And then the floodgates within her eyes opened.
***
“You’re awfully quiet.” Chloe sipped her Espresso and fixed Reid with a curious stare. “Tired?”
Reid sat at the two-seater, black marble table across from her feeling physically ill. There was nothing wrong with the small restaurant situated near the College of Technology. The tiny bistro was crowded but clean and cheerful. The gray slate walls guarded by an army of potted plants supported huge single-pane windows overlooking the rolling, landscaped campus. The breakfast food and drink was excellent, served with glazed stoneware dishes and mugs.
Still Reid could barely force himself to talk or eat. A few hours before, when Odie called as requested, he’d ordered the detective to do a complete background check on Cody Masterson and Chloe Masterson Birch. He wanted to know what ties, if any, Chloe had maintained with her ex-husband. The thought that she might be involved in fossil poaching or drugs had driven him to this point. It was a cop’s mentality and, though he berated himself for it, it was as much of who he was as the normal social pleasantries he now forced himself to do.
Reid sighed. “It was a long night. I’m not looking forward to the drive back either, but that’s the demands of the job. Speaking of which, you did a great job on that reconstruction.”
“You keep saying that. I’m just a messenger. My work will only be a success if somebody uses the information to come forward and identify the man.”
Reid nodded and picked at his scrambled eggs. “The photo was distributed electronically early this morning, especially to the tribal police agencies. We’ll get a strike soon.”
Chloe’s hair shined like spun platinum beneath the sunlight coming in through the window as she reached across the table and placed her left palm over his hand resting along the table edge. “I hope you get bonus points with Sheriff Combs,” she said with a wink. “That would make my long hours of slaving over a hot computer worthwhile.”
Reid felt worse. She was making all the right overtures about still caring for him, and he was about to manipulate her trust for selfish reasons. “Must have been tough for you.”
Her brows crinkled together. “What?”
“Finally finding something you love to do and that you’re really good at, but it has this humongous down side – it negatively affects your life, even your marriage.”
Chloe removed her hand and gestured off-handedly. “Oh, that...Well, like I said, Cody wasn’t entirely to blame. We were both career driven fiends. Not that he didn’t have his faults. He had a lot of mood swings and bouts with depression. I didn’t have the time to coddle him, and he found other ways to pull himself together without me.” She looked at him, her face pensive. “I know what you’re thinking. Other women. No, he never cheated on me. I know that for a fact.”
Reid sensed an underlying current of evasion about Cody’s faults. He’d have to probe deeper. “How did you meet him?”
“I met him at MSU in Missoula. He was getting a law degree. He wanted to be an attorney. We clicked right away when we found out that we were both interested in the criminal field. After dating until he graduated, we decided to get married. Soon after we lived apart on and off because he got an attorney job in Havre for a small law firm while I continued my schooling, graduated with an archeology degree, and then decided to go into forensic reconstruction. After that, things fell apart.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Cody’s the county attorney in Helena. He prosecutes big-time criminals.”
Or protects them from prosecution, Dorbandt thought. Masterson had a lot of power, like the ability to dismiss cases he deemed lost causes. How many mafia stooges, poaching accomplices, or personal criminal buddies had he let loose by failing to allow cases to move forward into a Lewis and Clark county courtroom?
“He sounds very ambitious,” Reid replied, barely containing his consternation. How could Chloe have gotten involved with this man?
She inhaled deeply. “Definitely. You know, it seemed like the more Cody succeeded from small time attorney to deputy county attorney, and then to county prosecutor, the more our marriage disintegrated.”
“He moved up quickly, then?”
Chloe nodded. “Almost like opportunities fell into his lap. And he’s still hungry for more. His ultimate goal is to get the U.S. Attorney position for Montana.”
Reid took a sip of coffee as he considered Chloe’s words. Corrupt local and state government employees were the bane of law enforcement when it came to weeding out drug enemies. Masterson had probably made his connections with the mafia in Havre as a fledgling attorney. All kinds of narcotraffic went through that border town straight from the Canadian line. Sometime during a fragile period when a brassy, ambitious attorney’s soul could be tarnished black, Masterson was seduced by the prospect of easy money, future career advances, and power. Love of self had replaced his love for Chloe.
“Chloe, did Cody ever use drugs?”
Chloe looked at him sharply, a shadow crossing over her eyes. “Why on earth would you ask me that?”
“You said that Cody had mood swings and bouts with depression. Sounds like a substance abuse issue.”
She looked down at her near empty plate once filled with puffy slices of French Toast slathered with hand-harvested maple syrup from Vermont. “Once a cop, always a cop. Sure, Cody had his bout with recreational drugs when he was in college, but that was it. His real problem during the marriage was alcohol. I pushed him into rehab once, and he passed with flying colors. All of this was before we decided to part ways. As far as I know, he’s still on the wagon. Why this deep interest in my ex?”
Reid knew that he’d pushed far enough. He grinned. “Guess I’m curious about the competition.”
When she gazed at him this time, her expression was mirthful. “There is no competition, Reid. I don’t even speak with him anymore. Does that make you feel better?”
“Yeah, it does.”
Chloe looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get going. I have some papers to correct before class.” She gathered her purse and briefcase together.
“I wish we had more time.”
“Me, too, Reid. When will you come back to Billings?”
Reid swiped a hand across his face. “I don’t know. I’ve got a heavy case load right now, but I’ll have some vacation time soon. I could come back and visit my parents and brother. Haven’t seen them in quite a while.”
Chloe stared into his eyes. “I’d like that. Call me and let me know what you’re doing. I’ll clear my calendar.” Chloe stood and so did he. The bill had already been paid so they left the bistro and forged out into the suffocating heat.
Since they’d met there, he walked her to her van, feeling awkward, sad, and excited at the same time. “Well, here we are,” he said as they stood by the Lumina’s door.
Chloe leaned close to him and kissed him briefly on the lips. It was not a passionate move, but not just a peck on the cheek either. “I’ll miss you, Reid. Come back quickly.”
Reid searched her eyes, wondering if she felt as he did that they’d just turned some invisible corner with one another. He placed his hand on her arm and pulled her close again. This time, he kissed her and drew away. Her response had been just as he remembered it to be so long ago as she leaned into him, cool, soft, and smelling of lavender. It was like a time warp, as if fifteen years hadn’t passed at all.
“I’ll call when I get back to Mission City,” he said.
Chloe laughed. “You’d better. I don’t want you to disappear on me.” She unlocked the van with an electronic remote and slid in, then shut the door, waving quickly as she started the vehicle.
Reid watched, feeling ten feet tall, as she backed out and left the parking lot. It had been a long time since he’d been in a serious relationship with a woman. Work had consumed him. The long hours on the job filled his head and his hours. It was time that he started enjoying life more, he decided as he watched the van tur
n into a blue dot amidst downtown traffic.
Maybe it was time to turn his compass toward home instead of toward infinity. He wasn’t getting any younger. He did want a wife and kids. Early thirties and he was sightseeing life on cruise control rather than with his hands guiding the wheel. Maybe Chloe was always the woman he was meant to be with.
His cell phone rang and he scrabbled for it. “Detective Dorbandt.”
“Reid? This is Pearl Phoenix.”
Though he’d had meals at the ranch a few times that Ansel pressed him into and liked her parents very much, they had never called him directly. “This is a surprise. How are you?”
“Not well, I’m afraid. I’m sorry to call your cell phone, but a nice man named Detective Fiskar at the sheriff’s department gave me this number when I told him it was an emergency.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Chase is in the hospital. He’s had a heart attack. I need to speak with Ansel, Reid. Do you know where she is? I’ve called her home phone and the cell all night, but she doesn’t answer,” she said in a rush of words.
Reid assimilated the bad news and the effect it would have on Ansel in a split second. He was thankful that he would be the one to break the news to her. “It’s a long story, but she and I happened to meet here in Billings.
“Billings? Well, can you contact her and tell her to call me?”
“I’ll call the hotel where she’s staying. Where are you?”
An exhalation of relief echoed through the receiver. “Thank God. I’m at the McCone County Hospital ICU. Tell Ansel to call my cell phone. She knows the number.”
“What’s Chase’s condition,” Reid said, knowing that ICU was a red flag of danger.
Pearl’s voice cracked with emotion as she replied, “Very serious. He’s critical.”
Chapter 29
“One has to face fear or forever run from it.”
Crow
“You still mad at me?” Dixie said through her headset microphone.
The FBI Eurocopter banked to the right, rotor blades drumming like thunder while Ansel’s fingernails dug into the rough, navy-blue fabric on the armrests and her seat belt clip cinched into her abdomen from the sudden shift in centrifugal force. Parker wasn’t wasting any time lifting off and jettisoning his four passengers toward Glasgow with a short side-trip to the McCone hospital heliport beforehand.
“No,” Ansel replied, barely able to respond. Her conversation with Pearl on the hotel phone was all she could think about, and her stepmother’s words echoed through her head.
“Chase is in ICU, Ansel. They just brought him up from the emergency room. He’s unconscious. They want to stabilize him. Dr. Welman say’s it’s a myocardial infarction. Please, hurry.”
Fortunately, she’d received Reid’s call relaying the horrible news about her father before the ERT had departed for the Billings airport. She’d rushed to Outerbridge’s room and asked to be taken to the hospital by air rather than make the long drive with Reid. The agent was very sympathetic and obliging considering their previous confrontation, but she would have begged on bended knees if she had to. This flight would cut her travel time by more than half.
She sat in an aft passenger seat this time, right behind Parker. He couldn’t see her, but she didn’t care. Dixie occupied the middle seat to her left. Walthers inhabited the far left seat behind Outerbridge who rode shotgun with Parker. The quarters were cramp and claustrophobic, their backs pressed up against a vibrating rear wall next to the tail boom, but Ansel’s anxiety had more to do with her internal demons rather than a fear of her surroundings.
She was paralyzed by the black dread that her father would die before she saw him. All she could see in her mind’s eye was herself yelling at him about not telling her that Rusty was back. Guilt and sheer mortification gutted her insides at the very thought of it. She’d argued with her father before, but never like that. Never with such a cold hate in her heart and such venom in her voice. Had she upset him so much that she’d caused his heart attack?
Without warning, her internal self-control mechanism misfired, and Ansel began to sob openly, hands over her face, head bent, which wasn’t easy with the bulky helmet and headset.
Dixie came to her rescue. The paleontologist handed her a wad of tissues taken from her duffel bag beneath a seat and patted her on the back. “Ansel, don’t worry,” she said, her voice tinny through the earphones they wore to communicate above the thumping din. “We’ll get you to your daddy.”
Ansel gratefully took the tissues and wiped her puffy eyes and red-splotched face. The interior scene would have been comic under other circumstances. The beefy, self-assured Walthers grimaced nervously as if dealing with a despairing woman was above and beyond the call of duty. Outerbridge feigned total ignorance and stared through the sun-filled windshield where toy-sized ranches and farms filled a tinderbox landscape moving quickly past below.
She could also see every twist and turn of Parker’s body as he surreptitiously tried to cast glances toward her over his shoulder. His movements intensified as she cried, and she imagined every twitch had something to do with his frustrated efforts to either see or console her without Outerbridge noticing. Dixie just kept talking.
Ansel ignored all of them, leaned back into her seat, then stared out her window like a zombie. Finally Dixie quit trying to rouse her into good cheer with a few hope and faith one-liners about her father’s prospective recovery, and the only sound inside the cabin was generated by the engine, rotors, turbines, and wind.
Her fragmented thoughts drifted briefly toward Reid, whom she hadn’t seen before leaving Billings. Nor had she seen the photo reconstruction of the Indian poacher’s physical identity, something she’d been longing to discover for over a week. Now it didn’t seem important.
Time passed with the slowness of a freeze-frame, slide show. They’d traveled northeast for about an hour before the flat topography began to break apart by the appearance of large dun-colored humps. Ansel’s looked at Dixie who was dozing beside her.
“Is that the Badlands?”
Dixie jerked to attention, peered out the same window, and nodded. “Sure is. Should be right near Hell Creek again. Looks clear out here now, but I hear there’s an honest-to-God storm front coming in. We might get some rain.”
The unexpected good news nibbled away at the dark abyss filling Ansel’s soul. Above the copter, visibility looked unlimited. The sky was azure blue and relatively devoid of clouds. It didn’t look as if there would ever be relief for the drought-ridden terrain.
“When’s that supposed to happen?”Ansel asked.
Parker’s voice shot through the earphones. “About four o’clock. All that dust in Canada helped a weather system develop some convective storms. Sometimes dust serves as a condensation nuclei for water vapors. That’s going to make your father happy.”
“Parker, have you noticed any bogies following us?” Outerbridge said suddenly.
“Negative. Saw a light plane behind us about five minutes ago. That was it.”
“Well, there’s a black chopper coming up fast from below. It’s headed right at us.”
Ansel looked out her window but couldn’t see anything.
“I see it,” Walthers said from his left end seat as he peered out Outerbridge’s side. “No call letters.”
“I’m going to take a look,” Parker replied. The copter executed a smooth lefthand turn so he could observe the approaching aircraft through the lower front windshield.
Ansel saw it, too. It was slightly larger than the Eurocopter with a similar styled, teardrop-shaped fuselage, glassed-in cockpit, long tail boom, and enclosed tail rotor. The chopper climbed toward them at a forty-five degree angle, it’s current trajectory placing them on a collision course.
“It’s a Gazelle with outriggers,” Parker said, his voice tense. Abruptly, he banked the chopper back to their previous heading and increased his flight speed with a burst of power.
Outerbridg
e stared at Parker. “What’s an outrigger?”
“The external stores racks on either side of the fuselage behind the cabin. Could be carrying nothing more than smoke markers and flares. Or it might be hauling 36-mm rockets, TOW missiles, machine guns or side-mounted miniguns. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe they’re military,” Walthers added.
“Uh, uh. They’re unmarked. The Gazelle is a reconnaissance and attack helicopter mostly used against armored troops. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. They shouldn’t be here. I’ll try the com and see if they respond.” He began a calm, purposeful inquiry across the radio airwaves, requesting that the unidentified helicopter on an approach below make contact.
Ansel listened to all this with a sinking feeling in her stomach. If Parker was worried, so was she. They were much closer to the Hell Creek bluffs now. That would be a bad place to encounter trouble. She gazed at Dixie. The paleontologist stared back at her, eyes wide and frightened.
“They’re still coming,” Walthers volunteered as he watched out his rear window. “I see two people in the cockpit. Can’t be more than five-hundred feet away now. Looks like they’re moving over to come up alongside.”
Parker abandoned his mike. “They aren’t responding, and I don’t want them too close.”
Outerbridge nodded. “I agree. Let’s get out of here.”
Parker increased the collective, and their flight speed jumped yet again. Ansel watched as the other copter appeared below her window and began to drop back appreciably because of the Eurocopter’s acceleration. On the ground, the first of the Badlands’ bluffs came into view, and she tensed. “Shouldn’t we avoid the rocks and stay over level ground?”
“Not necessarily,” Parker responded. “If things turn sour, we’ll need cover.”
She leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“He means we’re a sitting duck out in the open.” Outerbridge had swivelled his head around to stare at her. “Somebody’s coming after us, Miss Phoenix.”
Carnosaur Crimes Page 23