Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  He began to relax. Now everything would work out fine, for his biggest worry was that the FBI man wouldn’t be able to keep up in the darkness. After all, not everyone gladly embraced the night. Not everybody had the Watcher’s gift of understanding shadows. Now, because of the bloodhounds, he wouldn’t have to stoop to clumsily moving through the woods with enough noise to lead his prey to his lair.

  The edge of the barn cut them from his line of vision.

  The Watcher rose from his bale, walked softly through scattered straw to the side of the loft, and resumed watching them from a window there. He watched the men until they chose their hiding positions.

  They moved into a triangle that would give each man a view of Kelsie’s bedroom window. Each of them settled into the dark shadows of a tree.

  The Watcher smiled again. It was exactly how he had planned to manipulate them.

  His biggest regret regarding the events about to unfold was that he wouldn’t be able to savor the death of the FBI pig. Yes, he had to die; Kelsie had turned to him and in so doing, betrayed the Watcher once more. The pig would die as punishment. Unfortunately, the bullet from Nick’s rifle would be far too merciful. Yet, justice, as with Nick’s death, would be served, and Kelsie would have no one left but her true love, always watching, always waiting.

  Watching. Waiting.

  Much as the Watcher would have liked to begin his plan now, he had written in the note that Kelsie should be at the window at 2 a.m. If he made his move before that time, they might have suspicions later.

  To pass the time, the Watcher closed his eyes and enjoyed blood-soaked memories of Nick Buffalo’s final moments. Because he was able to use Doris as a comparison, the Watcher had discovered that he did prefer killing women. Still, Nick had served well, holding to his life force so long and with such fierceness and fury that the Watcher had absorbed much power.

  He was learning and accepted that there would have to be trial and error involved. He would have to find women who matched Nick in their reluctance to relinquish their life force. He would have to find a way to test these women to his satisfaction beforehand. Because of the time and effort it took to prepare, there was no sense disappointing himself by discovering too late that he had taken a weakling.

  For the Watcher did know with absolute certainty that after he completed his plans tonight, there would be a next victim to give him the life flow of power. And another. And another.

  1:58 a.m.

  Clay Garner wanted to stand and adjust his undershorts. Somehow – and it should have been impossible because he’d held himself still for three-quarters of an hour – the stupid boxers had managed to bunch themselves like an accordion up the legs of his blue jeans.

  Because James McNeill had earlier warned him not to anticipate the night temperature from the day’s heat, Clay had prepared properly for extra warmth by wearing a bulky sweater and a borrowed hunting cap. So, aside from the undershorts and aside from the reason he was sitting motionless on a stump beneath the boughs of a large spruce tree, he hadn’t minded the vigil.

  Several times coyotes had howled beyond the crew’s bunkhouse. A distant jet had hissed as it passed high over the valley. Other than that, the air around him had been silky in its quiet. Unlike the muggy, hot summer nights of West Virginia, no incessant creaking and chirping of crickets and bugs disturbed the silence.

  By tilting his head slightly, Clay could see a piece of sky between the boughs of the tree above him. He’d never realized a sky could be so dark, never understood how numberless were the stars. He liked it here.

  Clay wondered how it might be to find enough peace to make a home in the valley, without the steamer trunk of memories and regrets included with the possessions he dragged along from apartment to apartment, peace like the peace he’d sensed from that old man, George Samson.

  Clay let his thoughts stray. He’d begun to enjoy his daily travels in the valley, fruitless as they were in the course of his train-derailment investigation. They’d given him an excuse to range the Montana hills and mountains.

  Much of his driving had been on Highway 93, the two-lane pavement running most of the length of the western edge of the valley. South, the highway skirted Flathead Lake for nearly fifty miles, dipping and curving through the rocky bluffs that dropped to the resort cabins on the shoreline. North, beyond Kalispell and the ski resort town of Whitefish, the highway turned into a sixty-mile funnel between two mountain ranges.

  There was a seven-mile stretch of highway between the north end of Flathead Lake and the commercial spillover at the south end of the town of Kalispell, where Highway 93 was uncharacteristically straight and Rat, with uncharacteristic fields of grass and wheat arranged in uncharacteristic neatness, as if Dutch farmers had invaded to form an enclave against the ruggedness of the Montana hills and mountains.

  The stretch of flatness, unbroken by buildings or trees, was nearly his favorite piece of road because it gave him a sense of the panoramic scope of wide sky and freedom of the land. He remembered how he’d stopped along it early one morning, awed by the view of dawn clouds streaked with pale yellows and tinted with rose hues above the far mountain walls on the other side of the valley.

  Something about Montana had captured his soul, he decided. Someday, he’d be back. Someday...

  A square piece of light appeared, more intense because his eyes had become accustomed to the night. Immediately, he focused on the light.

  Kelsie had turned on the light in her bedroom and was now standing at the window, opening the curtains, then the window itself.

  Although her outline against the light revealed little more than a cutout figure, Clay knew she was wearing a full-length robe with pajamas underneath. James and Clay had both been adamant about her apparel and about her actions. Kelsie was not to do anything remotely suggestive. The thought of it filled both of them with rage and revulsion; not even to trap this killer and pervert was she to compromise herself. 54oreover, if they did not catch the Watcher, they didn’t want him encouraged to try again later.

  Instead, they had instructed Kelsie to do exactly what she did next. She pulled a chair close to the window and sat. She rested her forearms on the window sill and leaned her chin on her arms, to stare out the window.

  If he called out to her, she was to remain silent. They wanted his curiosity to drive him forward, not perverted desire. She was to be a beacon to bring him in closer, anything to get him to move and betray his position.

  Five minutes passed.

  To Clay, it seemed as if he hadn’t breathed in that time. The slightest crackle of branches, the slightest motion of shadow, and they would move.

  Noise and lights would be their first weapons. Clay and James had powerful searchlights and CO2 airhorns. They wanted to confuse the man, panic him, freeze him, making it seem as if people were coming in on him from all directions. If he managed to slip away, Caleb and the hounds would track him down, and they’d have the lights to help follow.

  Another five minutes passed.

  Clay’s senses were heightened to the point he believed he would hear a spruce needle as it fell through branches and dropped to the soft forest floor. He smelled his own sweat of adrenaline, found himself tasting the night air for clues to the prey, was conscious of the pressure of the weight of the rifle slung across his back, was aware of the pressure of his fingertips on the cool metal skin of his flashlight.

  It dawned on him: He was juiced. This was hunting – far, far beyond his teenage memories of deer season. It was hunting at its highest level, stirring a primal instinctive lust he’d never known existed within him. It both excited and repelled him.

  He was stalking a stalker. Was this what the stalker felt in pursuit of his victims? Was Clay himself becoming a monster in chasing a monster?

  Yet another five minutes passed. Then...

  To the left of the house! A crouching figure, stealing forward.

  Clay grabbed his airhorn in one hand and his flashlight in the ot
her. He pushed forward, keeping himself stooped until the rifle across his back cleared the low branches of the tree.

  Clay rose into a sprint and burst forward, clicking on the flashlight. “Down here!” Clay shouted then pressed the button on the airhorn. He reached the open ground near the house.

  On cue, James hit his own airhorn. Caleb hit his from the other side. The dogs howled, and noise filled the valley.

  Clay’s light bounced off the figure moving back into the trees above the house. The man was ducking and weaving, and Clay couldn’t pin him with the light.

  Another light bobbed through the trees. It was James coming down.

  “To your right!” Clay shouted, trying to keep pace with the figure. “He’s moving up and to your right!”

  Caleb kept pressing his airhorn. The dogs kept howling. Lights appeared in the bunkhouse at the far side of the buildings.

  James and his bobbing flashlight beam stopped, something Clay didn’t note until after the roaring crash of rifle fire sent peals of thunder among the trees. There were two more rifle shots.

  It crossed Clay’s mind – the rifles were only meant for backup. But he himself didn’t stop running, trying to keep the figure in his flashlight beam.

  Uphill. The figure stayed on the uphill course, away from the road and buildings, losing himself in the surreal shadows of spruce and pine boughs that reflected as sheer white in the flashlight beam.

  Another two rifle shots. McNeill wants to kill him.

  Clay reached the trees again and crashed through some branches. He had no choice but to take the flashlight off the disappearing figure and concentrate on moving through the trees.

  “McNeill!” Clay shouted, stopping suddenly. “Hold your fire!”

  The last thing Clay wanted was to get shot himself, especially now that it appeared the initial attack had failed.

  “Hold your fire!” he shouted, “Got that?”

  McNeill turned his flashlight on Clay. Clay was surprised that James was so close. He hadn’t realized he’d already covered so much ground in his stumbling pursuit.

  “I got it,” McNeill said.

  Clay heaved for breath. McNeill pushed through some branches and reached Clay.

  “Well, son,” James McNeill said, “looks like we got some tracking ahead of us.”

  “You wanted to shoot him.” It came out as an accusation.

  “You’d shoot him, too,” McNeill said. “If it was your daughter, you’d shoot him and hope for a gut shot that kills him slow. Fact is, I sent both my sons to Great Falls for a cattle auction tomorrow because if they were here, they’d do the same. If I can get him, I’ll be the one to carry the burden, not one of them.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Clay said. “I’m here as a law enforcement officer, and I can’t let you take justice into your own –”

  “You don’t think I couldn’t have set this trap by myself or with a few friends? That’s exactly why I wanted you here – as a law-enforcement officer, someone trustworthy who could testify in court that I shot him in self-defense.”

  McNeill stepped away from Clay and toward the sound of Caleb Latcher’s bloodhounds.

  “I’m going to the bunkhouse. I need to talk to the hired men,” McNeill said without looking back. “In the meantime, you make up your mind. You stay back here, or you come along and track him with us. But if you join us, son, you remember, we are after an animal. And first chance I get to make it happen, he’ll die that way too.”

  2:05 a.m.

  Neither councilman had been able to escape their families for what Fowler had told them at dinnertime would be an all-night poker game at the cabin. Nor had Frank Evans been able to leave the ranch on short notice. Michael McNeill was in Great Falls for a livestock auction along with his cousin Lawson.

  That meant, aside from Sheriff Russ Fowler, who in this case had a valid reason to plead work, only two others had been able to find excuses to leave their respective families for an entire night. Actually, the two had not needed excuses. Banker Wayne Anderson’s wife was out of state visiting her elderly parents. Judge Thomas King’s wife tended to drink heavily – Fowler suspected it was because the judge often beat her – and wouldn’t even be aware her husband had stayed away the entire night.

  Both men were seated and waiting in the cabin when Fowler arrived. A half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels rested in Judge Thomas King’s lap. Light from the single gas lantern hanging from the rafters glinted off the amber contents of full glasses in both men’s hands.

  The cabin was hardly more than a shack with a tarpaper roof. It had one double-paned window from which, in daylight, one could see a small lake framed by trees growing down to the shore’s edge. On the other side of the cabin was the campsite where days earlier the judge had aimed a rifle at Fowler’s chest, something that Fowler intended to remember and pay back when the opportunity presented itself.

  The cabin’s interior matched the spartan exterior, with bunkbeds on three of the roughhewn walls, a sagging cupboard, an old table with a Formica top, and straight-back chairs with vinyl cushions. The closest object of luxury was a potbelly stove in the center. More than a few times each winter, some or all of the group would use the cabin as a base for an ice-fishing weekend, and the potbelly stove proved its worth then. At other times, the cabin was a base for hunting and fishing or poker games. Or, as in the stag weekend last fall – for something more. The cabin was a symbol of defiance for the men who gathered there, an escape from the women in their lives, and accordingly, the unspoken rule was that no effort would be made to clean or fix it up in any way.

  “I got one,” Fowler said in greeting as both men rose, question marks on their faces. “Twelve midnight. Saint Andrews Church. Exactly like the tip said. He was half drunk, and he was at the corner of the church trying to start a fire. All I had to do was walk up behind him and snap the cuffs in place.”

  “Only caught one. The slowest and stupidest, right?” King said.

  “The only one we saw.” Fowler tried to keep his voice level. King’s overstated racism always irritated him.

  “Who knows he’s here?” Anderson asked. Despite the heavy smell of whiskey on his breath, he looked fresh and clean shaven. The judge, on the other hand, with his sagging jowls on his overlarge head, looked old and tired.

  “Two Car was with me during the arrest,” Fowler confirmed. “But we haven’t done any paperwork. And Two Car’s not going to ask questions about where I took him, You know how much he hates them.”

  “So bring the savage in,” the judge said, downing a large shot of Jack Daniels.

  “Only after you understand how we’re going to do this,” Fowler said. “So listen close to how it’s going to go once he’s in here. And after I’ve explained, we’re going to settle back and have a couple of drinks. The longer we leave him out there in the dark, the more scared he’s going to be.”

  2:23 a.m.

  “Let me ask you something,” James McNeill said. “You had the best look of all of us. Did he have a rifle or shotgun?”

  Clay shook his head. “Definitely no weapon.”

  “Good. We don’t have to worry about an ambush.”

  “What if he gets into a vehicle?” Clay asked. They’d been in pursuit for less than five minutes, after a twenty-minute delay while McNeill dealt with his hired hands at the bunkhouse and while Latcher got his bloodhounds on the scent.

  Now Latcher and the leashed bloodhounds ranged twenty steps ahead, breaking through underbrush with the help of Latcher’s spotlight. This was the first time McNeill had spoken since leaving the ranch house, and Clay, staying close behind, had been waiting for the chance to ask his own questions.

  McNeill pointed uphill. “Vehicle? No roads that way. None. The fool is maybe thinking he can lose the dogs, but he’s wrong. Those hounds can track a sparrow through fog from here to New York.”

  “Did you send someone to look after Kelsie? Clay asked. In case he circles back?”


  “Yup. And I hope you’re finished wasting good air on useless talk. This ain’t going to be an easy hike, and you’d be better off saving your breath.”

  The next half-hour proved the rancher’s prediction to be accurate. They followed a trail that would have been difficult in daylight. More than once, their quarry doubled back then jumped far to one side or another. At best, though, it only delayed the bloodhounds a few minutes.

  The trail disappeared into a mountain stream. James and Clay guessed their prey had traveled uphill instead of downhill. Even though he almost never did it, Caleb finally decided to let the bloodhounds off the leash. He wouldn’t have done it if they were tracking an animal, but he figured that the man they were tracking wouldn’t hurt the hounds.

  He sent one up each side of the water. Five minutes later, the dog on the far side of the stream brayed to show he’d picked up the trail again. Caleb leashed the hounds again, and they strained to pull him up a path in their eagerness to stay on a hot scent.

  Soon after, the trail became a straight line, as if their quarry had decided he could not outsmart the bloodhounds and had chosen to outrun them.

  Again, Clay found his focus heightened. The occasional braying of the bloodhounds, their obvious straining at the leashes, his own heavy panting, the flashlight beams darting into thick bushes and crevices behind large boulders, and the expectation of reaching their quarry at any moment – all of it brought him solidly into the present, where second by second all that mattered was the input of his five senses.

  They half-jogged behind the bloodhounds, stopping every few minutes to catch their breath. After forty minutes of fast-paced pursuit, McNeill called out to Caleb. “Up ahead’s the mad trapper’s cabin. You think he knows that?”

  Caleb called out a command to his hounds, and they stopped. “Probably, Jim,” Caleb said, his breathing ragged. “The way he’s running, he shows a good grasp of the area.”

  “Let’s go slow then.”