapes against the wall. He pried away the board and stepped back. None of them were prepared for what they saw.

  The beams from all the searchers’ high-power flashlights illuminated a grisly pile of bone and desiccated flesh. Tangles of blond hair clung to a dried skull with the jaw wide open in a silent scream. Another skeleton had knees drawn up to the chin. Rotting ropes fastened wrist bones and ankles, but there were no shreds of clothing or buttons or zippers. The victims had been naked when their remains were discarded in this dark, narrow chamber.

  The sheriff squatted down and shone his light on a piece of rope. “This knot is different from the ones used on Ellen Jessop.”

  “He could have changed his method,” a deputy said. “These bodies have been here for a good, long while.”

  “How many do you think there are?”

  “Six or seven, at the least.”

  “How long?” Aiden asked. “How long have they been buried?”

  “I’m no expert on decomposition,” the sheriff said, “but this isn’t a recent grave. They’ve been dead for years.”

  The recent disappearances of young women had opened the door to an extended history of killing. These bones offered mute testimony to a horror that had been too long hidden.

  “We need to end this,” Aiden said quietly.

  “We will.” The sheriff rose and took a step back. “Let’s go outside. I’ll contact the state police and Joseph Lefthand. Identification needs to be done properly.”

  “Doesn’t seem right to leave them here,” said the deputy who had discovered the cache of bones in the back wall of the cave when he rolled three heavy rocks out of the way. “I’ll stand guard.”

  “Suit yourself,” the sheriff said. “Don’t touch anything.”

  The hiding place was simple but effective. The back wall of the cave was marked by several small openings that led deeper into the earth. Unless you were searching, you’d never notice the rocks that hide the alcove.

  Aiden wondered how many people had passed close to this terrible secret and never suspected a thing. People explored this cave all the time. They built campfires near the wide opening at the front. When he was a teenager, he’d come to parties here. As a kid, he and his buddies played in the cave, using it as a clubhouse. They’d never known. If Wally hadn’t remembered screams from this place, the burial chamber might never have been uncovered.