Montana Standoff

by Nadia Nichols

  While Molly ate, she filled Dani in on the past weekend, the party at the Bow and Arrow and her horseback ride, which already seemed like another lifetime ago. Then she told her about her extraordinary lunch with Gregory Dehaviland, her subsequent reinstatement to active duty at Taintor, Skelton and Goldstein, and her falling out with Steven. “And you know all about Ken Manning and the pot of hot noodle soup,” she concluded, finishing her drink.

  “Wow,” Dani said. “No wonder you weren’t answering your phone. You’re a busy lady. So now what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you and Steven.”

  “Weren’t you listening? It’s over between us.”

  Dani fixed her with a long-suffering expression. “Right,” she said, leaning forward to retrieve Molly’s empty glass. “I’m going to fix you another drink, you’re going to sit here and relax with it, and you’re also going to promise me before you creep off to bed that you’ll stay right here until this whole mess blows over. I don’t want you living all alone in that apartment. My God, Molly, drunk or no, there’s no excuse for Manning’s behavior. You could have been hurt. You’re staying here with us, no arguments.”

  STEVEN dialed Molly’s home phone at six Tuesday morning. He knew the hour was well beyond the boundaries of proper etiquette, but each minute that passed only increased his agony after a long and sleepless night. When she didn’t answer, his anxiety grew. He called her again five minutes later. Still no answer. He made coffee, rang her number every five minutes but each time her answering machined picked up, and he felt a growing sense of unease. She’d left in such a distraught state the night before. Had she made it home safely, or was her little red Mercedes piled into another ditch somewhere between Bozeman and Helena?

  He barely tasted the coffee, was hardly aware of getting dressed, and didn’t even think about breakfast. Called her again at seven. At five past. By seven-thirty he’d given up all hope and was in his Jeep, heading for Helena. She lived on one of those high-end streets, in a fancy brick walk-up that in a year or two would probably have a doorman. Two hours later he was halfway up the entry stairs when a young policeman leaned over the stairwell and said, “Hold on. You live here?”

  The sight of the uniform triggered an intense panic in Steven. He rounded the top of the stairs, plowed past the startled officer, and burst into Molly’s apartment with a feeling like he’d never experienced before. “Molly?” he called out, as if she would materialize before him, alive and well, when every fiber of his being twisted in silent anguish that something terrible had happened to her, and that he could have so easily prevented it by not going to that damn meeting.

  “Steven?” Her voice speaking his name was like sweet music, and he whirled toward the sound. There she was, alive and well, emerging from her bedroom. “It’s all right, Officer, he’s a friend of mine.” She was pulling a shoe on her foot and holding a hairbrush in one hand. Her face was pale and there were dark smudges beneath her eyes. “I’m late for work,” she explained, casting him a guarded glance. “The police are just finishing up.”

  Steven stared, his heart hammering. “Finishing up what?”

  “Someone broke into my apartment last night.” Molly’s eyes dropped and a faint blush colored her cheeks. She laid the hairbrush down on the kitchen counter and began to braid her hair with trembling fingers. With a nod she indicated the three uniformed officers. “They’re just making sure they get the story straight from me. So tell me, Young Bear. Did your emergency zoning meeting go well last night? And what brings you to Helena this fine Montana morning?”

  Her coolness set him back on his heels; that, and the fact that the police were eyeing him with wary suspicion. “I came when you didn’t answer your phone this morning,” he said. “I was worried about you.”

  She neatly bound the end of her braid and her eyes remained downcast. “Well, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine.” She turned to one of the officers. “You’ll lock up when you leave?” Satisfied with his nod, she picked up her purse and briefcase and walked to the door. Steven followed.

  “Who broke into your apartment?” he asked as she started down the stairs.

  “I’m just an attorney, not an investigator. Ask the police,” she responded, not bothering to look back.

  “Molly.” His plea for her to stop fell on deaf ears. “Molly, dammit, talk to me.”

  She paused and glanced over her shoulder with obvious reluctance. Her eyes mirrored an ocean of unspoken hurt. “Why?” she said. “What do you and I have to say to each other, Young Bear?”

  Steven didn’t care if half the police in Helena overheard. He spoke his mind, and he spoke from the heart. “I love you, Molly Ferguson. I trust you and I believe in you, and when I call you up at six in the morning to make sure you’re okay, I want you to answer the phone. That’s what I have to say to you.”

  She dropped her eyes again but not before he caught a glimpse of the tears that flooded them. “Oh, Steven,” she said in a voice choked with emotion. “Why couldn’t you have told me that last night?” And without another word or so much as a backward glance, she continued down the stairwell, slamming the most painful of emotional doors in his face.

  WHEN MOLLY REACHED HER OFFICE, the first thing she saw were the long-stemmed roses on her desk, twelve red and four each of pink, yellow and white. “They were delivered right after you left yesterday afternoon,” the secretary said with a wistful smile. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Molly waited until she was alone to read the card that accompanied them.

  You were right.

  I should have eaten some of Luther Makes

  Elk’s owl stew.

  It might have given me wisdom.

  Steven.

  “Oh, Steven,” she murmured, remembering the stricken expression in his eyes as she turned her back on him and left him standing at the top of the stairwell not half an hour earlier. “We’re both stubborn and stupid. We both should have eaten some of your grandfather’s stew.”

  If only there were some way to reach him, to call him and tell him she was sorry, but he wouldn’t be back in Bozeman until later that morning. She wouldn’t see him until the public meeting tonight, and then they’d be in opposite camps, each fighting for a different cause.

  Unless…unless she did what he wanted her to do, and resigned her position with the firm. Unless she picked up the phone right now and called Dehaviland’s private cell-phone number and told him she’d failed to persuade Steven to speak with him, and she felt the only recourse was to resign her position with Taintor, Skelton and Goldstein because she felt that remaining in their employ, given what she knew about them, might compromise any future she might have as a reputable attorney….

  Molly glanced at the phone. She could do it. She could call Dehaviland. In her heart she knew it was the right thing to do, and she felt sure that he would understand. She flipped through her desk file and found his unlisted number, which he’d given her in the restaurant before parting. “Call anytime,” he’d said. “Tell Young Bear I’ll meet with him wherever, whenever. Tell him the ball’s in his court and he calls the shots.”

  Oh, why couldn’t Steven have listened to her? Why couldn’t he have believed?

  Molly reached for the phone and just as her fingers brushed the receiver, it rang. Startled, she lifted it to her ear. “Ferguson.”

  “Young Bear.” Her heart jumped with gladness at the sound of his deep, calm voice. “I just spoke with Dehaviland, and in the course of our conversation he invited me out to his fishing camp. I asked him if I could bring a date, and he asked if you liked to fish.”

  Molly’s grip tightened on the receiver. “Where’s his place, and when do we go?”

  “About two hours south of here, and how does right now sound?”

  “Right now sounds pretty good. Where are you?”

  “Parked beside your car in the parking lot.”

  “Give me five minutes,” Molly said, rising ou
t of her chair as she spoke. “And Steven?” she added, her voice softening. “The roses are beautiful. Thank you.”

  Skelton gave her no arguments about leaving work just minutes after arriving. He’d heard about Manning’s visit to her apartment the night before, and when she told him she was on her way to meet with Dehaviland prior to the public meeting, he gave a curt nod. “I’ll let Brad know,” he said.

  Steven opened the passenger side door of his Wagoneer as she walked briskly across the parking lot. The very sight of him made her want to rush into his arms, and it took all her willpower to remain coolly professional. A sudden breeze tousled her escaped curls and she reached a hand to brush them out of her eyes as she came to an uncertain halt. “Shouldn’t we take separate vehicles?” she faltered.

  He shook his head. “Not until this is over. Until he’s taken into custody, Manning’s still a definite threat. You should place a restraining order on him.”

  “He was just drunk, and mad because he thought I had something to do with him being fired. How did you know he was the one who broke into my apartment?”

  “I took your advice and asked the investigator. Get in, we can talk on the way.”

  Steven’s expression was uncharacteristically stern and she felt the beginning twinges of indignation give way to a prickle of fear. “He was just drunk,” she repeated.

  “I’m sure he was, but if you don’t place a restraining order on him, I will.” Steven continued to hold the passenger door for her and when she continued to hesitate he said, “It’s time I told you about Mary Pretty Shield.”

  With a jolt of surprise Molly stared into his dark eyes. Suddenly breathless, she climbed into the Wagoneer and moments later they were headed south, toward the valley of the Yellowstone. But before Steven would speak a word about Mary Pretty Shield, he made sure Molly called the police and requested them to place a restraining order on Ken Manning.

  “MARY WAS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE that everyone loved,” Steven said, beginning her story before the time he met her. “She was class valedictorian. She played basketball in high school. She was captain of the team in her senior year, and they never lost a game. She got a scholarship to go to a good college off the rez, and decided to major in political science. In her sophomore year, she called me out of the blue. I’d never met her before, but she said she’d heard about me through some of the elders on the rez and wanted to intern with me for the summer, if she could. She had changed her major to environmental studies, and was thinking of going to law school.”

  “And that was when you happened to be involved in the Soldier Mountain dispute,” Molly guessed.

  “Yes. I was practically living on the Rocky Ridge reservation. In fact, when I was there I stayed with one of Mary’s aunts, though I didn’t know it until after I took her on as an intern. Mary dove right into the mine dispute that summer as my intern. She was full of an energy and idealism that captured the hearts of nearly everyone she spoke to about the mine, and Mary spoke to everyone, including the mine workers. She didn’t like the things she was learning, and she wasn’t afraid to talk about them.”

  Steven fell silent for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. “I was studying the mining laws, looking for some loophole to use against Soldier Mountain mine to keep them from extending their permits, and I found it in the wording of the mill site law. Apparently I wasn’t the only one looking closely at it. The mining industry had been lobbying the government to get it changed, but eventually it was decided that the original mining laws shall stand, which meant that each designated mill site on each mining claim could use no more than five acres for activities associated with mining. Are you familiar with that law?”

  Molly nodded. “I’m relatively new to all of this, but Brad’s been coaching me. I’ve read the Emergency Supplemental Bill pushed through by Congress to sidestep the wording in the old law, and I also happen to know the Senate is working for all its worth to overturn the decision and permanently prohibit placing limits on mill sites in the Interior Appropriations bill.”

  “The House isn’t going to let them,” Steven said. “They’re fighting that Senate amendment tooth and nail.”

  “If you’re right, and the House wins this fight, that old mill site law could do a lot of damage to a whole lot of mining operations. It could cause a whole lot of hate and discontent.”

  “Yes,” Steven said. “I looked into Soldier Mountain’s permitting and found that they’d filed for only ten mill sites for a total of fifty acres, yet over the years they’d been dumping waste rock and contaminates on well over three hundred acres, all of which was contributing to the contamination of the groundwater. Bottom line, they were in gross violation of their own laws, so I decided to bring that to light.

  “The day before Mary died, I ran the idea past her. She was sharp, and I often used her as a sounding board. I explained to her about mill sites, about how the whole permitting process worked in regards to them, and about how we might be able to make that same process work for us. If we could prove that Soldier Mountain was operating in noncompliance of the mill site law, which it was and in fact still is, we might have the edge we needed to prevent their ten-year permitting extension. I cautioned her not to speak about it, but I could see that she was excited by the idea. She was young and naive and still believed that good always triumphed over evil. She said, ‘We’ll beat them with their own rules and regulations, won’t we? We’ll stop them from poisoning our water and killing our people!’ She told me I was brilliant, and then she left.

  “That was the last time I saw her alive. She called me the following evening, a Saturday, all excited about a message she’d found in her car, put there apparently by a whistle-blower willing to talk to her about illegal dumping at the Soldier Mountain mine. When Mary told me where and when the note said she was supposed to meet him, I told her that I’d follow up on it, that it wasn’t safe for her to go alone, and I told her to go home.”

  “But she went anyway,” Molly said.

  “Yes. I was late getting there, half an hour later than the message requested. It was a long drive from where I was staying. Mary’s car was there, and I found her lying facedown in the shallow water near the river’s edge. Her body was still warm. I called for help on my cell phone, tried CPR until I was exhausted, cursed the gods that let this happen, and was sitting beside her when the tribal police showed up, followed closely by the feds. They trampled the ground enough to obliterate any evidence, asked a lot of questions, and I spent the rest of the night answering them. Are you following me?” he said.

  “Yes,” Molly said faintly. “Someone murdered her to shut her up, and you walked right into it. Did you have legal representation when you were questioned?”

  “I didn’t think I needed it.”

  “Do you think Ken Manning was somehow involved?”

  “He was the one pushing the hardest for my arrest. When the feds could find no motive that would fly in court, and my character was vouched for by too many reputable people, including a congressman and a heavy-hitting California senator I worked for while I was in law school, they finally let me go. They listed her death as an accidental drowning. I told Mary’s father about the message, and her meeting with the supposed whistle-blower, and my belief that her drowning had definitely not been accidental. I asked him to push for a forensic autopsy. He looked me in the eye and said that if I didn’t stop what I was doing, if I didn’t stop trying to shut down the uranium mine on Soldier Mountain, more innocent people would be hurt or killed. He knew Mary’s death hadn’t been an accident, and he knew I hadn’t killed her, but he was scared, and clearly he held me responsible for the loss of his daughter.

  “So I told the tribe I couldn’t help them anymore, and without any legal representation they had no choice but to drop the lawsuit against Soldier Mountain. The feds immediately sealed the files, so who knows? Maybe by backing off I kept my own people safe. My sister Pony, for one, and my brothers and their families, but I betr
ayed the tribe, and I betrayed Mary Pretty Shield.

  “And Mary’s father was right. I was responsible for her death. That innocent girl died because after she left my office that afternoon she said the wrong things to the wrong people. She died because suddenly she was a threat to the federal government, to the corporate bank, and to corrupt tribal members. She died because I told her something I shouldn’t have. She died because of me, and she died for nothing.”

  Steven kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, taut with pent-up emotion. He was unprepared for the touch upon his arm and Molly’s gentle voice saying, “No, Steven, that’s not true at all. Mary Pretty Shield died fighting for something she truly believed in, and that’s truly the noblest death of all.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GREGORY DEHAVILAND’S fishing camp was located at the very end of one of the worst stretches of dirt road Molly had ever seen. Five miles passed at the unheard of speed of five miles per hour. They could have walked the distance faster. She clutched the dash as Steven eased through another deep washout and then stared at the sky as he climbed in low gear out the far side. “This can’t be right,” she repeated for the umpteenth time. “Dehaviland owns and flies his very own Learjet. He certainly wouldn’t have a cabin on a cart path like this, and there hasn’t been another building for the past forty minutes.”

  “These were the directions he gave,” Steven said, unperturbed. “He warned me the road was rough and the camp remote.”

  “Yes, but ‘remote’ to a man like him doesn’t have anything to do with this, Young Bear. I think we’re hopelessly lost.”

  “This isn’t exactly wilderness, and we’re not lost,” Steven said. “There are other vehicle tracks in the road. Have patience.”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that redheads have no patience?” She studied him at the next stretch of level road. “Steven, did you call Dehaviland today, or did he call you?”